The sun was beginning to dip, tingeing the sky with streaks of pink and orange. It wasn’t until I was passing the diner that I became aware of the black Mercedes trailing behind me. The traffic on Main Street had declined and now cars passed by in dregs.
I turned into the lot and stopped walking. The Mercedes parked several spaces away. The engine shut off and the girl with purple hair emerged. She flicked her hair from her face but the bangs held steady, drooping over her eyes. There was a forced casualness about her stance – her arms hung limply by her sides, but her hands were clenched in fists.
She rounded the car and came towards me. I squared my shoulders to appear bigger than I was. We were almost the same height and she was slight, too. She stopped too close to me and I stepped backwards, away from her citrus perfume. It took a moment to find her eyes underneath the bangs and the black kohl powder she had over-rimmed them with.
‘Sophie Gracewell,’ she said, appraising me with unashamed forwardness. Her voice was a lot softer than I expected it to be. It struck me again how young she was – she couldn’t be much older than me. She twirled her hands in front of her as though she was pointing me out to an invisible audience. ‘God, I feel like I’ve been trying to get you on your own for, like, my whole life.’ She smiled broadly, revealing two dimples so pronounced that it suddenly seemed impossible to be intimidated by her. Which was irritatingly misleading.
‘That’s funny,’ I said, not laughing. ‘I feel like I’ve been avoiding you for about that long, too.’
She nodded, her smile faltering as she heaved a sigh. ‘I’ve been freaking you out, I know. I’m sorry.’
Her contrition disarmed me, and, softer than I intended to, I said, ‘There’s a right way and a wrong way to approach someone, you know.’
She started chewing on the corner of her lip, smearing her fuchsia lipstick across her teeth. She was wringing her hands and I realized she was as jittery as I was.
‘I take it you’re a Marino,’ I said.
Her eyes went wide. ‘So you’ve heard of us?’
‘Somewhat.’
‘All good, I’m sure.’ She offered me a bashful smile, all doe-eyed, with those dimples again. There was a small gap between her two front teeth.
‘So my uncle sent you?’
I crunched my palms into fists, feeling the sweat on my fingertips.
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t think you’d have figured it out.’
Poof! There goes the truce.
Thank God I hadn’t mentioned anything about this to Luca.
The girl’s grin betrayed a sense of lightness that was buried beneath the dramatic make-up and severe hair. ‘How did you know that?’
‘I guessed,’ I lied.
She broke off into a chesty laugh. ‘He said you were clever, but I think you had me figured out at the movie theatre. I’m sorry if I scared you. I was trying to get a minute to talk to you by yourself. No one else is supposed to know.’
It was hard to dislike her – as far as Mafia types went, she was surprisingly normal. I might have let my guard drop if I hadn’t known her surname. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked her. ‘Can I know that, at least?’ Anything to distract from the pulsing Marino in my head.
‘Sara.’ She feigned a curtsy and I found myself laughing before clamping my mouth shut. God, she was weird, too. What the hell was she doing running errands for my uncle? She should be out being a teenager.
‘Sorry,’ she said, seeing the bewildered curiosity on my face. ‘I’m kind of new at this messenger thing.’ Her expression turned sheepish. ‘I’m supposed to just give you something,’ she continued. ‘I’m not really even supposed to talk to you.’
‘Why?’ My pulse kicked into high gear.
‘Oh I don’t know.’ She smiled. ‘In case I tip over and all the family’s secrets come out.’
‘Right,’ I said, understanding perfectly.
‘Anyways, your uncle wants to see you.’
‘Not to be rude,’ I said, ‘but he could have called me and saved you all this running around …’ And creepy-ass stalking.
Sara rolled her eyes so intensely her irises practically disappeared. ‘That’s what I said. The last thing I wanted to do was freak you out, but your uncle wanted to be extra careful now that he’s got, like, a thousand hits on him. He was hellbent on making sure you weren’t running around with …’ – she faltered and something dark flittered across her face – ‘… with people you shouldn’t be,’ she finished. ‘It’s important that the information reaches you and only you. It can’t leak. At least not yet. I guess this was the only way to ensure that.’
‘I see.’ It all seemed so intense, so clandestine … so dangerous. They didn’t want to shatter the truce yet. They obviously didn’t realize it was already hanging by a thread. I swallowed hard. I felt like I had my finger in the dam, holding on to a secret that was swelling and swelling. ‘So where is he?’
‘I should go now.’ Sara fished a business card out of her pocket and held it in front of me. ‘Take it,’ she said. ‘Before they fire me!’ She pulled an elaborate mock frown; it dragged at her cheeks, revealing razor-sharp cheekbones. Her eyebrows sank low over her eyes and I was struck then by how familiar she seemed. That expression – I had seen it before.