1

  Isaías ran to the half-open gate, ready to shoot again in case the bastard was still breathing. But he wasn't. There wasn't even a slight post-death tremor in the arms fallen along his body.

  Even so, he hurried to the executed man. The woman was still inside, and he wanted to ensure not only that she remained there, but that she offered no resistance.

  As soon as he crouched down, he regretted having aimed at the face. He'd wanted to see the enemy's face. But it was too late for that, and he cursed himself under his breath. Wielding the weapon again, Isaías shot the Jeep's tires just to be sure. Then he yanked the cap from the victim's head and went to the cabin door. With a violent kick, he was already inside.

  He spotted the woman behind the sofa, her eyes blind with shock. Good, very good, but it could still improve a lot. That's why he threw the bloodied cap onto the seat in front of her, functioning as both trophy and warning. The fear in her expression was replaced by something much more visceral, much more acute: pain.

  "I wasn't sure if the guy was your lover or not. Thanks for clarifying the matter. The bad news is he's done for. You're coming with me."

  A low howl escaped her lips, but the woman didn't move.

  "Besides being an adulteress, are you deaf? Come over here. Now. I'm not asking."

  She remained motionless. The only movement he caught were tears clouding her vision, transforming pain into fortress. He'd witnessed many scenes like that before. Some people react to the loss of a loved one with denial, closing themselves inside and throwing away the key. Most were like that. But there were also people like that woman, who transformed loss into fury. They were interesting cases, and gave a lot more work. The end, however, was always the same.

  He approached cautiously, the weapon pointing the way. At any sign of attack, he would shoot. The instruction was to bring the woman back to Porto Alegre alive, yes, but it didn't say she needed to be whole. A shot in the arm, a leg, or the side of her torso wouldn't kill her, and still had the potential to make her more cooperative.

  Then she made a sudden movement downward, disappearing behind the sofa. Isaías imagined she would try to crawl away from him, probably to the bedroom, where she'd lock herself in. Why do people have this childish habit of believing a locked door has the power to keep the world out?

  "I'm losing my patience, professor. You're coming with me one way or another. You're just wasting my time and making me more irritated."

  He needed to intercept the woman's escape attempt before it turned into a tedious game of hide-and-seek. Although he believed she would head toward the cabin's interior, it was a good idea to prevent her from accessing the street door. So he chose to investigate the side of the sofa closest to him.

  The shooter had barely begun to crouch beside the sofa when he felt the first sting in his thigh. A serrated knife emerged from below, quick and determined. The second strike came after he recoiled by instinct. The third tore the fabric of his pants, a grunt of surprise escaping him.

  The woman held the knife so tightly the skin was blanched white. She was determined not to take that trip with him.

  Stubborn bitch. But Isaías had to admit: she was no coward.

  A single pistol-whip to the woman's hand was enough to interrupt the attack. Then he dragged the sofa with his good leg to access what he wanted most at the moment: her face. A single blow was enough to make the wretch see stars.

  He knew the gunshots must have attracted someone's attention in the neighborhood. He didn't have much time. He gathered the woman's belongings, which were miraculously organized, and threw them on the kitchen counter.

  He searched the ground-floor bedroom. He saw the unmade bed, the empty closet, nothing useful. He had better luck upstairs.

  He found a woman's purse and a red suitcase in the suite. He took both and brought them to the living room, where he placed the other items found in the suitcase. He threw everything in there without even looking, including the flash drives and photos scattered around the house. He didn't waste time looking for one thing: her phone had been found in a motel in I?ara. As for the man's phone, it must be with the corpse. He just had to grab it on the way out. He sent a voice message calling the driver.

  Moments later, the vehicle crossed the wooden gate. Isaías placed the suitcase and purse in the back seat and returned to the cabin. The woman was still unconscious on the floor, as he'd left her.

  He pulled a pair of plastic handcuffs from his pocket and bound her wrists. He did the same with her ankles. This way the trip would be peaceful, no funny business. He picked up the woman in his arms without difficulty and placed her body in the trunk. He took one last look before slamming the lid hard and turning the key.

  When he settled into the passenger seat, he was invaded by an immense peace of mind. The mission was almost over. He heard an ambulance siren at a still-safe distance. They were going to escape by a hair.

  The driver was paralyzed at the wheel, his eyes wide. He must be a rookie military cop. With time, he'd see worse. On missions like this, the worst always happened.

  "You waiting for a special invitation to get moving? Step on it, idiot."

  Shaking his head, the man came out of his trance and started the car.

