RAZOR EDGE

A MASON SHARPE THRILLER

LOGAN RYLES

Published by Inkubator Books

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Copyright © 2025 by Logan Ryles

Logan Ryles has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-83756-661-7

ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-83756-662-4

ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-83756-663-1

RAZOR EDGE is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

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For Matt and Millie

1

They hit him in the stomach first.

Not the face—that was a rookie move that would leave marks not only on their target but also on their hands. These weren’t rookies, even if they were cowards in uniform who pounded a defenseless homeless man while nobody was watching.

At least, they didn’t think anyone was watching. I was watching, and I’d been watching since before they arrived. Seated in a rusted metal chair in front of a sandwich shop, I was halfway through a sausage and peppers sub when the homeless guy first appeared. He walked south along the far side of Pulaski Street, his dirty jeans displaying ragged holes not because they were styled that way but because he was dirt poor. His hair, a mixture of black and gray, was just as dirty. His beard was six inches long and untrimmed. He walked with a little stoop, a backpack slung over one shoulder, also stained and worn.

And he carried flowers. A big, bright bouquet of them. I recognized the branding on their plastic packaging—they were purchased from a grocery store several blocks away in one of Newark’s nicer neighborhoods. He’d walked a while to get here, but he didn’t look tired. In fact, he looked upbeat, shuffling a long in a half-skip, then stopping at the corner of Pulaski and a narrow one-way to fuss with the flowers.

Shifting. Rearranging. Picking at bits of dry leaves and fluffing the overall presentation. Then looking up the sidewalk—waiting. Whistling and checking the flowers again. Tapping one foot.

I wiped olive oil from my own beard—only slightly better trimmed—and watched. Not because I was nosy, or suspicious, or even very curious. I watched mostly because I didn’t have anything else to do. The whole afternoon was open.

No appointments. No address to go home to. No people to catch up with. Not even a phone to distract me. Just a sausage and peppers sub and a very animated homeless guy.

Then the cops arrived. One cruiser, two uniforms. They were Newark PD, and they eased to a stop fifty yards down the street without ever engaging their lights. They were zeroed in on the guy, even while he was oblivious. A few seconds passed, then both cops got out of their Ford Explorer and offered my first indicator of impending trouble—they both removed their hats and tossed them back into the SUV.

Never a good sign.

I rattled ice in my lemonade and glanced back to the homeless guy. He still wasn’t aware of the approaching police, and they still hadn’t announced themselves—another bad sign. They were glancing around, too, sweeping sidewalks and passing cars, maybe checking for witnesses.

But they missed me, because I sat in the shadows of a slight alcove with my back to the wall and a Chrysler minivan parked on the curb between us. By the time they passed in front of the minivan they were no longer looking my way. They beelined straight for the guy with the flowers, and I forgot about my sandwich.

I had a bad feeling.

The confrontation was brief. I couldn’t hear any of it, but I saw everything, and the body language told the story. The cops caught the homeless guy by the arm and demanded to know something. He looked only momentarily confused, and then very irritated. He jerked away, attempting to return to his surveillance of the street.

That was when they hit him in the stomach—first one guy, then the other. The flowers hit the sidewalk and the guy doubled over. He couldn’t breathe, which meant he couldn’t scream. Before he could even gasp, they had him hooked by his arms and were dragging him down the narrow one-way, into the shadows, passing behind a dumpster.

He finally managed a choking shout—then they hit him again, and by that point, I was out my chair.

Across Pulaski, I hit the sidewalk right at the fallen flowers and entered the one-way to the tempo of fists slamming into unprotected flesh. The street was really more of an alley, with high brick walls blocking out the sun and no utility lamps. Puddles from the previous day’s rain shower filled potholes the size of tractor tires—welcome to New Jersey.

I crashed through, muddy water spraying my knees. I reached the dumpster where one cop stood with his back to me and the other was busy hammering the homeless guy. Neither saw me coming—maybe they weren’t so good at this, after all.

But I was. I hit the first guy in the back of his knee, the one that supported the bulk of his bodyweight. He pitched forward immediately, his upper body plummeting toward the concrete. His head passed the rusted steel lip of the dumpster just as my left arm raced in like a tank shell, smacking him open-palmed in the side of the face and slamming his skull into the rusted lip.

Just like that, he was done. He hit the ground stunned just as the second guy became aware of my presence. He held the homeless guy by his collar, cocking back a fist for the next blow. He released his victim and spun as soon as I came into his peripheral. He went immediately for his sidearm.

But it was much too late for that. I was already on top of him, already driving with four locked fingers straight into his windpipe. It’s a dirty move and had recently become one of my favorites. It hurt me a lot less than a closed-knuckled punch, and hurt him a lot more. In an instant his windpipe was smashed and he forgot about his pistol as he gasped for air. Stumbled back. Lost his balance.

Then I hit him again—not a punch or even an elbow strike, but an open-palmed slap right across his face. Hard.

Flesh met flesh with a crack and blood spurted from a busted lip. He went sideways, gasping and crashing into a wall. I immediately broke off pursuit, stepping backward to where I could see both adversaries.

Normally, of course, I would have pressed the attack. I would have beaten them both until some combination of broken bones, blackened eyes, and serious concussions ended the engagement solidly in my favor. If they had drawn on me, I might even have imposed lethal force.

But these were not normal circumstances, because these were not normal street thugs. These were cops, and corrupt or otherwise, those badges were still a factor in my battlefield calculus.

“Okay,” I said. “Everybody listening?”

No verbal answer. Just gasps from the throat-jabbed guy—his nameplate read Hightower—and groans from the one picking himself up alongside the dumpster—his plate read Faust. The homeless guy, meanwhile, held his side while bleeding from one cheekbone.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said. “You two are going to get off the ground, get back in your car, and burn rubber. You’re not going to argue and you’re not going to call for backup. You’re definitely not going to reach for your cuffs, because if you do, I’ll respond in the worst possible way—I’ll comply. Then when we get downtown, I’ll call a lawyer, and before this is over, the story of Newark’s finest pounding a homeless guy will be on every major news network from here to Nova Scotia, guaranteed. So, you’re gonna quit while you’re ahead, and I’m never going to see you hanging around here again. Are we clear?”

I punctuated the last three words, alternating my gaze between the two cops. They were both back on their feet, right hands resting on their firearms.

But they didn’t draw. They exchanged a look instead, seeming to hold some manner of silent conference, maybe a debate. Hightower certainly looked interested in busting my face open, but Faust seemed to understand the rationale of my directions.

Maybe I’d knocked some sense into him when he hit the dumpster.

“Now,” I said, no shortage of condescension in my voice.

They went. Slowly, walking backward, still holding their holstered guns and panting—but they went. They reached the intersection and turned for their cruiser.

Then they were gone, and at last I addressed the still-slumped homeless guy wheezing at the base of a moldy brick wall.

“Vinny, man. What in the world have you gotten into?”

2

Vinny was from Boston.

I knew that because anybody who had ever heard him utter more than a single word knew that. The dockside abuse of the letter R, misplaced or omitted altogether, was unmistakable.

Beyond that, I didn’t know anything about Vinny, and I didn’t know anyone who did. I didn’t know if his full name was Vincent or Vinicio or Van Gogh, and I certainly didn’t know his last name. He’d never said and I’d never asked, because the societal stratosphere where Vinny lived—and I sort of lived myself, if I was being honest—wasn’t big on questions or intrusions. Privacy, being one of the few luxuries afforded to those with non-styled holes in their jeans, was held at a premium.

Maybe that was why I liked people like Vinny, body odor aside. Maybe it was why I found myself gravitating toward them.

I extended a hand and Vinny took it. He didn’t weigh much but staggered when I got him to his feet, coughing and spitting blood. They’d busted his cheek or maybe his tongue—otherwise the damage seemed to be concentrated on his torso, which meant bruising and a lot of discomfort, but probably not any long-term damage.

“Geez!” Vinny choked. “What happen’ to America? It’s like a guy can’t even use the sidewalk no moh.”

He was still wheezing, still dusting off his jacket and shirt as though they weren’t both already so filthy that their original colors had become a mystery. I stepped back to give him room, glancing back to Pulaski Street just to make sure the boys in blue hadn’t doubled back.

I didn’t see anybody.

“What happened, Vinny?” I said. “What’d you do?”

Maybe it was an unfair question. He was the one getting pounded, after all. But cops, crooked or otherwise, aren’t in the habit of working up a sweat for no reason.

I should know—I used to be one.

“Huh?” Vinny squinted like I’d just asked him for the nineteenth numeral of pi.

“The cops,” I said. “Why were they whipping on you?”

“That’s a great question! I’d love to know.”

There was a nervous vehemence in his voice that I didn’t quite buy. A sort of manufactured energy, as though he knew exactly why they were whipping on him, and for whatever reason, he didn’t want to say.

I didn’t give him an escape. I just folded my arms and waited. Vinny scratched one bearded cheek, scanning the street as though he expected answers—or maybe more assailants—to spring from the shadows.

There was nobody, and finally he looked to me. He raised both eyebrows.

“Whatcha starin’ at?”

I snorted. “A guy who just got pounded.”

“Huh?”

He looked confused again—now I was confused. But maybe I shouldn’t be. None of his reactions were what I might have expected from a regular American citizen driven against a wall and beaten by two uniformed cops…but then again, Vinny wasn’t really a regular American citizen, was he?

He might have a social security number, but he wasn’t filing taxes. He might have an income, however meager, but he wasn’t working any steady job. He didn’t have an address. He didn’t have a family or car or any personal property that couldn’t fit into his backpack.

No, Vinny wasn’t a regular American citizen at all. He was one of the forgotten ones—the homeless, the vagrants, the addicts and alcoholics and the hopelessly ill. Those who had given up on the system and the system, in turn, had very much given up on them.

For people like this, violence such as what I had just witnessed wasn’t unusual. It was part of life, regardless of what sort of clothes its perpetuators wore. You collided with it, you endured it…and you moved on.

All I could do was sigh.

“What’s with the flowers?”

“The what?”

I gestured toward Pulaski. Vinny blinked—then he remembered.

“Aw, crap on a cracka!”

He started off with that same awkward shuffle I’d witnessed before, his left leg dragging not because it was stiff but because it was twisted about halfway down the shin. Again, I didn’t know why. Maybe a car accident left him with a broken leg that was never properly treated. Maybe another cop had bashed his shin with a night stick.

Maybe he was born that way.

I followed Vinny back to Pulaski, again checking both ways for the cops. I saw no sign of Newark PD—I did see the flowers.

They lay on the sidewalk, and they were crushed. Smashed with black boot prints pressed into the grocery store packaging, lily petals and fragments of baby’s breath ground into the concrete.

I’m no forensic footwear analyst, but those prints looked to be about the size and shape of the black boots worn by Newark’s finest.

Vinny snatched up the packaging, scooping petals back into the wrapper as though that would somehow restore the flowers to their original condition. It didn’t—it just concentrated the mess. He was muttering curses and hopping around in a squat, growing more animated by the second. More agitated, too.

Finally, he stood. He glanced both ways down the sidewalk, rising up onto his toes and craning his neck. His breath came in more rapid bursts, his teeth grinding. One arm shook.

Then he hurled the flowers against the nearest brick wall. An explosion of green, purple, pink, and white burst into a shower, raining back over the sidewalk, and Vinny screamed.

“Balls!”

I just stood. Hands in my pocket, watching but not commenting. I gave him sixty unbroken seconds to calm, but he was still breathing hard and scratching beneath one sweaty armpit.

Then I said, “You want a hot meal, Vinny?”

3

The shelter resided in Newark’s Ironbound district. South of the river, west of the port, surrounded by highways. Some parts of Ironbound were nice, others not so much. This was a not so much part—the kind of place where soccer moms were as rare as unicorns, cops patrolled in pairs, and only the very drunk or the very foolish visited at night. A gritty, hard place.

Exactly the kind of place where people like Vinny needed help.

Constructed inside an abandoned warehouse, the walls of the shelter were two stories high, but the second-level flooring had long ago rotted and been removed. The roof was metal and roared like a A-10 Warthog when it rained—only some of the windows featured glass. It wasn’t all that warm in the winter and totally uncooled in the summer.

But it was still a shelter, serving three square meals a day and providing enough cots for a hundred people to sleep safe at night, all compliments of the Ironbound Methodist Fellowship.

I found the place by accident a few days after arriving in Newark, strolling the streets with my hands in my pockets—and very little else. I was short on cash, and my primary mode of transportation/rolling home was in desperate need of repair following a traffic accident in South Jersey some weeks prior.

Truth be told, I needed a little help myself.

The old guy working high atop a rickety ladder was busy patching those broken windows with black plastic. He wasn’t having much luck—he clearly didn’t enjoy ladders and his arthritic hands struggled with the staple gun. I called up to ask if he wanted a hand.

Three hours later we were swapping war stories—literal war stories—over canned soup at the shelter’s nightly open-house dinner. The old timer’s name was Ed Clark, and he served in the United States Army Airborne back in Panama. I knew a thing or two about jumping out of planes myself. I also knew how to staple plastic, sweep floors, scrub bathrooms, and muscle the occasional drunk back into the streets.

So I was hired—ten bucks an hour, not more than six hours a day. Peanuts, really, but those peanuts came with a free place to sleep and free food to eat, and I enjoyed the work. Vinny first appeared on my fourth day and from there I encountered him every couple of weeks. He would show up, eat a meal, stay one or maybe two nights. Then he would disappear again, and that wasn’t unusual. Many of the shelter’s target audience behaved in that way, coming and going in no apparent pattern as they waded through the tumultuous waters of their troubled lives.

“Just trying to stay afloat,” Ed would say, and the tone of his voice made me wonder how storm-torn his own waters might be.

The afternoon I found Vinny tangling with officers Faust and Hightower was the first time I’d seen him in at least a week, but I knew he would enjoy dinner. The selection was spaghetti with meatballs, and Vinny adored the pasta, sometimes sneaking a second helping when he thought nobody was looking. One mention of the menu was all I needed to recruit his services in helping me to erect tables and arrange chairs, after which we wiled away the rest of the afternoon practicing classic rock riffs—he on a dented harmonica, me on the worn violin I’d carried with me across half the country. The music echoed off high brick walls, the nearest of which was painted in blocky white letters with the shelter’s motto—a Scripture verse selected from the book of Luke.

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God… Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

I’d read that text so many times that I could quote it from memory. Ed’s favorite part was the middle bit: not one of them is forgotten by God. He would recite it as the homeless gathered at the door, dirty and smelling of the streets. Some inebriated, others only communicating in incoherent grunts. All broken, all jaded.

But not forgotten—not in this place. Maybe that was what I liked about it. Why I stuck around for sixty bucks a day and the promise of being cursed out and spit on at least once at every meal. It was one of the toughest places I’d ever kicked off my boots.

But the mission mattered.

By dinnertime Vinny and I had exhausted our musical repertoire and were contented with the performances we had arranged. It wasn’t yet dark in Newark, but I could already hear the line building at the door—feet shuffling, voices hoarse and impatient. Usually by this point we already had people waiting at the kitchen counter.

Not tonight. Exceptions were made in the interest of security—not that of the guests or even the shelter staff, but of the special volunteer scheduled to arrive at any minute. As I packed away my violin, I could hear the heavy engines growling toward us, followed by an overly cheery voice calling a greeting to the assembled crowd.

Nobody responded. I shot a look across the shelter floor to Ed. He pursed his lips and didn’t say anything, but I knew what he was thinking.

Here we go.

Mayor Kenneth Greene entered the building with every bit of the pomp and circumstance I expected from a guy who made a literal living out of grandstanding. Flanked by security and a small army of staff, he advanced straight to Ed and extended a hand, spewing his gratitude for the “fantastic work of your organization”.

Ed took the greeting in stride, never commenting on the fact that Greene’s compliments were so generic they could have been applied to any nonprofit in the city—and probably had been, more than once.

“So where do you need me?”

Greene said it as though he didn’t already know the answer. In fact, every portion of this charade had been pre-programmed, right down to his pretended surprise at the arrival of a local news crew. They were here to document the mayor’s generous public service—a goodwill gesture that just so happened to coincide with the final weeks of a contentious reelection campaign.

Imagine that.

Greene took the marinara ladle while his campaign manager served breadsticks. Members of the Newark PD’s Executive Protection Department fanned out to establish a perimeter and I scanned their faces, thinking of Pulaski Street and the two crooked cops I had pounded.

Part of me hoped they’d turn up and attempt an arrest. I’d love the chance to file a report in front of the mayor. Maybe I could do that regardless…but I still didn’t know the reason for Vinny’s shakedown, and however unjustifiable it might be, I’d learned the hard way not to jump to any conclusions in life.

If Vinny didn’t want to explain, then I would just let it go.

Forty-five minutes into the meal the service line had thinned out, and I could tell that Greene was getting restless. He whispered into the ear of his campaign manager, glancing at the bored reporters, and then gesturing at an open space beneath that verse from Luke. I could predict what was coming without any need for political analysis, and I wasn’t interested in hearing Greene bloviate about the great city of Newark and all the amazing changes he hadn’t yet made but totally would make in his second term.

It was exactly the moment Vinny and I had prepared for. I rapped my knuckles on the table and tilted my head. Vinny got the message, abandoning his second plate of spaghetti and whistling to a friend. By the time I arrived with my violin case, Vinny was already seated on an upturned bucket, while his friend sat on a second with a third held between his legs as a makeshift bongo drum.

Greene lifted a hand, but nobody was paying him any attention. Vinny let out a long yip, whipping the harmonica from his pocket like an Old West gunslinger ready to do some high noon killing. Then his friend smacked his bucket drum, and I flicked out the first electrifying notes of Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O' Mine”.

Greene was pissed—he actually flushed, but had enough sense to bottle the indignation. I shot him a wink just as Vinny jumped in with his harmonica for the start of the first verse. We’d only practiced this particular song a couple of times—I chose it at random, knowing that opening riff would captivate the attention of every person in the building.

It wasn’t a great performance, just a great time. Tonight, that was exactly what the forgotten society needed.

From Guns we hit Boston, Bryan Adams, Journey, and Tom Jones. There was no rhyme or reason to the mix. Vinny played the harmonic like an Eighties rocker jacked up on Colombian coke, headbanging his way through the choruses without ever losing a note. The drummer was good too—the tone wasn’t ideal, but the beat was steady. I kept time on my violin, thriving under the hand-clapping adoration of the crowd.

It had been years since I’d played for much of anyone but myself. The last occasion was in a Florida waterside bar, and even that wasn’t this much fun. There was a sort of raw energy to the disheveled crowd that couldn’t be matched by drunks distracted by cell phones. These people really listened, really engaged. They lost themselves in the music and roared between every song.

And Greene just stood there. Trying to tap his feet, trying to snap his fingers. Looking like a moron and knowing it—but what was he going to do?

I kept us playing as Greene made an orbit to say his goodbyes. The last song was “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey—because that’s a winner in any environment. Somewhere after the first few notes somebody in the back began to sing.

He was way off key, but that didn’t stop him. It didn’t stop the others, either. Everyone sang. Some cried. I hit that solo like I was performing at Madison Square Garden, leaning into every draw of the bow—repeating the cycle. Sweating. Breathing hard. As lost in the moment as anybody else…and just as happy to be there.

We finished to a thunder of applause and more than a few calls for an encore, but Greene was gone and Vinny looked ready to pass out. I hauled him up by one hand and the three of us put fists in the air. More cheers, and Ed leaned in to whisper in my ear.

“Thank. God.”

I winked. I loosened my bow and repacked my violin into the employee locker bolted to the back wall. I helped the staff break down the tables and erect the cots. Those who were staying unrolled sleeping bags while others shuffled out. At precisely ten p.m. the doors would be locked, and nobody would enter or exit until morning. It was a hard rule—a security precaution. Children sometimes slept there, and we had to keep track of who came and went.

My cot stood in the back, not far from where Vinny wiped down his beloved harmonica. I patted him on the shoulder as I passed.

“Nice jamming, Vinny.”

He nodded but didn’t seem to be listening. As I stretched out, he kept glancing toward the locked doors. When the lights switched off, he lay down but never climbed into his sleeping bag.

At exactly midnight, just as I was finally drifting off to sleep amid an orchestra of snores, I heard the shuffle on the floor. A familiar drag, like one leg was stiff but really it was twisted. The noise was faint, but my mind identified it through the haze. I blinked and twisted my head.

I found Vinny’s cot empty. Rising on my elbows, I swept the room. Checked the doors, the bathroom entrance. Then I saw him.

Vinny had pulled himself up a wall at the back of the room and was sliding through an open window. I saw his face for only a split second, illuminated by a streetlamp outside. His eyes were laced by stress, maybe fear.

I blinked, and then Vinny was out the window and gone.

4

Something was wrong.

I didn’t have a concrete reason to think so. Vinny sneaking out in the middle of the night was odd, and against the rules. Then again, he was an odd guy who did lots of things against the rules, and by the ease with which he shinnied six feet up a brick wall to slip outside, I guessed that this wasn’t the first time he’d broken this particular rule.

No, what bothered me was more of a gut feeling. Maybe it was triggered by the look in his face just before he slipped outside. Maybe I was still troubled by the unanswered questions from the police shakedown the previous afternoon—questions that now came pouring back into my mind.

Whatever the case, I didn’t like it—not the fact that Vinny was sneaking out, not the look in his eye when he did, and not the feeling it left me with. I could have rolled out of bed and woken Ed. We could have barred the window and later disciplined Vinny. Alternatively, I could roll over and go back to sleep.

But I didn’t. I sat up instead and slid my feet into my boots. Five seconds later I was at the same window Vinny left through, wrapping battered hands over the windowsill and hauling myself up.

It was difficult—more so than it should have been. The physical fitness I had maintained during my years as an Army Ranger had faded over the seasons since, but the window was by far my best chance of catching Vinny before he escaped. I grunted my way through and landed in an alley that cut behind the shelter and connected with a street on either end.

I looked right and saw nothing.

I looked left and just barely caught sight of Vinny turning a corner. He was two hundred yards ahead of me, shuffling along with that awkward leg-dragging stride that now seemed forcibly accelerated.

