Page 60 of You Can Run

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.