Page 76 of You Can Run

She approached the bar. The bartender was a heavyset woman in her fifties.

“I'm looking for Miller,” Jessica said.

The woman continued wiping the bar. “Don't know a Miller.”

“He uses this place as an office. Or he did, last week.” Jessica kept her voice even. “Fifties, heavy, grey hair. He sits in the back booth and he takes meetings.”

The woman looked at her for the first time. “You a cop?”

“No.”

“You look like you've had a bad few days.”

“I have.” Jessica held her gaze. “Where is he?”

Another pause. The bartender folded her cloth and set it on the counter. “I don't know where he is today. But if someone were looking for him, they might try the marina off Pelican Island. He keeps a boat there. The Marguerite. Slip fourteen.” She picked up the cloth again. “I didn't tell you that.”

“Tell me what,” Jessica said.

TWENTY-NINE

The cab droppedher at the marina entrance and she walked the dock alone, the afternoon heat radiating up off the weathered boards. The boats in their slips rocked gently in the wake of something that had passed through, their rigging ticking against the masts in the light wind.

Slip fourteen was toward the end of the dock. The Marguerite was a cabin cruiser; it’s white hull stained with rust tracks below the railing. A canvas awning covered the rear deck, and in the shade beneath it, a man was sitting in a folding chair with a bottle of beer and a phone, not looking at anything in particular.

He glanced up and spotted her when she was ten feet away. She watched his face go through three things in quick succession—recognition, confusion, and then something that looked almost like fear.

She stepped up onto the boat without being invited.

“Jessica—” He started to stand.

“Sit down,” she said. She kept her hand in her jacket pocket, her fingers around the Ruger. “I'm going to need you to put the phone face down on the deck.”

He looked at her for a moment—at the jacket, at the line of her arm, at her face—and then he set the phone down. “Jessica, I want you to understand. What happened at the docks—I didn't have a choice.”

“You sold us out,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. “You took money from Borya Sokolov to give him our location. I'm not here for an explanation.” She took the Ruger out of her pocket and held it at her side, just visible. “I'm here for information.”

Miller looked at the gun. He was quiet for a moment, recalibrating. She watched him decide that argument wasn't an option and move toward cooperation, and she felt something cold settle in her chest. It was the understanding that she could actually do this.

“What do you want to know?” he said.

“Dante went with the woman this morning. Where is she taking him?”

Miller shifted in his chair. “I don't know.”

“Where does Borya Sokolov bring people when he wants them to disappear.” She said it differently this time, making it not a question.

“Philadelphia,” he said. “He has a club there. The Dollhouse, in South Philly. It's his main base when he's in the States. When he wants something handled quietly, that's where it happens. It's also where he—” He stopped.

“Where he what?”

Miller looked uncomfortable in a way that went beyond his current situation. “He runs other operations out of the Dollhouse. Below the main floor. Things that don't get talked about in polite company.” He met her eyes briefly. “You don't want to know the details.”

“No, I don't.”

She lowered the gun and put it back in her pocket. Then she stepped off the boat and back onto the dock. She didn't look back at him. “Get a different line of work, Miller.”

She walked back down the dock toward the marina entrance with the afternoon light long on the water and Philadelphia assembling itself in her mind.