Again, it felt wrong.

I stretched into a jog, working my way up to a run only by degrees to avoid pulling any muscles. These are things you have to worry about after years of physical abuse. I was no stranger to suffering the discomfort of sore muscles while battling through, but I was just old enough to see the value of working smarter, not harder. By the time I reached the turn I was moving at a good lope and had closed fifty yards on Vinny. He moved along a dirty sidewalk with a wall of mixed-use, multi-story buildings rising over his left shoulder. Streetlights hung directly ahead, glowing red in midnight mist. When Vinny reached the intersection, he didn’t so much as pause—he barely checked for traffic. Shuffling right across he continued north, and I accelerated to follow.

Four blocks. We passed Independence Park before Vinny eventually hooked a left on Nichols Street. Leaving behind a collection of shabby used car lots and convenience stores with bars on their windows, we were now fully ensconced in an old blue-collar neighborhood. The houses were mostly townhomes, three or four stories tall, and many converted into multi-unit dwellings with apartment numbers to divvy up residency. The parking was entirely on the street, a row of dented and dirty cars resting under a tangle of power lines that sliced streetlamp light into a spiderweb of shadows.

Along the way, every four or five houses, Vinny would slow and slip up to a front door. Bending in the shadows with his back to me, I couldn’t quite see what he was doing, but it never took very long. Soon enough he was on the move again, and it wasn’t until I identified a common denominator among all the addresses he stopped at that I was able to guess what he was up to.

He was stealing flowers. From front porch pots and sagging window boxes. You couldn’t miss what was taken, but every place he stopped featured some sort of botanical display, and as I squinted in the dark, I thought I now detected him carrying a mass beneath one arm.

What the heck?

We turned twice more. North onto Pacific, past a pizzeria and a discount wireless store. Then west onto Garden Street, half a block to a three-story red brick building with window units jutting out like crooked teeth and only a single door for entry.

It was another one of those multi-unit places—maybe not originally, but certainly now. All the windows were dark, and the nearest streetlamp was fifty yards away. Vinny blended with the shadows, shuffling to an awkward halt and tilting his head back toward the third floor.

I slowed also, dropping into a squat behind a parked SUV. I could still see Vinny just around the SUV’s rear corner, but I kept the bulk of my body concealed to avoid drawing his eye.

I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want him to see me. I wasn’t even sure why I was following him. It was just that nagging feeling…

Vinny stooped. He lifted something off the ground. He cocked one arm and flung it. A soft tap echoed down the street, and Vinny looked both ways. Then he waited.

Nothing happened. He stooped again. The second object hit a third-floor window, triggering another sharp tap.

He was throwing pebbles.

Is this…

My suspicions were confirmed when a light flicked on behind the window, but Vinny didn’t run. He remained planted on the sidewalk, his head rocked back. Blinds shifted, and I saw a silhouette.

Then the window opened and a young woman stuck her head out.

“Vinny?”

The voice was sleepy, the face obscured by a cloud of dark hair. Vinny’s reaction was immediate. He grinned wide and lifted the bundle from beneath his left arm, a tangle of stolen flowers. The glow of his face, even in the dark, was unmistakable, and I wanted to kick myself. I wanted to laugh. I wasn’t sure what my reaction should be, but the joke was definitely on me.

Romance. It had driven Vinny out of the cot and through the window. Some obsession of the heart, a stronger force of nature than any hurricane or volcano or nuclear strike. I remembered the flowers from earlier that day, crushed and destroyed by Faust and Hightower, and I felt a little foolish.

I also felt a little like an intruder—like I was an unwelcome spectator of this private moment. Vinny was trying to toss the flowers up to the woman and she was giggling as they fell pitifully short. Clearly, the relationship was in some way mutual, or at least not unwanted. The creepiest thing by far was me squatting behind this SUV, spying on these two instead of leaving them to their fun.

I straightened, slowly. I started to turn back the way I’d come…but the laughter stopped me. That voice of joy from the window, mirrored by Vinny on the ground. He’d given up trying to throw the flowers and was blowing a kiss instead. She was waving at him. It looked like he might leave…

I didn’t want him to. I wanted this moment to last for him, and I knew that was also creepy. Unusual. For me to be living vicariously through somebody else’s romance. I told myself I just wanted everyone to be happy—I knew it was deeper than that.

My own smile faded, and my shoulders slumped, just a little. The woman’s laughs merged into another voice from the back of my mind, not laughing at all but screaming…then permanently silenced.

I turned. I started back the way I’d come, a leaden weight in my stomach making me wish I’d never left my cot. I was a dozen paces closer to Pacific Avenue, already thinking about finding some late-night bar to wash away a little of the loneliness, when the squeal of tires arrested my attention once more.

I looked back. I saw the panel van turning the corner onto Garden Street, headlights flashing as it bore down on Vinny’s position. He saw it too and shielded his eyes. The vehicle was speeding toward him like an incoming rocket, moving way too fast for both the speed limit and the context. That pit returned to my stomach—I was just starting to twist back.

Then the van braked hard. The rolling side door hurtled open. Two men dressed in black jumped out and grabbed Vinny by both arms. The woman screamed and Vinny kicked, but neither reaction was enough to so much as slow them.

Vinny vanished inside the vehicle. The door slammed with a crunch. The engine surged.

And then the van blazed down Garden Street, barreling toward me.

5

The vehicle hadn’t even passed me before I was running in the same direction. I noted a muddy brown paint scheme and rims without hubcaps. It bore a New Jersey plate, but I didn’t have time to read it. Already the vehicle had reached Pacific Avenue and was squealing around the corner, headed south.

Then it was gone, and my mind raced as fast as my heart. I was stretched into a full sprint, and already knew it was a fruitless effort. I knew I had zero chance of outrunning a racing motor vehicle with zero apparent respect for traffic laws. I stumbled to a halt, breathing hard and looking over my shoulder.

There were plenty of cars parked along the street, but I didn’t have keys to any of them, and I dismissed the thought of hotwiring one. It’s harder than it looks in the movies and takes too much time. I didn’t have time—Vinny was gone, and I knew in my very bones that whoever took him couldn’t be looking for ransom money from a homeless guy.

They were looking for blood.

The turnpike.

The thought clicked in my head like a gunshot, making instant and perfect sense. This van, whoever drove it and wherever they were headed, would not stay in Ironbound. During the mere seconds they had occupied Garden Street, they’d made a lot of noise and left behind at least one screaming witness, who had subsequently retreated into her apartment. This wasn’t a subtle attack, but a lightning strike, and the only way that made sense was if they were going to burn rubber onto the highway where they could lose themselves amid late night traffic—then head someplace quiet to handle whatever business they had in mind.

The highway, in this case, was the New Jersey Turnpike. It ran just a couple miles south of Ironbound and would allow the fleeing van open access to any number of secluded spots across the city or beyond—if Vinny’s captors made it that far, he was doomed.

But to get to the Turnpike the van would first need to escape Ironbound, likely via McCarter Highway—and to get there they would need to travel south along Pacific before turning west along the first available one-way. Garden Street ran east—the next street, whatever it was called, would be their obvious route.

It was a giant U-turn, and for just a split second, I stood sandwiched between either of the U’s legs.

Move now!

I spun and launched myself toward the first opening in the wall of houses that I could find—an alley protected by a four-foot chain link fence. It was damp with midnight dew and rattled as I vaulted across it. Then I was running south, between tall and skinny homes and skidding around trash cans. My path was nearly pitch black, with only the glow of a street light some hundred yards ahead to serve as a beacon. Another fence blocked my path, this one six feet tall and constructed of wooden planks.

I grabbed the top and wrenched myself up it just as a surging engine howled from somewhere ahead and to my left. It sounded like the van—it was turning onto the same street I was headed toward. My guesswork had proven accurate, but I might already be too late.

I dropped off the fence into a postage stamp back yard littered with children’s toys. The grass was torn away, turned mostly to sand, and the fence wrapped all the way around the lot to block access to the next alley. I jumped atop a plastic playhouse. It crunched beneath me—from somewhere behind a light flicked on and a sleepy voice called. I didn’t wait to look back, grabbing the top of the next fence panel and flinging myself straight into the darkness beyond.

I landed on concrete hard enough to drive the wind from my lungs. Catching myself on the fence, I looked down another alley fifty yards long that opened directly into the next street. There were more trash cans—the metal kind, many stuffed to the point of overflowing. Another light mounted high on a telephone pole dumped illumination over the intersecting street, while glare poured from somewhere to my left, reflecting off a townhouse window and bouncing to the rhythm of a surging engine.

I ran, giving everything I had. I heard the van coming from my left and knew it couldn’t be more than a few houses away. There were no speed bumps on this street, nothing to slow its progress. The glare of the headlights grew brighter as I reached the line of trash cans, the roar of the van’s engine pounding off brick walls. I knew it would cross the alley before I reached the street—I could feel it bearing down and ready to explode into view at any moment. I was only ten feet short but would never make it.

I didn’t try. I ground to a stop and grabbed the last trash can. It was full but not heavy. I wrenched it off the ground, twisting and slinging it without aiming or really thinking. The can rocketed into the street just as the van’s brown nose exploded into view. Headlights blazed against the orbiting trash can, small bags exploding from its mouth in slow motion.

Then my missile struck—or, better put, the van struck. It hit the can with a squeal of impulsive brakes. Metal crunched against metal and the can bounced right off the van’s hood, a relatively harmless blow.

But the psychological effect of an unexpected obstacle had achieved the desired result. The van slid to a stop right across the mouth of the alley. I was running again, my right hand already descending into my pocket and wrapping tight around the oversized Victorinox Swiss Army knife I carry. It filled my palm like a railroad spike, almost as heavy and just as solid. I reached the van’s door just as the face of a bulky white man twisted toward me. His eyes went wide as my arm cocked back, the butt of the knife protruding from the bottom of my fist.

Then I smashed the window.

6

The glass shattered in an explosion so sudden that even I startled. My arm passed inside the van and I released the knife, allowing it to vanish into the dark. I was moving on autopilot, every motion pre-choregraphed in my mind from the moment I threw that trash can. The panel van was a Chevy, not unlike the one that the shelter used to haul groceries and supplies. I’d ridden shotgun alongside Ed more than a few times—I knew where the interior door handle and lock were, and already my hand had found them. I yanked, the latch popped, and then the door was open.

All before the big guy in the seat could reach the pistol protruding from just beneath his jacket. He twisted, lips parting in preparation for a shout, and then I shut those lips with a hard uppercut to the underside of his jaw. Teeth crunched and his head snapped back. From the seat next to him the driver was cursing. He smashed on the gas and the van’s rear tires spun, but by that point I had a boot planted in the footwell and was shoving the passenger sideways, hard.

He wasn’t buckled in, and he rolled left, body-slamming the driver. The van’s engine howled, but the driver’s arms were jerked left along with his body. The van turned hard in the same direction, wheeling toward a curb…

And smashing straight into the telephone pole. An airbag detonated from the steering wheel as we lurched to a halt. The driver’s choked, while nothing but confused grunts sounded from the guy that I was still on top of. He was twisting, wriggling, fighting to get his hands on me.

I hit him again, this time in the stomach, as hard as I could. The breath rushed from his mouth and half the fight went out of him. I found his pistol before he could, housed in an appendix holster. The retention snap clicked free, and I snatched the weapon out. It was an SIG Sauer P226 Legion—a really nice gun, but it must have felt like a brick as it smashed into the guy’s face.

Once, twice. His nose collapsed and I flipped the gun in my hand, grabbing it by the barrel before clocking him right between the eyes—lights out, body limp.

I choked on airbag dust and slid backward, returning to the street with the gun still clutched in my right fist. I hadn’t seen anybody in the van’s rear—I hadn’t really had time to look, but I remembered there being two men who snatched Vinny while the driver remained behind the wheel. One of those guys now lay unconscious. The second must be scrambling to engage even while the driver fought to extricate himself from a locked seatbelt and an inflated airbag.

Sure enough, the van’s sliding side door rolled open with a rattle. A shadow moved just inside—the muzzle of a gun swept in my direction, but he never got the chance to fire. I dropped the SIG and grabbed his outstretched forearm with one hand, yanked it farther out of the van just as I grabbed the rolling door’s handle with my other hand. I slammed it closed as hard and as fast as I could. Solid steel crushed the arm against the doorframe and a shriek burst from inside the vehicle. The guy dropped the gun—it clattered to the ground, and I threw the door open again and yanked on his arm a second time.

This time his whole body came spilling out. I grabbed him by the collar on the way past and heaved him straight for the pavement. He struck face-first with a sound that reminded me of a dropped watermelon. His head actually bounced, sounding almost as bad as it landed the second time.

He didn’t get up, and I didn’t have time to congratulate myself. The driver had made his escape and already he was circling the nose of the van, staggering and clawing at his jacket, no doubt searching for his own pistol. We met at the front bumper, his right hand buried beneath his left arm, his nose and lips bleeding and his eyes wide.

I treated him much the same as I had treated Faust, shooting a hand around his neck, twisting at my hips, and driving his skull sideways into the van’s hood. Unable to break his fall with his right arm still buried in the jacket, he pitched sideways and landed with a crunch of bone against steel. His eyes rolled but his body didn’t go limp—he wasn’t quite done.

I wrapped my fingers into long, greasy hair and yanked his head up again before smashing it a second time, every bit as hard.

That did it. His body went limp, and he slid down. The pistol fell from his jacket and clattered on the ground. I stepped back, heaving like an Olympic swimmer fresh off a sprint.

It was quiet—quieter than it should have been after so much violence. The van’s engine still purred, but no sirens screamed down the streets. No voices called from the dark. I swept the lines of houses to either side and found more than a few backlit windows—maybe one face peered between parted blinds, but I couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter.

I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth and staggered to the open side door of the van. I drew a flashlight from my pocket and clicked it on, flooding the van’s cargo area with bright white light and revealing Vinny. He lay bunched against one wall, hands already tied behind his back, a wide strip of tape stretched over his mouth. He was staring at me, eyes as wide as pool balls.

“Vinny,” I panted. “What the hell have you gotten into?”

7

Vinny didn’t answer—his mouth was still taped. I climbed into the van and located my fallen Victorinox, then used the blade to cut him free. He was panting and shaking by the time I got him upright, his head on a swivel as he looked from one unconscious guy to the next. The frame of the rolling door was actually dented when I’d smashed one kidnapper’s forearm—I couldn’t deny being proud of that.

Vinny seemed less impressed and more alarmed. He was shifting, breathing faster and faster, his dark eyes still bouncing from one body to the next.

“Hey,” I said. “Slow down. You’ll hyperventilate.”

It was good advice, but it wasn’t getting through to him. I hauled Vinny out of the van. He landed on the sidewalk but was still gasping. I duffed him over the back of the head.

“Hey. Snap out of it. You’re okay.”

Vinny shook his head like a dog fresh out of a lake. His lip smacked and he blinked several times. His fists clenched at his sides, and he grew very still.

Then he screamed.

“Balls!”

I blinked, a little surprised but not really, because with a guy like Vinny you had to be ready for anything. I simply replaced the knife and the flashlight in my pocket and glanced down the street, again checking the houses.

There were more lights than two minutes prior, and now I was sure that somebody’s face was visible through a window. Squatting, I retrieved the pistol I’d used to bludgeon one guy into lala land. I used the tail of my shirt to wipe any prints from the grip and repeated the process on all the door handles. Then I dumped the gun into the passenger’s floorboard and flexed my head until my neck crackled in sweet relief.

I started down the street. “Come on.”

“Huh?”

I turned back, hands in my pockets. “You’re coming with me.”

“Wha…where?” Vinny panted, still looking dazed.

“White Castle. Fighting makes me hungry.”

The cheesy little sliders served by White Castle couldn’t rival the In-N-Out Double-Doubles that I so often enjoyed during my patrol cop years back in Phoenix. Smaller, greasier, and overall tasting very East Coast, the sliders were nonetheless an excellent solution to midnight protein cravings, and the White Castle just outside of Ironbound was open twenty-four hours.

I ordered a sack of sliders and two drinks, then joined Vinny at a booth in the back. He sat stooped toward the table, his gaze darting from the windows to the doors and back again. One foot tapped the tile absently, as though he wasn’t even aware that he was doing it.

He didn’t look up when I offered him a root beer, and he flatly ignored a proffered slider. I shrugged and popped the sandwich from its little cardboard box, taking a big bite.

I hurt—I already hurt. Not just in my knuckles and arms but in weird places scattered all throughout my body. Calves, one ankle, and on the left side of my neck. All strained muscles from the fight or maybe the scramble across so many fences—who knew?

If I’m going to flip around like an acrobat, I should at least stretch first.

I slurped my own root beer and restrained a burp. Then I wiped my mouth.

“You’re welcome, by the way.”

Vinny glanced my way. He blinked, nose wrinkling. Then he surveyed the parking lot again while I finished the slider.

“Okay,” I said, wiping my fingers on a napkin. “I gave you some space after the thing on Pulaski Street because I figured we all have our moments, and privacy is gold. But tonight, you snuck out of the shelter—against the rules, I might add—threw pebbles at a woman’s window, and were subsequently kidnapped by three hairy dudes in a creeper van. Following on the heels of your brush with the police, I’m going to guess that bad luck isn’t your problem. It’s past time you were honest with me.”

Vinny stared for a long moment, then licked his lips. I could see the debate in his eyes, and while I didn’t understand it, I had a pretty good idea how to handle it.

I would do nothing—make no effort to fill the silence. Let his own racing mind work against him while I enjoyed another slider—and I really did enjoy it. The cook had hooked me up, throwing fresh patties on the flat top.

Hot, juicy, amazing.

“Street stuff,” Vinny finally mumbled, then immediately reached for the slider bag.

Before I could answer, he was stuffing his face like a squirrel prepping for winter, gulping root beer between swallows. Bits of cheese and bread stuck to his stringy beard, and soda dripped down his chin.

Vinny didn’t seem to notice, and he was no longer preoccupied with the parking lot. He was staring at the table instead, apparently lost in thought.

“Hey,” I snapped my fingers. “I just saved your hide for the second time. You owe me more than ‘street stuff’, whatever that means.”

Vinny shook his head. “That’s all it is, Mason. You wouldn’t understand—don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it? Hey, buddy, I’m not the one who should be worried. If it weren’t for me, you’d be rotting in a landfill by now. Or did you think those guys were kidnapping you for a bachelor’s party down in AC?”

Again, Vinny shook his head, ripping off bits of a slider and packing them into one cheek. “You did me a solid, Mason. No doubt. I owe you a big un. Any time you need something, you just shout. Vinny will be there.”

“What? I’m not asking for a favor, genius. I’m asking for the truth. Who were those guys?”

Vinny hesitated just a beat too long. “How should I know?”

“I think you do know.”

He sipped his soda a little slower, as though he was stalling. It only added to my impatience.

“What about the girl?”

“Huh?”

“The woman whose window you were chucking pebbles at. Your crush.”

Vinny stopped chewing. I saw something in his eyes that was different than before. It was as though his mind stopped racing. As though he was losing himself in a singular thought, once more forgetting where he was or who he was talking to. He was staring right at me, but I could tell he wasn’t seeing me.

“Hey.” I smacked the table. Vinny blinked.

“Just a friend,” he mumbled, then he was packing in another slider. I ran a hand over my face, rolling my head back and remembering that I was tired. That I hadn’t really slept since that morning.

What was it, anyway? Nearly one?

My watch read one-fifteen.

“Look,” I said. “I know you’re lying to me. I know you’re in trouble. Whatever’s going on…I’m offering to help. As a friend.”

Vinny stared at an empty slider carton, gently rotating it with one dirty finger. Even over the greasy odor of the remaining food, I smelled Vinny also. Body odor and rancid clothes and matted, unwashed hair. The smell of the streets and their relentless brutality.

And yet his situation was bigger than that—I knew it. I also couldn’t help but think of the woman on Garden Street…how she had laughed. Whatever their relationship, Vinny was more than another faceless shadow on the street to her. He was special, and she was special to him, and that was the kind of thing I saw as much value in protecting as just about anything else on earth. I really did want to help.

But Vinny simply shook his head. He flashed a weak smile.

“Just street stuff,” he said. “Thanks for the help, Mason. I owe you one.”

Then he dispensed another slider and began packing it down in pieces, just like before.

8

We returned to the shelter by foot, and I let Vinny in using the keypad entrance. Technically, he’d broken the rules, and that violation necessitated discipline. But I was still far from convinced that Vinny was secure—the way he kept glancing over his shoulder on our way through Ironbound did anything but reassure me—and the shelter seemed a safer place than leaving him out in the dark.

I ushered Vinny in ahead of me, and just before I entered the shelter, I cast a glance back up the street. There was an SUV there—some kind of large, dark thing. Probably American. Not very old. It was too far away to be sure. I thought I’d seen a similar vehicle parked a block away when we departed the White Castle, and even as I watched it rolling through an intersection, I thought the SUV was moving a little too slowly for normal traffic, even so late at night.

It bothered me. Every bit of this situation bothered me. But what was I going to do? If Vinny didn’t want to talk, I couldn’t make him. If he was way up the creek without a paddle and insistent on drowning, eventually his wish would come true, and I’d bear no guilt for it.

But I couldn’t stop wondering. Something was out of place. This wasn’t just “street stuff”.

I watched the SUV fade and convinced myself that it was merely a coincidence. It wasn’t like large, dark American SUVs were anomalies in a large, dark American city. Probably just a drunk bumping his way home, driving slowly to avoid attention.

I went inside and returned to my cot. It was after two a.m. and I didn’t feel great. The sliders, delicious though they may have been, landed hard in my stomach. My body ached. I cast a glance across the room at Vinny and found him lying on his back on his own cot, staring up at the moonlight sky through a second-story window. Chewing his lip. Lost in thought.

And clearly, not okay.

I awoke late the next day. Maybe it was the sliders or the exhaustion of pounding five guys in one day. Whatever the case, I slept right through the morning wake up bell and even through the grumbling shuffle of a hundred homeless people. It wasn’t until Ed toed my cot that I finally blinked my way back to the land of the living.

