“I wasn’t trying to be.” She offered him a consoling smile. “How horrible that must have been. To have to go on after, all alone at such a young age.”

  “We don’t have much time,” he told her. “We need to focus on you, or I won’t be able to do anything for you. Tell me what happened at the Four Seasons. Were you at the Edison?”

  The accent perfected now, she went on. “We’ve both had some tribulations in life, sadness. I suppose those things are what shape us. Clay can’t be molded into something beautiful without pressure from all sides. I think that’s what first attracted me to you, the pain you carry right below the surface. You’re not unique in that fact. Many people suffer, but there is something different about your suffering, a vulnerability. Like an impenetrable door left slightly ajar. We have that in common, the two of us. When you look at me, I know you see it. That’s why you feel this need to help me. I want to be there for you, too. We could disappear. Start something new. A new life far from here. We could heal each other and learn to move on as one instead of two broken halves covered in jagged edges.” She nodded toward the front of the restaurant. “There are two futures outside that door. The first where you take me back to your friends in the white van on Franklin and I’m dragged away from you, put in a box. And a second, where we walk out together, hand in hand, down the sidewalk, get in a car, and go anywhere in the world that is not here. I have money. We could disappear.”

  Under the table, her hand found his. He knew he shouldn’t let her take it, but he did anyway. He knew he shouldn’t look into her eyes, but he did that, too, because he also understood what waited on the other side of that door wasn’t good and he didn’t want to think about it, not then, not in that particular moment.

  Her voice fell to a whisper again. “I want you to be the first person I see in the morning and the last one I see each night. I want to know how you feel inside me. I don’t want secrets between us, never again.”

  Walter hadn’t heard the waiter walk up, but he was now standing beside them doling out the various plates.

  Amy—Velma—cleared her throat, stood, and set her napkin down on the chair. “I’m going to visit the ladies’ and wash my hands. I’ll be right back.”

  She was gone before Walter could object, walking off toward the back of the restaurant and down a short hallway, disappearing through the restroom door.

  When a minute ticked by, Walter asked the waiter, “Is there a way to get out of the restaurant from back there?”

  The waiter looked at him, puzzled. “From the restrooms? No. The only other door is in the kitchen.”

  He gave Walter another look, one that said, Is your date really going that badly?

  Walter got up and went to the small hallway in the back. He knocked on the door marked DONNE / WOMEN. When no answer came, he stepped inside.

  The waiter had been correct. There was no door, no window, no visible way out—only a single stall with a toilet and a pedestal sink—but the bathroom was empty.

  On the mirror, written in red lipstick, big, loopy letters formed the words

  Good-bye, Henry.

  Chapter

  50

  Walter ran.

  From the bathroom.

  Through the crowded restaurant.

  Out the front door and to the sidewalk.

  He frantically scanned up and down the block, finding no sign of her. There was a narrow gated-off alley on the right of the restaurant. Walter’s waiter was there, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette.

  Walter pressed against the fence. “Hey, I’m a cop! Did you see my date come out that way?”

  The waiter did a slight double take. “No. I told you, she couldn’t. Even if she tried, Chef Luca has the key to that gate.”

  Walter reached through the chain link and shook the padlock.

  Locked.

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  The waiter shouted something about the check as Walter jumped into a taxi. “Four fifteen Franklin!”

  Four minutes.

  That’s all the time it took to get back.

  He threw some bills at the driver, not sure how much, not caring, and ran from the car to the back of the white van, yanked open the door, and scrambled inside.

  Buncy glared at him. “What the hell? Where did you go?”

  Wilson was still in his seat, fumbling with knobs, headphones on, his eyes fixed on the monitors.

  “Where’s the girl?” Buncy asked.

  “Where’s Brayman?”

  Buncy leaned his sizable bulk on the edge of the table. “We saw you get in a cab with her. Did you lose her?”

  Twice. Three times, if you count the train station.

  Or did you let her go?

  Buncy didn’t say that last part, not out loud, but it was right there.

