“Who’s texting you? Matteo?”
I shake my head. “Edward Fadden.”
“Who?”
“I’m sorry, Val. But I’ve got to run,” I tell her, watching disappointment flit across her face. “I promise I’ll be back soon. And I agree, we should definitely have that dinner. Bye. Love you.”
“Love you too,” she mutters.
I wrap my arms around her, breathing in her warmth for a couple of seconds.
“Congratulations again,” I say quietly. “You’re going to be an incredible mom.”
She squeezes my hands. “Go. But eat something, you look pale.”
And then I’m headed downstairs to see an FBI agent who’s threatening to track me down if I don’t show up to a meeting. All thoughts of a possible pregnancy—of missed periods and missed mornings and a first night I haven’t let myself think too hard about, I push firmly from my mind.
I’m sure everything’s fine.
I keep telling myself that all the way to the car.
CHAPTER 21
Lindsay
Ifeel it on the walk back from the parking garage.
It’s nothing I can name. No sound, no movement, no face I clock as wrong. Just a shift in the air—the particular quality of being observed that I’ve spent the last several weeks becoming uncomfortably familiar with.
Matteo’s surveillance has a specific texture to it. Warm, almost. The feeling of being watched by someone who doesn’t want you to come to harm.
This is not that.
I slow my pace without meaning to. My hand finds my bag strap, adjusting it, buying myself a reason to glance behind me.
The street is normal. Evening foot traffic, a couple walking a dog, a man in a gray coat reading something on his phone outside the pharmacy.
I look at the man in the gray coat.
He isn’t reading. His eyes are on his screen but his body is wrong—angled slightly toward me rather than the pharmacy door, weight forward on his toes. The posture of someone ready to move rather than someone waiting.
I look away immediately. Keep walking. My heart is doing something unpleasant and rapid behind my ribs.
You’re being paranoid, I tell myself.You’ve been living inside a mafia household for two weeks. You’re seeing threats in gray coats. You need to sleep more and catastrophize less.
I reach the corner. The light is red. I wait.
The man in the gray coat is no longer outside the pharmacy.
I don’t look for him. I’ve learned enough from Matteo’s world to know that looking for a threat announces that you’ve seen it, and announcing you’ve seen it changes what happens next. Instead I pull out my phone with steady hands—steadier than they have any right to be—and I type without looking up.
Me: Are your men on me right now?
The light changes. I cross.
His reply comes before I reach the other side.
Matteo: Crater and Boulder are in the car on your left. Why?