Ed stood over me, both eyebrows arched. “Sleeping something off?”

I sat up with a grunt, hurting in every extremity. “I wish.”

Ed didn’t look like he believed me, but he shuffled off to the breakfast line where paper baggies full of granola bars, bananas, and bottled water stood available for the guests to take with them. Ed and the other staff usually stood by the door wishing each person a good day and ready to pray with anybody who was willing.

Usually, nobody was. Within minutes the whole place was cleared out, leaving only Ed and the other staff to sweep up the trash, scrub stains from the cots, and get ready to do it all over again.

A career? No. Not even a job. This was pure ministry.

I didn’t see Vinny among the crowd that departed, but the door was already open when Ed woke me, so maybe he slipped out early. Brushing my teeth in a kitchen sink, I chugged half a cup of coffee, then collected a broom and assisted with the morning ritual. It consumed over an hour, after which Ed had a list waiting for me of various items that required maintenance or repair—the specialty of his “handyman”. I munched a stale granola bar and reviewed the list, but I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering back to Vinny. To the night before.

To three hairy guys in an unmarked panel van who snatched him up with the targeted intention of a falcon snatching a groundhog. There was no question about it—they’d come to Garden Street expressly to snatch Vinny. He wasn’t a random victim, he was the intended victim, and those guys weren’t cops, not even dirty ones. I knew it by their basic demeanor—by all the forgettable details of the way they behaved.

The thing about cops is that they all follow routines. They eat the same breakfasts, drink at the same bars, fill up at the same gas stations, and wear the same clothes. For years. This is why regular patrol cops make such terrible undercover investigators—you can look at them and tell what they are. It’s all they know.

But nothing about the three guys in the van felt the least bit like law enforcement—corrupt, undercover, or otherwise. Their uncut hair was too authentically dirty. Their clothes too authentically ordinary. It all blended and matched—like this was just who they were, what they wore, and what they did. They were real deal, and that being the case, it meant Vinny had somehow crossed two separate groups of people—both the corrupt cops on Pulaski Street, and the hairy guys on Garden Street.

Were the two unrelated? Perhaps they were directly related, but still two separate groups, and that fact only confirmed my existing conviction that this wasn’t a small problem.

This was big—the kind of thing that would get Vinny killed sooner rather than later. I could stand by and let that happen and tell myself that I’d done the best I could…

But when had that argument ever satisfied my conscience?

“Hey, Ed!” I called.

Ed looked up from the cot he was busy scrubbing.

“I’ve got an errand to run,” I said. “I’ll tackle this a little later.”

I lifted the clipboard displaying the to-do list. He waved a dismissive hand, and I hit my locker to retrieve my cell phone. It wasn’t actually my cell phone so much as a cell phone. One of a series of burners I had purchased over the years since abandoning my own post as a homicide detective back in Phoenix, trading the life of a productive citizen for…whatever it was I’d become.

I powered on the phone and waited for the service to connect. I used the default GPS app to locate my destination, which was less than a mile away in the heart of downtown Newark. Easy walking distance.

Grabbing a bottle of water, I hit the streets.

9

Newark Police headquarters shared space with the Newark Municipal Court. The building was four stories tall, built of concrete and stone with exposed columns and arches over the windows. At a distance it was quite attractive, but as with most government buildings the hardened effects of budget cuts and civil servants who hated their jobs became visible as you approached.

The front doors were all steel with reinforced glass panels, reminding me more of a maximum-security prison than a police headquarters. I stopped across the street long enough to conceal my knife and flashlight in the back of one of those free real estate brochure dispensers. There were no brochures available, but the makeshift arrangement would keep my belongings safe while I migrated through a metal detector.

Inside, the smell that greeted me was exactly like the smell of the old South Phoenix precinct building where I’d worked as a detective…although, perhaps, somehow mustier. The floors were yellowed and worn. The officer who manned the security check-in looked finished with the day, and it was barely nine o’clock.

I submitted to the cattle-like experience of being funneled through the horseshoe metal detector, then declared my interest in speaking with a detective. I was directed down a hallway to the actual police department, stepping into a steamy bullpen that buzzed with ringing phones and creaking chairs, the aroma of sweat and stale coffee heavy on the air.

Exactly like Phoenix.

“Whatcha need, hun?” The desk officer also sounded like she was finished with life, but at least had the kindness to address me as hun. I asked to speak with somebody in major crimes. She made a call, and I waited, hands in my pockets, gaze drifting…

And then I saw them. Faust and Hightower, the two cops I’d spanked like naughty children outside the sandwich shop. They entered from the far side of the room, strutting with heads held high despite the obvious welt on Faust’s cheekbone and the traces of a bruise of Hightower’s left cheek—gifts of a dumpster’s rim and my own right hand, respectively.

They were fifty yards away and didn’t see me at first. I made no effort to hide, the hint of a smile tugging the corners of my mouth as Faust’s gaze drifted past me—then ratcheted abruptly back and locked on.

My smile widened. I lifted a hand in a subdued wave. Faust jabbed Hightower, and he saw me also. Both men reddened—but neither man started my way. Neither man shouted for my arrest or raised any sort of alarm.

How could they? I could still make good on my threat to call that lawyer.

“Mr. Sharpe?”

I broke off my torment of Faust and Hightower to find a new cop addressing me from alongside the receptionist’s desk. He wore plain clothes—skinny, mid-forties, looking as tired as everybody else.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Detective Weinburg. You wanted to see somebody from major crimes?”

“Yep. Is there someplace we could talk?”

Weinburg led me to his desk, which sat inside a four-foot partition labeled with “MCU”. There were two other desks alongside his, but neither was occupied. Weinburg gestured to a chair, and I cast a glance over my shoulder as I settled in.

Faust was gone. Hightower was still watching me—still looking red, but maybe that was an aftereffect of my slap.

“What can we do for you, Mr. Sharpe?”

Weinburg had the tone of a man who expected his time to be wasted and wanted to get the experience over with as soon as possible. I didn’t keep him hanging, diving straight into a summary of the previous night’s engagement. I left some details out, of course. I didn’t mention exactly why I’d been there, and I didn’t mention Vinny’s Romeo and Juliet-style liaison, either. Without the context of Juliet’s response, which had been entirely warm, that incident might paint Vinny in a creepy light. Better to stick to the core facts.

I witnessed a man being kidnapped. I interceded. The resulting confrontation would explain whatever police reports the department had already taken from the site of my three-man wrecking job and the smashed telephone pole.

Only, there were no police reports. Weinburg stared at me like I was describing a UFO sighting. When I pressed him about three men in a panel van, he placed a few phone calls to colleagues around the building, but nobody knew anything about a case of assault, broken bones, or a wrecked Chevy van. Nobody knew anything about an incident in Ironbound at all.

Apparently, it had been a remarkably quiet night in the district.

“It happened,” I said, reading the doubt in his face. “I don’t know why, and I don’t know who they were. But if you don’t open an investigation into kidnapping, you’ll be opening an investigation into homicide. I guarantee it.”

Weinburg leaned back. He made a show of scratching his chin while failing to conceal a yawn. When he spoke, I couldn’t imagine his voice sounding any more bored.

“So, this guy you say was kidnapped⁠—”

“Vinny.”

“Right. Vinny. Is he…around?”

I had been expecting the question, but that didn’t make it any less of a roadblock.

“He’s homeless,” I said, deciding to confront the problem head on. “He’s back on the streets.”

Weinburg’s eyes were already glazed, but at the word homeless they turned practically opaque—like I’d just said that Vinny was a time traveling monk with an acid problem.

“Look,” I said. “I was cop—a detective, actually. I understand how this sounds. But I’m telling you it happened, and I need you to look into it.”

“So why didn’t you call us last night?”

“I didn’t have my phone with me.”

“You couldn’t find a phone before nine o’clock this morning?”

“Vinny was strung out. I thought he should rest.”

“Sure. And did you think, as a former cop yourself, that you should bring him in to issue his own statement?”

There it was—the question I couldn’t get around. I’d hoped to reel Weinburg in enough so that he’d engage with the investigation without snagging on this critical flaw in my approach. Clearly, I’d failed. So now what?

Once more, I decided to go with the truth. It wasn’t a great option, but really my only choice.

“He doesn’t want to talk.”

“He doesn’t want to talk?”

“That’s right.”

Weinburg let out a sigh and placed both arms on the table.

“So let me get this straight. Last night in Ironbound there was an altercation involving you, this Vinny guy, and three unknown belligerents. Nobody reported the incident, and we have no evidence of this supposed crash. The alleged kidnap victim isn’t here to provide a statement or file charges. All we really have is the guy who also claims to have beaten these three guys into submission…by himself. In the dark. On foot, while they were in a van. Is that about right?”

I showed myself out of the Newark Police Station ten minutes later, shooting another glance—no smile this time—at Faust and Hightower on my way. I’d tried without success to hit Weinburg from another angle, claiming my own intentions to file charges and necessitate an investigation, but he wasn’t having it.

If I was honest, I didn’t really blame him.

At a nearby café—there’s always a café near a police station—I ordered a better breakfast than dry granola but could only manage to eat half of it. Seated near a window overlooking a sidewalk in desperate need of pressure washing, my mind drifted behind Vinny. Behind Newark, even behind New Jersey.

His Romeo and Juliet-style rendezvous with the woman in the third-story window had unleashed feelings that I had carefully bottled up for over six months. Memories that took me back to Washington, DC and a smile like the sunrise. Date nights and Nationals baseball games. Afternoons on the Chesapeake Bay, and so much…belonging.

Like before, in Phoenix. That little house and little life shared with somebody just as special as the girl in DC. They both made me feel at home. They both made me feel like my life mattered, like I had a reason to be somewhere specific doing something meaningful.

And I’d lost them both. Gone in the blink of an eye, one less violently than the other, but both of them equally snatched away, leaving me alone in a Newark café worried about another man because I had to be worried about something.

Just go home, Mason. To whatever you call home.

I lifted a hand for the check. I walked with my hands in my pockets down those same filthy sidewalks, retracing the logic that had first led me to Newark—that desire to do something purposeful with my life, maybe to mute some of my own loneliness.

The strategy wasn’t working. Maybe the city itself wasn’t a fit.

I wondered, and then I rounded a corner and stopped wondering, because I saw the shelter. Standing in weathered brick glory one block away, the front entrance was usually marked by nothing more than drifting trash, but today it was marked by police vehicles.

Six of them. No sirens, but lights flashing. Five patrol cops and one panel van marked with blue paint.

NEWARK POLICE — CRIME SCENE UNIT.

10

Imet the first cop just outside the police perimeter. There was no crime scene tape, just a rough circle of cars parked in a makeshift barricade. A sergeant with a pencil mustache extended a hand, barking at me to stop.

I ignored him. I slid around the nose of the nearest squad car and reached the shelter’s front entrance. Ed was there, standing with a plain clothes detective. Both men saw me enter and Ed’s ashen face told the story better than a billboard.

Vinny.

I didn’t need to ask where he lay. A chain of cops marked a highway to the crime scene. My gaze settled on an open metal door—the only door to the alley behind the shelter. Usually, that door was locked. In fact, I’d never seen it open. But as I broke into another jog, Ed calling after me with a hoarse voice, I saw the squatting criminalist. I passed the window Vinny and I had climbed through the night prior and recognized the flash of a high-wattage camera bulb. My heart hammered a little faster and my gut tightened around what little of my second breakfast I had stuffed down.

No, Vinny…

But it was Vinny. He lay twisted on the gravel, his skinny little body coated in blood, his mouth half open. He’d been stabbed—not once or twice but half a dozen times. The marks were wide, and the sheer volume of blood spoke to their depth. I’m no criminalist and I hadn’t touched the body, but I didn’t think the crime was recent.

At least, not younger than a few hours. Vinny had lain behind the shelter in a drying pool. His eyes, wide and haunted, stared at the shelter’s rear wall…his last view before eternity.

“Who are you?”

The voice was male, very Jersey, very abrupt. I observed the second Newark detective from the corner of my eye but never took my gaze off Vinny. I wanted to vomit—not because I’m squeamish, but because I knew this would happen. I’d told Weinburg that it would happen.

And neither of us had stopped it.

“Hey. You got mud in your ears? I asked a question.”

“Ease up,” a raspy Ed said, appearing in the door. “He works for the shelter.”

The original plain clothes detective also appeared. They crowded me from behind, and the criminalist looked up from his camera. I stepped right past them all, squatting at Vinny’s side despite the barking protest of the second detective.

I didn’t touch the body. I was smarter than that. But I wanted to be close. I wanted to look in that face and measure the lifeless gaze. I wanted to know—was this my fault?

My eyes burned. My jaw tightened. I swept the body as my mind snapped into automatic investigator mode—an old habit that wouldn’t die. I noted that one hand was trapped beneath Vinny’s back. The other lay twisted, palm-up, in the gravel.

“Make sure you check his hands for defensive wounds,” I said, addressing the criminalist.

“Huh?”

“Roll his hands and photograph the back side. Check his nails for blood or skin tissue—there might be DNA.”

“Dude. Who are you?”

I ignored the question. I returned to my feet and began an orbit of the crime scene, noting the boot marks. Wide and deep, they were stomps, not steps. I placed one foot alongside an imprint to estimate its size, then a glint of something silver and metallic caught my eye from tall dead grass growing nearby.

“Hey! Get back here. You’re not a cop!”

It was the second detective again. I tuned him out and approached the silver object. Brushing the grass away, I identified plastic, then metal.

It was Vinny’s harmonica, dinged and smeared red. I lifted it and rolled it in my palm, noting Vinny’s initials etched in fine, straight lines—engraved, perhaps, by the shop where he bought it.

V.G.T.

What was his last name?

Before I could even guess, a shout rang from inside the shelter. Abrupt and loud, echoing through the same open window that Vinny had slipped through the night prior. There was something about the voice that rang familiar, but it was the words themselves that really snagged my attention.

“Whose locker is this? Who plays the violin?”

Vinny’s harmonica slipped into my pocket as I turned—I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t want to let go of it. Already Ed and the two detectives were headed back inside. I rounded the corner with them, squinting in the glare of crime scene lights already erected in front of the employee lockers. Two cops stood in front of my locker, their backs turned to me. The door was open, my violin case parked against the wall, my personal effects scattered…

And one cop was reaching inside. He withdrew a gloved hand, dangling a metallic object. I saw his face at the same time as I saw the object, and I recognized both.

It was Officer Faust. He was holding a bloodied kitchen knife. Our gazes locked—and he smiled.

11

Iran.

What else was I going to do? The reality of the situation hit me like a baseball bat in the face, crystal clear only a split second before it was crystal clear to those cops standing closest to me—but that was enough.

Spinning on my heel even as Faust shouted for my arrest, I tore through the back door and into the alley. Voices rose into shouts behind me, but I had the edge on the cops thanks to the speed with which I responded to Faust’s revelation of the knife.

In my locker.

Heart slamming, breath coming quick and sharp, I reached the first intersection of a one-way Newark street and spun right, throwing my body out of the line of fire just in case the cops decided to go lethal. Shouts continued from somewhere behind, along with the scream of a siren in front of the shelter, but it was all too little too late.

I was sprinting, moving full speed along a narrow sidewalk with brick storefronts, mostly abandoned, flashing past on either side. I passed cars parked next to the curb and took a hard left into a residential district even as the siren grew louder behind me. I was moving south, toward the tangle of commercial railroad lines that separated Ironbound from the Newark Airport. I didn’t know the area well, but I’d passed the rail yard often enough in the course of my local residency to remember a row of chain link fences that separated the tracks from the streets.

Patrol cars couldn’t cross those fences. The swarm of shipping cars that occupied those rail lines would provide a morass to lose myself in. If I could get to the tracks before a patrol car ran me down, I just might have a chance at slipping away altogether.

And I had to slip away. I had to avoid the handcuffs. This wasn’t a misunderstanding, and if I went behind bars, I would never resurface. Faust had smiled when he saw me. I knew for a fact that I wasn’t the one to stab Vinny or place that blade in my locker, but somebody had, and with evidence that damning no public defender on the planet would get me off.

I’d go to jail. Maybe, for a long time. That was bad, but what was even worse was the certain knowledge that whoever was actually responsible for Vinny’s murder would go free. I’d never know the answer to the riddle of his last twenty-four hours—but I’d still be responsible for the fallout.

No chance.

I stretched out. I hurtled past privacy fences and barking dogs, around street corners occupied by pot dealers who scurried for cover at the blare of the incoming siren. I was weaving and zig-zagging, taking turns at random, opting for blind corners and alleys too narrow for vehicle passage whenever possible, but always headed south toward the rail yard. The pavement beneath my feet shuddered as a Boeing jetliner launched from the nearby airport and roared overhead, temporarily obscuring the sirens.

And I ran on. Heaving and spinning onto Jefferson Street, passing rows of parked semi-trucks on one side and a wall covered in multi-colored graffiti on the other. The whine of pursuing incarceration faded a little as I turned a corner, nearly knocking a truck driver off his feet just as he dropped from his cab. He swore and definitely saw my face—I kept going. The fence was within sight.

Chain link rattled as I struck it full-bodied. My boots hooked bending wires, and I clawed my way to the top. It was eight feet high but there was no barbed wire. I rolled over the top and dropped straight into a grassy ditch just as a freight train hurtled by with a clack of wheels and a scream of brakes.

Tracks, trains, and the din of diesel engines. The noise swarmed me on every side even as I clawed my way back to my feet and peered through privacy slats in the fence for a view of the street I’d just left. The trucks were still there, and so was that driver. Dressed in boots and gym shorts, he waved a clipboard in my direction as he shouted to a colleague.

Not good.

I turned into the yard and hit more gravel. The first pair of tracks blinked beneath my feet, and then I was swerving behind a line of parked boxcars, headed for the blast of a train horn some fifty yards away.

One engine. A dozen tankers and just as many bulk carriers. The line was headed out of the yard—west, toward the American heartland. Without hesitating I aimed for the train’s midsection and unleashed a final burst of energy. I crossed two more rail lines under the beating sun, curving to keep my body out of view of the train’s engineer. The cars gained speed, and I thought I heard the sirens again, closing on Jefferson Street. I jumped just as the last bulk carrier clacked by.

I snagged the bulk carrier by the welded ladder that provided access to its top, and was nearly snatched off my feet. Skipping and almost letting go, I got another hand on the ladder and heaved my boots off the ground. In another moment I was climbing, not stopping until I reached the open top. One glance over the rim and I found a mound of more gravel waiting to greet me—not a soft landing spot, but what choice did I have?

I rolled over the edge, falling two feet and landing with a thud. The rail car clacked beneath me and sirens grew louder, announcing the closing cops…

But I had already slipped away.

12

Ileft the train at Roselle Park, just about five miles southwest of the rail yard where I boarded it. It only took about eight minutes to travel that distance, but it was long enough for me to catch my breath and reach the inevitable conclusion that my present method of freedom, however clever, wouldn’t last.

That trucker had seen me jump the fence. Eight minutes should have been long enough for the pursuing cops to arrive on scene, question him, and then radio for additional units to converge on the rail yard. How long would it be until they identified the train headed southwest out of the city, and halted it to search every car?

Then I’d be right back under their noses, forced to run again, maybe this time with less success as additional cops joined the chase and word of my escape spread through police radios.

It was a bad situation turned to a worse one, and the only logical way to avoid it was to maintain the initiative.

So, I squatted on the gravel, monitoring passing neighborhoods and parks, waiting for the train to slow at a suitably secluded railroad crossing. In urban New Jersey, nothing was truly isolated. I settled on Roselle Park and swung out onto the ladder, shinnying straight back to the gravel.

Then I was on the move again, not running this time but walking at a steady clip. I left the rail line and turned north on Chestnut Street through a neighborhood that felt more suburban than urban, at least by Jersey standards. Attractive two-story houses were paired with postage stamp yards, many featuring campaign signs for a familiar face—Mayor Greene—while a few displayed signs for his opponent. Sidewalks provided access to a Dunkin Donuts, a title loan vendor…then a thrift store.

I slipped inside the final option after a cursory glance around the parking lot for any sign of police. The thrift store smelled of musty clothes and water damaged drywall. A field of household items were separated from racks of gender-segmented clothing. I only saw one clerk, and she wore headphones and was lost in her cell phone.

One pass of the nearest men’s rack netted a worn synthetic hoodie to replace my black cotton jacket, and a stained New York Giants baseball cap to cover my unkempt brown hair. I ducked into a changing room and swapped my shirt, also—it was sweat-stained and dirty from the gravel I’d landed in. I shoved my old clothes in a random bin and passed the clerk a twenty while she popped gum and continued to scan her phone. She handed me five in change without ever paying much attention to what I’d bought—then I was outside again.

Moving a little slower. Breathing a little easier. And for the first time since the fight or flight instinct took command of my body, I really began to think.

What had just happened?

It was a simple question with no obvious answer. I settled for a review of what I already knew—the basic facts. Vinny was dead, presumably stabbed to death with the same knife found in my locker. My locked locker, which raised additional questions. The lock featured a spinning dial, and I hadn’t shared the combo with anyone.

Then again, when I ran my mind back through the scene at the shelter with Faust and Hightower gathered over my personal belongings, I pictured the open door and couldn’t recall any lock hanging from the hasp. Had it been cut? Maybe Faust himself had cut it, while Hightower collected the bloodied kitchen knife from the alley behind the shelter. Maybe they had subsequently planted it in my locker, then slid aside before the criminalist and the other cops could arrive. Faust and Hightower must have arrived first at the scene—they must have responded while I was wasting time feeling sorry for myself at the café. They were one step ahead of this thing from the start.

Did that mean they had killed Vinny? His body hadn’t looked fresh, and they hadn’t looked guilty when I faced them down at the police station. In fact, they’d looked more startled than alarmed. Not at all calculative—not like Faust had looked when he presented the knife from my locker.

So, what then? What was I missing? Was I seriously backed into a corner solving the death of a homeless guy just to prove I hadn’t done it? Had the cops set me up, or was it the other guys? The ones I’d bludgeoned near Garden Street.

Slow down, Mason. Get organized.

