Chapter 5
The knock faded. It didn't go away, it just settled into the wood like it was waiting for an answer.
I still had the object in my hands. It was smaller than I'd imagined after hunting for it, a hard envelope tucked inside a hollowed book I'd never opened, and my fingers were locked around it. Dante's phone buzzed against the table by the lamp. The screen lit up and I saw a name with no contact photo, just letters. MARCOS.
He looked at it, then at me, then at the door.
"Don't move," he said.
I didn't. He stepped to the doorway, put his back to the brick wall so he could see both me and the brass knob, and answered in Spanish. Low, controlled. Like someone who'd rehearsed being calm.
"Sí. Está conmigo," he said. "Está tranquila. No va a gritar."
He listened. His jaw tightened. He switched to English mid-sentence, like he wanted me to understand part of it and not the rest.
"She's compliant. I have her and I have it. No police."
I held the book tighter. The radiator clicked behind me.
"Para mañana, sí," he said. "Antes de las siete. En el mismo lugar."
Before seven. In the same place.
He nodded once, even though the person couldn't see him. "Entendido."
He ended the call. He didn't put the phone down. He kept it in his palm, thumb over the screen, breathing slow.
"Who was that?" I said.
"My contact."
"What did you tell him?"
"That you were cooperating."
I stared at him. "I'm not."
"I know," he said. "I needed him to think you were."
The hallway outside went quiet. The person who knocked wasn't knocking again, but I could hear faint movement, a shoe shifting on the wooden floor of the corridor. Whoever it was hadn't left.
Dante lowered his voice. "They want you and whatever you took with the envelope. By morning. That's the deal."
"Whatever I took? I didn't take anything."
"You did. You just didn't know you did."
He said it without cruelty, which made it worse. I looked down at the book in my hands. The envelope inside was sealed, the paper thick. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to hide it.
"So you're supposed to deliver me," I said. My voice sounded smaller than I wanted. "That's what this is. You're not here to warn me. You're here to hand me over."
He didn't answer right away. He glanced at the dark wooden door, at the light switch I had tried to reach the first time he grabbed me. His hand was still near that switch, like he was deciding whether light would help or hurt us.
"I was hired to retrieve you," he said finally. "And that."
The words landed flat and cold between us. Retrieve. Like I was a package.
"Retrieve me for who?"
"For the people who think that envelope belongs to them."
"And you said yes."
"I said I'd find you before they sent someone else."
He took half a step closer and I stepped back until my shoulders hit the door. The brass knob pressed into my lower back. I clutched the book to my chest.
"So you lied," I said. "You said you weren't here to hurt me."
"I'm not."
"You said they wanted something from me and you would tell me. You haven't told me."
"Because you weren't ready to hear you were already holding it."
I shook my head. "Don't do that. Don't make it sound like you're protecting me when you're working for them."
"I am working for them," he said, quiet. "And I'm trying to keep you out of their hands with both of you intact. Those two things don't align anymore."
Outside, the shadow under the door moved again. Dante's eyes flicked to it.
"Then why are you still here?" I asked. "Why not just take it and leave me? You could have in the first minute."
"Because if I take it and leave you, they will still come for you," he said. "They don't leave loose ends. And because—"
He stopped himself. His breathing had changed, a little faster than before.
"Because what?"
"Because I told them I'd bring you calm. Not bruised. Not screaming. If I break that, the price goes up. For you."
I swallowed. The lamp threw warm light across his black shirt and the brick, but the entryway felt colder now. Every detail stood out too sharp — the dust on the radiator, the chipped paint by the switch, his boots planted steady on my floor.
"So what happens before seven?" I said.
He looked at the phone in his hand, then at the object in mine.
"They expect a handoff. If I don't call back with a location, they send someone who doesn't knock."
I tightened my grip until my knuckles hurt.
"You're not getting this," I said. "Not until you tell me exactly who they are and what this is."
He nodded, slow, like he had expected that. Like he deserved it.
"I was hired to bring you to Marcos by morning, with that envelope unopened," he said. "That's all I agreed to. I didn't know what was inside. I still don't."
"And now?"
May you like
"Now I'm asking you to keep it closed and keep it on you. Because as long as you have it, we have leverage."
We didn't have trust. We had the door at my back, the switch I still hadn't touched, and the man who'd admitted he'd come to take me, standing between me and the knock that hadn't left.
