Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
Jessica woke to grey light and the sound of water dripping from the eaves.
The storm had passed. What it left behind was a heavy, rinsed-out stillness; just the water lapping at the pilings, the house settling back into itself.
She was on her side, facing the window. Dante was behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him along her back, his arm heavy across her waist. At some point in the night, they'd shifted and now they were fitted together in the sag of the old mattress like two people who'd been sleeping this way for years.
His breathing was slow and even. She thought he was asleep until his thumb moved, one small stroke against her ribs. He was awake, holding still on purpose.
She didn't move either.
For a while, they just lay there, the room slowly brightening around them, the silence filled with everything that last night had made impossible to ignore. His hand on her bare skin. Her body remembering where his mouth had been.
Her stomach broke the silence—a long, audible growl that was so completely wrong for the moment that she felt a helpless laugh rise in her chest before she could stop it.
She felt Dante's breath change behind her. A short exhale through his nose. Not quite a laugh, but close.
“Romantic,” he murmured.
“I haven't eaten since yesterday.”
His arm tightened briefly around her waist, then he pulled away and sat up, the mattress groaning as his weight shifted. She rolled onto her back and watched him stand, barefoot on the cedar planks, the grey morning light catching the tattoos across his shoulders.
“There might be something in the kitchen,” he said, crossing to the small counter.
Jessica sat up, pulling the wool blanket around her shoulders.
The room looked different in daylight too, smaller and shabbier, the water stains on the ceiling more visible, the bed more obviously the centerpiece of a space that had nothing else to offer.
But the windows faced the Gulf, and the light coming through them was pale and clean, and for a moment the shack felt less like a hiding place and more like somewhere you might choose to be.
She watched Dante open cabinets—crackers, instant coffee, a jar of peanut butter, a few cans of something she couldn't read from the bed. The domesticity of it was surreal, considering that forty-eight hours ago, she'd been in a crawl space with a gun.
“Peanut butter and crackers,” he said. “That's what we've got.”
“Works for me.”
He glanced back at her, and she caught it—the flicker at the corner of his mouth, the small smile that brought out his dimple.
“Dante,” she said.
He stopped, the jar in his hand.
She wanted to ask him about last night, about what it had meant, about how this time they couldn’t blame it on adrenaline and heightened feelings. But she didn’t want to ruin this tiny moment of almost-domestic bliss, so what she said instead was, “Bring the whole jar. And come back over here.”
He didn't smile, but his eyes changed, and that was better.
He brought the jar.
The burner phone buzzed while Jessica was licking peanut butter off her thumb.
Dante reached across the counter for it, his shoulder brushing hers as he read the screen.
SALVAGE YARD. NORTH HARBOR. DITCH THE CAR. THEN PIER 19. 9AM.
He showed her the message. She read it twice, her expression shifting.
“He wants us to leave the car,” she said.
“He's right. It's a beacon.”
Jessica looked at him, and he could see her registering what that meant—not just tactically, but for him. The 'Cuda wasn't a car. It was the last thing he owned that belonged to who he'd been before all of this, and Miller was asking him to leave it in a scrapyard.
“Dante—”
“It's fine,” he said, because it had to be.
They left the stilt house ten minutes later. Neither of them looked back at the unmade bed.
The morning was grey and overcast, the Gulf flat after the storm. Dante backed the 'Cuda out of the drive, tires spitting crushed oyster shells, and pulled onto the narrow road heading east toward the harbor.
They drove in silence for a while, the engine filling the space between them. Jessica leaned forward and ran her fingers along the dashboard.
“I remember the first time you pulled up in one of these,” she said, her gaze fixed somewhere past the windshield.
“You said it was the ugliest thing you'd ever seen.”
She nodded seriously. “I meant it.”
A pause. Then, still not looking at him: “And then a few hours later, we were parked by the lake.”
“Lake Michigan.”
She turned to him. “I remember you leaned against the side of it, looking all dark and broody, and I kissed you right there, pressed against the door. The handle was digging into my back the whole time, but I didn't want you to stop.”
Dante could still feel the ghost of it—the cold metal, the smell of the water, her hands pulling at his singlet. He almost smiled, but it didn't quite land. “You were high as fuck.”
“I wasn't that high.”
The moment hung between them, warm and bittersweet, until the industrial skyline of the harbor rose ahead and swallowed it.
Dante steered the 'Cuda into the salvage yard, threading between rusted hulls and stacked anchor chains until he found a spot deep enough in the maze that the car wouldn't be visible from the road. He killed the engine.
The silence that followed was sudden and total, like something had been unplugged.
He sat there, his hands on the wheel, feeling the residual warmth of the engine fade through the dash. The leather creaked as he shifted, and even that sounded like a goodbye.