I breathed deep. I stopped at the corner of the thrift store parking lot and swept the street beneath the brim of my captured Giants hat. Two police cars passed, each moving in opposite directions. Neither ran with lights or sirens, and neither slowed or turned back for me.

Why should they? At a hundred yards I was just another guy. A bum on the street. A nobody.

For now. That reality would change if bulletins were issued, my face plastered across TV screens and social media around the city. The fact was, if I wanted to get out, now was the best time. I could sprint for the hills and leave New Jersey within hours. I could reach Ohio, or West Virginia. Lose myself in the hills. Never be seen again. The idea was appealing.

But that wasn’t me. Living on the lam, always watching my back, running. No way. I hadn’t done a thing wrong, and I might have to prove that, but this picture was even bigger than my own guilt or innocence.

Vinny had been murdered. In cold blood. Alone and helpless and, as far as I knew, perfectly innocent. He’d been stabbed to death and deposited like a sack of garbage behind the same shelter that had dedicated so much time and effort into helping him.

My hand closed around his harmonica, still encased in my pocket, and I knew…

Somebody was going to answer for that.

13

Ifirst arrived in Newark behind the wheel of a 1967 GMC pickup—my standard form of transportation/mobile residence for the past few years. That truck had taken a beating during a wreck on the Delaware Memorial Bridge some weeks prior, and I had limped it to northern New Jersey with the intention of obtaining repairs as fast as my meager wages could fund them.

The truck, in fact, was now fully repaired, but was still parked at the body shop on Frelinghuysen Avenue because I had no better place to keep it, and the show owner was agreeable. Painted an iconic two-tone light green and bright white, it wasn’t a covert vehicle, and was likely to draw attention. I didn’t have the seven-hundred-fifty bucks, either.

But I headed to Frelinghuysen Avenue, anyway—not to collect the truck, but to test a theory on just how much the Newark police knew about me. Taking a bus across town and hoofing the final four blocks, I settled into the booth of a McDonalds across the street from the body shop and sipped black coffee while monitoring my truck where it sat behind a chain link fence. By the count of the thirteen-dollar Casio on my wrist, I waited only eighteen minutes before a black-and-white Ford Explorer pulled into the lot and two cops got out.

I recognized the vehicle, and even at a hundred yards, I recognized the cops—Faust and Hightower.

Remarkable.

It was an impressive response time, especially given the fact that the GMC wasn’t registered in my name. I’d bought it off a bar owner down in Carolina, and even though she hadn’t driven it in years, the truck still featured a North Carolina antique vehicle license plate—which never expires. Because I don’t have a home address, or maybe because I hate paperwork, I’d never actually registered the truck in my name, and there was no subsequent documentation on file with any state.

Yet Faust and Hightower had found the truck, just like they’d found my locker. Those two facts spoke to serious resources, serious connections…or perhaps, serious pre-meditation.

I zeroed in on Faust, watching him confront the body shop owner while Hightower stared at my truck through the fence and spoke into his radio. Judging by body language alone, the owner didn’t appear interested in dealing with cops. He was stiff and irritated—he kept glancing back toward his garage and shouting at one of his technicians.

But he let Faust and Hightower into the chain link yard. He let them into my truck, too, and they spent some time poking around in the cab and beneath the camper shell.

Besides the bill of sale, they would find nothing but cheap camping gear and empty candy bar wrappers. Every personal item of value I kept in my locker back at the shelter, and this wasn’t an evidence recovery operation, anyway. Neither cop wore gloves.

No, they weren’t looking for evidence of who I was, clues for how I could be found. Because they were already convinced I was guilty, and they already had manufactured evidence to prove it. On reflection, that kitchen knife had been familiar. I thought it came from the shelter’s kitchen, where I sometimes helped the shelter cooks prep meals.

That meant my fingerprints might be on the handle. Paired with the blade’s presence in my locker and my own decision to run, Faust and Hightower were justified in being confident—this was indeed a conspiracy.

So where did that leave me? Sipping black coffee with four hundred bucks in my pocket and borrowed time before billboards with my face printed on them turned the whole of Newark into a death trap. I knew Faust and Hightower were my enemies. I assumed they had set me up, and it was possible that they had killed Vinny, also.

But why had Vinny been killed? Why were Faust and Hightower so bent on his demise and my false arrest? And how did those three guys in the panel van back on Garden Street factor into this mess? Was their assault on Vinny an unrelated coincidence?

No chance.

Each of these events and questions was a dot on a whiteboard in my mind, and I knew there must be an invisible thread that connected them all, like a spiderweb. Some logical overlay that explained every apparent coincidence, every invisible force.

I was way too lean on data to even take a guess at what that overlay might look like, but that was okay because all I really needed was a loose thread to pull on, and by the time I finished my coffee, I thought I knew what that loose thread should be.

Not Faust, not Hightower. Not the precise timeline of Vinny’s murder or the question of why I was selected to take the fall for it. All of those details could be sorted out later—what mattered most was the story behind the story. The first domino to fall.

And to find that domino, my instincts directed me back to Garden Street.

14

Ireturned to Ironbound via taxi. In another few hours, hired transportation or even public transportation might not be an option, but for the moment, exposing my face to a cab driver was a safer bet than risking open sidewalks with cop cars whizzing by.

That, and I was tired of walking.

Garden Street looked a lot different during the day. Brighter, but somehow grungier, with the Newark Light Rail clacking in the background and not a heck of a lot else happening, the place felt…sad, somehow. Maybe weathered, as though this neighborhood had once been vibrant and bustling but had since succumbed to the relentless tirade of passing time and worsening economic conditions. Many of the houses were nice enough, but other lots stood empty, occupied only by drifting trash and high weeds. Fence paint was faded, cars battered and old.

It wasn’t a bad place, just a tired one. The house that Vinny had visited the night before stood on the second block of Garden between McWhorter and Pacific. It was exactly as I remembered it from the night before, although not as cloaked in shadows. Three stories tall, faced with brick, with a lone door offering access. Maybe it was a single-family home, at some point, but by this stage it had very clearly been subdivided into small apartments.

Only one vehicle sat out front. It was a panel van—but not the panel van. This one was a Dodge, not a Chevy, and although it was dented, none of those dents were shaped like a telephone pole. The back doors stood open, but I didn’t see anybody.

I did hear somebody, however, or rather something. From an open third-story window—the same window Vinny had thrown pebbles at the night prior—I recognized the energy and tempo of a radio broadcast. Maybe a sports show. It wasn’t in English, so I had to guess, but the broadcast and the van’s open doors were both indicative of an invisible occupant.

The woman from the night before?

Maybe. I stood two houses down and spent five minutes surveying every window, every parked vehicle, and every alley entrance. Twice cars passed but didn’t slow, and nobody glanced at me twice. I felt that I was unobserved, which isn’t the same as knowing.

Today, I would have to take the chance.

I crossed the street and found that lone door two inches ajar. Inside was a worn wooden hallway with doors to either side and stairs leading up. I deliberated only a moment, reluctant to advance without clearing each ground level room…

But these weren’t just rooms, they were individual residences, and clearing them would attract more attention than I could afford. If somebody was waiting to close in from behind and ambush me, I would simply need to improvise.

I hit the second floor and found nobody. The radio broadcast was no longer audible, but I heard it again as I reached the third flight of steps. Creaking hardwood and a handrail worn smooth by fifty thousand passing hands guided me to a final landing, where three more doors waited.

A bathroom, open and empty, and two pinewood doors each hung with a number—six and seven. Number seven stood open, and the broadcast barked from beyond. I thought it was probably the room that corresponded to the window where the young woman leaned out. I cast one more glance down the steps, then tapped my knuckles against the open door.

“Hello?”

No answer, just the broadcast. I nudged the door open.

“Hello?”

I was louder the second time, and I heard footsteps. Heavy and shuffling, they came from just around the corner inside the room. I stepped across the threshold, surveying a clean patch of hardwood no larger than two hundred feet square without a stick of furniture or so much as a curtain rod hung over the window. It just bare—empty.

“Anybody here?” I called, my spine beginning to tingle.

Then he appeared. Turning the corner with a broom in one hand, he was short and overweight, maybe sixty years old with thin hair already turning from white to gray. His eyes were dark, his skin about the same shade as mine. He wore utility pants and rubber boots matched with a tank top undershirt stained by sweat and paint—he seemed startled to see me.

And then, instantly, suspicious.

“Who are you?”

The language was English, but the accent was not domestic. Judging by the rolled R’s, I thought it might be Russian or perhaps Ukrainian, but again, I’m the furthest thing from a linguist.

“I’m looking for the young lady who lives here,” I said.

“Who?”

“The young lady,” I repeated.

I didn’t know her name, but that didn’t matter. I could already tell that he knew exactly who I was talking about. He bent and flicked off the battery-operated radio—I focused on the dying broadcast just long enough to conclude that the speaker might also be Russian.

“There is no woman living here,” he said. “The apartment is empty.”

He gestured with the broom, as if that explained everything. I didn’t move, my gaze traveling past him to the walls. The floors. The dual window frames—one with a window unit, the other without.

This place hadn’t been painted in years. It hadn’t been thoroughly scrubbed, either, but it wasn’t filthy. Just used. There were little holes in the walls where pictures might have hung and worn spots in the wood where furniture once stood—all the hallmarks of an occupied living space.

But not now.

I turned back to the old guy, my hands loose at my sides, my body relaxed.

“Why don’t you try again,” I suggested.

“What?”

“There was a young woman here last night, and you and I both know it. How about we skip the part where I bounce you off the roof of your own van, and you just tell me the truth.”

He should have flinched at that—maybe panicked, just a little. Most people in his position, heavily out-muscled and literally cornered, would have. But this guy hardened instead. His jaw tightened. He didn’t say a word.

And he didn’t appear afraid.

Behind me a door opened, and I cast a glance over my shoulder just in time to see a woman appearing from unit six. It wasn’t the woman from the night before. This woman was shorter, heavier, and a little older. She was headed to the bathroom, her arms loaded with clothing and a fresh towel, but she stopped when she saw me and our gazes locked. Her eyes turned instantly wider than they should have been, her body a little stiffer than the circumstances justified. Her lips parted—her gaze switched away from mine, passing through the open door to the guy with the broom.

Then her mouth closed, and she scurried back into unit six. Her door lock clicked, and I turned back to the broom guy.

“What’s going on here?”

No answer. I took a step forward. He didn’t back up.

“You know something?” I said. “I’m not in the habit of beating elders, but you’re really starting to piss me off. A friend of mine is dead, and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that you know something about it. So, unless you want to wear that broom like a tail, you better start talking.”

This time I saw it—just the hint of fear, or at least uncertainty. His own mouth opened, and he shuffled backward half a step.

Then brakes squealed through the open window. Both our gazes flicked in that direction. I was too far inside the room to see into the street, but I heard doors opening and boots hitting the ground. Several of them—and then the broom guy smiled. He took another step back, his hand falling to his side.

I followed the gesture and saw a cell phone protruding from his utility pants pocket. I remembered how long it had taken him to answer my calls when I first arrived. Then

I shoved past him and slid to the window. I saw the Dodge, its back doors still open. Behind it sat a black Lincoln Navigator, the last of its back doors smacking shut as not one, not two, not three, but four beefy guys stepped out.

They were all tall. Muscular. Dark hair and dark eyes but light skin, a little like mine. The driver featured a blacked nose in a brace, smashed as though it had been beaten with the butt of a SIG pistol. One of his companions sported an arm wrapped in a sling, as though it had been crunched in the sliding door of a panel van.

And they were all headed for the lone entrance to the apartment building.

15

The old guy was gone—he left the broom on the floor, and he shouted in his native tongue as his feet pounded the stairs. Even before I reached the hallway, I could hear the return shouts, spoken in the same language. Then boots thumped the steps, and I pictured four meaty guys headed to the second level—already cutting me off from my lone route of escape.

I had five, maybe eight seconds before they reached the third level landing where I waited. One glance down the hallway confirmed that there was no rear window. There might be a fire escape attached to unit six, but if I kicked that door down, I would be directly endangering whatever occupants hid inside.

That left me with only the option of flinging myself from the same third-floor window where Vinny’s friend had leaned out to flirt with him. It was thirty long feet to the sidewalk below and I didn’t like my chances of surviving without at least a broken bone, maybe a shattered knee. Besides that, I was already thinking of Vinny’s cold body behind the shelter and the three guys who had kidnapped him the night before, at least two of which were headed up the stairs. I was thinking about two corrupt cops—maybe more—and a missing woman that my dead friend cared about.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel like running at all.

Kicking the door shut, I didn’t bother with the lock as I reached for the fallen broom. It wasn’t one of those new-fangled metal and synthetic things you pick up at the grocery store. No, this was old school. A whisk broom with a three-quarter inch solid wood handle, worn by use but still as sturdy as the day it was manufactured. I grabbed the handle by either end and slammed it down over my right knee, busting it right in the middle and leaving me with a section about two feet long capped with a jagged spear-tip. The other half of the broom I dropped to the floor, then I slid into the bedroom’s closet and pulled the door closed just as the bootsteps reached the third-floor landing.

They didn’t wait around to search the bathroom or unit six. They didn’t even try the latch of unit seven. They just kicked the door open, triggering what sounded like a shower of dry wood splinters raining over the floor as an angry shout penetrated the closet. Footsteps marked their progress around the corner—I noted shadows dancing beneath the closet door as one of them passed in front of a window. Another growled a remark in a foreign language.

Then, at last, they thought of the closet. Footsteps closed on my position. I shrank against the wall and held my makeshift javelin with one hand, cocked like a spear. A hand touched the closet’s doorknob, and it rattled. They were taking their time now, maybe worried about being shot in the face. I was pretty worried about that myself, but what was I going to do?

Violence of action. Hit them fast, hit them hard. Give them everything I had all at once and end this thing before it even got started.

The door opened in a rush, and I sprang. The first guy was tall and broad, his left hand on the door handle and his right hand clutching an SIG Sauer handgun. The muzzle was up, but as I exploded out of the closet he froze. The jagged end of the broom handle raced like a striking snake and plunged into the base of his neck, sinking in four inches even as I body slammed him backward.

The SIG fell. He screamed and crashed into one of his compatriots as I yanked the broom handle free. Blood spurted like a fountain—he was going down, and I was already spinning to my next target.

It was the guy with the busted arm, and the broken tip of the broom handle raked his eyes and shredded skin before his pistol could swing toward me. He shouted and clawed at his face with his good hand, dropping the pistol. I retracted the broom stick and jabbed at his cheek, punching right through and driving into the roof of his mouth. The shout became a shriek, and in that moment, it became chaos.

One guy lay on the floor, clawing at his neck and dumping blood. Another crashed backward with a broomstick still stuck in his mouth. A third was stumbling and slipping over blood. Only the fourth was far enough away to pop off a shot at me, still standing near the bedroom entrance. I recognized him—he was the guy whose nose I had smashed the night before. He pivoted a SIG pistol and I charged. The gunshot cracked and the bullet struck drywall. He should have reacquired and fired again, but he stumbled backward instead, an instinctual response to my irrational violence. Then I was on him.

My left hand closed around the top of the pistol and wrenched the muzzle away from my body. He fired again and the pistol belched another hot round beneath my elbow, but my grip on the slide was sufficient to keep the weapon from cycling. It failed to eject, and I drove him into the wall. Shoulder blades smashed into sheetrock, and then I hit him—right on the nose, because why reinvent the wheel?

Already shattered cartilage collapsed a second time, and blinding pain clouded his face. He screamed—really screamed, like a kid in a horror movie. I belted him a second time, wrenched the pistol from his hand, and stepped instinctively toward the closet wall.

I was only just in time. The last uninjured thug found his footing, and he also found a gun. A thunder of pistol fire erupted from across the room, bullets whining past my ear before they turned drywall to powder. I shrank into cover and cleared the jammed casing from the SIG. A fresh round landed in the chamber, and I faked a turn around the corner, flashing the muzzle of my gun. The resulting storm of fire was both instant and unchecked. Bullets rained in and I counted.

Six. Eight. Ten. How many had he already fired? A full-size handgun wouldn’t hold more than seventeen rounds—maybe twenty with an extended magazine.

He ran dry at twelve and I pounced on the opportunity. Around the corner with my pistol up, I shot him center-mass just as he was fumbling with a reload. The bullet struck home, dead in the middle of his sternum, and he stumbled backward but didn’t go down. He didn’t bleed, either.

Body armor. Unbelievable.

I fired twice more, still charging across the room. The first shot hit his shoulder, the second clipped his ear—both kept him reeling backward until his thighs slammed against the sill over the open window. Its upper pane hit him at neck-level, stopping the fall.

But only for a moment. I lowered my shoulder and body-slammed him right in the gut. He folded in half and slid through the window, shouting only once on his way down—a brief, blood-curdling shriek.

Then meat hit concrete with a slam that silenced any further panic. I spun on my heel with the gun up and swept the room.

The guy I’d stabbed in the neck was dead—bled out. The guy with a broomstick in his sinus cavity thrashed on the floor and clawed at his face, helpless and desperate.

The final guy—the driver with the busted nose—was scrambling back to his feet with one hand clutching his face, tears streaming from his eyes as he clawed at the small of his back, maybe for a second pistol.

I didn’t wait to find out. I crossed the bloody floor and backhanded him in the face, reigniting an atom bomb of agony. He choked and snatched a J-frame revolver from the small of his back. I swatted it out of his hand long before it came anywhere near me. The SIG rotated on my hand, and I clocked him right between the eyes with the butt.

Not hard enough to kill him. Not even hard enough to knock him out. Just hard enough to daze him.

His body swayed and I grabbed him by the collar with my free hand, yanking his body toward the door. He was thick and heavy, but I was headed downstairs, and I didn’t much care of he walked or slid. He half-stumbled, half-fell down each step, feet and legs thumping as the bloodied SIG P226 Legion rode in my left hand—just in case the old janitor decided to get cute.

I reached the ground level without seeing another soul. My hostage started to come around and I popped him in the forehead again. He went limp and I reached the front door, breathing hard. Then I stopped.

The janitor was there, standing slack-jawed in the yard overlooking a body on the sidewalk. His gaze traveled up to the window, then to me.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my gun hand, then grunted.

“You’ll need a new broom.”

I dragged the semi-conscious gunman across the yard and straight to the back of the parked Navigator. It was a new model, with all the bells and whistles. I kicked one foot beneath the rear bumper, and right on command the hatch beeped and lifted.

I picked him up. I dumped him in with a gasp. He rolled and groaned, and I popped him one last time, harder than before, and enough to drive him into full unconsciousness. Then I fished through his pockets and found a wallet, a cell phone, and a Lincoln-branded key fob.

The fob landed in my pocket. The wallet landed in the back seat. The phone landed on the asphalt. I mashed the button to lower the hatch, then headed for the driver’s seat without another glance at the old timer still standing stunned on the sidewalk.

16

Idrove without any destination in mind. First north, and then east. I wanted someplace quiet and isolated, but mostly I just wanted to get outside of Ironbound before the cops—or more Lincoln Navigators full of gangsters—popped out of the woodwork.

There aren’t a lot of quiet places in Newark, and pretty much nowhere that’s isolated. I figured my best bet was some industrial place, semi-abandoned or at least not occupied by homebodies with lots of open windows to spy through. I took Wilson Avenue out of Ironbound and crossed beneath I-95, trading houses for industrial parks, logistics warehouses, and crude oil facilities. Traffic faded and pedestrians disappeared. I found what I was looking for at the terminus of Delancy Street, where the blacktop dead-ended into a chain link fence with a gate and a view across the Newark Bay to distant Jersey City.

There were fences on either side, too. Fuel storage silos and pipes riding high on steel trusses…but no people. Not for the moment.

It wasn’t great, but it was good enough. I spun the Navigator around and backed up to the end of the street. I cut the engine and kept the key fob, tucking the pistol into the small of my back and dropping out. I scanned my surroundings once more, looking for security cameras or office buildings, and finding neither.

It was the best place I was likely to find on short notice, and at some point, perfect couldn’t be the enemy of good. I was running on borrowed time.

Advancing to the gate, I found it secured with a padlock, and deployed lock picks from my wallet. I defeated the mechanism in sixty-four seconds—not my best time, but a win is a win. Then I dragged my prisoner from the back of the Navigator and straight through the gate. We crossed gravel, then uncut grass, descending a gentle slope to the water’s edge. By the time I stopped we were out of sight of the street behind, and still a mile or so from the far side of the bay.

Plenty of concealment.

I dropped him in the grass and caught my breath before searching his person a second time. I found a handful of change and a pack of cigarettes I’d missed before. There was a switchblade knife tucked into the small of his back alongside the holster that had held his J-frame. He wore a watch on a metal band—some kind of designer brand that cost as much as fifty of my Casios.

That was all. No second cell phone, no other weapons. He was at my mercy, and I shoved his body with one boot into the bay.

The water was cold, and it brought him back to consciousness with a rush. He thrashed, choked, and clawed his way out, wild eyes scanning the unfamiliar landscape and then landing on me.

I sat on a pile of rocks, rotating the switchblade in my left hand, my right hand pointing the SIG at his chest. I’d already checked for Kevlar—he wasn’t as prepared as his buddy.

Not like Kevlar had protected against a three-story fall.

“Sit,” I said.

He blinked, either thinking or pretending not to understand. I didn’t buy it for a moment, and thumb-cocked the SIG’s exposed hammer. I’d previously de-cocked it precisely for the purpose of this theatrical threat, and it worked like a charm. He shuddered and clawed his way up the back. He stopped on his knees, five yards away, and licked dirty bay water from his lips.

“Please,” he mumbled. “Don’t shoot.”

The accent was like all the others—Russian, or at the least, Eastern European.

“I don’t want to shoot,” I said. “But that’s up to you.”

He swallowed. His gaze passed over my shoulder, and along the bank. I couldn’t tell if he recognized where we were, but I wasn’t going to give him time to think about it, or somebody else time to wander by. My grip tightened.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“What?”

“Name.”

He hesitated. “Dimitri.”

The voice was hoarse and nasal, perhaps the product of his repeatedly smashed nose. The accent matched the name.

