CHAPTER 3
TESSA
The first report of my death appears forty-seven minutes after I climb into the car of the man assigned to kill me.
It is not an official report. Official reports require confirmation, signatures, and someone willing to accept responsibility for the spelling. This is a local news alert.
VEHICLE FIRE CLOSES SECTION OF MORROW PASS; DRIVER BELIEVED DEAD
No name yet. No date either. Whoever prepared the certificate has either revised the field or expects fire to make several hours disappear. The discrepancy is evidence. It does not make the body less real.
My car is visible in the photograph beneath the headline, red paint distorted by flames. The passenger side rests against a guardrail. Snow around the vehicle glows orange. Dane takes the phone away after I read it twice.
I let him. The reaction worries me more than if I had fought.
My hands feel distant, particularly the injured one. I have cleaned the cut and wrapped gauze around it, but I cannot remember deciding how tightly to pull the bandage. A thin line of blood has already reached the edge.
June is sitting in a restaurant expecting me.
Perhaps she has paid. Perhaps she has called again. She may be irritated enough to drive to my office, where she will find emergency vehicles and people who will not tell her anything useful because nobody wants to be the first person to give a family bad information.
Then someone will connect my license plate to the burning car. Someone will tell her there are remains.
“What time is it?” I ask.
Dane glances at the dashboard. “Eight eleven.”
“I was supposed to meet June at six thirty.”
He says nothing. Silence around him does not feel empty. It feels selected.
We have left the interstate and are moving west on a two-lane road edged by dark fields. Snow has begun to gather in the beams of the headlights, small dry flakes moving sideways.
I reach for the door handle. It does not open. The lock is engaged.
“Unlock it.”
“No.”
My fingers remain around the handle. “You said I have six hours before they expect confirmation.”
“They changed the timetable.”
“You know that from one message?”
“I know it from the burning car.”
“I need to speak to my sister.”
“No.”
The calmness of the answer strikes harder than volume would.
I turn toward him. “You do not get to decide that.”
“I already did.”
My body moves before thought catches up.
I pull the metal clip from what remains of my hair knot and push one end beneath the plastic cover beside the handle. I am not trying to pick a lock. Modern vehicle locks are not defeated by a hair clip and determination. I am trying to reach the manual cable I can feel behind the panel.
Dane’s right hand leaves the steering wheel.
“Don’t.”
“Drive.”
“Tessa.”
“Watch the road.”
A vehicle rounds the distant bend behind us. Its headlights disappear, reappear, and settle into the same lane. Dane looks into the mirror. The movement costs me his attention.
I push harder. The clip catches something. The lock gives a small mechanical jump. I pull the handle. Cold air tears into the vehicle.
Dane catches the back of my coat before I can push the door wider. The car moves onto the gravel shoulder, tires throwing stones. He brakes hard. The seat belt locks across my chest.
The following vehicle passes without slowing. For several seconds, the only sound is the open-door warning. Dane closes my door from the driver’s side. His hand remains on the interior handle, not on me.
“What was the plan?” he asks.
His voice is lower than before.
“I was going to leave.”
“At sixty miles per hour?”
“You slowed.”
“After you opened the door.”
“It worked.”
He looks at me fully for the first time since we left the city.
There is blood along the cuff of his jacket. Not mine. His face is controlled, but control is not the same as absence. A muscle moves once near the damaged line of his nose.
“You would have hit the road.”
“I would have chosen the road.”
“Dead is not a choice.”
“It was when you accepted the contract.”
Silence opens between us. His hand leaves the door. I expect an argument. An explanation. One of the precise statements he uses to turn other people’s lives into physical problems.
Instead, he says, “Yes.” His agreement strips some of the structure from my anger. I look away. He pulls back onto the road. A minute later, the locks release with an audible click. I test the handle.
It opens, and cold enters through the gap.
Dane keeps his eyes ahead. “If you open it again while we’re moving, I stop the vehicle.”
“You could have done that before.”
“Yes.”
I close the door. The admission is not an apology. It is more unsettling because it is not designed to be forgiven.
Ten minutes later, a gas station appears ahead. Two pumps, a low convenience store, and a motel sign with three letters burned out. The parking lot holds a pickup truck and a sedan with frost across its roof.
“I need a restroom,” I say.
“No.”
“I am not asking for permission to possess a bladder.”
“You can wait.”
“I can also bleed onto your seat.”
His gaze flicks toward my hand. The gauze is more red than white. He turns into the lot.
