Alessandro shook his head. “Etterson was an experienced assassin. They wouldn’t send a rookie after her.”

He stared at the laptop, his expression dark. How did he get those files? More importantly, why? This went beyond any due diligence one would do to research his competitors. It would have taken months, possibly years to compile this database. Alessandro was hunting Diatheke.

“My turn to ask questions,” I said.

He smiled. “Go.”

“Are you trying to take out a competitor? Is there another assassin firm pulling your strings?”

“I don’t work for a firm. I’m here to kill Sigourney’s murderer.”

I raised my eyebrows and nodded at his laptop. “And so you threw this together on the fly?”

“Fair enough.” Alessandro leaned back against the table and crossed his arms. “Benedict has been on my radar for a while. I need to ask him some questions on an unrelated matter. It has nothing to do with House Etterson.”

“How important are those questions to you?”

“If it’s a choice between the Etterson contract and his life, I’ll kill him. I can find my answers in another way.”

“How did Sigourney hire you, what are the terms of your contract, what do you know about Halle?”

“She hired me through an intermediary. She was in the business, and she was aware of my particular job requirements.”

“Which are?”

“Privileged.”

“Alessandro, she’d been out of the game for almost ten years. How did she even know about you? You would’ve been in your teens when she quit. Have you been doing this since you were fifteen?”

His face shut down. “I have a certain reputation.”

“What kind of reputation?”

“The kind people like Sigourney make a point to note.”

What the hell did that mean?

“The intermediary arranged a call,” he continued, “during which Sigourney told me that her old firm was coming after her. She indicated they had pressured her to come out of retirement for a high-profile job, which she declined. She didn’t tell me who the target was, said we would discuss it in person. She didn’t think Diatheke would move on her immediately. She expected them to come back with a higher offer, which she also intended to reject.”

“Clearly she was wrong.”

“Yes.”

I thought out loud. “For them to insist that she come out of retirement after so many years means the target was someone she had access to and they didn’t.”

“Or they didn’t want it traced to them.”

“Did she say why she wouldn’t do it?”

Alessandro grimaced. “She said that if she didn’t kill him, she would be in danger. If she did kill him, her entire family would be done. I got the feeling that she wasn’t sure she could complete the job. It was a no-win situation. One way or the other, someone would die.”

“So a dangerous, high-profile target. Male. Someone she knew.” We would have to go through Sigourney’s files again.

“Someone who scared her,” Alessandro added.

“I don’t understand why Diatheke let her walk into their building and take out the money. They knew they were going to kill her.” That had to be some conversation.

“Two separate things. She earned the money, and if they didn’t pay her, nobody else would work with them. The greatest sin in this business is to withhold money earned.” His voice dripped with disgust. “They have no problem killing a parent in front of their kids or blowing up a car full of charity workers; but if they don’t get paid, they lose their shit.”

For a hired killer, he had a lot of disdain for the profession. And he didn’t say we. He said they.

He made sense though. It probably wasn’t the best idea to cheat an assassin out of their paycheck.

“She didn’t think her children would be in danger.”

“Normally, they wouldn’t be.” Alessandro shrugged.

“Professional courtesy?” I couldn’t quite keep the skepticism out of my voice.

“There’s no such thing. If you must eliminate an assassin and things go sour, leaking the fact that they were a hired killer douses the heat. Nobody extends sympathy to murderers. But if a minor is killed, there is an elevated risk of public outcry and pressure to solve it. Halle should’ve been safe.”

“It has to be her magic,” I said. What else was there? Halle was too dangerous to sell or contain.

Alessandro met my gaze. “They bothered with this elaborate ruse because they need her alive. Catalina, we’ll find her. I promise you. We’ll get her back.”

He said it like he meant every word.

“Thank you for leveling with me.” I moved to the door.

He got there ahead of me and leaned on the door frame. “Leaving so soon?”

“Things to do.”

“What if I asked you to stay? What if I said, ‘Don’t go, Catalina. I’ll be lonely without you.’”

If he actually said that and was serious, I might move into this room with him. “I have to go.”

“Stay,” he said. “We can compare notes on murderers. It will be fun.”

His voice pulled me in, and for a second, I didn’t know which one of us was the siren.

“No. I have to go.” If I kept repeating it, I might actually believe it. “I have to look through Sigourney’s files and make dinner.”

“Or you could bring your laptop over here. We could order Chinese takeout and wash it down with some bad American wine.”

His eyes were so warm and inviting. It would be so easy just to stay here with him.

“I’ll tell you funny stories,” he offered.

I would give anything to spend an evening here, figuring out what made him laugh. “I have to go.”

He gave me a resigned smile and invited me to exit with an elegant sweep of his hand.

I had to leave. I said I would. I insisted on it. I walked through the doorway.

“If you think of anything else,” I said.

“I know where you live.”

I was going to say text me. A sudden thought hit me like a bolt of lightning. “Alessandro, one last thing. Stay out of my room.”

“Not a chance,” he told me.

Thirty seconds after I finished putting dinner into the oven and invited Runa into my office to brief her, Shadow started sniffing my office floor and running around in circles. Runa and I had to grab her and sprint outside.

Grass was in short supply and the only tree, the massive oak across the road, was protected by a stone wall four feet high. I would have to drop her over it and then somehow scoop her out. I imagined loading Shadow into a bucket and lowering her to the roots of the oak with a rope. In my little fantasy Shadow wore a yellow mining helmet with a round light.

Clearly, I’d been staring at the computer for too long.

We took Shadow to the area behind the motor pool instead. Grandma Frida had set up a picnic table to the right, and we landed there, deposited the little dog on the pavement, and chorused, “Go potty!” in encouraging voices.

Shadow looked at us and wagged her little black tail.

“Whatever is cooking in the kitchen smells amazing. What are we having?” Runa asked.

“Lemon roasted chicken with rosemary baked potatoes, chive butter, kale and Brussels sprout salad with tahini maple dressing, and an apple pithivier.”

Runa gave me a long look.

“I cook when I’m stressed out. It sounds more complicated than it is. In reality, it’s mostly season things, dump them in a baking pan, and stick them in the oven.”

The little dog wandered off.

“What’s a PTVA?”

“It’s a French pie-cake made with puff pastry. The traditional version uses rum and almonds, but nobody likes rum, so I make mine with apples.”

Shadow trotted around, periodically paused to sniff at some random spot of asphalt, carefully considered it, then moved on. Apparently, selecting the perfect place to pee was vitally important.

“I need to catch you up on what we have so far.” I summarized the last few days for her; Diatheke, Celia, Benedict, Keystone, the chase, and Alessandro’s involvement. I kept the information about his database private. I didn’t know what it meant yet in the big picture.

She rubbed her face with both hands. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

“It’s my job.” But yeah, it sucked. “I’m sorry we haven’t found Halle. But so far the evidence seems to point to kidnapping, not murder.”

Professionally I knew that we were doing everything we could. Personally, the guilt drowned me. No matter how many times I warned myself, I thought of Runa as my friend. I desperately needed to fix this for her, and this case was a quicksand trap. Just when I thought I was on my way up, I sank deeper in. It was driving me up the wall.

“So where do we go from here?” Runa asked.

“Well, first things first. We’re now in the crosshairs of an assassin firm, so we’ll get attacked. It’s not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when.’ I called Matilda’s aunt. Unfortunately, she’s out of town, but she said a friend will be coming by to pick her up. Would you like to send Ragnar with them?”