Chapter 7: The Chapel

Brennan did not like it.

"It's a trap," he said, for the third time, in the car.

"It's a number from her phone."

"Which you think is hers."

"Which I know is hers."

He drove with both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the dark road.

"I'll park a mile back," he said. "If you text me one letter, I'm there."

"One letter."

"Any letter."

I got out at the bend in Route 9 and walked the rest alone.

The chapel was a small white building on a hill with one light over the door.

Nobody had mown the grass in a month.

I pushed the door open and stood in the aisle of an empty church.

"Britta."

She was in the last pew on the left, in a dark coat, with her hair down.

I went down the aisle slowly, and I did not sit.

In the candlelight I could see her face.

The print on her cheek had faded to a long purple smear, and under her left eye was another, older mark.

"You came," Fiorella said.

"You hit me five times."

"Yes."

"You hit me harder than I thought you could."

"I know." She looked down at her small hands in her lap. "I had to make it loud."

I stared at her.

I had come to be angry, and I was.

But it wasn't the anger I had planned.

"Loud for who?" I said.

"Not here." Her voice dropped. "He counts how long I'm alone. I have four minutes, and the driver is a friend, or he'll say he is."

She slid a hand into her coat and held out something small.

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