Page 32 of Born for Starlight

There was a man in Brazil I hadn't spoken to in fourteen months. I wouldn't speak to him now, not the way normal people meant it. Men who lived where he lived didn't take calls. A call would get him killed, no question.

I pulled up a classified-ad site, a regional one, Portuguese-language, the kind of place people sold used generators and dirt bikes. I posted a listing for a motorcycle I didn't own. A 1986 model, a year that model was never made. The wrong year was the whole message. Anyone scrolling past saw a typo. The one man I wanted saw a sign—not neon, just a small wave in the distance asking for a reply when possible. But he’d know it was me, so he’d reach out fast.

I closed that window and waited. That had been the hardest thing to learn for the job. Patience. I had it now, but it still didn’t come easy. He'd answer in two days or two weeks, whenever the people around him slept or turned their backs. He couldn’t go faster. Faster meant death.

I moved on to the part I could control.

I'd get her to Casa Semente first, hell yeah. And then I'd do the harder job, which was keeping her alive at Aurora, because that was where this was going, whether I liked it or not.

I thought, briefly, about Bruno.

If Bruno were running this, he'd do it by the book. Warrants, task-force coordination, careful international legal architecture, the whole HSI apparatus grinding forward at the speed of due process. Good instincts, decent tradecraft, a badge that opened doors in the daylight. And every one of those doors slammed shut at the edge of a network like Aurora's, because Aurora didn't answer to warrants. Bruno was a solid investigator working the world he could see. He'd never had to live in the underbelly. This was three levels below where his clearance and his feet had ever been.

I'd handle the part Bruno, and others like him, couldn't. I always had.

I stood, stretched out the run stiffening in my legs, and put water on for the bad instant coffee. I’d issued the ping. Casa Semente was real. Aurora was a nightmare just waiting to get its hooks into Angelica. I had three weeks to build something that kept a luminous, reckless, maddening woman on the living side of all of it.

My phone lit up on the desk.

Not the Brazil line. My regular number.

Unknown: So my cousin tells me you're my new bodyguard. Funny. I don't remember hiring you. We should fix that before Brazil, since I'd hate to owe you money. Diner. Tomorrow. 8 a.m. Come hungry. — A.

I read it twice.

Then I did something I hadn't done alone in a room in longer than I could remember.

I laughed. Out loud, to nobody, in a motel room that smelled like other men's cigarettes. The woman had manipulated the whole thing and was now acting like she hadn’t had a hand in it. Priceless.

She was good. She was so good.

I was in a lot of trouble.

I responded.

Me: Don’t eat my cinnamon roll.

Then I set the phone down, and I sat there grinning at the wall like a fool, and for the first time since Code's call I wasn't thinking about Brazil at all.

Chapter Eleven

I got to the diner at seven forty. This was a tactical decision.

Little Grandma didn't even pretend to consult the seating chart. She just tilted her head toward the corner booth like it had Matthew's name engraved on it, which at this point it might as well have. Lettie brought coffee before I sat down and a cinnamon roll thirty seconds after, still warm, the frosting sliding down one side. Apparently, he had been serious about the roll.

"He usually gets here at eight," Lettie said. "You want your own?"

"No." I pulled the plate toward me. "This one's perfect."

Lettie looked at the roll. She looked at me. She smiled, already picking who she'd tell first, and walked away without another word.

I picked it up and let the sticky mess slide over my fingers as I took one bite. One. A big one, right off the edge closest to me, and then I set it back down onto the plate, my teeth marks clear to see. I pushed the plate to the exact center of the table and waited.

Lettie came over with a wet-wipe and a grin, God bless the woman, and I cleaned off my hand. "So that's the way it is, huh?"

"Hmm," was all she said as she walked over to the hostess stand to talk to little Grandma.

Matthew came through the door at seven fifty-eight. He clocked me before the bell over the door finished ringing, because of course he did, and he crossed the diner. My whole body sat up and took notice. Then he got to the booth and stopped.