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once before, on holiday when I was a child. I didn’t remember much about it, except that there had been a carnival: lights and music, all twisted together in one warped reality.
    “Take a right,” he told me, gesturing impatiently at the windshield, although at least he had put the gun down. “I know where I’m going, mec . Quickly!”
    I shook my head, but followed his directions. There wasn’t really much else I could do, although I was beginning to feel afraid, like maybe this was a holiday from which I would not return. Antoine had me skirt the main routes, driving way out past Nantes, toward the coast and, finally, the neat roads fringed with green grass and tidy, white little houses. The midday sun hid its face behind grey clouds, as if it was ashamed to watch us, and rain began to fall as Antoine piloted me toward a speck of nowhere just down the coast from Pornic. Everything was fields and trees, and we no longer played loud rap as we drove. Antoine called it “silent running”, and held the Glock tenderly in his lap. He told me the place was quiet, set back up a long driveway with no near neighbours. I was to come in with him, but I better be ready to run back to the car and drive like a fucking madman. I started to think he might not be intending for both of us to get back to Paris… that maybe I was only ever supposed to go far enough to get him out clean.
    Sweat pricked my palms as I nosed the Visa into the bare, gravelled approach that led up to the gîte. With nothing around but trees and swells of green—the last signpost I’d seen was for Monval—I could hear the echo of the sea beneath bird cries, though I couldn’t see it. I was glad of that. I was a city boy; I wanted no part of any great, wide emptiness… no threatening void that only held horizons.
    “Stop here,” Antoine said, his face so very still and sullen.
    Usually there was some hint of movement about him, some glance or glimmer of impatience that whispered of his dangers, but he was quiet now. Drawn in on himself.
    I stopped the car on the grey driveway, within sight of the long, low house ahead. It seemed to cling to the ground like a limpet, hiding amongst the flourishing shrubs and borders; the kind of place that must once have been expensive, with a backyard the size of a field, and maybe a swimming pool. Now, though, it looked unkempt, uncared for… as forgotten as the memories of a dozen childhood summers. Lots of windows, but each and every one shuttered with blinds. I could see why Radouane had picked this place. It was private, remote… the kind of bashed-up, out-of-the-way old house that no one ever bothered to look at twice these days. No sign of anyone. Not even a dog barked. It was the kind of place no one would hear a damn thing, and my heart trilled behind my ribs, my palms wet against the wheel.
    Antoine had tucked the gun into his jeans. He motioned me to follow him as he got out of the car and we began to walk toward the house, rain spotting against my face—cool and calm, like a benediction. Humidity purred in the air, and it seemed as if the rain should have smoked, each drop sizzling as it slipped through the heat.
    I glanced at the gîte, and thought I saw a face in the farthest window: a girl, dark-skinned and wide-eyed, yet unafraid. When I looked back, blinking through the thickening rain, she had disappeared behind the blinds once more.
    Beside me, Antoine’s lips curled into that snake-sway smile of his.
     
    * * *
     
    Esther
     
    Radouane called it a party: his terminology for getting a bunch of girls together and shipping them off to take care of clients for a weekend. Any big deal, any major score he wanted in on—or anybody he’d managed to piss off, with his winning charm and top-drawer personality—and he applied them like bandages or buttercream, either patching up problems or sweetening the pot.
    She had agreed to go, which was more than the other girls had. Two Macedonians, a Bosnian, and