“I go inside with you.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I will scream.”
“Then scream before someone recognizes you.”
He parks near the side wall rather than the entrance and removes a dark knit cap from the rear seat.
“Put this on.”
I stare at it.
“It covers your hair.”
“I understand the function of a hat.”
“Then we are making progress.”
His humor is so dry I am not sure he intended it.
I take the cap because the camera above the door is obvious even from the vehicle. My coat remains buttoned. The death certificate presses against my ribs inside the pocket.
Dane gets out first and scans the parking lot. In the store, a teenage clerk sits behind the counter reading something on his phone. A television mounted near the coffee machines shows a weather map.
The restroom is through a narrow hallway beside the refrigerated cases. Dane stops near the entrance.
“You have two minutes.”
“I need five.”
“You have two.”
I push the restroom door open. “This is why nobody misses mercenaries when they die.”
The words leave before I consider them. His expression does not change. That does not mean they miss. I lock the door behind me.
There is a small window above the toilet, too high and too narrow. The sink has no paper towels. The mirror reflects a woman in a borrowed black hat, face pale beneath fluorescent light, hair shoved unevenly behind her ears.
I do not look dead. The thought produces a laugh that becomes something else before I can stop it. I turn on the faucet.
Cold water runs over my fingers. I unwrap the gauze. The cut is shallow and irregular across the back of my hand, probably from the edge of the lamp base. It does not require stitches.
June would tell me to get stitches anyway because June believes every injury near a joint is a plot against future mobility. My throat tightens. I close my eyes.
Not now. The phrase is familiar. I have used it in parking lots outside family homes, in elevators after speaking to parents, in storage rooms where nobody could see me lean against shelves.
Not now becomes later. Later becomes the television left on after midnight because silence makes room for everything I postponed. I dry my hand on toilet paper and wrap it again.
A narrow employee phone is mounted beneath the counter beside the sink, half hidden behind a stack of paper towels.
Its cord disappears through the partition toward the manager’s office.
The public phone is gone, but the store still needs a line for deliveries and emergencies. Dane gave me two minutes.
He should know better. At three minutes, I lift the receiver.
Dial tone.
“Tessa.”
“I need another minute.”
“No.”
My hands begin to shake. I call June. The number rings once.
Twice.
Three times.
“Hello?”
Her voice is breathless. I close my eyes.
“June.”
“Tessa? Where are you? The police are at your building and your car—someone said your car—”
“I’m alive.”
“What happened?”
“I can’t explain everything.”
“Try.”
The restroom door shifts under a blow from the other side.
“Tessa.”
Dane does not shout. He does not need to.
“I have to go.”
“No. Do not hang up. Tell me where you are.”
“I’m safe for the next few minutes.”
“That is not an answer.”
The door frame cracks.
“June, listen. Do not go home. Stay somewhere public. Find Mateo Ruiz and tell him the identification is wrong.”
“What identification?”
The television volume rises in the store. A news anchor says my name. June hears it through the phone. Her breathing stops.
“Tess.”
“I love you.”
“No. No, do not say it like that.”
The door opens six inches before the chain catches. Dane’s hand appears through the gap. He could break the chain. He does not.
“End the call,” he says.
June hears him.
“Who is that?”
“I’ll contact you again.”
“Tessa, please.”
Hearing my name almost keeps me there. Then a man enters the store. I know because Dane’s attention leaves the door. His hand disappears. The silence beyond the restroom changes.
The clerk says, “Can I help you?”
Another voice answers. Male. Calm.
“I’m looking for my wife.”
I lower the receiver. The voice continues. “Dark hair. Gray coat. She’s upset.”
My photograph is already circulating. I put the phone back without saying goodbye. The restroom window is too small. The door opens into the hallway, which leads directly past the refrigerated cases.
I take the metal panel in one hand.
Dane whispers through the gap. “Stay inside.”
I unlock the chain. He stands close to the wall, weapon hidden along his thigh. His dark eyes move over my face, checking injury, panic, decision.
“You called her.”
“Yes.”
“You gave location?”
“No.”
“Did she say your name?”
“The television did.”
A flicker of something crosses his expression. Frustration, perhaps. Not surprise. The man near the counter turns. He wears a tan coat over a collared shirt, clothes chosen to be forgotten. Mid-forties. Short blond hair. No visible weapon.
His eyes find me. Recognition is immediate.
He smiles.
“There you are.”