“Where are you from, Dimitri?”

“Newark.”

I smirked. “Where’s your father from?”

No hesitation this time. “St. Petersburg.”

So he is Russian.

“Okay, Dimitri,” I said. “Here’s how this will go. I’ll ask questions and you’ll give answers. If you don’t, that busted snout will be the least of your concerns. Understand? You won’t get a second warning.”

His tongue darted across mangled lips. He didn’t otherwise answer.

“The homeless guy,” I said. “Why did you jump him last night?”

A hesitation. I shook my head and began to stand. He lifted his hands.

“Look! I’m just a guy—I just follow orders. Okay? I don’t know why we were there—I’m not in charge. Sergei gives the orders.”

“Sergei?”

“You shoved him through a window.”

“Ah, right. So what were Sergei’s orders, then? Last night.”

Dimitri shook his head. “It was just a thing. We had to go to this place and run this guy off. He was…a problem.”

“Is that why you killed him?”

Dimitri squinted, appearing genuinely confused. “What?”

“Why was Vinny a problem, Dimitri? Who was he a problem for?”

Dimitri shook his head. Didn’t answer. I leaned forward, speaking through my teeth.

“Four men, Dimitri, all with guns. I wrecked you all without breaking a sweat. Do you honestly think I’m intimidated by who you work for?”

“You should be,” Dimitri growled.

“Yeah? And why is that?”

No answer. I curled my finger around the SIG’s trigger.

“Who was the woman, Dimitri? What did you do with her?”

“I don’t know.”

“You absolutely know, and this is your last chance to answer. Why were you sent to kidnap Vinny? Why did you kill him?”

I got the words out and Dimitri’s jaw tightened. His gaze darted over my shoulder again, still searching for an escape. Desperate for one. His lips parted…

And then I heard the sirens. We both heard them, a distant wail already growing louder. My back stiffened and I rose from my seat even while I kept the SIG on Dimitri. I backed two paces up the bank until I could see through the gate to the road. The sirens had doubled in volume in just those few seconds—they echoed and wailed, reverberating off the fuel tanks and reaching the water.

Then I saw them. Three Newark Police Explorers, turning onto Delancy Street some half mile away and bearing straight for the trapped Navigator, lights flashing.

My gaze snapped back to Dimitri, and the first thing I saw was his smile, wide and toothy. The second thing I saw was his watch—that same metal-banded timepiece that I had initially mistook for a designer brand. Now I saw that it wasn’t a traditional watch at all, but a smart watched styled to look like a designer brand. The screen had been dark before but now gleamed like a phone screen, displaying an active call ticking past four minutes in length.

“Your move,” Dimitri said, still smiling.

I hit him on my way past. Not hard—I didn’t have time to wind up a really strong slap, but even a rushed strike was enough to fully disable him via his obliterated nose. He shrieked and pitched sideways. I decocked the SIG and thrust it into the small of my back. My feet hit the water.

Then I dove head-first into the bay and swam like my life depended on it.

17

There was a current in Newark Bay—not a crushing one, but strong enough to pull my body south as soon as I passed a hundred yards from shore.

I didn’t try to fight it. In fact, I was hoping for it, turning in the water and striking off downstream in the most subdued swimming profile that I could manage. With the sun glaring off the water, I hoped I would be difficult to spot as I passed two, then three hundred yards from the bank where I’d left Dimitri.

But one glance over my shoulder confirmed that the Newark police had arrived at the site of the parked Navigator. I could still see their flashing lights, even if I couldn’t see moving men. I knew it was only a matter of time before they found Dimitri, and he told his story. They would search the river next, and current or otherwise, I had zero chance of outrunning police boats.

I needed to be out of the water, sooner rather than later.

Stretching out into aggressive freestyle, I passed beneath a railroad bridge and then under I-78, lifting my face to take measured breaths and trying not to think about how deep the water was or what submersed monsters might be lurking amid the silt and sludge. I couldn’t see more than six inches through the murk, and the chill constricted my muscles, escalating my heartbeat and leaving me trembling as I kicked. On one stroke I rolled too far, and the SIG slid from the small of my back. Long before I could grab for it, it was gone, vanished forever into the bay.

I kept going—there was nothing else to do. I may have swum half a mile, maybe twice that—the current made it impossible to judge, and the passing shoreline all looked the same. The first divergence from rock and scrub brush came in the form of a point of land jutting out from the Newark side of the bay, a high chain link fence barricading a parking lot full of matching sedans.

It was another industrial zone, likely something to do with the port, maybe where some automotive importer offloaded vehicles. I didn’t know and didn’t care. The cold was getting to me, and I was fatiguing under the steady drain of sustained swimming. Turning for shore, I set that point of land as my bullseye and stretched out for the final sprint.

I returned to dry land sopping wet and shivering—and only just in time. I clambered behind a row of shrubs as a Newark Police boat throbbed down the river behind me. With lights flashing but no siren, the vessel carried a pair of cops who swept the river with binoculars. They looked right past my position and didn’t turn back to it. The boat was running at maybe twenty miles per hour, which was really much too fast for an effective search, but maybe they thought I had a boat of my own hidden somewhere along the shoreline.

I didn’t move, barely breathing until the patrol passed. It moved half mile farther on before slowing and beginning to turn. Then it churned back the other way, zig-zagging a little while the search continued.

A quick response. Too quick, perhaps? Maybe not if Dimitri’s crew was connected with the Newark PD…or, at least, a few of them.

Russian mob.

It was a theatrical guess, but deep in my gut, I knew it was reasonable. All the indicators were there. Multiple men with matching appearances and accents, indicating a criminal ring unified by ethnic association, which is the very hallmark of a mob. The accent could have been Ukrainian or Estonian or, heck, Polish. Again, I’m no linguist.

But Dimitri’s family hailed from St. Petersburg, and so the Russian mob made the most sense. It’s a solidified, organized, widespread problem, particularly on the East Coast. I’d brushed up against far-reaching branches of that crowd once or twice while working as a detective in Phoenix. I knew something about their operating style, which could be summarized in a single word: brutal.

Exactly like the smug mugs I’d already collided with in Ironbound. All the signs were there.

I bit back a curse, rising from the brush only when the police boat faded from view. I was bone cold, my muscles turning rigid, but I didn’t think about the chill. I didn’t even think about my predicament.

I thought about the situation. The circumstances. The facts as I knew them and what they could possibly mean—because only one question mattered.

What now?

I deliberated for only a moment before the sirens reached my ears. Distant but steady and growing louder. Multiple cars, and I could only assume that they were headed my way—ready to stretch a net. Establish a perimeter. Resume their search for a wanted murderer.

So, what now? There was really only one option.

Run.

18

Hypothermia is a silent killer.

Insidious and subtle, it sneaks up on even the wariest veteran of the outdoors, sinking in its fangs and leaking out invisible venom. It can tear a person down in mere minutes, even while you think that you’re under control of your own body. Damp clothes only strengthen its attack, and wet clothes are like a supercharger.

I was dripping as I returned to dry land, weaving my way past a chain link fence and a web of industrial facilities. With a biting, forty-degree wind slicing straight to my bones, I had to clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering, irregular shivers beyond my control.

First priority—get warm. Second priority—get lost.

I knew there would be a truck stop, maybe a few of them, nestled on the outskirts of the shipping district at the intersection of the nearest major highway. I was right—there were three, and I selected the oldest and grimiest of the bunch. A place where overnight parking for long haul truckers featured room service. Not the kind of place where cops refuel.

Slipping inside with my head down, I navigated past racks of candy bars and coolers of sodas to a tool and supply section at the back of the store. One pair of utilitarian coveralls looked a little too short in both the arms and the legs, but I thought I could make them work. I selected thick wool socks and a trucker’s jacket, along with a brand new burner phone to replace the one my swim destroyed. A hundred bucks in all, plus twenty dollars more for a hot shower.

I wasn’t so concerned about being clean—I just wanted to be warm. A high-pressure spray of hot water in a discolored tile stall drove back the chills and finally loosened my muscles. I breathed in the steam and listened to the grunts and mutters of greasy truckers passing around the toilet and sink area outside.

Nothing they said generated any alarm, but the mental clock in my head was ticking so loudly that I cut the water off ten minutes sooner than I wanted. It was now a half hour or more since my swim down Newark Bay, and I could only assume that the police net would have widened in that time. If the beat cops were any good at their jobs, they would think to check truck stops immediately after concluding that I had escaped the river.

It was time to move again.

The coveralls fit poorly, a little too short in both the legs and the arms, but the jacket was warm enough on top of them. I trashed my old clothes and returned to the streets with my boots still damp but my socks dry. I walked west first, because I wanted to get inland and open up my directional options. Then I pivoted north, returning to Ironbound and zig-zagging at random, sticking close to buildings and stepping into alleys at any sign of a passing blue-and-white car.

I saw two cops. They didn’t see me—but they were looking. I could tell by the slow turn of their tires, an altogether too methodical pace to be anything other than a search.

The net had indeed widened. They were canvasing all of Ironbound, a full-blown search for a wanted killer.

But why?

That was the part I couldn’t get over. The truth was that, no matter how politically incorrect or uncomfortable a reality it might be, Vinny’s death should not be such a priority to a massive police force like Newark’s. Homeless people die every day. They starve, and they freeze, and they overdose. Sometimes they die from stab wounds or bullet wounds or blows to the head.

It’s tragic. It’s brutal. It’s the ugly underbelly of American big city life that politicians and suburbanites alike would prefer to forget, and usually ignore. Yet this time it was neither being forgotten nor ignored. A lot of police heat was pouring down on my head. It felt like half the city was rolling out to nail me to the wall, all at Dimitri’s smart watch call.

I thought I knew why. It was an ugly, cynical guess, but I’ve been around this block way too many times to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, especially when my own life was on the line. If I was going to get out of this—if I was going to confirm and confront what I was starting to suspect—I needed to know that I was right. I needed evidence to prove it.

So I returned to the shelter where Vinny was killed—or at least, where his body was dumped. Stalking through the shadows, working alleys and dark corners and keeping myself off the main streets, it took me roughly an hour to progress the three miles deep into Ironbound. I passed two more patrol cars on the way, but their drivers never saw me, or even slowed. They didn’t actually appear to be searching as hard as the cops near the bay.

Why should they be? Nobody would expect me to return to the scene of my supposed crime. Who would be so stupid?

Squatting in the mouth of an alley a hundred yards from the shelter, I surveyed an entrance wrapped in crime scene tape, the sign behind the glass rotated to display CLOSED. I didn’t see Ed, and only one squad car waited outside. It was another Ford Explorer, with the same white paint and blue stripes as the rest of the police force. Its LED light bar was switched on—not blinking, just shining. One door stood open. One cop sat behind the wheel, his face twisted away from me, calling to somebody.

Then the second cop appeared, and I recognized him in an instant. It was Faust—that little freak—and I assumed the guy in the Explorer to be Hightower. Faust walked out from around the shelter, a large paper bag sealed with yellow tape held beneath one arm. I recognized it in an instant as an evidence bag, although I was much too far away to read the label.

It didn’t matter. The circumstances of Faust removing so large a bag, so late after the other cops and the criminalist had already departed, were story enough. A very suspicious story.

Faust got into the passenger seat. I could no longer see the bag, but I could tell by his body language that he’d placed it beneath his knees and opened it. Hightower leaned in and they both look. Discussed. Shook their heads. Then settled into their seats and the Explorer dropped into gear. I shrank into the shadows as they rolled past, crossing to within twenty yards of my position but not even glancing my way.

I could see it in their faces. They were angry, both of them, and brooding also. Debating and deliberating this thing. Evaluating their options.

Because it was a setup—it had been from the start. I didn’t know why or to what purpose, but I did know that my escape was never part of the plan, and now things had gone sideways.

I also knew that I detested corrupt cops. More than raw criminals themselves, because corrupt cops hide behind the pretense of justice and service—literal wolves in sheep’s clothing. So, no matter what happened next, no matter what it cost or how long it took, by the time I was finished unravelling this mess…Faust and Hightower were going down.

Guaranteed.

19

Iknew what my next step was. I had to launch my own investigation. I had to work these streets much like the Newark cops—the good ones—worked their investigation against me. I needed witnesses, I needed leads, I needed a toehold to sink my foot into as I clawed my way up the sheer cliff of an unsolved murder.

I’d done this before—many times. I was good at it, comfortable in my own approach. But this time was different, not only because I was the primary murder suspect, but also because my investigation necessitated a canvassing of the same streets where an army of cops hunted me like a pack of salivating dogs.

That wasn’t a workable mix. I needed these streets to cool off before I ventured directly into them, but in that respect, time was on my side. The Newark PD might be allocating the bulk of their force into chasing me down now, but even while they tightened their dragnet, someplace across town a psychopath was choking a teenager to death. A gang banger was carjacking a grandma and bludgeoning her skull. A pair of drunk college kids were gang raping a co-ed.

In a city this size, it’s not a possibility, it’s a harsh statistic, and that statistic guaranteed that the NPD’s fixation on me was a limited time problem. In another twelve hours their Ironbound patrol forces might decrease by seventy or eighty percent. I only had to wait them out.

I just needed a place to do it. Off the grid and out of the way, where I could lie low for the night, resting my body and allowing my mind to start at the beginning. To unravel this problem the old school way—one thread a time.

A hotel wouldn’t work. The desk staff would ask for ID and they would have cameras. Motels were better options, but pay-by-the-hour joints would be the first place any smart cop would look. Once cornered, I would have a much more difficult time escaping—and besides, I really wanted a good night’s sleep. Being woken by pounding fists would be a drag.

That left option C—an option the cops wouldn’t expect. For that I needed to cross Newark, working my way out of Ironbound and northwest through downtown and University Heights. It was a slow, slogging walk, negotiated along the quietest streets, leaning into lengthening shadows as late afternoon slipped into early evening and the winter sun dipped toward Ohio. I ducked into a pair of convenience stores along the way—the kind with bars on the windows and pot smokers openly displaying joints just outside—and bought bottled water. Candy bars. Beef jerky. Crackers.

My last stop before crossing beneath I-280 was also my riskiest. The trendy thrift store built into a line of clothing shops, restaurants, and a hair salon only blocks from Rutgers University was more of the hipster hats and torn jeans variety than the smelly sweaters and mismatched kitchenware variety that I so often favored. They had cameras, and the clerks were both attentive and sober. I knew I stuck out like a sore thumb in my utilitarian coveralls and jacket, but in this part of Newark there isn’t much in the way of traditional retail shopping, and as previously stated, hypothermia is a silent killer.

I overpaid for a vintage quilt that looked like something a grandma from the fifties had sewn with her church group. At only six feet long, it was shorter than I liked, and thinner also, but I thought it would suffice. The clerk took my cash and provided my change with the detached disinterest of a woman who wanted my smelly body out of her store as soon as possible—that suited me just fine. She never glanced twice at my face. I returned to the street and crossed beneath the I-280 overpass.

Then, at last, I reached Branch Brook Park.

Three hundred sixty acres in size, with walking trails, ball parks, playgrounds, and a lake, Branch Brook was Newark’s version of New York’s Central Park, and roughly as long. It wound and twisted alongside Upper Roseville, a picturesque destination for joggers and painters, moms with young children and lovers strolling hand-in-hand. Still an hour before sunset, there were plenty of people around, but not the observant kind. Not those on guard against an accused killer on the run, his coveralls bulging with a vintage quilt wrapped tight around his stomach.

The coveralls, in fact, were serving as more than just clothing. I looked like a groundskeeper, and nobody paid me any attention as I migrated north of the lake, past Clark’s Pond to the forested upper section of the park where hardwoods were interspersed with thickets of brush, flowering bushes, and ornate flowerbeds.

It wasn’t a wilderness—not hardly. But for a man trained to stand alongside the Army’s most elite fast-infantry units, it was more than what I needed. I walked along a jogging trail for a hundred yards, glancing periodically over my shoulder until a woman with a baby stroller disappeared around the corner. Then, just like that, I slipped sideways.

Past a pair of park benches, and into a thicket of brush choked by sweet pepper bushes and dormant honeysuckle. Within seconds, I was deep inside. Yards from the path and wrapped in shadows, creeping over dead leaves and packed earth like a woodland rodent.

I found a clear patch just large enough to lie down in and took my time developing cover on every side. Sticks, leaves, manipulated branches. The wood saw on my Victorinox Locksmith served me well in notching and adjusting existing coverage, never removing anything and never developing any one portion into so thick an obstruction as to be obvious. The work was slow—I had to stop each time a jogger passed by, only thirty feet from my position.

Then I started again, not stopping until I was satisfied that my position remained totally invisible to any casual passerby, and reasonably protected from all but the direct penetration of a powerful flashlight.

Good enough—and better than the motel.

Sitting cross-legged with my back propped up against a slender hickory, I relaxed for the first time all day, breathing deep and twisting my hips to provide a contour in the dirt for my tailbone.

It was funny, when I thought about it. I had been roughing it in the back of my ‘67 pickup for years now, only sleeping in a real bed whenever I rented a hotel. I hadn’t claimed an address as home since abandoning my little house in South Phoenix. I’d spent maybe half of the nights since sleeping outside, sometimes on an air mattress and sometimes in a hammock. Sometimes I fell asleep stretched out on the ground with my hands interlaced behind my head, my last view before the dreams took me that of the open sky.

But for all that “roughing it”, for all that unrefined and perhaps uncivilized way of living, it had been years since I hid myself in some bushes, monitoring each passerby and ready to freeze like a stone at the drop of a hat. No doubt the last time I’d done something similar, either in training or in lethal earnest, I’d worn a US Army uniform. I’d carried a rifle and a sidearm and probably a half dozen grenades.

And the enemy hadn’t been corrupt cops and potential Russian mobsters. It had been AK-wielding insurgents.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I unwrapped a candy bar. Ate a package of jerky and sucked down cool water as daylight faded and my eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. It was cold in the park—just above freezing, but my brushy hideout offered surprisingly effective wind protection. I likely wouldn’t be comfortable, but I wouldn’t freeze to death.

Good enough.

I finished my meal and tugged the quilt from my coveralls. I rolled inside it, using the hood of my jacket for a thin pillow over the ground. With my body stretched between the branches and trunks, I breathed deeply. I picked a single pinpoint of light gleaming a trillion miles overhead—a lone star. A promise of a world beyond.

And I thought of Ed. Of the Bible studies he led me through on quiet afternoons, seated alone at battered shelter tables. Of conversations about this life and the life to come. About faith and truth.

About a loving, merciful God, only a heart’s cry away.

It was the last thing on my mind each night before I faded into black, and even there on the hard ground, alone in the cold, it was a warm enough thought to calm my body. To bring peace to my strained mind.

To guide me into welcome sleep.

20

Iawoke with a start—to my surprise, and maybe to my chagrin, I had slept harder than I expected.

Maybe those Ranger Regiment skills weren’t as sharp as I thought.

Twisting my head toward the noise that had woken me, I found my peripheral view blocked by the edge of my hood. My breath clouded over my face as I listened for the repeat of the sound—what I thought might have been a shout, but I couldn’t be sure. My mind was still waking up, but I didn’t have to wait long.

There it was again. A mumbled curse. A clink of metal on metal, and a shouted order that I couldn’t quite understand through the insulation of my jacket hood, but the tone told me enough. It was as clear as day to my ex-cop ear.

It was the call of a police officer addressing a problematic civilian.

“On your feet, everybody. Hotel Branch Brook Park is now closed for business. Let’s go!”

The rap of metal on metal repeated. I lifted my head, rising from the hood and then twisting. I looked between one of the carefully orchestrated gaps in my leaf-and-twig cover, scanning brown grass thick with morning dew, an asphalt walking trail lit by the first traces of sunlight piercing nearby tree limbs…and then a pair of legs.

Blue pants. Black boots. The tip of a black night stick rapped against the back of a metal bench. It was a cop, just as I expected, and he wasn’t alone. There were eight other legs spread around the park in a hundred-yard radius—four more officers, all rapping with nightsticks or otherwise flushing sleeping homeless people off the benches and onto their feet. The demands were neither courteous nor politically correct—a lot of pejoratives were thrown in, while curses from the displaced vagrants were refuted with snorts and laughs.

It was the morning routine, and it was familiar to me. Not just because I’d witnessed it, but because, as a beat cop, I’d participated in it myself. Each morning across South Phoenix, I had rustled the homeless off benches and sidewalks, out of doorways and away from exhaust vents that provided warmth in the winters. Not a desirable duty—maybe, in some ways, not even a sanctimonious practice.

But a necessary one, in the eyes of law and order. Part of a city’s regular operations. Only…this was something else. Better put, it was something more.

Two cops could have done the job. Even one. Instead, we had five, and I didn’t have to wonder why for long. Already they were cornering their victims one at a time, holding brief but intense interrogations. Most resulted in shouts of “pig” before their subjects shuffled off.

But not in one case. That confrontation just so happened to occur at the same bench I’d slipped around on my way into the brush the night prior. It involved a skinny, scraggly guy with a beard and a threadbare New Jersey Devils beanie stretched down to his ears. He held a backpack, also, but that was quickly ripped away and rifled through by one of the cops.

Again, not normal practice. The homeless guy was the only face I could see, but the moment the cop with the backpack spoke, my body went rigid.

I recognized the voice. It was Hightower.

“Well, well. Looky what we have here! Is it just me, Gil, or is that marijuana?”

A hand emerged from the backpack. I barely caught a glimpse of the produced item but immediately wanted to roll my eyes.

It wasn’t a bag. Not even a pouch. It was half a blunt.

“Oh, that’s just you, Jeff. It looks more like six months in the slammer to me.”

Faust’s voice was just as recognizable, a heavy New Jersey whine so laced with sarcasm that I could actually picture the sneer on his face.

“Come on!” The homeless man slammed his arms against his sides. “Half a joint?”

“Hey, I don’t make the law, buddy,” Faust said. “And you’re the one who broke it. Why don’t you sit down?”

The guy didn’t move. Hightower smacked him—not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough to displace the Devils beanie from his head. He stumbled. Hightower pushed him to the bench.