  “Brayman hasn’t come out yet?” Walter pressed. He looked at his watch. He’d been in there more than half an hour.

  Buncy shook his head. “Not yet. Wilson’s been trying to get something on the directional mic, but it’s quiet in there. Nobody else in, nobody out. I’m trying to get a warrant to go in. Judge Belton said—”

  Walter didn’t hear the rest. He jumped out of the van and ran to the door of the brownstone—beat on it with the back of his fist. “Detroit PD! Open the door, now!”

  He tried the knob and found it locked.

  Above the door, the lens of the small camera glared down at him, unblinking and quiet.

  He pounded the door again. “Open the goddamn door!”

  On the street, both Buncy and Wilson were leaning out the back of the van. “What the hell, O’Brien?” Buncy said in a loud whisper.

  Walter took out his gun, pulled back the hammer, and shot the lock three times.

  The first bullet missed its mark and vanished in the wood frame, but the other two tore into the doorjamb between the knob and strike plate, leaving nothing behind but a splintered mess.

  Walter grabbed the knob, yanked the door open, and, leading with the barrel of his revolver, stepped into the brownstone.

  He nearly tripped over the body of the large man who had run him off the other night. The guard was on the floor, leaning lazily against the wall, one arm at his side, the other bent at an odd angle behind his back. His mouth was open, and a glistening trail of drool hung from his purple lips, down over the tattoo on his neck, and into his shirt, where it pooled on the collar. One dead eye looked up at Walter. The other was turned off to the right, staring at things unknown. Walter was reminded of Earl Golston’s body back at the Four Seasons. He had no doubt when they ran a black light over this man they would find a small mark on his temple, a mark no larger than a fingerprint.

  “Brayman!” Walter shouted, moving fast down a hallway that opened into a sitting room.

  The furniture in here was all antique, obviously expensive. Walter found more bodies positioned on each couch, in each chair. Seven dead men and four women faced each other in silent conversation, heads lolled to the side, hands folded in their laps. The room reeked of something both sweet and acidic, and Walter didn’t need anyone to tell him these people had all died recently, probably within the past few hours.

  Music drifted down from upstairs. Walter knew the song—“Crying in the Rain” by the Everly Brothers. His mother had played the forty-five so often, the highs and lows had vanished in the worn grooves.

  Walter yelled Brayman’s name again as he bounded up the steps, taking them two at a time.

  Each open door he passed—bedrooms and several bathrooms—revealed more bodies. Walter tried not to look. He only followed the music, the twang of the chorus and the soft strum of a guitar.

  He found Brayman in the last bedroom on the left.

  His body had been dragged up and positioned in the center of the bed. Fully clothed, and with the same dead look upon his face as all the others. Willow was draped over him, one arm across his chest, her legs twisted in his, her flesh unnaturally white.

  The music came from a small turntable on the dresser, and when the song ended, Walter watched the arm rise, move back to the beginning of the record, and lower the needle, starting again. A bit of static followed by the strum of a D chord and a lazy drum.

  Now

  Chapter

  51

  Rigby had given the phone to Hurwitz earlier, and he’d wired it up to a recorder and a system that would help him triangulate the signal and pinpoint the caller. She gave him a soft nod. He keyed in some instructions on his computer, then answered the call on speaker.

  It was the same male voice as earlier:

  “You need to stand down.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  Hurwitz had a camera fixed on Walter O’Brien, and he hadn’t moved. He was still sitting in the battered patrol car, door open, staring at the entrance to the club. If he was listening in on this conversation, he gave no indication of it.

  “I know you have people in the utility tunnels and you’re preparing to breach. I’m going to ask you to abort so I don’t have to shoot them on live television.”

  Rigby looked over at Hurwitz, who had turned worriedly to the breach-team feeds.

  Maybe Walter’s people had cameras of their own.

  “What makes you think I have people in the utility tunnels?”

  “Because that’s what I would do. If you didn’t, I’d be very disappointed in you.”

  On a sheet of paper, Hurwitz scribbled He’s guessing. Can’t see.

