She held Elísa’s face in both her hands and looked into her eyes.

‘Be good, my darling. Seriously. Be good.’

‘I promise,’ Elísa whispered and smiled awkwardly. ‘I promise not to fuck things up.’

She pulled away and picked up her case, two plastic bags and a couple of extra garments she hadn’t been able to fit anywhere.

‘I’ll come and get you when you’re released,’ she said from the doorway, and grinned with a mixture of shyness and teasing impertinence.

Agla smiled back. In a week Elísa would drive up to the prison in the Tesla, and Agla would walk out of the turnstile gate, ready to breathe in the aroma of Elísa’s tousled hair and the Tesla’s leather upholstery. For the first time she was not only free of the fear of being released from the cage, but was actively looking forward to it.

53

The source lived in Morgantown in West Virginia, so it was convenient for María to drop by on her way to Washington for the next morning’s flight home. She had arranged to meet him at a coffee house, as after the incident at the rest area, she had no desire to meet a trucker anywhere other than in a public place.

She had arrived early and had been to a bank to fetch the thousand dollars that was his price for the information, according to Marteinn, who had found the source and set up the meeting.

Marteinn hadn’t wanted to explain in too much detail what he had done, but it seemed that he had managed to hack into Meteorite’s staff lists, identified some of the drivers then been through their social media pages until he found one who had let negative comments about his work slip out. Using this as a starting point, Marteinn judged that this man would be likely to spill the beans on his employer. He turned out to be right. The man was prepared to tell María everything she wanted to know about the trucking operation, in return for anonymity and a thousand dollars. María had to admit that it was smart of Marteinn to find a source this way. Her own approach would have been to call every driver on the list, which would not have led to such a quick, accurate result.

This driver turned out to be nothing like the one who had threatened her at the rest area the night before. This man was young and small, neat and well dressed, with a strong smell of aftershave about him that reminded María of something – she just couldn’t think what. He shook María’s hand courteously as he introduced himself, and she took a seat opposite him and slid the envelope across the table.

‘I appreciate this,’ he said, folding the envelope away into his jacket pocket. ‘What do you want to know about Meteorite?’

María had made notes on her phone of the questions she wanted to ask, but had no need to look at them. She knew precisely what to ask.