Page 42 of Accidental Alliance

Until I see the black SUV parked two doors down.

Everything inside me goes cold. My feet stop without warning.

It is pulled up in front of the Thomasons’ driveway, but not quite angled toward their house.

Something about the placement is wrong. The windows are tinted dark enough to swallow any hint of movement inside, and even from here I can tell the plates are out-of-state.

My pulse spikes the instant I register it, every nerve in my body suddenly alive in the worst way.

The shift is so abrupt, Matteo takes half a step ahead before our joined hands pull taut between us. He turns slightly from the force of it, but I barely notice.

My eyes are too fixed on the SUV, scanning the outside of its frame with frantic precision for anything that looks familiar. Any insignia or subtle customization that might place it with Davide’s convoy from a few days ago.

But I see nothing.

Somehow, that is worse. Because if it matched, at least I would know what I am dealing with.

Matteo’s hand tugs on mine. “Mom?”

His voice is small with confusion, and that sound slices straight through the static roaring in my ears just enough for me to look down at him. His big honey-gold eyes are turned up at me, open and questioning, his earlier excitement about sundaes already slipping into concern. He senses the change as he always does. One glance at my face and I know he can feel something has gone wrong even if he has no words for it yet.

I open my mouth to answer him but nothing comes out. My heart is pounding so hard in my chest, it is making it difficult to hear over the sound of it. Each beat lands like a fist against my sternum, drowning out the ordinary suburban soundtrack that should still be here.

It could be nothing. Plenty of people drive large blacked-out SUVs in this city. Plenty of people come up from out of town for weekends in our little town a few miles from the coast.

Maybe the Thomasons have family visiting, their nephew from Boston they always liked to brag about or that friend from Connecticut who does roof contracting.

Maybe the out-of-state plates mean vacation, not surveillance. Tinted windows could mean nothing more than expensive taste and too much disposable income.

None of those explanations settle me. I know too damn well what men in cars like that look are doing when they are waiting for their target to walk by unaware.

My eyes dart to the house beside us, two doors down from ours, that belongs to an elderly couple who rarely come up from the city in spring.

Their front porch is bare, no car in the driveway. No lights on that I can see from here, even through the afternoon glare.

My mind latches onto the layout instantly, tracing the route the way I would have once done with escape routes in banquet halls and side entrances from safe houses—through their side yard, around the back, past the covered pool, cut across the back to our property’s fence line, climb it into our own.

If there is someone sitting in that SUV watching the front of my house, they would not notice us slipping in through the back. There is no visibility of it from the street.

I look down at him once more and force my features into something softer that could pass for being distracted rather than terrified. “Let’s go on a little adventure.”

He blinks up at me, dark brows pulling together. “An adventure?”

The suspicion on his face is almost painful.

He is too smart and observant for a seven-year-old.

Before he can ask anything else, I tug him gently with me and steer us off the sidewalk. We cross the elderly couple’s lawn slowly as if there is nothing strange at all about cutting across a neighbor’s yard in a neighborhood like this one.

The grass is brittle and yellow in patches where the spring rain has not yet fully repaired winter’s damage, and it crunches beneath our feet in dry little snaps that sound far too loud to me.

Matteo is quiet as we make our way around the back of the house, and that silence frightens me almost as much as his chatter would have.

It means he knows enough to feel that something is wrong even if he does not understand why. His hand squeezes mine tighter than before, and I squeeze his right back.

We pass through the back yard, keeping clear of the fenced-in pool. Its dark cover is stretched tight across the water, leaves scattered over it like rust-colored paper.

The whole yard smells faintly of damp wood and the rot of old spring mulch. Wind stirs the branches of the trees overhead. Somewhere nearby, a screen door slams. Every ordinary sound makes my nerves jump.