The Famous Mafioso Hired Me to Hear Him, and the Man in the Cell Is Not Who They Convicted novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Long Way Home

The car was a black sedan with a driver who did not speak.

He held the door for me, and I sat in the back with my bag on my knees and the window cold against my shoulder.

It was a gray afternoon at the end of January, with snow stacked along the road and the sky the color of a dirty sink.

I had expected to be driven to the interstate.

Instead we turned north, toward the lake.

"This isn't the way to Rochester," I said.

"Mrs. Brancato asked me to take the scenic road," the driver said.

He did not turn his head.

I put my hand on the door handle and found it locked.

I sat very still.

I had spent my whole life reading rooms for danger, and I read this one carefully.

The driver was big and quiet, in a dark coat, with a thick neck and a hearing aid in his left ear that he had not bothered to hide.

He drove well, and he drove with both hands on the wheel.

There was nothing in the car to hurt me.

There was nothing in the car at all, except the long white shoulder of the lake road unwinding past the glass.

After twenty minutes the lake came up on our right, frozen to the horizon, a flat gray plain of shore ice with pressure ridges heaved up along the edge.

The driver slowed.

He pulled into a gravel lot in front of a closed bait shop and a single gas pump, and stopped the engine.

"Five minutes," he said.

"I need to use the facilities."

He got out and walked to the side of the building, and left the keys in the ignition.

I stared at them.

I did not take them.

I understood that this was a test, and that someone behind me was watching how I answered it.

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