14. Matteo #2
Nico does not swear. His jaw changes shape. “You want to sit on them?” he asks.
“I want to know who calls,” I answer. “We do not have time to plant ears. The safest play is to let them think they are alone. We will need some reinforcements.”
I make the call myself. Vincent answers on the second ring, his tone weighing the trouble I have dragged across the map. It is calm as a current under ice. “Matteo, report.”
“Benedetti watchers at the Pine Crest Motor Lodge on the spur,” I state.
“Two in a room, one extra in a far door. They are not moving until they get instructions. They used the words the girl and the kid. The SUV that watched the square splits time between the gas lot and this lot. Paper tag over a plate.”
“How close are you?” Vincent asks.
“Across the lot,” I answer. “The town is bare of cameras. I have my own inside the bakery.”
“Good.” A pause that weighs the rest. “Bad on the rest. Wrenleigh is too far outside our shield. Nothing close enough to move fast. I’ll see what I can do. Don’t wait on it.”
“I understand.”
“You can move the pieces,” he says. “You can bring the woman and the boy into better walls.”
“She will not move,” I answer. “I will not ask her yet.”
“You can order,” he reminds me.
“I can,” I agree. “I will not. Not until I have proof. If I push her today, she will lock her doors against me. That helps Benedetti.”
“You think the watchers are locals?” he asks.
“They are not,” I answer. “Boots do not match coats. Shoulders sit wrongly for people who belong here. Eyes rest too long on nothing.”
“You know what you are doing,” Vincent decides. “Send me the motel sheets if you can pull them.”
“I will send numbers,” I tell him.
“Matteo.”
“Capo.”
“Do not forget who carries the price if you misjudge,” he warns. “It is not only you.”
“I never forget.” The call ends. I know what I have to do. If reinforcements cannot reach Wrenleigh fast enough, then I have to stay close—inside her walls, not outside her door. Distance will not guard her. Proximity will.
“We sit,” I tell Nico. “Thirty minutes. If there is no movement, we break off and sweep town. You go to the diner. I go to the square. Petro takes the church hall.”
“Copy,” he answers. He kills the engine, and we become another broken machine.
The gold curtain shifts, and a man steps out, stretches, looks at the sky.
His coat is black, cut long, sharp at the shoulders, with polished buttons, the kind of coat that would turn heads here.
He drops a cigarette butt into the bucket that already holds too many.
From the room comes a burst of laughter, the kind that rides on a canned track.
I watch the room like a cat watches a hole.
For rhythm. I count seconds between voices, mark the time a toilet fills, and note how long the water runs.
I put the pattern on a shelf in my head so I know what does not fit later.
After twenty-five minutes, I decide the rest will be a waste. I tap Nico’s wrist twice.
“Go,” I instruct. “One pass through town. Don’t be seen twice in the same six minutes. If you catch the SUV on the move, note the direction. If it turns left at the square, don’t follow. I’ll take the south.”
Nico looks up. “Why not left?”
“That street’s narrow and all glass,” I say. “Too few cars. He will spot you in ten seconds. I will cut through Pearl and come out on Depot. There is only one way off that strip to the south. He will have to pass me there.”
Nico nods. “And if he goes straight?”
“Stay with him, two cars back,” I answer. “Use your car or tuck behind a parked delivery truck for cover. If he stops short or fakes a phone call, keep rolling. Look like a local. Sit at the diner if it’s open. Otherwise, use a parked work truck.”
“The sheriff?”
“He already sees that turn without knowing it,” I say. “Don’t give him a reason to learn your face.”
Nico sets his hands at ten and two.
“If they swing south, I take them,” I finish. “You hold the square and keep routine. No hero moves. We lose them clean and pick them up clean. That’s how we live.”
“Va bene,” he replies. He eases us out the way we came and lets the motel shrink in the side glass.
We roll back into town. Nico drops me off at the square.
It holds its evening choreography. The barber stands in his doorway.
He watches and does not watch. A woman wrestles a Christmas tree into a hatchback.
The market is still open. Kids run between the stalls, coats unzipped, daring the cold before someone yells, “It’s time to go.
” I stay far enough to look like part of it and close enough to count faces.
I take the long way past the river, where the metal bench sits empty and cold and the ducks drift in the morning in tight groups near the ice, their heads tucked down as if patience could change the season.
The water moves slowly enough to sound tired.
I climb School Street and watch the buses lined in the lot, most of them rusted at the wheel wells and dulled by salt, one too new for this district, still wearing a loan sticker on its glass. I write down the number.
The light has been gone for hours. Windows have taken over, glittering like stars. Streetlamps flare steadily. A man in a knit hat wipes a table outside the diner and tells me I am early for dinner.
“Then I’ll call it a reservation,” I tell him.
He grins, still wiping. “We don’t take those, but I’ll remember your face.”
The bakery door should be locked. This hour wants a closed sign. I turn the handle before I think, and it gives under slight pressure. No bell. The chime cord lies slack against the jamb. That tells me enough.
I step inside. The heat that belongs to ovens and people and a thousand mornings wraps me. The case light is on. The front looks like it does after hours, clean and ready for a new day. But something does not fit.
Lila stands in the middle of the room, an envelope clutched in both hands as if she is not sure whether to tear it or feed it to the flame. Her name, handwritten, sits on the front in neat block letters.