He had studied her — her income, her credit, her business standing, the exact documents a bank would need — and he had used all of it as raw material, forging her name onto a federal banking form as casually as a man signing for a package.

Somewhere in the days before this trip, while she was buying gifts for his family and choosing which dinnerware would match Xiomara’s dining room, Emiliano had been sitting at a desk copying her signature until he got it right.

That was the image she could not get out of her head.

Not the tail lights in the rain, but her husband practicing her own name until he could counterfeit it.

The rain had been cruelty.

This was calculation.