Page 77 of You Can Run

At the marina gate, she flagged down a cab.

“Greyhound station,” she said. “Please hurry.”

THIRTY

Sofia drove a dark blue Camry,rental plates, nothing in the back seat. They'd been on the road for forty minutes and neither of them had said anything.

That suited Dante fine. He had enough noise in his head already.

He watched the island fall away behind them as they crossed the causeway, the Gulf spreading out on both sides of the bridge in the early morning light.

He shifted in the passenger seat and looked at Sofia. Back at the house, he’d handed over his gun and so he was unarmed, but the woman was slight enough that he could easily overpower her. The reason he didn’t was because he knew that this didn’t end with her—it didn’t even begin with her.

She was focused on the road, one hand on the wheel, the other resting in her lap. She drove slightly under the speed limit, giving traffic cameras no reason to look at her twice. Her face in profile was still, wearing the same neutral expression she'd been wearing since the beach. He'd been trying to read her since the moment she walked through the door that morning and he'd gotten almost nothing.

He recognized her posture, in the way she held the wheel. The feeling of a decision already made and a road already committed to.

“Where are we going?”

He didn’t think she’d answer him, but to his surprised she turned to him and said, “Philadelphia.”

Philly. Borya’s old stomping ground. Dante’s memories of that place were tainted with the smell of blood and spilled champagne and the sound of women screaming. It was where he’d killed Borya’s brother, Sasha. Given half the chance, he’d do his best to kill Borya there today, too. But he was without a weapon and would be outnumbered by Borya’s men the moment he stepped foot in that place.

They drove in silence for another twenty minutes. The Houston sprawl built up around them and then began to thin on the northern side of the city, the density dropping away into stretches of flat commercial land and highway interchanges. Dante watched it go past and let himself think about Jessica one more time and then put it away again, more firmly this time. He'd made the decision that gave her the rest of her life, and spending the rest of his own time revisiting it was a waste of what he had left.

He was watching a water tower disappear in the side mirror when he felt the car slow and move right.

He looked at the road. They were taking an exit that had nothing on it—no gas stations, no truck stops, just a county road heading west through scrub land. He checked the signage as they came off the ramp.

“This isn't the way,” he said.

“No.” She merged onto the county road and maintained her speed, unhurried.

“Where are we going?”

“There's something I need to do before we get to where we’re going.” She said it the same way she said everything, as information, without apology. “Things I need to collect before we go to Borya,” she said. She paused. “I need them with me for what happens in Philadelphia.”

Dante looked at her profile. “What things?”

“The kind that end careers,” she said. “And organizations. And men who believe they've made themselves untouchable.” She said it calmly, without emotion, which somehow made it more convincing than if she'd said it with feeling. “I've been inside Borya's operation for years. I know where the money moves and who it moves to and what it buys on the way. I know where the recordings are and what's on them and who's in them.” She glanced at him. “I know things that would interest the FBI. And Interpol. And a number of journalists who have been trying to break pieces of this story for a long time.”

Dante was quiet for a moment. “You're not delivering me to him.”

“Not in the way you think.”

“Then what way?”

She checked her mirror again, a habit so ingrained it seemed involuntary. “When I reached out to you, you told me you wanted to trade yourself for Jessica. But what I'm asking you to do is more complicated than that. And considerably more dangerous.”

“More dangerous than walking into the Dollhouse as Borya Sokolov's outstanding debt?”

“Yes.” She said it without hesitation, which he appreciated. “But if it works, it ends differently than the version you were planning.”

Dante looked at the road. The county road was beginning to curve slightly north. He could see, in the distance, the faintgeometry of a commercial strip, which meant she wasn't driving him into the middle of nowhere—she had a destination

“What do you need me to do?”

Sofia glanced at him. Something in her face shifted. It was barely perceptible and gone almost before it arrived.