We trek up the hill after Claudia as one car after another pulls from the line below us.

“Have you heard from Ivan?” I say.

“I did.” Her eyes dart to Luka.

“Where is he? Is he okay?”

“Come,” she says, and though her tone is brisk, her face is pale.

She leads us farther up the hill to a car idling on the side of the road. Piotrek’s behind the wheel. We get in, and Claudia turns around in the front seat. She looks younger in the dark without her black sunglasses, and far more human.

“So this is the friend,” she says, as Piotrek pulls ahead of the traffic.

“Luka,” I say.

“Well, Luka, I’m sorry to say you have come at a very bad time.” She slides a meaningful look to me.

“Any idea what happened?” Luka asks tightly, well aware, I know, that he isn’t supposed to know anything about this.

“I am afraid for the worst. Ivan has a history of bad company. It appears the past may have caught up to him tonight.”

“You mean like the mafia?”

“Well, he was from Serbia.”

“How did you know to come for us?” I ask.

“We were headed to Karlovac when Ivan called to say he thought he was being followed and to get you away. We came as quickly as we could.” She glances at Luka. “Ivan’s old associates have a habit of going after their victims’ friends.” She turns forward, and I can hear her exhale an unsteady breath.

“I tried his phone,” I say. “Someone else answered.”

Luka says, “If someone killed him on the ferry, they did it on the way over. They’d still be on the island.”

“You know your way around,” Piotrek says, silent until now. “But your accent is Slovakian.”

“I studied in Croatia—it’s where we met.” He takes my hand. “Before the mess of Audra’s ex showing up, of course, and everything since.”

For a moment there’s nothing but the sound of the car whizzing down the road. And then I realize we are headed not back toward Opatija but east.

“Where are we going?” I say.

“We go to Karlovac and then Zagreb,” Piotrek says, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

“No. We can’t! Ivan had something to give me. Something from my mother, maybe. I need it.”

“It isn’t safe,” Claudia says.

“You don’t understand—”

“No, you don’t understand. Ivan lived in Lubenice. There are only two old ladies and hardly any tourists this time of year. You will stand out. And we cannot stay in Rijeka.”

“Actually, I would think they’d expect us to be running as far from Rijeka as possible,” Luka says slowly. And I suppose he should know, being a hunter himself.