Nineteen
The car Hank had stashed at the bottom of the mountain was an anonymous sedan, the kind that could blend into any parking lot without attracting attention.
We drove in silence through lonely road, each of us lost in our own thoughts about what we were planning to do. The evidence container sat between Maddie and me in the back seat like a time bomb.
"Where are we going?" I finally asked as Hank turned onto the main coastal highway.
"To get your mother. If we're doing this, we all need to be together."
"And then?"
"Then we find somewhere public to make our stand. Somewhere Vincent can't just disappear without witnesses."
Maddie looked up from her tablet, where she'd been typing furiously for the past twenty minutes. "I've been thinking about that. What if we don't wait for Vincent to come to us?"
"What do you mean?"
"What if we force his hand? Make him reveal himself in a way that can't be covered up?"
Hank caught her eyes in the rearview mirror. "How?"
"The Founder's Day Festival is this weekend. Biggest event of the year in Windemere Bay. Hundreds of tourists, local media coverage, everyone with a camera phone documenting everything."
"You want to confront a crime boss at a public festival?"
"I want to confront a crime boss where his usual methods won't work. Where violence would be witnessed by hundreds of people and recorded by dozens of cameras."
I could see the logic in it, but the risk was enormous. "What if he just waits until after the festival? Picks us off one by one when there aren't witnesses around?"
"Then we make sure he can't wait." Maddie's fingers were flying over her tablet screen. "I've been working on a story about the trafficking operation. Names, dates, financial records, everything we've uncovered. If I publish it online during the festival, with live updates and real-time evidence..."
"Vincent will have to respond immediately," Hank finished. "He can't let that kind of information stay public."
"Exactly. And his response will tell everyone exactly who he is and what he's been doing."
It was risky, maybe suicidal. But it was also the kind of plan that might actually work.
"There's one problem," I said. "If Vincent really is coming to town looking for Antonio Torrino, he's going to recognize you the moment he sees you."
"Yes he will."
"That's what worries me."
Hank pulled off the highway onto the winding road that led back to his grandmother's cottage. The sun was starting to rise over the ocean, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold that made the whole situation feel surreal.
"There's something I need you to understand," he said as we climbed toward the cottage. "About what I was before I came here. About what I might have to become again."
"I already know what you were."
"Do you? Do you really understand what it means to be trained as a killer from childhood? What it does to someone to grow up in a world where violence is the first solution to every problem?"
I looked at his hands on the steering wheel. Strong hands that had stitched my wounds, helped me climb to safety, held me when I was cold and scared.
"I understand that you chose to leave that world behind."
"I chose to run from it. That's different than leaving it behind."
"How?"
"Because running means you never really face what you were. Never really change. You just hide from the truth until it catches up with you."
We pulled into the cottage driveway, and I could see smoke rising from the chimney. My mother was awake, probably making coffee and wondering where we'd disappeared to in the middle of the night.
"What if facing it changes you back into what you were?" I asked.
Hank turned off the engine and looked at me directly. "What if it does?"
The question hung between us as we got out of the car. What if confronting Vincent Torrino turned Antonio back into the man he'd been trained to be? What if the gentle fisherman who'd captured my heart was just a temporary identity, something that would disappear the moment he was forced to face his past?
"Elise," Maddie said quietly. "Whatever happens with Vincent, whatever Antonio has to do to stop him, you need to remember something."
"What?"
"The man who saved your life last night, who's been protecting you from the beginning, who just agreed to risk everything to stop a trafficking operation. That man is real. Don't let anyone, including him, convince you otherwise."
My mother met us at the door, worry written all over her face. "Thank God you're safe. I heard vehicles in the night, thought someone might have found you."
"Someone did," I said. "We'll explain everything. But first, we need to pack. We're leaving here today."
"Where are we going?"
"Into town. Where everyone can see us."