Anna came closer yet, her cheeks glinting. “How about Maria? They won’t hurt Maria?”

“There’s no one left to hurt Maria.”

Openly sobbing now. “Mayrig? Hayrig?”

“Your mother and father will be fine.”

He thought of her family in their beds and wondered at the serenity they might offer her. At her age he hadn’t had much, which meant he’d had nothing to leave behind. As a twelve-year-old, he’d stepped off a truck-stop curb into a dark sedan and blipped off the radar. Back then any gamble was worth the taking. This one had gotten him out of East Baltimore. He’d been to Marrakech and St. Petersburg and Cape Town, and he’d left his mark in blood at every stop. But he’d never had what Anna had waiting for her upstairs. The chill breeze brought with it the realization that he’d devoted his life to preserving for others what he couldn’t have himself.

“The pictures of me,” she said. “They’ll be so ashamed.”

Before leaving Hector’s place, Evan had safed the house, finding little more than construction materials, empty beer bottles, a few hefty dumbbells in the garage. Fast-food wrappers layered a mattress thrown on the floor in one of the bare-bones rooms upstairs where Hector was living during the construction. Evan had gone back down to the comms center and dragged the considerable body out of the way. Once the cockpit was clear, he spent a few stomach-churning minutes navigating the databases, clicking through the files of past “eligibles” to locate the matching buyers. Client information was sparse and coded, but he forwarded it on to the local FBI field office. But not before wiping all information about Anna Rezian off the servers.

“The pictures are gone,” Evan said. “No one will have to know anything.”

Anna took an unsteady step to the side and lifted a hand to the cracked stucco wall. “Eduard. He’s safe now. He’s safe.” Still working it through, thawing out of denial.

“You’re all safe.”

Anna’s face wobbled, and for a moment it seemed she might come apart entirely. “I don’t know how I can face them. Knowing what I almost did to us all. I’ll never forgive myself.”

“That’s up to you.”

She looked stung by his response. Tears clung to her lashes. She bit her lips. Her chest rose, her nostrils flaring. Deep breath. Exhale. The tears did not fall.

“You’re not to call me again,” Evan said. “Do you understand? This is what I do. But it’s all that I do.”

“Albert and Maria are okay now.” Her lips barely moved. Her voice, little more than a whisper. “Mayrig and Hayrig. And Eduard. Eduard.”

“Anna, I need you to focus. Look at me. Look at me. I have one thing to ask of you before I leave.”

Her eyes found a sudden clarity. “Anything.”