Chapter 11: Heartbeat

Ciro sat on the edge of his uncle's bed with the empty wallet slot open in his hand.

"Why would he take that?" Lexie said.

"So he can say he's seen her," I said. "So he can show somebody."

"Show who?"

Nobody answered, because all four of us knew the answer was everybody.

Cillian made two calls in the hall, ten words each.

By dark the guard was on a plane to Philadelphia with two Whalen men beside him.

By morning he'd slipped them in the airport bathroom and was gone.

"He'll turn up," Cillian said.

"In the ocean," Ciro said.

Neither of them said it like a joke.

We moved back into the villa that night, because the old woman made us.

She stood in the bakery doorway, pointed at the van, pointed up the hill, and wouldn't let us back inside.

"She's evicting us for our own good," Lexie said.

"She kept the month's rent."

"She's a businesswoman. I respect it."

Our first real appointment was on a Thursday, at a clinic in Nice with lemon trees outside.

Two rooms side by side again.

Lexie squeezed my hand in the hall.

"Same time," she said. "Like always."

Ciro had asked to come. He'd asked, not told.

I'd said he could stand in the corner and not talk.

He stood in the corner of the little dark room with his back to the wall.

The doctor squeezed cold gel on my stomach.

I hissed. Ciro took one step forward and stopped himself.

"Corner," I said.

He went back.

The doctor moved the wand around, frowning at the screen.

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