“There’s a good fella,” Hightower said. “Now then, bub. Besides the Mary Jane, what were you up to last night?”

No answer. I wasn’t surprised. I’ve interviewed more than a few members of the aforementioned invisible society in my day, and this isn’t at all the way you get them to talk. What Hightower should have been doing was searching for a way to relate to the guy and treat him as an equal without coming off like a fraud. In short: be human.

But I already knew Hightower wasn’t capable of being human. After all, I’d already busted him for assaulting Vinny.

“Hey,” Hightower snapped his fingers under the guy’s nose. “I’m talking to you, bub. You better start answering, or we’ll cart you in.”

A snort. Hightower squinted.

“You laughing at me?”

“Not laughing, just thinking. It’s warm at the jail and almost breakfast time. Let’s do it.”

I wanted to laugh myself—not because it was funny, but because the guy was quick on his feet, and I admired that. I thought I recognized his voice, also. Maybe he was somebody I’d met at the shelter, sometime before. I still hadn’t had a clear look at his face.

“You think this is a game?” Hightower’s voice turned ugly, and my body stiffened. I glanced around the park, momentarily contemplating a break from the shadows. Inside of ten seconds I could neutralize both crooked cops—maybe drag them back into the bushes for a conversation of my own.

But no. There were too many other officers around, and besides that, circumstances had changed considerably since my last physical encounter with these two. Back then, a threat to report their abuse was enough to send them running.

Now, wanted as a murderer, my word wouldn’t mean jack with their internal investigations unit. They would know that. If I jumped them, I’d only be stepping into my own trap.

So, I waited again. Hightower leaned close. His voice dropped into a snarl.

“I could beat you senseless, you know that? Leave you in a ditch like an abandoned soda can, all battered and bent. The whole world walking by, and nobody would notice you. Nobody would care, because you’re just trash. Just smelly garbage that good people don’t want to look at.”

Hightower’s teeth clenched. Seated on the bench, the guy didn’t move or even tense. He remained relaxed.

“Inspiring words,” he said, at last. “Did you borrow them from Churchill?”

Hightower cursed. He reached a hand back and snapped his fingers. Faust passed him a tablet computer already switched on. I thought it displayed a photograph, but I couldn’t discern details. Hightower thrust the device into the guy’s face.

“All right, smart guy. How about this? You tell me if you’ve seen this man, or I’ll break your arms.”

Still, the guy didn’t flinch. He did look at the picture, chin dipping. He took his time. Then he shrugged.

“Never seen him.”

“You sure about that?”

“Sure, I’m sure.”

“So you’ve never slept at that rat hole shelter down in Ironbound, then? The brick place with the cots.”

Another shrug.

“Is that a no?”

“I sleep on park benches…until you show up.”

Hightower looked ready to explode. Faust stepped in before he could.

“Take another look,” Faust said, sounding a little softer. A little more reasonable. “You help us out and we’ll set you up with a hotel tonight. A delivery pizza and a hot shower, all to yourself. Heck, I’ll even throw in a bottle of booze.”

The guy studied at Faust for a long moment. With his face twisted, I could just see the corner of his eye squinting.

Then he looked back to the tablet, and I held my breath—because I knew for sure whose face was on that screen.

“I don’t know him,” he said, at last. “But I tell you what, there’s a pot dealer down on Hawthorne that I can set you up with. He deals to kids. If I give you his name, do I get the hotel?”

Hightower hit the guy right in the chest, and he slammed into the bench’s back without so much as a grunt—just going limp, not resisting. Faust snatched the tablet back and put a finger in the guy’s face—warned him not to show up at the park again.

Then both cops left. The homeless guy watched them go, his Devils beanie shifted awkwardly on his head and his hands lying limp in his lap. Faust and Hightower disappeared around the bend.

Then the guy turned on the bench and looked me dead in the face.

21

My body froze the moment our gazes met. He looked right through the leaves, right through a gap I’d left for my own observation. I didn’t know if he could actually see my face amid the shadows that enshrouded me, but three long seconds of sustained staring killed any value in the question.

He knew exactly where I was. He gazed without blinking, without nodding, without smiling. Then he was on his feet, gathering up a dirty backpack, and shuffling off south. Out of the park.

I caught my breath and threw the quilt off. I twisted to watch him disappear, and I knew—I had seen him. At the shelter, more than once. I couldn’t remember his name or recall any specific interaction.

But we’d met. He knew who I was, and he’d lied on my behalf. For some reason…I didn’t think that was for my sake.

I swept my remaining viewing ports, noting an early morning jogger with a loping big dog, and a pair of cops I didn’t recognize climbing into a cruiser. The morning shakedown—or whatever it was—was complete. Everybody was clearing out. It was nearly time to move.

And I needed to catch that guy in the Devils beanie.

Rolling my blanket but leaving it behind, I dusted leaves and dirt from my jacket and took my time scoping out my exit before I slipped out the way I’d come. Easy, smooth, quick. No chance for anyone to observe. I turned on the trail and set off with my hands in my coat pockets, just another groundskeeper getting an early start.

Only, I wasn’t staying in the park. I was headed out the same way my target had, jogging paths converting to dirty sidewalks as I hit Bloomingfield Avenue and turned northeast. It was barely seven a.m., but already the thoroughfare was packed with rushing traffic, intermittent horns voicing the angst of worker bees late for the office.

And I saw him. Fifty yards away, leaned against a bus stop. He saw me, also, but he made no acknowledgement of the connection. His gaze simply switched across the street to where a cop car pulled away from a coffee shop. I took the hint and adjusted my position to conceal my face.

Then I was following him. Remaining a comfortable fifty yards back, not pushing or rushing him. He took me four blocks up Bloomingfield, past brick-faced grocery stores and bars, pharmacies and budget law offices, before hanging a hard turn into the parking lot of a combined laundromat and breakfast café.

He entered on the café side. I gave him five minutes to get seated in the back and order some coffee. Then I took the chair across from him without a word. He didn’t even look up from his coffee, stirring in sugar with a spoon held between dirty fingers.

He smelled, just like Hightower said. I couldn’t help but notice, but I didn’t take offense. I was much more bothered by sitting with my back to the door.

“How did you find me?” I said, at last.

He sipped coffee. Wrinkled his nose and reached for more sugar.

“Snores,” he said.

“What?”

“You snored in your sleep. Kept me awake.”

“I don’t snore.”

His dark eyes snapped my way, piercing and unblinking. He looked personally affronted, as though I’d just called him a liar.

Actually, I had.

“I appreciate you covering for me,” I said. “It was noble.”

A snort. The waitress came to take my order. I didn’t think I could eat under the cloud of body odor, but I requested coffee to be polite. He wanted biscuits with jam, eggs over easy, ham and sausage and two pancakes. I had a feeling that I was paying.

The waitress departed and he returned to his coffee. A long slurp, both hands cradling the warm mug. Then he said: “I didn’t do it for you.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Did it for Vinny.”

“You were friends?”

A shrug. His gaze dropped. “As much friends as street people get.”

It might have been self-pity. It might have been simple fact. I accepted it on face value regardless.

“So how does your friendship with Vinny result in you covering for me?”

“Vinny liked you. Said you were good people. Honestly, you always seemed like a tool to me.”

I squinted, unsure whether to take offense or laugh. Before I could decide the first of his short-order food arrived, and he dug right in, smacking his lips and licking his fingers. Smearing jam and leaving biscuit crumbs stuck in his beard.

It was one part nasty, one part ravenous. Something about the combination tightened my chest, leaving me with a twinge of empathy in my gut. I gave him a few minutes to eat before I spoke again.

“What’s your name?”

Another snort. I waited.

“You don’t remember?” he said.

“No, I don’t. Sorry.”

His gaze popped up again. This time I thought I detected a glint of respect in it, maybe for the honesty.

“Ellis,” he said.

“Okay, Ellis. You clearly don’t think I killed your friend, or else you would have turned me in. So who do you think did?”

Ellis tore off a chunk of pancake and mopped it through a pool of syrup on his plate. “Pigs,” he said.

I squinted. “The cops?”

“That’s what I said.”

“You saw them?”

“Of course I didn’t see them. Woulda bashed their skulls if I had. Some things you just know. The pork patrol’s had it out for people like Vinny since the dawn of time.”

Pork patrol.

I’d heard a lot of pejoratives for cops over the years—more than a few directed at me in particular. That was a new one.

“They’re not all like Faust and Hightower,” I said. “Those are bad apples.”

He rolled his eyes but didn’t comment further. He was working on the eggs now, mercifully using his fork. I leaned close, ignoring the smell, and lowered my voice.

“Why do you think Vinny was killed?”

He didn’t answer. He kept smacking and slurping coffee.

“Was it a coverup?” I pressed. “Did Vinny mention anything to you?”

Another snorted laugh. “I said we were friendly. I didn’t say we were best pals.”

“Vinny never said anything? Nothing about a woman on Garden Street?”

That got his attention. His fork hovered over his plate. He looked suddenly hard, maybe a little angry.

“I told him she was trouble,” he muttered.

“What’s that?”

Ellis shook his head. Went back to the eggs.

“Look, I’m trying to help, okay?”

“You’re just trying to get those bad apples off your back.”

“What’s the difference? Do you know something or not?”

Long pause. More smacking of eggs. Then he shook his head.

“Vinny met her while playing his harmonica. She liked the tune, I guess. She stopped to sing, dropped a buck in his jar. Whatever. Next thing you know, Vinny thinks she gots the hots for him, and he’s over the moon about it. Total insanity.”

“He was stalking her?”

“You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you? Just another street creeper, huh?”

My hand tightened around the coffee mug. I was losing my patience—rapidly. Maybe he saw something in my face that signaled the change. Maybe it intimidated him, or maybe he was just tired of being obstinate.

“He wasn’t stalking her,” he said. “They had something going. Not, like, physical or nothing. I’d have known if he was getting the business. Felt more like…sweet, I guess. High school nonsense.”

A bitter wistfulness crept into his voice, but I knew what he meant. I’d witnessed it firsthand, that whole Romeo and Juliet thing with the pebbles and the window. The stolen flowers.

Very high school. Even innocent.

“And that got Vinny killed?”

In place of an answer, he jammed a thick finger between his lips and pried packed biscuit from a rotten tooth. He sucked the finger clean and smacked. I wanted to pressure him, but the detached way he stared at the saltshaker told me to wait.

He was processing something.

“Vinny…he got weird about a week ago. I mean, weirder than usual.”

“Yeah?”

Ellis was still staring at the saltshaker, now sucking those rotten teeth. He shook his head.

“I dunno. He got fixated, paranoid. Wouldn’t talk much, but he started asking around the community.”

“You mean the homeless community?”

“No, jackass. I meant the polo club. What do you think I mean?”

I said nothing. He sighed.

“Vinny was asking about comings and goings. Specifically of these guys in black SUVs. Government types…mobsters. I don’t know. He wanted us to keep our eyes open, maybe track them.”

“Did you?”

“Heck no, and neither did anybody else with a half a brain cell. You think we survive on these streets by poking our noses where they don’t belong? You want to live out here, you keep your head down. Always. Vinny ought to have known that. Might still be breathing if he had.”

He poked his dirty fork at me. I waited. Ellis nodded and resumed his meal—as if that was that.

“So that’s all?” I pressed. “He didn’t tell you who these guys were or why he wanted them watched?”

“Nope.”

“Did he say if the woman was involved?”

“Nope.”

“Did he mention the Russian mob?”

A roll of his eyes. No other answer. I gave him another few minutes while I assimilated the information for what little it was worth. He didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know—that Vinny had crossed some powerful, nasty people, and they had killed him for it.

But why?

“There was nothing else?” I pressed. “Even a small thing? Something Vinny may have said, or asked about?”

I half expected Ellis to ignore the question or throw another barb. Instead, he paused, the fork halfway to his lips.

“Yellow brick road.”

“Huh?”

“I heard him muttering about some yellow brick road. It was the last time I saw him. He seemed agitated about it.”

“He didn’t say what that meant?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“And you’re sure there wasn’t more?”

He met my gaze once more, and there was a finality in his look that told me the conversation was over, one way or the other.

Without another word, he went back to his plate, and I dropped twenty bucks on the table for the meal.

22

Iducked out of the café ahead of my surly witness and slipped back onto the streets, weaving away from the main thoroughfares and taking my time in identifying a fast food franchise where I could collect my own breakfast.

I was starving. I was stiff and sore from a long night of sleeping on the ground. My mind buzzed with the perpetual tension of needing to avoid the police—a circumstance I didn’t relish.

Most of all, though, I was wrapped up in the question of what anything I had been told might mean…or if it had any value at all.

Seated in the back of the restaurant with a sausage biscuit and considerably improved breakfast company—that of an empty seat—I monitored the passing streets while powering on my cell phone for a web search. I already knew what I would find when I input “yellow brick road”. L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s tale, The Wizard of Oz, along with the 1939 film of the same name, flooded the search results. I tried adding “Newark” and “New Jersey” but garnered only outdated listings for local stage productions of The Wizard of Oz.

Nothing about Russian mobsters, corrupt cops, or one missing woman who enjoyed the harmonica solos of a now-dead homeless man.

It was the woman who bothered me the most. Not because I could see any particular link between herself and the aforementioned Russian mobsters and corrupt cops, but because I couldn’t. By themselves, any of the two pieces fit together just fine—link the woman with the corrupt cops and you have a jealous boyfriend who just happened to wear a badge and was willing to hide behind that badge while pummeling Vinny…but then, why kill him?

Link the woman and the Russian mobsters and maybe you have a prostitute who was getting too friendly with outsiders and needed to be reeled in. Maybe you had a vigilante homeless guy with white knight syndrome who needed to be silenced. But even in that case, why involve the cops? Why not simply disappear Vinny, in the usual fashion of organized crime?

It just didn’t fit, and my gut told me that Vinny’s crush was neither a cop’s girlfriend nor a prostitute. Her interactions with Vinny at the window had been far too innocent and girlish to be either, speaking of a young woman who had certainly faced hardship, but maybe of a different sort than the sexually abusive kind.

So what, then?

Back up, Mason. Put your ducks in a row. You know how to handle this.

I did. I’d handled cases equally as opaque many times before, and not only as a cop. Wiping sausage grease from my lips, I withdrew from the question of who the woman might be or what her problems were, and thought instead about her association with Vinny. How Ellis had said they met, how the music brought them together.

Then it hit me—like a fist in the face, like a glaring neon sign. The street corner. The one where Vinny had waited, flowers in hand, peering up the sidewalk when Faust and Hightower roared in to beat him up. I’d been seated not fifty yards away, kicked back with my sausage and peppers sandwich, watching Vinny because there was nothing else to do.

But Vinny hadn’t seen me, because Vinny was preoccupied. He was waiting. He was looking. He was expecting her.

I returned to my phone and called up the map application. I located that particular intersection on Pulaski Street in Ironbound, holding my finger to drop a pin. Then I scanned left, to Garden Street where the young woman lived, and dropped another pin. Two points on the map—the place where Vinny expected to meet his crush, and the place where I assumed her to be headed. It had been late afternoon, after all. She was going home, likely using the same route that she used every day. The route where she had first encountered Vinny and his mournful harmonica.

I traced it with my finger, remembering which way Vinny had been looking before Faust and Hightower converged on him. South, toward the appropriately named South Street, which actually ran west to east along the edge of Ironbound, beneath Highway 9, out toward the river and…

My finger froze. My heart skipped with it. I sat upright in the booth and zoomed in, unconvinced that I wasn’t imagining things.

But I wasn’t. The name was right there, bold and clear over a neutral map background.

Yellow Street.

23

Yellow Street stretched all the way back across town on the southeastern edge of Ironbound, but I didn’t mind the walk. In fact, I didn’t have a choice but to walk. I was right in my earlier assumption that the police dragnet would loosen over time as fresh crime drew the attention of Newark’s finest, but there were still enough patrol cars out on the streets to keep me pressed in the shadows.

That, and there were now the wanted posters. Not literal posters so much as their twenty-first-century equivalent, digital billboards that flashed my driver’s license photo alongside “WANTED FOR MURDER” in between ads for climate-controlled storage units and tanning salons. The image was washed monochrome, attached to a phone number for the Newark PD’s tip line. I almost wanted to dial the number just to drop a tip about Faust and Hightower, two guys the internal affairs department should definitely have a look at.

But what was the point in that? Those thugs had evaded discipline thus far, and there was no reason to think that they wouldn’t continue to do so. If I really wanted them nailed to a wall, I would need to do that myself.

And to begin, I wanted a look at Yellow Street.

The district was industrial, but that was no surprise. Much of Ironbound was industrial, a region once populated by textile mills, shoe factories, and brickyards during the heyday of the Industrial Revolution when American manufacturing led the globe from rustbelt towns exactly like this. I was no expert, but as I turned off Pulaski and onto South Street, I admired the weathered brick architecture dating back to the early twentieth century. Some of it might be even older. Walls topped in rusted barbed wire guarded the entrance to industrial lots now mostly abandoned, gravel overgrown with weeds and ditches choked by rusting metal machinery. The occasional new construction that occupied cleared lots wasn’t of the manufacturing sort at all, but the distribution sort—warehouses where cheap, imported goods could be staged for dispersion across the region.

It made me sad—all of it. A story of a bygone time of American engineering, American production, and American pride. A time that my soul would have enjoyed…

But what could I say? The eight-dollar T-shirt on my back was imported from Asia, as were the Walmart boots on my feet. Actually, I couldn’t think of a single thing I was wearing that wasn’t imported.

That was just life. The American story had faded, at least so far as production was concerned. Marketplaces now demanded the cheapest products, even while those same consumers demanded richer salaries. The two couldn’t mix—not while Chinese sweat shops employed mass labor for three bucks an hour. What could beat that?

Only slavery.

I pushed the socioeconomic musings from my mind as I passed beneath the Highway 9 overpass. There were no sidewalks, here—just a narrow shoulder with a lot of dormant vegetation springing from the ditches and leaning toward the road. The abandoned buildings and distant warehouses faded. Much of the passing traffic was commercial, both heavy trucks and light, all rushing along without any concern for the wanted man walking with his face down.

Even a cop rushed by—another Ford Explorer, but it wasn’t Faust and Hightower, and the vehicle didn’t stop or even slow. It faded over my shoulder, and I accelerated beyond the overpass where chain link fences rose through the brush and vines. Logistical yards spread out to either side, row after row of shipping containers and the wheeled chassis that carried them. I passed another empty lot…

And then, there it was. Yellow Street. It wasn’t labeled as such—there was no street sign or even a stop sign to mark its union with the broader South Street. To either side of a busted asphalt lane brush grew tall and leaned low. There was no corporate signage, either, or any indicator of what lay down that winding path.

But I knew it was Yellow Street, because the map on my phone clearly marked it as such. I also knew it had been recently traveled, because tire marks in the crushed rock outlined the path of vehicles rolling between walls of dead vegetation.

I stopped at the intersection and took my time inspecting the road. Heavy trucks whizzed by every few seconds, but even after five full minutes, no vehicle or person had emerged around the bend in Yellow Street, and nobody had turned onto it, either.

It was quiet—but in that odd way that only suspicious places can be, it was also too quiet. I waited for a break in traffic, then jogged across South Street. I reached the intersection and was headed straight for the shelter of the brush, ready to fade once more into the darker shadows when something caught my eye from beneath a busted section of asphalt.

It wasn’t the road, but the roadbed. What the road used to be, maybe a hundred years ago, back when this was a bustling and growing side of town. Long before asphalt pavers and white line painters smoothed every drivable surface for the comfort of modern automobiles. Back when road paving was an even more bitter, gruesome job, and materials varied based on local supply.

Gravel for some. Concrete for others. But here, beneath Yellow Street’s crumbling asphalt veneer?

It was brick.

I’d found Vinny’s target.

24

Ileft South Street behind and entered the dead grass growing along Yellow Street’s borders. Two inches of mud left by a recent rainstorm sucked around my boots as I squatted low, one eye on the roadbed and another on my next nearest point of concealment, just in case a SUV loaded with Russian mobsters rolled around the corner.

As it turned out, it was an unnecessary precaution. I made it half a mile through the muck with the rush of South Street traffic fading into a whisper of wind. I breathed deep but didn’t smell anything I hadn’t before—exhaust fumes, grit, and the vague flavor of distant saltwater. With every stride along the ditch the overgrown brush grew quieter, not so much as the rustle of vermin or the rattle of loose trash tossed by the wind to draw my attention.

That by itself was strange, because no place is truly quiet. Not even graveyards. There’s always some kind of natural noise, some manner of organic heartbeat. The only times I could ever remember encountering a place with no such rhythm were those days on battlefields in Afghanistan, where nature itself grew still like the calm before a storm.

Then, gunfire.

Sensing more than knowing that I was drawing near the end of my trek, I cut my pace down to a creep and shrank deeper into the grass. I chose my steps with care, rolling my feet to minimize the sucking of the mud, squinting as a rusty brown blob appeared between static grass stalks.

I stopped at the edge of the overgrowth, looking past the terminus of Yellow Street and straight into a gravel lot twice the size of a football field. Littered with trash and patches of weeds reaching for sunlight between mounds of broken rock, the lot might once have been a parking lot…and actually, it still was, although it was filled to barely one percent capacity. There were eight vehicles in total, all parked together a hundred yards from my position. Five dinky old sedans with dented fenders and missing hubcaps. Two retired school buses, stripped of their city or county insignia, but still with that iconic tint of yellow-orange.

And rising beyond them all, the main feature of the property was also framed by overgrown brush and a row of rusted metal dumpsters. Constructed of brick, the factory building was old—really old. No less than a hundred years, with the trademark multi-pane windows mounted high over a second floor, allowing natural light to workstations beneath. The roof was sloped and covered in rusted tin. Two smokestacks, also made of brick, towered from one end.

Nothing rose out of them. No name or company logo was printed on the faded brick. No lights shone behind the lower-level windows, which seemed to be concealed behind curtains of blackout paper. The place was giant, still, and apparently empty.

I knew better. Not just because of the vehicles outside, but because I could feel it. Like the prickle of hairs on the back of your neck when you know that you’re being watched, the sensation wasn’t so much tangible as instinctual, but no less convincing either way.

