Gallardo held her gaze. "The kind that your former community has had dealings with, not friendly dealings. Something moved through Emily's expression that was not quite readable from the outside, but it was a movement. Something shifting position. Give me a number, she said, where I can reach you.
You'll think about it. I'll think about it, she said. That's all I'm saying. Gallardo gave her a card. Emily took it.
She put it in her jacket pocket without looking at it again. He got back in his rental car and drove away. And Emily stood in the parking lot of her quiet shop in her quiet town and looked out at the road where his car had disappeared and felt the particular sensation of a door she'd closed six years ago developing a crack in it. Not opening, just a crack. She stood there for a long time in the cooling evening, the card sitting in her pocket, the weight of it much larger than a piece of cardboard had any right to be.
A 12-year-old girl. She hadn't said yes, but she hadn't walked away either. And in Emily Carter's experience in her long and complicated experience of the world and what it asked of people, there was often very little distance between those two things. She didn't sleep that night, not because she was afraid. Fear was something Emily Carter had a specific and functional relationship with.
She recognized it, she respected it, she did not let it make decisions for her. What kept her awake Thursday night was something more complicated than fear. It was the particular discomfort of a person who has built a careful life discovering that the careful life has edges and that standing at one of those edges requires a choice. The card sat on her kitchen counter. She hadn't put it away.
She hadn't thrown it away. She'd set it face down and then made dinner and eaten without tasting much of it and washed the dishes and gone to bed and at 2:00 in the morning she was still looking at the ceiling thinking about a 12-year-old girl she had never met. This was the problem with having a past like hers. Most people got to make decisions based purely on what they wanted, what fit their current life, what was convenient or comfortable or reasonable. Emily had that option too, technically.
She could call Gallardo in the morning and say she'd reconsidered and it wasn't for her and go back to the brake calipers and the engine oil and the quiet rhythm of Cedar Ridge. Nobody would blame her. Nobody even knew the offer existed. But she had spent eight years in a community built on a single foundational principle, you do not leave people in danger when you have the ability to help. That principle did not have an expiration date.
It did not stop applying the moment you took off your colors and moved to a small town in Arizona and started calling yourself a mechanic. At 3:00 in the morning, she picked up her phone and called Darnell Cross. He picked up on the first ring, which told her he'd been awake. You told him about the girl on purpose, she said. I told him the facts of the situation, Darnell said.
The girl is a fact. You knew exactly what you were doing. Emily. His voice was steady and very direct in the way it had always been the voice of a man who said what he meant because he'd been in enough situations where imprecision cost people things they couldn't get back. I would not have passed Gallardo your name if I thought the situation was beyond you.
And I would not have mentioned the girl if I thought the situation wasn't serious enough to warrant your attention. Tell me what you know about the group making the threats. Outfit called the Varga crew. Former Tucson operation moved mobile after the federal indictment 3 years back. They do protection rackets, some trafficking, some very unpleasant things involving people who can't protect themselves.
He paused. We've had interactions with them. None of those interactions ended well for either side, but they kept coming back, which tells you something about their persistence. Why are they targeting this family? The father, his name is Robert Ashworth.
He's a mid-level accountant who did work for a company connected to the Varga operation 3 years ago. He didn't know what the company was when he took the contract. When he figured it out, he went to the FBI instead of looking the other way. Emily was quiet. He testified, she said.
Preliminary stage. The case is ongoing. The Varga people lost a significant operation because of what he provided. They have not forgotten. And the FBI protection ended 6 weeks ago.
Budget decision, apparently. The case is moving through the courts slowly, and the active threat assessment was downgraded. Darnell's voice carried something dry and specific. Somebody made an administrative error in judgment. The Ashworth family has been without coverage for 6 weeks, and the threats restarted 4 weeks ago.
And Gallardo. Gallardo does legitimate work. He's expensive, and he's good, and he's reached the limit of his team's experience with this particular type of threat. He needs someone who understands how the Varga people think, how they move, how they make decisions about when and where. Emily sat up in bed.
Where is the family? Currently in a rented house outside Flagstaff. Gallardo has two men on them. The girl goes to school locally under a slightly adjusted name. The wife thinks it will all blow over.
The husband knows better. And the threat assessment now? What's the actual current risk? Darnell was quiet for a moment, and she knew that particular quality of his silence. The pause that came before he said something he'd rather not have to say.
There was an incident 2 days ago, he said. A car parked outside the school. Different car, same parking spot, three consecutive days. The driver wore a hat and stayed in the car both times they could confirm his presence. On the third day, Gallardo's man approached the car, and it left before he could get close.
Emily closed her eyes. They're doing surveillance on the school," she said. "Yes." "That means they have already moved past the threat stage. That's my read," Darnell said.
"Yes." She sat in the dark for 10 seconds that felt longer. "If I do this," she said, "I need to be able to work my way, not Gallardo's way. I told him that already. And he agreed.