I wouldn’t hand it to anyone you haven’t personally watched breathe for the last hour.”

He gave a small nod.

“Your shop.”

“No.”

“I can pay.”

“I assumed.”

“You do not understand.”

“I understand plenty.” Amelia picked up her toolkit.

“I have a bank notice on my kitchen table and a roof leak over bay two.

That doesn’t mean I’m turning my father’s garage into a mob pit stop.”

The word mob changed the air around the SUVs.

One of the men stiffened.

Luca did not.

“The papers call me many things,” he said.

“Most are incomplete.

None are safe for you.”

“Then we agree.”

“We agree that you should stay alive.”

“Great.

I’ll start there.”

She walked toward her pickup.

Luca followed, leaving several feet between them.

At the driver’s door, she turned.

“You owe me three hundred twelve dollars.”

That surprised him more than the hidden device had.

“Three hundred twelve.”

“Emergency roadside diagnostic, weather fee, temporary bypass, and one ruined pair of gloves.

I don’t charge extra for being terrified.

That would feel unprofessional.”

The broad man made a sound that might have been a laugh if he had been a different kind of man.

Luca reached into his jacket slowly and pulled out a slim money clip.

Amelia lifted one hand.

“No cash bricks.

No favors.

No envelopes.”

He paused.

“I have a card reader in the truck,” she said.

“It works when it feels like it.”

For the first time, Luca Moretti smiled.

It was brief and tired, but it reached his eyes.

“Of course you do.”

The card went through on the second try.

Amelia sent the receipt to an email address that looked too plain for him.

Then she drove home with rain rattling the cab and her hands shaking so hard she had to park twice before reaching the apartment above her garage.

She slept badly.

Every engine outside sounded like an SUV.

Every flash of light on the ceiling became the blink of that device.

By nine in the morning, she had convinced herself the night would become one of those stories mechanics told after enough years had softened the edges.

Then the first Bentley rolled into Hayes Auto.

It was not Luca’s.

A black sedan followed.

Then a Range Rover.

Then a town car with a dented quarter panel.

Amelia stood in the open bay with coffee she had forgotten to drink.

The broad man from the night before stepped out of the first car.

“No,” Amelia said before he reached the office.

He stopped.

“Mr.

Moretti asked me to deliver these for inspection.”

“No.”

“He said you would say that.”

“Then he listens.”

“He also said to give you this.”

The man held out a folder.

Amelia did not take it.

“If that is full of money, I’m throwing it in the waste oil.”

“It is paperwork.”

“That can be worse.”

He set it on the hood of the nearest car and stepped back.

Inside was not cash.

It was a proposed fleet maintenance contract for vehicles owned by a legitimate import business, with vehicle identification numbers, billing addresses, tax information, and a retainer amount that made her grip tighten on the paper.

Enough to cover the bank’s demand.

Enough to repair the roof over bay two.

Enough to