There were people inside. I knew it. Perhaps Vinny had known it, also. Maybe that was what got him killed.

It was worth a tour of inspection, either way. After selecting a route of incursion, I stepped out of the brush and sprinted for the factory.

25

It was steam—that was the scent that cued my subconscious mind to the presence of human activity within those faded walls.

I hadn’t actually identified the smell from the shelter of the tall grass, but long before I reached the line of buses and dinky sedans, I could taste that water vapor on my lips. Vague but thick, like a hot Alabama summer day. Like a venting sauna, unleashing an invisible cloud that filled my lungs as I slipped between the buses and crouched to catch my breath.

Then I heard the voices. Dim, unintelligible, but certainly human. I thought they sounded from beyond those blackout windows, not a few but many, accompanied by the clang of machinery and an intermittent hissing, like the sound of a giant snake. There were footsteps, also. A persistent whir.

All the sounds you’d expect to hear from a functioning production facility, and yet this particular facility seemed bent on appearing empty. There was something so clandestine about it, so deliberately covert that even factory noises from inside a factory didn’t put my mind at ease.

If anything, the edge only sharpened.

Creeping around the tail of the bus, I passed the line of cars, noting more Jersey plates matched to sagging bumpers and peeling clear coat. There wasn’t a vehicle there that had been built after my fifteenth birthday, and none of them looked highway ready. I swept windshields and back seats just to make sure nobody was hiding inside, then I rounded the rear corner of the factory.

More tall grass. Rotting wood pallets and a liquor store’s worth of broken booze bottles—only cheap brands, matched with the stubs of burned out cigarettes. Kids, I thought, rendezvousing at an abandoned Ironbound plant to do all the stupid things kids do while adults aren’t watching. Yet I couldn’t help but notice that all the whiskey labels were faded, all the cigarette packs bleached by the sun and now unreadable.

There hadn’t been any kids fooling around here for a while. Someone, or something, had run them off.

What?

I stopped halfway down the end of the factory to rock my head back. The building was topped with a monitor roof design—sort of a smaller roof riding the top of a larger roof, with a row of six-foot windows filling the space in between. It was an old school system, designed to allow light to flow over the core of the factory floor beneath, just like the giant vent built into the factory’s back wall was designed to draw in fresh air. Amid the groans of a slow-turning, rusted steel fan blade, I heard more of the sounds I had before, that whir and intermittent hiss. The tap of feet and the clamor of undistinguishable voices.

But I still couldn’t see anything. There were no ground level windows constructed into the back wall—only a single steel door built alongside a matching ladder. Both rusted, the door closed and the ladder leading to the base of the monitor roof.

I tried the door first. It wasn’t locked, but it was very much secured. Somebody had actually welded it closed, permanently sealing it in place—something I could only assume was a major violation of fire code, and very weird besides. I flicked my Victorinox open and used the locking blade to test a weld at eye level.

It was rock solid, and looked fresh—far younger than the broken whiskey bottles littering the ground around my boots.

More red flags.

I closed the knife and evaluated my options one last time…then I approached the ladder. One hand, then one boot. A pause and a deliberate shudder to see if the ladder would shake, squeak, or rip free of the wall.

Flakes of rust broke free from the rung beneath my boot, but the ladder didn’t budge, and I started upward. Moving easily, not getting in a hurry. Testing each rung before applying my full weight. Shuddering a little when something popped, but whatever it was, I didn’t fall.

My heart thumped a little harder as I reached fifteen feet off the ground, then twenty. The steady hum of the exhaust fan grew louder, and the smell of steam stronger. The voices were still there, but no clearer than before. I thought, maybe, that they were…

No. I wouldn’t guess. There was no point in that. I would know for certain in mere moments. The top of the ladder connected with the lower factory roof where it married up to the monitor roof assembly, and the long row of small-paned windows I’d seen from ground level. I would leave the ladder on the sheltered side of that assembly, concealed from Yellow Street and the parking lot, which couldn’t be a bad thing. The pitch of the main roof was mild, maybe four over twelve, and after only a moment of deliberation I resigned myself to the inevitable.

I swung one leg off the ladder and tested the tin roofing my boot landed on. It groaned a little, not loud but distinct. I waited for a break in the activity from the factory.

There was nothing. Still just the voices, the whir of the fan, and that irregular hiss. I gritted my teeth and committed, hauling my body up and over the edge and settling onto the tin with another pop and groan of strained metal. I was on the main roof, at the base of the monitor roof’s windowed walls, and I paused once more to catch my breath. To listen. To steady myself on cold metal.

Then I descended onto my chest and wriggled slowly upward. A yard to the base of the monitor roof, its eaves closing over my head even as murky window panes, long neglected and weathered, drew near to my face. I could see light, but little else. I attempted to peer down, but the glass was old—truly old, lead-based and deteriorated. It wasn’t quite opaque, but wavy, distorting my view. I couldn’t see more than a yard or two, certainly not into the factory floor fifteen yards below.

I reached for the Victorinox a second time, this time selecting the bottle cap tool, which came equipped with a skinny, flat-head screwdriver built into its tip. It wasn’t an ideal tool for the application, but that’s the beauty of a Swiss Army Knife—you can improvise and make things work. I focused on the aged line of glazing putty packed around a window pane’s edge, chipping it away to expose the little metal brackets that were concealed beneath. Those took a little more work to wiggle out of the rock-hard pinewood frames, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I took my time and wiggled each one free. When the glass was finally loose, I applied the tip of the bottle cap tool once more, and pried the pane out.

It fell into my open hand, releasing an instant cloud of warm steam that coated my face and turned my skin sticky. I inhaled and smelled chemicals—not the harsh kinds, but something that almost tasted domestic.

I leaned forward. I twisted my face to look through the window gap. It wasn’t large enough to allow full passage of my head, but it was enough to get my face in. To look down to the factory floor.

And then I understood—not why Vinny had been killed, maybe.

But at least what he’d gotten himself into.

26

It was a sweat shop, plain and simple. I’d never seen one before and didn’t know much about mass clothing manufacture, which was what this appeared to be, but I didn’t need to be a professor of human rights studies to see the obvious. It was painted over every face scattered across the factory floor beneath me.

And there were a lot of them. Maybe eighty, all women, all with olive complexions and Latina traits—just like the young woman Vinny had brought flowers to back on Garden Street. They were spread along workbenches that ran the length of the factory floor, some manning industrial sewing machines while others worked fabric cutters or oversized steam presses. It was those presses that emitted the periodic, reptilian hiss that I’d heard outside, along with the steam that continued to boil out of the window hole that I’d opened. It was thick, sticky—I was already sweating despite the exterior chill, and the women working below were sweating also. Their clothes were nearly drenched, some panted and most wore headbands. They bustled in organized cycles, seeming to need no direction for the work they performed.

They were churning out T-shirts. Baby clothes. Tablecloths. It was a varied mix, apparently organized by the computer screen that adorned one wall. They checked off projects like pizza chefs checking off online orders, a row of folding tables leading to a pallet loaded down with cardboard boxes.

Shirt cut. Shirt stitched. Shirt pressed. Shirt folded and packed. Repeat.

I might have marveled at the flawless rhythm of it all, had not the dejection and depression of the place been so blatant. Then there was the white guy seated at the end of the room, literally kicked back in an easy chair with a blackjack resting on one knee, a tall cup of something cold in one hand, and a TV parked on a table directly in front of him.

He was watching some sporting event—I could tell by the irregular spikes of jubilation, despair, and frustration. I could also tell that the long, stick-like object sloppily concealed beneath a blanket at his back wasn’t a stick at all. It looked more like some kind of pistol caliber carbine—a chatter gun.

I bit back a curse, my gaze sweeping the faces once more, looking for one in particular. I wasn’t sure what my next step was, but I was already resolved that before the day was finished, somebody would be missing teeth, and that somebody wouldn’t be a female garment maker. That was obvious, because what I observed was obvious.

I could just barely believe that it was happening here. In a major US city within spitting distance of metro cops and county deputies and federal agents, all of whom must be either ignorant or crooked. It was yet another installment in a lesson that I refused to learn even as evidence stacked like the folded T-shirts at the end of that production line. The lesson that America, the so-called pinnacle of developed civilization, was a whole lot closer to the ugly underbelly of human cruelty than most people realized or admitted.

Well, I might be failing the class, but I wouldn’t fail the midterm. Problems like this were horrifying to encounter and infuriating in their tenacity, but easy enough to solve, nonetheless. I just needed to plot an angle of attack, and I still wanted to know⁠—

My thoughts cut short as the white guy in the easy chair abruptly sat up. He looked to his phone, then stood and switched the TV off. He straightened his shirt and left the cup on the table. He scanned the factory floor and shouted at somebody near an iron.

It wasn’t Russian—it wasn’t English, either. This was Spanish, and while I only caught a word or two, the corrective tone of his voice was impossible to misidentify. Whatever infraction had been committed or perceived was quickly corrected. The white guy’s angry gaze swept the floor once more.

Then he turned to the door—not the welded door in the back, but a front door—just as it opened. Light poured in from outside. The white guy stiffened, transparently nervous. Every laborer in the room bent, made themselves small and worked faster.

Then they arrived. Two guys, burly and tall. Dressed in tank tops and black jackets that failed to conceal the handguns holstered on their hips. They were sweaty and one smoked, blasting a cloud of gray through his nostrils as his dark eyes surveyed the room.

The other guy wore a fresh nose brace.

I gritted my teeth, watching as the leader completed his search and didn’t seem to find what he was looking for. He turned to the guy that was in the easy chair and muttered something. The order triggered an immediate response. The guy barreled through the crowd of now-frozen women, calling a name I couldn’t quite hear over the continued hum of machinery. He stopped halfway along the stitching table and said something to a woman standing there. She mumbled and shook her head. He cuffed her in the ear. Then his gaze snapped right at a sudden movement, and he muttered something. In a blink he was jogging down a line of tables, shoving women aside even as a few attempted to sloppily block his passage. The blackjack snapped like a striking snake, popping against faces and arms at random, drawing pained cries and clearing his path.

Then he reached her. She sat bent over a sewing machine with a black beanie pulled low around her head. I’d passed over her twice without stopping. I couldn’t see her face, and her silhouette wasn’t particularly familiar. Why should it be? I’d only ever seen her once, and that was through a window from the chest up.

But the moment he reached her, snatching the hat off her head and jerking her out of the chair by her arm, I knew it was Vinny’s crush. She was older than I remembered, or maybe it was just the context of this bleak environment that sucked the youth from her face. Wide eyes flooded with panic, pleas bubbling from her lips even as he cracked the blackjack over her stomach.

She winced and doubled over. His fingers tightened around her arm, and he dragged her down the line and toward the two newcomers.

A few tried vainly to assist her, calling out in pleading voices. Some covered their mouths and shrank back. Nobody could stop the inevitable. The woman was passed from the easy chair guy to the two newcomers. I held my breath, thinking and hoping that this was just a moment of public humiliation. A shout, maybe a smack, a point made and then the goons would depart.

But no. The two newcomers didn’t say a word, they simply took the woman by the arm and pivoted toward the door. In a blink, they were headed out, and just as fast, I was clamoring for the ladder.

27

Long before I reached the pile of busted whiskey bottles and cigarette butts, I knew I was too late to save the woman from being thrown into the back of whatever vehicle these guys had rolled up in. I thought, “whatever vehicle” because I hadn’t actually seen it, but I had a pretty good guess.

Once glance around the building’s corner was enough to confirm that guess. It was a gleaming black Lincoln Navigator, all chrome and sport rims and limousine tinted windows. I didn’t see the woman or the guys. I only caught the upper edge of the driver’s side door smacking shut, and then the rear wheels spat gravel. The vehicle turned, headed for Yellow Street, and I broke from cover.

There was no other option. If the easy chair guy appeared, I might need to dive for cover from his chatter gun, but with the lower-level factory windows blacked out I didn’t think anyone could see me. I rushed the line of dinted and dinged up cars and chose the early nineties Chevrolet Corsica by default—both because I knew something about its ignition wiring, and because domestic cars are the most predictable.

The doors were locked, but one blow from the butt of my Victorinox shattered the glass like a falling champagne flute. No alarm sounded. I ratcheted the manual seat back but didn’t pile in. I hit my knees instead, flicking the Victorinox’s blade open as my heart thumped an escalated drumbeat.

I was already counting seconds, thinking about the length of Yellow Street—about how long it would take that Navigator to fade into Newark traffic, lost forever. If traffic was light on South Street and they turned quickly…

Focus, Mason.

The cheap plastic steering column housing popped away with ease. The wires sheltered behind were exactly the colors that I expected—Chevy changes things very slowly, if at all. There’s a charm to that. I appreciate consistency.

What I appreciated in that moment, however, was speed. The blade sliced wires like twigs, cutting rubber and copper, baring the correct strands. I closed the knife, slid inside the car and mashed the brake. I touched the wires and earned a grunt, but no start. Lights flashed on the dash with the second contact.

Then the starter turned. The Corsica rattled the way only ‘90s sedans can, sounding like late night family trips to the Pizza Hut and the local Blockbuster Video store…not that an orphan like me knew a heck a lot about either. I slammed the door and ratcheted the console shifter into reverse. The aging transmission clunked and I stomped on the gas.

Tires spun. I was headed for Yellow Street like a rocket, picturing that still-nameless young Latina woman—Vinny’s crush—thrown in the back seat of that Navigator with a gun pressed her head.

Headed where? It didn’t take a genius to guess.

I spun down the curves in bumpy Yellow Street without any concern for slamming headlong into the back of the Navigator. If that happened, so be it. We could hash this thing out right there in the middle of Newark. I’d rather that than lose them, but as it turned out, I reached the end of Yellow Street just as the roof rack bars of the Navigator crossed above tall grass, moving west along South Street. There was a steady stream of traffic flowing in that direction, mostly trucks and light commercial vehicles. I reached the intersection and tapped the brake, then flattened the accelerator.

More wheels spinning. I bounced onto South Street just ahead of a chugging Freightliner and an air horn blew. I found the westbound lane and accelerated, totally ignoring the truck on my tail as I swept the vehicles ahead for the Navigator.

And found it. Three cars and a hundred yards ahead, swerving around slower drivers. The Russians were in a hurry, but it felt like more of an impatient hurry than a desperate hurry. I didn’t think they had seen me—and if they had, so what?

Try and run.

I wasn’t calling the cops. I didn’t know what officers could be trusted and which ones were as crooked as Faust and Hightower, and besides, the police still thought I was a murderer. They might be more hinderance than help. This was my problem, and I was totally up for the challenge. Even outgunned eight cylinders to four, I knew a thing or two about tailing a suspect that these guy had never learned in St. Petersburg. I knew how to blend with the fabric of the road, always far enough back to remain obscure but never so far that I lost sight of my quarry. The Corsica, in that capacity, was a nearly perfect vehicle. It was forgettable, ordinary, just another dot in a sea of bland sedans fighting through a crush of Newark traffic.

I followed the Navigator straight through Ironbound before hanging a right on McCarter Highway. They forced the red light, leaving me in a stack of stalled vehicles. I waited five seconds to ensure visual obscurity, then hopped the sidewalk and laid on my little beeper horn to push pedestrians out of my way. There were no cops—nobody to obstruct my path all the way to the intersection. I made the right and returned to the blacktop with a jolt. The Corsica wound out again, and I’d just regained visual of my target when the Navigator took the interchange onto I-280. We crossed the same bay I’d swum the day prior, a glimmering brown ribbon encased by a concrete jungle. I was losing ground as the Russian’s beefier vehicle delivered superior highway performance amid slackening traffic. Another mile, and they might lose me.

But then the Navigator slowed again. It took the next interchange, swapping from I-280 to I-95 North. We were instantly surrounded by branches of the Hackensack River, crossing onto the Bergen Neck as city skylines were lost amid urban sprawl and industrial spiderwebs. The Navigator was accelerating again—I accelerated with it, my gaze flicking to check the Corsica’s fuel gauge.

Less than a quarter tank. How far were we going? What would I do if the Navigator slipped away?

One problem at a time. Stay on them.

I passed a minivan, pushing the little four-banger to its limits at eight-five miles per hour. The Navigator was still outpacing me, growing smaller by degrees as we swept past billboards advertising MetLife Stadium and season ticket sales for the Giants and the Jets. These were the Meadowlands, that part of northern New Jersey where marshes stretched out from the rivers and covered large swaths of Bergan and Hudson counties. I knew about the area not because I’d ever been there before, but because I was a sports fan myself, and the Giants and the Jets both played their home games in the Meadowlands Sports Complex.

Also, there were the legends. Stories dating back to the heyday of organized crime headquartered in nearby New York City. Tales of problems confronted, problems shot in the back of the head, and problems buried. In the Meadowlands.

I hadn’t dug deeply enough into those Hollywood-style rumors to judge their legitimacy, but once more it didn’t take a genius to connect the dots of my present situation.

Two guys, likely Russian mobsters, with a kidnapped woman in the back of their SUV headed into the most rural, unmonitored section of the East Coast for miles on any side. A place where any number of things could be easily lost and never seen again.

Not happening.

The Navigator took an exit at Patterson Plank Road and turned inland, toward the swamps, and my gut tightened. I dropped back an extra fifty yards just to ensure concealment, creeping through congested intersections and eventually rolling into a shopping strip populated by name brand retailers and a lot of shiny, modern cars. It was a nice place, but the Navigator wasn’t headed for a clothing store or an electronics dealer. It routed behind the shopping complex instead, and I let it go, biding my time. Two minutes later, I risked making the curve, following a bumping asphalt trail that led past loading docks and parked semi-trailers. Eventually, there was a second curve. The path opened into a small parking lot. There was a green chain link fence and an open gate. The Navigator sat parked directly in front of it, with no other cars or people around.

Then there was the sign, hanging alongside the gate, printed in the usual governmental block text with hours and rules posted beneath.

Mill Creek Marsh.

It was a swamp trail.

28

Imissed the SIG Sauer Legion—the pistol I had lost while swimming Newark Bay. Without it I was left with nothing other than my Victorinox, and that didn’t feel like much in the context of two burly guys no doubt armed with pistols.

So I checked the trunk of the Corsica for a tire iron—one of my favorite makeshift weapons. I found only dirty clothes and empty oil bottles, with more of the same in the back seat. Next, I dug beneath the front seat and found something I didn’t expect—something that told me a lot about whoever drove this car. It was a steak knife, like the kind you might buy in a pack of six from Walmart with a plastic handle. The blade was clean, and the knife was wrapped in an empty fast food wrapper.

As though somebody was trying to conceal it.

I considered the implement for only a moment before thrusting it back beneath the seat and starting down the trail. If it came down to knives, I liked the razor edge of the locking three-inch blade on my Victorinox better than any dull steak knife, but if I had my way it wouldn’t come to blades. Edged weapons, in my book, are always a last resort.

If guns aren’t available, I prefer blunt force trauma. A lot of it, delivered quickly. Lights out.

The trail was beaten dirt. About five feet wide and leading between corridors of reeds and grass, the distant high rises of nearby Secaucus and West New York almost totally obscured in an instant. It was like stepping through a magic door into another world. One moment I was in the city, the next I was out in the marsh, with water and vegetation on every side, the rush of the nearby highways muted by the stillness of undevelopable wetlands.

If it hadn’t been such a macabre occasion that led me to this place, I might have found solace in the natural calm. I might have selected a shaded spot near the water to tune my violin and serenade the passing turtles with one of my late fiancée’s favorite songs—“Hallelujah”, by Leonard Cohen.

But this wasn’t a pleasure visit, and if I had a violin close to hand, I might bash it over somebody’s face. I was now certain as to why the thugs in that Navigator had brought their hostage here, and it had nothing to do with enjoying the local scenery.

Barely a hundred yards down the trail I reached a fork—left or right. I couldn’t hear anything but the gentle whisper of wind, and nobody was around. Scanning the packed earth, I thought I saw a hard line dug through the dirt—maybe the toe of somebody’s shoe dragging as they were hauled along. The mark led me left, and I accelerated. With every jogged stepped my breath came a little quicker, my gaze darting from one rotten stump or mudflat to the next, always looking for a place where a gangster might be lurking in the shadows.

Two hundred yards, and another fork. The toe-drag mark was there, as before, but not as deep. I trusted my instincts and took the left, moving closer to a run. I wasn’t sure why, but I could feel that I was running out of time. The next intersection wasn’t a fork so much as a T, with a long trail leading off to my left between taller brush and trees onto a finger of land that jutted straight out into the water.

Then I heard it. A familiar slice of metal against dirt. A crunch, and a dull sob. A murmuring voice.

Panic.

I swung left for a third time and ran. Moving on the balls of my feet with the packed earth muting each step, I was no longer worried about being heard. The tone of that voice told a story, and that story was reaching its climax. In another minute, maybe less…

I smelled the cigarette smoke before I actually saw anyone. Thick on the air, sour on my tongue, I rounded a final curve and found all three of them, all at once. They stood just off the trail, up to their waists in the bushes, that slice and crunch of a shovel coming from a place near a bobbing brown head. The woman was up to her waist in her own grave, actively digging under the pressure of a suppressed handgun pointed down at her. The man with the gun was familiar—he wore a nose brace, and his face was a mass of darkening bruises. It was Dimitri, from my interrogation at the bay. He snarled at the woman while the second guy stood a little closer to me, smoking and texting, oblivious to the world around him.

Then I was there. Practically on top of them, barging into their little party like the uninvited dork turning up at a high school booze fest. The guy with the phone looked up first. His eyes widened.

Then I dropped my shoulder and struck him in the chest like a charging linebacker. Full speed, everything I had, all at once. It wasn’t quite blunt force trauma, but in a pinch it would suffice. The air vacated his lungs and he flipped backward, losing the phone and heading straight for the ground. I knew he probably had a pistol, and I knew that pistol would be sweeping my way as soon as he could draw it, but Dimitri already had a drawn handgun, and I was painfully conscious of the elapsed seconds since I’d appeared on his radar. The element of surprise was wearing off. I might already be too late⁠—

I spun toward Dimitri just as his pistol spun on me. I was too late. The math was against me. But a folding metal shovel with a muddy blade was against him. The woman standing waist deep in her would-be grave swung with everything she had, executing the surprise rescue with speed and a decisiveness that would have impressed General Patton. The blade struck Dimitri’s shin just a moment before he squeezed off the shot, and the bullet flew wide. I actually heard it whine past my ear, and then I was charging again for a repeat of my shoulder-down tackle.