  2

  Silence finally settled on the other end of the line, but there was an even greater silence where Inácio was. He'd found the call with the 48 prefix strange. No one called that number except Daros, and Daros was in Santa Catarina, not answering calls. Actually, why wasn't he answering? And why call from another number?

  He finally understood: it was the woman who dialed. The woman from the beach, Greta. She'd been captured. And someone was already done for, as he'd heard the unknown man's voice say. It couldn't be Daros. No way: the guy had been trained by Germans, for fuck's sake.

  But he wasn't answering the phone. Inácio's willingness to joke about anything disappeared completely. He removed the reading glasses he used to read information about teenagers for adoption. Daros had given that idea one day, and he'd said it was a shitty idea just to keep up the habit of fighting with the boy. The truth, however, was that he soon went researching how to do it. The idea of having a new son at his age was absurd. It would be condemning an innocent to the double mourning of losing elderly parents. On the other hand, being a mentor to a young person who had no one to turn to was perfect.

  He looked at the farm's kitchen and everything seemed dark. It was as if night had fallen. Another kind of night, colder, a night he knew well.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The man blinked rapidly to shake off the torpor. He couldn't track her phone: Daros was the one who knew how to do those things. But he could track the Jeep. He slid the phone out of his pocket and opened the tracking app. The screen kept loading for too long. Weak signal. Damn farm. He cursed under his breath and raised the device, trying to better capture the Wi-Fi. Then, finally, the map appeared.

  A red dot pulsed on the screen, marking the Jeep's location. He took the address coordinates in Imbituba and called the city's police. He introduced himself, informed his detective registration and the internal affairs number. He knew that in a police station, the word of a fellow officer carried weight, but that of an internal affairs detective had maximum priority urgency. He emphasized the importance of sending an ambulance immediately to that address, because there was at least one person seriously injured. Finally, he was categorical:

  "This is an Internal Affairs exigency. Send medical aid and secure the perimeter. I require direct updates from the detective on scene. You have my number."

  His mind wandered to years ago, when he first caught Daros Fischer's recurring presence at the cemetery.

  Inácio went to his son's grave frequently. Sometimes he saw a tall, strong figure circling the nearby tombstones, right after Fernando's killer had been found dead. But the pain prevented careful observation. When he realized the figure was that of a young man close to the age Fernando would have been, curiosity was piqued.

  He was on health leave from work. At the time, he was still a civil police officer. The killer's death had been declared suicide, of all things. Naturally, there would be no official investigation. Well, actually official, no. Not really.

  He couldn't buy that story. A guy with numerous infractions, from drunk driving to substance abuse, isn't suddenly overcome with guilt and cuts his wrists with the damn shard of a champagne bottle. No, that only happened in fairy tales.

  So he started investigating. He didn't quite know why he was doing this when, in fact, he should be happy that one less worm was crawling around the planet. But the grief over his son's death stubbornly remained. The fissure inside him was still there. The emptiness of loss had been filled by the hunt for Fernando's killer, and it worked for a while. Now that the pursuit had been interrupted by the element's death, Inácio was afraid of drowning in the well of self-pity again.

  The problem was that the guy who executed the subject in the bathtub was too smart. Inácio spent months and months doing camera and fingerprint analysis without success. He was close to giving up when he noticed the constant presence of that solitary young man at the cemetery. His instinct clamored to investigate the kid.

  That's what he did. Armed with binoculars, he began monitoring the cemetery. He wanted to know which grave the young man visited. Above all, he needed to understand why that figure seemed so familiar to him.

  For four days, Inácio merged with the landscape. The early mornings found him with his forehead glued to the window, fingers clenched on the binocular cylinders, pupil dilated in the darkness. The cemetery, however, kept its secret. The phantom visitor didn't appear to honor his supposed ritual. His shadow didn't linger among the tombs nor disturb the sleep of the buried. The days were a succession of the slow movement of clouds over the cypresses and the distant echo of life outside the walls.

  On a rainy afternoon, the boy got off a motorcycle and crossed the gates of the holy ground. He had in his hands a small object that not even the magnification lenses helped identify. It didn't matter now. What mattered was discovering the visited grave. He was certain this would bring answers.

  He planned to trace a map of the tombstones around the visitation point so he could find the visitor's destination later, but it wasn't necessary. Among all those eternal beds, the boy stopped before the grave Inácio never wanted to exist: Fernando's. Kneeling there, the figure opened and closed his lips a few times, and Inácio couldn't hear the stranger's conversation with his son. Ten or twenty minutes passed, he wasn't sure. He was too emotional to check his watch. Then the visitor deposited the object on the tombstone and slowly walked away.

