“Did you ever get the feeling you were being watched but talked yourself out of it?”
She didn’t answer.
The kitchen seemed to shrink around them.
Deeper in the base, a door shut and voices drifted through the corridor, muffled by concrete. She stared at the counter as if the answer might be written between the scattered ingredients.
“I’m not asking if you can prove it.” He pitched his voice low. “I’m asking if your instincts ever told you something was off.”
Her throat worked. “I thought I was being paranoid.”
He didn’t move.
“Chicago is full of weird people,” she said, but the words lacked conviction. “Customers stare. Men stare. Sometimes if you smile, it means you like them. Sometimes they wait around too long after close.”
He waited.
She dragged in a breath and let it out slowly.
“There was a guy.”
Every muscle in his body locked down.
“Tell me.”
“I don’t know if it’s anything.”
“Tell me anyway.”
She reached for the towel beside the cutting board and twisted it between her hands. “I just remembered. That black car I told you about—outside my apartment. I saw it outside Antonio’s once. Maybe twice. Driver wore a dark coat and a baseball cap. He was leaning against a black car like he was waiting for someone. He kept looking toward the windows.”
Rome stayed silent. If he pushed too hard, she’d retreat.
“One of the busboys made a joke about it,” she continued. “Said my boyfriend was waiting again. I told him I didn’t have one, and he said the guy had been there the night before too.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know. A couple weeks before everything happened? Maybe longer.”
“Did you see him anywhere else?”
She pressed her lips together.
Then nodded.
“Near my apartment.”
The words were exactly what he expected and still managed to make his blood run cold.
“Same guy?”
“I thought so.” She looked up at him then, and the uncertainty in her eyes cut deeper than fear would have. “I didn’t know. I still don’t. He didn’t always wear the same coat. He was across the street, pretending to look at his phone. When I noticed him, he walked away.”
“How many times?”
“Once for sure. Maybe twice. I remember thinking he had the same hat. Then I told myself that was stupid because a million men own black baseball caps.”
It couldn’t be the agent—she’d seen his body and said she didn’t recognize him.
