"How long?"

The car moved fast through lower Manhattan.

Luca sat in the back seat in a borrowed jacket over his hospital gown, his bandaged shoulder pressed against the door, his phone in his hand.

The screen was dark.

He had read the four words eleven times since leaving the hospital.

*We know about Emma.*

He did not reply.

There was nothing to say to a message like that.

It was not a question.

It was not a demand.

It was a demonstration.

Sokolov telling him, calmly, that the wall Luca had spent three years building had already fallen.

"How did they get her number?" Luca said.

The man in the passenger seat — one of Marco's, young, quiet, reliable — didn't turn around.

"We don't know yet."

"That's not an answer."

"No, sir.

It isn't."

Luca looked out the window.

The city slid past.

Lit storefronts.

A woman walking a dog.

A couple arguing outside a restaurant, their breath visible in the cold air.

Normal things.

Things that had nothing to do with him.

The safe house was a fourth-floor walkup above a dry cleaner on Delancey.

Marco met him at the door.

"She's inside," Marco said.

"Emma's asleep.

Rachel got her down about twenty minutes ago."

"She's calm?"

Marco's expression answered that.

Luca pushed past him.

The apartment was small.

Two rooms.

A kitchen with a folding table, a couch with a blanket thrown across it, a hallway leading to a closed door.

Three of Marco's men stood at various points doing a poor job of looking relaxed.

Rachel was standing at the kitchen counter with her back to the door, both hands wrapped around a mug she wasn't drinking from.

She heard him come in.

She didn't turn around immediately.

She set the mug down.

She took one breath.

Then she turned.

Three years.

She looked the same and entirely different.

Her dark hair was shorter.

There were shadows under her eyes that hadn't been there before.

She was wearing a gray sweater and jeans and she was looking at him the way people look at something they prepared themselves for and still weren't ready to see.

"You look terrible," she said.

"I know."

"You're in a hospital gown."

"Partially."

Her eyes moved to his shoulder.

The bandage showed at the collar of the borrowed jacket.

Something crossed her face — not softness, not yet — but something that was trying not to be.

"Marco told me," she said.

"About your heart."

"I know."

"Is it as serious as he made it sound?"

"Yes."

She nodded once.

Picked up the mug again.

Put it back down.

"You should sit," she said.

"You look like you're about to fall over."

"I'm fine."

"Luca."

He sat.

She pulled out the chair across from him and sat too, and for a moment neither of them spoke.

The refrigerator hummed.

Somewhere in the building, a television was on.

"The message," Luca said.

"The one sent to your phone tonight."

Her jaw tightened.

"Yes."

"When did you get it?"

"About an hour before Marco's men showed up at the door." She looked at him directly.

"I thought it was a wrong number at first.

Then I read it again."

"You should have called immediately."

"I know that now." Her voice was flat.

Not angry.

Flat in the way people go flat when they are holding something much larger underneath.

"I've been doing this alone for three years, Luca.

I don't have a protocol for this."

That landed where she intended it to.

"I know," he said.

"Do you?"

He didn't answer.

There was no answer that wasn't an excuse.

Rachel looked toward the hallway.

The closed door at the end of it.

"She asked me tonight," Rachel said quietly.

"Before everything happened.

We were eating dinner and she just looked up and asked me if her daddy was ever going to come home."

Luca's chest tightened.

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her I didn't know." Rachel's voice didn't waver, but her hands did, just slightly, where they rested on the table.

"I've been telling her he loves her.

I've been telling her he can't be here right now.

But tonight I couldn't say it again.

I just — I couldn't."

"Rachel—"

"She's three years old." Her voice sharpened.

"She draws you.

Did Marco tell you that?

She draws you every week.

A man with no face standing next to us.

Every single week."

"He told me."

"And you want to know the worst part?" She leaned forward slightly.

"She doesn't draw him sad.

She draws him waving.

Like he's happy to see her.

Like he's just — just standing there, about to walk through the door." Her voice broke on the last word.

She pressed her lips together.

Looked away.

Luca said nothing.

There was nothing to say that would not make it worse.

After a moment, Rachel straightened.

"There's something I need to tell you," she said.

"Something I didn't tell Marco."

Luca looked at her.

"The message tonight wasn't the first one."

The room went very still.

"When was the first one?"

Rachel stood, crossed to the counter, and picked up her phone.

She turned it to face him.

There were three messages.

All from different unknown numbers.

All sent over the past two weeks.

The first said: *Beautiful child.*

The second said: *She has her father's eyes.*

The third, from tonight: *We know about Emma.*

Luca read all three twice.

Then he set the phone down on the table very carefully, the way a person sets something down when their hands are not entirely steady.

"Two weeks," he said.

"Yes."

"You didn't tell anyone."

"I was afraid." Her voice was quiet now.

"I thought if I told Marco, it would confirm something was wrong.

I thought if I ignored them, they might stop." She sat back down.

"I know how that sounds."

"It sounds like someone who was terrified and alone."

She looked at him.

Something shifted in her expression.

Not forgiveness.

Not yet.

But recognition.

"Who has access to my number?" she asked.

"Very few people."

"Then someone in your organization gave it to them."

Luca picked up his own phone and typed two words to Marco.

*Find Dmitri.*

Dmitri Voss.

One of the four people who knew about Emma.

Who had known for two years.

Who had recently, quietly, stopped returning calls on time.

Marco's reply came in under a minute.

*Already looking.

He missed check-in yesterday.*

Rachel watched his face.

"What is it?" she asked.

Luca looked up.

"Someone gave Sokolov your number," he said.

"Someone who knew about Emma.

I think I know who."

Rachel's hands went still on the table.

"Is Emma in danger right now?

Tonight?"

"My men are outside.

Three on the street, two in the building."

"That's not what I asked."

He held her gaze.

"She is safer right now than she has been in two weeks," he said.

"But I need to move you both again tomorrow.

Somewhere Sokolov has no connection to."

Rachel nodded slowly.

Then she looked toward the hallway again.

"She's going to wake up in a strange place," she said.

"She does that sometimes.

Wakes up and calls for me."

"I know."

"You don't know." But she said it without cruelty.

Just fact.

"You know the reports.

You don't know her."

That was true.

And it was the truest thing anyone had said to him in years.

"I want to," he said.

Rachel looked at him for a long moment.

"I know you do," she said finally.

"That's the problem, isn't it.

You always wanted to.

You just kept choosing not to."

She stood, picked up her mug, and moved toward the hallway.

At the door she stopped.

"She wakes up asking for water," Rachel said, without turning around.

"Every time.

Always water.

She won't go back to sleep until she has it."

She went into the bedroom and closed the door quietly behind her.

Luca sat alone at the folding table.

Marco appeared in the doorway from the main entrance.

"Dmitri's phone went dark six hours ago," Marco said.

"Last ping was near the Red Hook waterfront."

Sokolov's territory.

Luca looked at the three messages on Rachel's phone still sitting on the table.

*She has her father's eyes.*

Someone had been close enough to see Emma's eyes.

"Find him," Luca said.

"Alive if possible."

Marco's expression said he understood both parts of that sentence.

He left without another word.

Luca did not sleep.

He sat at the table until the city outside the window began to go gray with early morning, and he thought about a little girl who drew a waving man with no face, and the water she always needed when she woke up afraid.