  Inácio waited for the other to leave, and the strength he gathered not to run after the guy demanded everything from him. He couldn't be seen at all. Gripping the sides of the car seat tightly, he waited for the motorcycle to disappear on the horizon before shooting out into the street as if fleeing from a fire.

  Out of respect, he slowed down when entering the cemetery. His legs had traveled that path so many times they could get there alone if they ever got lost from the trunk. Before Fernando's grave, he first looked at the smiling face in the photo. Everyone takes very good photos of themselves from time to time, without having the slightest idea which one will end up on their tombstone. The sight of that open smile always made his heart ache.

  He lowered his eyes to where he'd seen the stranger leave the curious offering. In fact, there were two objects: a small electrical circuit and a tiny shard of dark glass. Of course, Inácio had no way to determine just from picking up the glass in his hand, but he could bet his hair that shard had once been part of an expensive champagne bottle. Inácio had the answer to his two questions at the same time: where he'd seen that boy before and who had killed the killer driver. He put the things in his pocket and justified to Fernando:

  "Sorry, son, but I'm going to have to confiscate your gifts. They could incriminate your friend."

  The memory made a solitary tear descend down Inácio's face. Daros really was a son of a bitch. He'd suggested adoption because he knew he wouldn't last long, knew he hadn't been made to remain, and wanted Inácio to have another connection. Son of a bitch. One side of him hoped that losing his only son would prepare him to lose anyone else. His torn chest proved how wrong he was.

  Inácio passed his clenched fists to clean his eyes. He shook his head and dragged himself back to the present. He couldn't give in to despair, not now. There was a woman in danger, the woman Daros had chosen to protect. He grabbed his phone and dialed the number he always hesitated before calling: his wife's. Normally, he didn't know how to start the conversation with someone who had shared the world's greatest pain with him. She answered on the second ring.

  "Hi, stranger. Is the world on fire or something? That's the only way you'd call."

  "I think they killed Daros." He hated the tremor in his own voice, but was unable to prevent it.

  The panic on the other side of the call was almost palpable. Lurdes was better than him at disguising emotions: her work required it.

  "What can I do to help?" she finally responded, swallowing a ball of unspoken things.

  "I'm going to send some photos and files to your email. I need two search and seizure warrants. It's big people, it'll be hard. We don't have time. There's a life at stake."

  "Right. I'll do what I can. Inácio...?" She didn't wait for an answer, knowing he was one step away from collapsing: "I love you."

  Clearing her throat, Lurdes added, feeling her eyes cloud:

  "I love Daros too. Let me do this with you."

  He'd never felt so grateful before for having married a judge, and one of the best. And he'd never needed to let his wife back into his life as much as now.

  3

  When Greta woke up, it was already night. She rolled from side to side in the dark trunk trying to free herself, but it was useless. She wondered why she'd ever doubted Daros's intentions. With each passing second, her mistake became more evident.

  He could have thrown her in the SUV's trunk when their paths first crossed, but he didn't do that. He could have forced her into the Jeep at that farm, but he let her choose her destiny. He could never have come back to help. And, to tell the truth, he shouldn't have come back. Because if he hadn't come back, he'd still be alive.

  She blinked several times to adapt her eyes to the darkness. She searched for the taillights, struggling to find any crack of hope. Maybe she could break a taillight with her feet and attract another vehicle's attention. The gag would weaken her screams, so she'd have to try to stick her fingers through the bodywork. She'd already started kicking the metal when the car stopped.

  She heard footsteps exit through the front door, hammer the asphalt, and enter through the back door. The back seat was yanked down, revealing that man's hateful face. He leaned over the reclined backrest to observe her.

  "Haven't you gotten enough people killed already, girl? Your lover's death is on your tab. If you attract anyone to us, you can bet the tab will increase. I'll leave the seat down. That way I can see if the lady is behaving well. And as a bonus you might be able to appreciate the beautiful starry sky we'll have tonight."

  Greta closed her eyes. She remembered a candle on a birthday cake from many, many years ago. The flame resisted her child's breath. It took four attempts to blow out the little candle, a very frustrating process for someone who can barely wait to eat the cake. She felt a bit like the candle now. She felt the flame inside her had gone out after resisting quite a bit. Fight for what? Why insist on surviving when all that awaited her in the world were empty places?

  She knew at that moment that the fascination she felt for the distant lights of cities had died too. She would no longer fantasize about them. Daros had been killed because of her. No one waited for her under any light at any point along the way.

  Now that she looked at a piece of the surrounding landscape, a painful certainty struck her. The world had lost its color.