  Rigby looked up at the clock. “According to your friend, I only have thirty-three minutes left. You’re not communicating. You haven’t asked for anything. I can’t let that clock tick down to zero and do nothing.”

  “I’m not faulting you for doing your job. I’d expect nothing less. But I feel obligated to tell you if your people attempt to come up through those tunnels, they will die. If they somehow manage to reach one of my shooters, I’ll have no choice but to detonate the bomb. That’s a lot of death on your hands, and as commander of this operation, I feel it’s important you consider all the facts before you decide on a course of action. Walter gave you a hard drive. Have you looked at it?”

  “No,” she lied.

  “I’m not sure I believe you.”

  “I don’t really care.”

  “They’re going to tell you Walter’s a dirty cop. Delusional. Can’t be reasoned with. They’ll order you to put him down. All of us. Their only move is to discredit us. What you have there is proof.”

  “Proof of what?”

  “Proof of who we really are. Proof of the things we’ve seen. Proof of something that shouldn’t exist. When this is over, people are going to demand answers, and you have all of them, right there.”

  On the monitor, Hurwitz was busy scrolling through all the data. He stopped on a folder tagged Walter O’Brien—Detroit PD.

  Opening the file brought up a series of documents nearly identical to the ones they were just looking at in the IA database, nearly—

  His jacket didn’t say he was terminated for cause. Instead, it simply read Resigned with a date of August 12, 1997. No mention of the disciplinary information. The two dead partners were still listed.

  Rigby told herself this was meaningless. Most likely fake. It changed nothing. She was still staring at a ticking clock, a hostage situation, and the people responsible were just trying to jerk her chain. She said, “I think you’re stalling. I need an act of good faith. You’ve got a lot of people in that club. The longer this goes on, the tougher that will make things. They’ll get hungry. They’ll need to use the bathrooms. Some might have medical conditions. Release half. Release two-thirds. Give me something, and make this easier on yourself.”

  “If she doesn’t come out on her own, the bomb goes off in thirty-two minutes. Bathroom breaks and snacks aren’t really a concern here.”

  Hurwitz pointed at something on the screen.

  Rigby studied the document as he loaded up others. All of them nearly identical, with the exception of the issue date. She said, “Brown hair. Gray eyes. Early twenties. Does that sound about right?”

  “So you are reading.”

  “Walter O’Brien issued the same BOLO more than a dozen times over eleven years. Wanted in connection to the homicide of some guy named Alvin Schalk in ’86. Multiples in ’92. Amy Archer. Is that the woman you’re after?”

  There was a photo, but it was horrible. Grainy. Couldn’t make out much of anything.

  “That would make her what, in her fifties now? If she’s in there, she wouldn’t be hard to find.”

  “Call off your teams.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “A week from now, when you’re sitting in front of a review board that’s holding a magnifying glass over every one of your decisions, I’d hate to see you have to explain some knee-jerk reaction and the resulting consequences, particularly those that could have been avoided. Are you watching the news?”

  They had a satellite on the roof, but none of the displays were tuned to television. That was a distraction she didn’t need. She’d spotted at least three news trucks beyond the barricades the last time she’d looked. There were probably more now. Reporters paid interns to listen to police scanners. They were never far behind. She told herself they were doing a job, and as long as they didn’t get in the way of hers, she’d let them.

  “All those eyes are on you. On this. You don’t want to do something you’ll regret.”

  “What I want to do—what I am doing—is my job.”

  One of the computers dinged, and Hurwitz loaded up the phone trace.

  Rigby mouthed, Do you know where he is?

  He shook his head. On the paper, he wrote: I think it’s a SAT phone. Only the last leg is running through the cell system. Best guess = he’s right here.

  Thirty-one minutes left.

  “I want you to let at least ten people out of that club.”

  “No.”

  “At the very least, I need to send in a medic to make sure everyone is okay.”

  “No.”

  “Let me send in someone with a camera. Try and find her for you. O’Brien can watch the feed, and—”

  “That won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Review the drive.”

