Page 37 of Ruthless Sin
“He ran it past me.”
Izzy doesn’t look up. “Sokolov is in a hotel by the airport. He has not moved in six hours. We have eyes. If he moves, you get the call before he is on the highway.”
“Good. Thank you, Izzy.”
I pick up the keys off the table.
“Nico.”
I look at her.
“He didn’t get on that plane to ask three more questions at the port.”
“I know.”
“You should tell her.”
“Not today.”
“Nico.”
“Iz. Not today.”
She does not push. She goes back to her screen.
I walk out with the keys.
The Algiers property looks like a clinic. Casa Lucia looks like a house.
I wait in the SUV in the back lot with the engine off and the window cracked. The sun comes through the leaves at a late-afternoon angle, and the heat is something you can taste. Cicadas in the live oak above the car. The pistol under the dashboard sits where it always sits. I am not thinking about it.
I am thinking about it.
Then a door at the side of the building opens. Sofia comes out first with her notebook against her chest. Mila comes out behind her.
I do not get out. Sofia opens the back door for herself and Mila opens the front passenger door for herself. She gets in and pulls it closed behind her, the same way she has since the first drive, without looking at me.
There is an empty paper cup on the floor between her feet that was not in the car this morning. She kept it.
A corner of folded paper sticks out of her sweater pocket.
I do not mention either.
I put the SUV in drive.
We pull out of the lot.
Magazine Street goes wrong at the second light. Marco’s new route. I take a left I would not normally take. River smell when the wind shifts. The dahlias on the corner of Audubon. I have driven this street for years. The streetcar tracks know me. I do not have to think about the route.
Her eyes stay open, fixed on something past the road, not on me. Today her body is awake under the stillness, and I can feel the charge of it from the driver’s seat without once looking over.
The first sign is at Napoleon.
Her knees, which have been angled exactly half an inch toward the gearshift since we left, do not move. The pause is what’s new. Last drive she angled them and held still. This drive she has held the position longer.
The second sign is at Louisiana.
Her hand, which has been on her thigh in a fist since we got in the car, opens slow. The fingers spread.
