Guillermo had come to her for a new identity. A clean passport. A flight to a country without extradition. Instead, she had placed a wooden spoon next to the jar.
The alley behind El Rincón Perdido smelled of fish guts and regret. Guillermo Fraile, known to the Interpol cyber-finance division as “The Ghost,” was sweating through his starched linen shirt. He wasn’t running from cartels or feds anymore. He was running from a jar.
“There,” Soledad said softly. “You have paid in full.”
Marco nodded, satisfied. He stepped into the sun.
Guillermo laughed, a hollow, rattling sound. He had spent twenty years cultivating amnesia. He had wiped servers, burned safe houses, and left three wives without a forwarding address. His whole life was a fortress built of forgetting. “I don’t have memories,” he said. “I have alibis.”
He paused at the threshold. A strange thought flickered. He turned to Soledad. “Who was Guillermo Fraile?”