  He was stalling. Wasting her time.

  “We’re done.” Rigby hung up on him.

  Fuck him.

  She blew out a breath and pressed the Transmit button on her comm. “Green and Blue teams—breach on my mark. We go in three…two…”

  “Whoa, wait!” Hurwitz nearly shouted.

  “Hold,” Rigby quickly transmitted.

  The live body-cam feeds filling several of the monitors bounced—jittery, jerky motions—then settled.

  She glared at Hurwitz. “This better be good.”

  “Walter O’Brien wasn’t the only one to issue a BOLO for a twentysomething female with brown hair, gray eyes, and a shitty photograph.”

  He pointed at another document on the screen.

  Specifically, the logo in the corner.

  “FBI?”

  Chapter

  52

  “Keep your shoulder down, O’Brien! Lean into the hit! You pull back and you give your opponent an opening, the chance to fully deploy their punch. Lean in, and you cut that punch short, reduce its overall force, and take them off-balance!”

  Walter feinted left, went right, and thrust out his left leg, catching his opponent in the ankle. The kid stumbled back and tripped, landed on his ass.

  Third time now. Take that, you squirmy little shit.

  “Better!”

  After a second, Instructor Sanchez ripped off his FBI Academy ball cap and threw it down onto the man’s chest. “Get up, Desmond! You stay down for more than a beat and you’re dead! Sleep on your own time!”

  Tim Desmond, a twenty-seven-year-old and self-proclaimed MMA enthusiast from Cleveland, scrambled back up looking at the dozen other recruits surrounding the mat, his face flushed with a mix of exertion and embarrassment. He planted both his feet and turned an angry gaze back on Walter. “Come on, old man! Knock off the cheap shots and throw a real punch!”

  “Old man” again. At thirty-three, Walter only had six years on this guy.

  You’re five years older than the average FBI recruit, nearly eleven over those coming in fresh from college, old by all counts, Walter. If the stats don’t sway you, how about that growing ache in your gut from a pulled something or other yesterday? Or how about the brace on your knee? I’m sure they’ve all spotted it under your sweatpants. How long before one of them takes a swipe?

  The punch caught Walter square in the gut. Air expelled from his lungs, rushed up his windpipe, and shot from his mouth in a wet gasp. He tried to suck more in but couldn’t before another hit caught him in his left kidney. Because Walter did nothing to protect his body, his body did it for him, a spastic bend to the side as a second kidney punch landed, then a third. On his way to the ground, Walter spun and managed to get his leg caught up in Desmond’s again. He hooked the man’s calf, and the two of them dropped to the mat together in a tangled mess.

  Ignoring the pain, Walter jerked his shoulders to the right, brought up his arm, and managed to get his elbow around Desmond’s neck. He was about to give the man a good squeeze when Sanchez blew his whistle.

  “Time!”

  Desmond was first to his feet, and when he got up, he held a hand out for Walter. When Walter reached for it, Desmond pulled away and started back to his place on the mat. “Life can be cruel, Grandpa.”

  Instructor Sanchez started over to assist, but Walter managed to get back on his feet all by himself and brushed off. Aches and pains began to sound off all over his body—particularly the tough, tight skin around the burn scar on his wrist.

  Sanchez studied the faces around the mat and pointed at Walter. “You see that? Like a damn junkyard dog cornered by three others. That’s how you do it. Doesn’t matter how bad you hurt, how hard you’re hit, you can’t stop swinging. The second you do, you’re dead. You think some crackhead is gonna fight fair? Some jerk-off staring at life in prison? I don’t care if you end up in financial crimes taking down rogue accountants, they’ll sooner stab you with a pencil or slit your throat with their pocket protector than go down. When you’ve got the bad guy against a wall, doesn’t matter the reason, they all see you with the same thought in their head—this is the guy about to take my life away, and I’m not gonna let ’im. They get the upper hand, and there’s nobody there to blow a whistle, you’re dead. Don’t ever let your guard down.”