She stood and went to the window. For a moment she stood looking down at the wet square, at the parked cars, at a gray sedan idling across the street with its engine running and its windows fogged.

“Marcus,” she said. “How long has that Buick been parked there?”

Marcus joined her at the glass. His face went very still.

“I noticed it when I came in this morning,” he said slowly. “I thought it was a delivery.”

“It’s not a delivery.”

Lena took a small camera from her tote and photographed the car through the glass, the plate, the fogged windows, the dent above the rear wheel. She did it without any hurry, the way another person might photograph a sunset. Then she lowered the camera and stood a moment longer with her arms folded, studying the street as though it were a puzzle she had long ago memorized and was only now seeing from a new angle.

“He’s early,” she murmured. “Vince doesn’t usually come himself. He sends a man. If he’s sitting out there in person, it means he doesn’t trust Dale to deliver, or he’s decided that Mr. Whitaker’s money is worth the risk.”

“Or both,” said Marcus.

“Or both.” She glanced back at the table. “It also means he can see the front doors, and anyone who comes out of them. So nobody leaves this building the way they came in. Understood?”

Tessa nodded. Her mouth had gone dry. She looked down at the notepad in her lap and discovered that she had been drawing a small, careful circle in the corner of the page, over and over, until the pen had nearly worn through the paper. She put the pen down. She folded her hands.

Slow down, she told herself. One thing at a time.

Behind them, in his chair, Eli Whitaker said quietly, “I believe that is our Friday.”

Tom’s Voice

Lena Park left the window and made two quick phone calls from the corridor, short, murmured, businesslike. When she returned, she told them that two uniformed officers would be at the back of the building in ten minutes, in an unmarked car. A caseworker from the county’s protective services office was on her way. And someone from the district attorney’s office had agreed to take a call that afternoon.

“None of this is final,” she said. “None of it commits you to anything, Mr. Whitaker. I want to be clear about that. But I’d rather have the people in place before something goes sideways.”

Eli nodded. He had been silent for most of the last ten minutes, sitting with the black notebook before him and his hands folded over it, looking at nothing. Now he reached into his satchel again.

“There is one more thing I carry,” he said. “I don’t know why I brought it. Perhaps for courage.”

He drew out a plain white envelope, soft with age, its flap yellowed and cracked. He set it on the table. On the front, in a loose, looping hand, someone had written Eli and underlined it twice.

“My brother Tom wrote this three days before he died,” said Eli. “He gave it to Margaret, not to me. He said I wasn’t ready for it. She kept it in a drawer for eleven years, and gave it to me the night before she passed.”

Tessa found she was holding her breath again.

“I have read it perhaps a hundred times.” He lifted the flap with his thumbnail, slid out a single sheet of lined paper, and unfolded it with great care. His hands were quite steady. “I won’t read it all. Some of it is private. But there is a passage I want you to hear, because it is the reason I have been so foolish for so long.”

He cleared his throat.

“Eli, I know you think I was a fool, and I was. I know you think the boy takes after me, and he does. But I want you to understand something about us. We were never bad men. We were scared men. I was scared of failing, and the boy is scared of the same. When a scared man does a bad thing, he is not asking to be punished. He is asking for somebody to see how afraid he is. Please look at him, Eli. Really look. And if he falls, be the one who catches him. I’m sorry I won’t be there to do it myself.”

He lowered the page.

No one spoke. Outside the window the rain had thinned to a mist, and a gray light lay across the table, soft as ash.