“Dante,” Jessica said softly. “We have to go.”
He nodded. But he didn't move yet.
He got out and walked around to the front, letting his hand trail along the fender as he passed. The red paint was dark with salt-spray and grit, the chrome dull. It looked tired. It looked exactly like how he felt.
He stopped at the bumper, his fingers resting on the metal for a moment, and let himself feel the full stupid weight of it—the sentimentality of a grown man grieving a car while people were trying to kill him.
Jessica appeared beside him. She didn't say anything. She just stood there, close enough that her arm touched his, and let him have the moment.
Then she slipped her hand into his.
“We'll get another one,” she said. “When this is over. An even uglier one.”
He forced a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
He let go of the bumper, pulled his hood up, and they walked out of the yard together, through the gate, past the chain-link, onto the cracked sidewalk that led toward the harbor.
The Strand was a busy for that time of morning, and it made Jessica want to scream.
The sudden influx of people felt like a physical assault.
The historic district was waking up in a flurry of pastel colors and the scent of sugar.
A family in matching “Galveston Island” t-shirts drifted along the sidewalk.
A few couples paused to admire the Victorian architecture or peer into the windows of fudge and souvenir shops.
To them, it was a Saturday. To Jessica, it was a minefield.
She walked close to Dante, her shoulder occasionally brushing his. He’d pulled his hoodie up, his gait casual, but he didn't look like a tourist.
“Don't look down,” Dante murmured, his voice barely audible over the chime of a shop door and the distant clatter of a horse-drawn carriage. “Look at the windows or the menus. Look like you’re trying to decide where to eat.”
“I can't,” Jessica whispered. Her heart was a frantic bird trapped in her ribs. “Dante, everyone is looking at us.”
“Nobody is looking at us, Jessica. That’s the point. They’re looking at the fudge. They’re looking at their kids. Just breathe.”
She tried. She forced her eyes to settle on the window of a boutique filled with expensive sun hats and linen dresses.
A little girl, no older than six, ran past them, a giant blue balloon trailing behind her.
The string brushed against Jessica’s arm, and she flinched so violently she nearly tripped over a decorative planter.
Dante’s hand was on her elbow in an instant, steadying her. His grip was firm, a silent command to get it together.
A few feet away, a woman was laughing, taking a photo of her husband in front of the Iron Front building.
She found herself wondering if any of these people knew how thin the ice was.
Did they even know that men like Ferrera existed?
Did they know that safety was just a curtain that could be torn aside in an instant?
The smell of the chocolate shop gave way to the sharp, briny stench of the harbor as they approached the end of the Strand. The air grew heavier, the humidity cloying.
They crossed the final intersection, leaving the brick-paved charm of the Strand behind. The transition was abrupt. The shops ended, replaced by the industrial reality of the waterfront—warehouses, stacks of shipping crates and the cry of gulls.
“There,” Dante said, nodding toward a sign that read PIER 19 - THE MOSQUITO FLEET.
Jessica looked at the forest of green nylon nets hanging from the masts. It looked like a graveyard of giant spiderwebs. She felt a cold shiver crawl down her spine despite the heat.
“It looks like a trap,” she whispered.
Dante didn't disagree. He just tightened his grip on her arm and led her into the maze.
The world through the glass was silent, reduced to a circle of grey light and the rhythmic, hollow sound of her own breathing.
The Sicaria lay flat on the corrugated iron of the warehouse roof, the metal still radiating the morning’s humid heat. She didn't use a tripod, she just rested the barrel of the long rifle on a rolled-up canvas bag and waited.
Below her, the shipyard was a mess of moving parts. She watched the pink-haired woman and the man in the hoodie—Dante—move through the maze of rusted hulls. They looked so small from this height.
She adjusted the dial on the scope, the click barely audible against the cry of gulls.
She moved the crosshairs until they settled on the center of Dante’s back.
He was an easy target. He walked with a heavy gait, his head turning in a slow, predictable sweep.
One squeeze of the trigger and El Fantasma would be a memory.
The Sicaria’s finger hovered over the guard, but she didn't move it to the trigger.
Slowly, almost lazily, she swung the rifle to the right. The circle of glass swept past the shipping containers, past the stacks of pallets, and came to rest on the white Ford F-150 idling fifty yards away.
She zoomed in.
Through the rear passenger window, she could see the silhouette of José Ferrera. He was sitting back, his face partially obscured by the tint, but she could see the glow of his cigarette. He looked relaxed. He looked like a man who believed he was the one holding the leash.
The Sicaria held the rifle there. She didn't move and she didn't blink. The crosshairs rested squarely on the back of Ferrera’s head. She wasn't watching the couple anymore. She was watching the hunter.