If the Giants or Jets had been watching, they might have recruited me. I hit Dimitri so fast that he didn’t have time for a second shot. His body hurtled backward and tumbled into the grave, and I was following him. Right on top of him. Driving us both into the hole even as the second guy found his gun and opened fire.

Bullets snapped through the brush and sliced over my head. Arms and legs tangled with mine, but I was on top. I thought I heard the woman grunting—she was someplace in the mix. My vision clarified around a broad, ugly face—a familiar face with a twice-obliterated snout.

I made it a third time, hitting Dimitri just as fast and as hard as I could. His nose didn’t even crunch—there was nothing else to break. It just smashed, and he shrieked. Then my left hand found his right arm and slid straight to his gun hand.

I rolled—to my left, landing on my back and wrenching the pistol over my body. It was still clutched in Dimitri’s shaking fingers. He squeezed off an involuntary shot and hot lead tunneled through dirt. I got my hand around his just as the second guy appeared as a staggering blur, headed toward us. His right arm lifted, pistol thrust outward. I wrenched Dimitri’s gun hand around and found his trigger finger and mashed down on it.

Together, we shot the second guy three times in the chest, enough to send him toppling sideways without a sound. Dimitri choked in Russian and tried to hit me with his free hand. It was a cross-body attempt and glanced off my skull. I got my knee into his side and jabbed, driving the wind from him. He gasped. I twisted his hand back on himself. It all happened together, so fast that he didn’t have time to resist or even blink.

The suppressor of his own pistol slapped against the inside of his right forearm, aimed at his bruised and bloody head. His fingers slipped free of the grip. My fingers found the trigger.

I fired.

29

Abullet hole opened dead between Dimitri’s eyes—a more perfect shot than I could have planned. His eyes, still wide, were shaded with death. His body went limp. I gasped for air as the handgun slipped to the dirt between us, a stove-piped cartridge casing fouling the chamber as the weapon’s slide had dragged against Dimitri’s forearm.

No second shot was available—no second shot was needed. The guy was gone, but I was still breathing. Coated in sticky mud with my spine curled against the wall of a shallow grave, I panted and wiped sweat from my face. I lay limp, rocking my head backward to look at the sky.

Whispering a praying of thanks…and then remembering the woman.

She wriggled beneath me, one leg pinned by my hips, her body crammed against the end of the grave. I turned to find eyes every bit as wide as Dimitri’s, and twice as terrified. She was shaking like a leaf, her olive skin washed nearly snow white. She started to cry. She put out a defensive hand.

“¡No me hagas daño!”

It was Spanish—a plea for mercy, I thought, but my head was buzzing too hard to access my admittedly limited understanding of the language. I simply raised a hand, still fighting for my breath, and shook my head.

“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I thought she understood. She stopped babbling but continued to shake and cry. I grabbed the top edge of the grave and clawed my way upright, kicking free of Dimitri’s arm. I took his pistol, too, rolling it in my hand for the first time to check the make and model.

It was another SIG Sauer P226 Legion, exactly like the one I’d lost in the bay. Not at all an inexpensive firearm, and the HK USP lying in the mud alongside the second dead Russian was every bit as expensive. Two elite handguns.

Interesting.

I cleared the stove pipe from the SIG, checked the magazine to find eleven remaining rounds, then slipped the gun into the small of my back. Only then did I turn back to Vinny’s streetside crush.

She lay right where I left her, crouched in the grave, still shaking but maybe less so. Her gaze bounced between me and the body at her feet, then landed on the shovel she had converted into a makeshift weapon—probably saving my life. That final object seemed to hit her the hardest, and the tears flowed once more, as though looking at the shovel unlocked the full reality of her situation. Looking to her feet, she choked.

Then she was scrambling out of the grave as quickly as she could, nearly falling over herself to get away from it. She left the shovel and the dead kidnappers behind. She retreated backward until a wall of foliage blocked her path. Scrubbing both palms against her jeans, her mouth opened and closed, but she made no sound.

I stepped to the end of the grave. She saw me coming and shrank away, mumbling in Spanish. I stopped, and very slowly, I reached into my pocket. She froze, still looking terrified but effectively cornered. She made no attempt to escape as I withdrew Vinny’s harmonica.

Battered. Stained with his own blood. But clearly recognizable. It rested in my open palm, and I extended my hand. Her gaze locked on the item, and she gave a little gasp. A large tear leaked from one eye. Her jaw trembled.

“Vinny,” I said.

Her gaze met mine, her eyes watery, her breath coming in little gasps. I lowered the harmonica.

“I need your help,” I said.

30

Ileft the dead Russians right where they lay, only pausing long enough to wipe my prints and the woman’s prints from any items hard enough to retain them.

It wasn’t a perfect situation. Actually, with the shovel and the half-dug grave, it looked pretty terrible. But what was I going to do? Call the police?

I took the second pistol—the HK, also a nine-millimeter—and transferred ammunition to top off the SIG’s mag. That gave me fifteen rounds plus one in the SIG’s pipe, with an additional nine rounds remaining in the HK. I also took the Lincoln keys.

It was growing dark as I led Vinny’s crush back to the parking lot, and we didn’t pass anybody else. Nearby traffic grew louder as we left the trail. I hit the unlock button on the key fob and the Navigator’s lights flashed.

The woman stopped. She shook her head and took a step back.

“No…please.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m here to help.”

It took some additional coaxing, but I got her into the front passenger seat, secured behind heavily tinted glass—which was my primary interest in the Navigator. I could have taken the Chevy, which might have already been reported missing. Plus, I didn’t have any keys. Getting pulled over, with the exposed evidence of my hot wiring job, wouldn’t play well with a cop.

The Navigator was enemy property and wouldn’t be a secure form of transportation for long, but if push came to shove and I needed to barrel out of a sticky situation, I liked eight cylinders better than four. I also enjoyed leather seats.

Pushbutton start awoke the big motor. I cast a look into the back seat, checking for bags or electronics or anything useful. What I found instead was a short rifle case, barely concealed beneath the seat, housing a fully automatic variant of the famous MP5 submachine gun, along with four fully loaded magazines.

Well, how about that.

The woman rode silent beside me as we cleared the shopping district, her fingers knotted around the tail of a faded T-shirt. She still shook, still breathed a little rough, and I couldn’t help noticing that when a Newark police patrol unit passed us in the oncoming lane, she shrank behind the dash.

Because she knew the cops were involved with her captors? I wondered, but there was another possibility, also. A possibility that had much less to do with her current predicament and much more to do with how she landed here in the first place.

I drove us north. Out of the city and deep into the endless suburbs of Jersey. We clipped along a highway and I didn’t talk, didn’t mess with the climate controls, didn’t turn on the radio. I wanted the silence both for her sake and for mine. We each needed time to unwind—to reset.

Not until we reached Westwood did I finally pull off, nosing the heavy SUV into the parking lot of another shopping district complete with discount clothing retailers and a pair of fast food restaurants. My stomach growled—fighting always made me hungry. I switched the Navigator into park.

“My name is Mason,” I said, after a long break. “I was friends with Vinny. We played music together.”

She was looking at the parking lot, swallowing and shifting in her seat. Her gaze darting from one vehicle to the next.

“It’s okay,” I said. “They won’t find us here. I’ll protect you.”

Still, no answer. I softened my voice. “Señorita?”

She turned slowly my way. She still didn’t speak.

“Habla Engles?” I said.

Another period of protracted silence, and I sighed, deciding to push a little. What else could I do?

“I know you speak English. Vinny didn’t speak Spanish.”

Actually, he might have. For all I knew, Vinny spoke fluent Latin. But it was a reasonable guess and a solid bluff—and it worked.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Okay, you speak English?”

“Yes…I speak English. Some.”

Some is enough.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

Again, no answer. Her gaze left mine and traveled to my pocket. Stopped there.

“Do you want to see it?” I asked.

She didn’t answer. I dug the harmonica out and extended it, gently. After further hesitation, she touched the shiny metal.

And she cried. A little, heartbreaking whimper of a sound. She withdrew her hand, and I set the harmonica on the console.

We could both see it. Maybe that was a good thing. It was an icon of Vinny’s life, as rough and difficult as it was…but also good.

Also, as Ed would say, made in the image of God.

“Tell me your name?” I asked again.

“Marielis,” she whispered. “Marielis Cedeño.”

“That’s a nice name,” I said. “Where are you from, Marielis?”

A little shrug. Her gaze drifted back to the window but didn’t seem to be looking at anything.

“Barquisimeto,” she said.

“Where is that?”

“Venezuela.”

I winced when she said it—because I may not have recognized the name of the city, but I knew all about Venezuela. The story of South America’s most impoverished, most violent nation had boiled up the length of Central America. It had reached the streets of Phoenix, where I had served as both a beat cop and then a homicide detective.

Some of the most destitute migrants spilling across the southern border were Venezuelans…and some of the most ruthless criminals.

“How did you get here, Marielis?”

She faced me at that—she looked right into my eyes, and what I saw in her own chilled me to the bone.

“May I have a Coca-Cola?” She said. “It’s a long story.”

31

Igot Marielis the Coca-Cola and I got her something to settle her stomach, also. A cheeseburger with fries. She only picked at the food, but she sucked on the soda like she hadn’t drunk anything in days. The caffeine, or maybe just the sugar, seemed to drive back the shock of her recent ordeal, oddly calming her.

She breathed a little slower. She sat slumped in the seat next to me, nibbling on French fries. And then, at last, she told her story.

Marielis Cedeño was thirty-two years old, the daughter of an oil worker and a homemaker, a native of the mountain town of Barquisimeto. Born during the glory days of the Chávez regime, when the oil flowed freely and so did its profits, Marielis’s family hadn’t been rich, but they were comfortable. They had their own little casa with plenty of food in the pantry, neighbor children for Marielis to play with, a dog name Franco, and even a family car. Her father worked hard in the nationalized oil fields, where he didn’t make much, but that was okay because nearly everything was free in Venezuela—which was to say, it was paid for by the government.

Schools, healthcare, subsidized food and fuel, and funded retirement. Life was good—far better in Venezuela than in neighboring Colombia, or most places, really. Marielis was reminded of that by her parents. She played soccer throughout primary school and went on to study dramatic arts at college, which was also free. Marielis loved theater and dreamed of one day performing on stage at the Teatro Teresa Carreño—perhaps even for “El Comandante” himself.

Yes, life was good. She spoke of her childhood and college days with the hint of a lost smile on her face, her voice barely above a whisper. It was heartbreaking to witness, not only because I knew where the story was headed, but because I already imagined that rock bottom for Marielis had only been the beginning.

Disaster began when the oil markets crashed, and the totally oil-reliant Venezuelan utopia crashed along with them. All those “free” services and benefits evaporated like mist under a hot sun. Grocery store shelves stood empty. Fuel tanks ran dry. Industries collapsed.

And the Venezuelan bolivar, once the strongest currency in South America? It hyperinflated. So worthless that locals would one day weave the bills into hats and bags for what meager tourism still visited Caracas. The country, in short order, went down the toilet. The truth of Chávez’s regime, and all the brutal corruption it practiced, was only exacerbated when El Comandante himself died of cancer, and his vice president assumed office…

A man who accelerated Venezuela’s spiral into an absolute collapse. A failed state.

Some of the details were new to me, but I was already familiar with the highlights. I listened anyway, because my gut told me that Marielis needed to lay the groundwork. She needed to build toward to the main point of her story—the part where she hopped from Barquisimeto to New Jersey and found herself working for a man with a submachine gun hidden under a towel.

Before she reached that point, her parents both died. For her mother, it was cancer. For her father, it was a heart attack. In both cases, the previously lauded national healthcare system was little better than a slow emergency room. Marielis watched her parents suffer before the end. Then she was alone, with no place to go and the luxuries of a family home long behind her. She shared a one-bedroom apartment with four roommates. She scraped by and missed meals. She spent long hours with nothing to do, humming those theater tunes to herself and dreaming of the good old days.

And then…and unbelievable opportunity. A miracle, Marielis thought, shaking her head even as she said it.

“They were businessmen,” she said. “From Europe, they said. I was serving tables at a restaurant. They…said they liked me. Liked my style. Said I was good on my feet. Asked me if I ever performed on stage.”

A soft snort. Her eyes were red, but she now looked more angry than sad.

“What a fool I was—I’m sure they heard me singing and knew how to tempt me. When they returned the next night, they told me they could take me to America—take me to a good job on Broadway in New York City.” She shook her head. “I could hardly believe it. They said it was wasted talent for me to wait tables, but maybe, if I worked hard…”

She trailed off. My jaw tightened. Marielis wiped her eyes and slurped her Coke. It seemed to bring her courage, as before.

“There was nothing left for me in Venezuela. No family, no future. Maybe I knew in my heart that what they said was too good to be true. But, I wanted it to be true. I said yes. They drove me to the port the next week. There were others, maybe ten of us. I started to feel like something was wrong, but…”

A shrug. Marielis stopped talking, and that was okay. She didn’t need to say more. I could fill in the dots. This story was as old as time, and I’d encountered it before, back in Phoenix.

Human trafficking. The oldest blood trade.

“They held your documents,” I said. “Put you to work in the sewing factory with the others. Told you that you owed them for your transport and had to work off the debt before you could be free. Probably fed you, clothed you, and gave you a place to stay—all of which added to your debt. So really, you can’t pay it off. You just have to keep working.”

Marielis’s tongue swept her lips. She nodded.

“Does anyone try to escape?” I asked.

Marielis snorted. “Escape where? If you get outside the factory, maybe you can avoid the bosses, but then there are the police. The immigration officers. We have no documents to be here—none of the Green Cards we were promised. At best, we are sent back to where we came from. For me, that future is perhaps worse than the factory. At least here…”

She didn’t finish, but again, that didn’t matter, because I knew what she wanted to say. I could fill in the blanks.

At least here there is hope.

However slim, or even delusional. It was just enough to keep her alive.

“Tell me about Vinny,” I said, deciding it was time to come full circle. I thought his name was a risk, that it might compromise her fragile state of mind…but to my surprise, the result was quite the opposite. Marielis smiled.

“Vinny,” she said. “He used to play his harmonica on the sidewalk between the factory and my apartment—the place where the bosses gave me a bed. Most days I would walk right past, never say anything. The bosses don’t like for us to talk to anybody. But one day…”

The smile became a little whimsical, her gaze a little distant.

“One day I was passing by, and Vinny was playing, and I could hardly believe it. He was playing ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ from Les Misérables. One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite plays. I once auditioned for the part of Fantine—in Venezuela, we call it Los Misérables. I didn’t get the part, but I knew the song. I stopped to listen. Then, I sang.”

She turned, still smiling, her cheeks pale and the tears drying. I believed her when she said she was thirty-two, but there was an age in that tired expression that truly couldn’t be expressed by the pages of a calendar. It was the same sort of sadness, sort of brutal hardship suffered by the characters in her favorite play—or, at least, in the film version of the play, which I’d once watched. My late fiancée was a big fan.

I thought I understood the story’s appeal.

“I’m sure Vinny enjoyed that,” I said.

“He did. We finished the song, and I started walking again, hurrying because I thought the bosses might be watching. They always said they were watching—always warning us not to break the rules. I barely slept that night, worrying about it. But the next day on the way home…there was Vinny again. And when he saw me, he quit what he was playing and went to ‘On My Own’, Éponine’s song. I couldn’t help myself—I sang that one too. The next day, it was something from Fiddler on the Roof. The day after that, he finally introduced himself and gave me a flower. And from then on…”

Another broken thought, and another story that was already complete in my mind. I imagined how enchanted Vinny must have been with this unattached South American stage angel—dropped into his life as if by accident, just as he appeared in hers.

Brought together by song. Becoming friends. For Vinny, becoming something more. And now I could tell, looking into her broken gaze…it was something more for Marielis, also.

“You told Vinny about the factory,” I said. “He wanted to help you—to get you out. That’s why they came for him the night he was throwing pebbles at your window.”

Her gaze flashed toward me. Her body tensed. “You were there?”

“I was. I’m sorry. I was keeping tabs on Vinny.”

“And you…you saved him?”

The question was tentative, laced with an undercurrent of hope that hit me in the chest like a shotgun blast. I looked into her face and saw what I should have seen from the start. What I’d been too preoccupied to see.

Marielis didn’t know.

“I did,” I said. “But…they came back.”

Once more her jaw trembled. A single large tear slipped down her cheek. She lifted the harmonica from the console and held it against her face and her head dropped. She was shaking.

I gave her the time. What else could I do? I sat silent in the Navigator, hating myself for failing her. Hating myself for failing Vinny. Hating the whole bloody mess, and my inability to turn back the clock.

But also knowing that I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t change what was already done. What I could do was move forward—like a battering ram.

“Marielis,” I said. “Who are they?”

She took her time answering. When she finally spoke, it was only in a muted whisper.

“Russians,” she said.

“Businessmen?” I said, already knowing the truth.

Her dark eyes lifted. Her face turned very hard.

“Killers.”

32

Ireturned to Newark pissed.

It wasn’t just Marielis’s story—that brutal symphony of abuse and manipulation that was just blip on the sheet music that was the hardship of history. It wasn’t just Vinny’s murder, or the probable truth behind its cause, either.

It was the fact that no matter where I went in this world, no matter who I encountered or what their accent or scheme or angle, one story rang true through it all—the story of the powerful versus the weak. The corrupt versus the just. The exploitive versus the exploitable.

And I was done with it.

Marielis rode mostly silent beside me, her wide eyes surveying a landscape of towers and suburbs. It occurred to me that despite her tenure in the Land of the Free—she thought it had been fifteen months since she first arrived in Newark—she had probably not seen any of this. To her, America was Ironbound, and Ironbound was America. A nicer place than Caracas, probably, but still gritty and mean.

Now Marielis was looking at two-story McMansions and fenced back yards with swimming pools. Polished high rises and shiny cars with laughing families. Digital billboards displaying ads for restaurants, local contractor services, and the grinny face of Kenneth Greene making another pitch for reelection. It was a sparkling world of wonder and opulence and untold possibilities—and this was just Jersey. She hadn’t even been to Manhattan yet. The Appalachian Mountains. The rolling fields of the heartland.

“You’re done working at the factory,” I said. “In few days, everyone will be. I’m going to burn it down.”

Her face swung toward me. She looked caught between hope and terror.

“Are you…with the government?”

I snorted, not because it was a dumb question, but because the government should have already solved this problem. They hadn’t so much as challenged it, and I thought I knew why.

I remembered Faust and Hightower—how they beat Vinny in the alley. How additional cops screamed up to the scene of my interrogation of a Russian mobster. Clearly, there were bad apples cashing Russian paychecks in Newark, shielding the Russian’s criminal operation while also performing basic functions on demand—functions like rescuing Dimitri from the hands of a vigilante kidnapper, or roughing up a troublesome homeless guy who had grown too close to one of their workers.

Workers. More like slaves—the modern kind. I remembered my tour through the industrial side of Ironbound and my musings about yesteryear, a time when American production fed the appetites of not only American consumers, but international consumers. Now, that world was dead. It was far too expensive to produce TVs and toasters and T-shirts here in the States…

Unless your labor was free.

I’m gonna tear this thing to the ground.

I promised myself, and then I turned off the highway. We were back in Newark, rolling down avenues that crossed through the North Ward, then the Central, and finally downtown. I was looking for something in particular, and I was happy to take my time in finding it. Marielis shrank into her seat and kept her head low, but I wasn’t worried about passing cops or Russian mobsters.

The honest cops would be unconcerned about a nice vehicle cruising beneath the speed limit. The corrupt ones might recognize the Navigator as mob transport and know to give it a wide berth. And the mobsters themselves?

I had an MP5 and three magazines full of good reasons flying at eight hundred rounds per minute to not worry about them.

So I kept driving. I swept neighborhoods and occasionally slowed to make eye contact with ducking faces, but I didn’t hit the jackpot until I was nearly back to Ironbound. The face I found there was that of a one-eyed Air Force veteran who exclusively wore United States Marine Corps hats and addressed anyone and everyone as “sailor”.

I wasn’t sure of his story, but I had a pretty good feeling that brain trauma was involved.

“Hey, Bucky.” I wound down the Navigator’s window and whistled low. My target sat on a bench with a bag of crushed bread, feeding the pigeons and tapping his foot to an inaudible song. He flatly ignored me at first—or maybe he was truly lost in his own world. I tapped the horn.

“Bucky!”

That got him. The bright red ballcap popped up. Bucky’s one good eye squinted. He reached for his bread bag and exploded off the bench, already headed up the sidewalk.

I mashed the gas and caught up. I called again, identifying myself. Bucky turned, wielding the bread bag like a club.

“You tryin’ to get wall-eyed, sailor? I’ll club your ass!”

“Bucky,” I growled. “It’s Mason. Calm down.”

We were close—barely ten feet. He bent his head, straining to see under the gathering dark. There weren’t any streetlights around, but I was okay with that. I wanted this to be quiet.

“Mason from the shelter?”

“Who else? How many Masons do you know?”

“I knew four back in ’Nam. Mason Gibbs, Gilbert Mason, Jimmy Mason, and Mason Bukes. We called ’im Pukes, ’cause he puked a lot, ’cause he drank too much. Also, his name was Bukes—kinda sounds the same. Ha.”

It was all I could do not to pinch the Navigator’s steering wheel in two. I breathed deep.

“This isn’t ’Nam, Bucky. You’re in Newark. You know me from the shelter. I play violin.”

Bucky didn’t look like he was listening. He surveyed the Navigator instead, whistling low.

“Gee whiz, sailor. Where’d you pick up a sweet set of wheels like that? You look like a mob boss.”

I almost smirked at that. I stayed on target instead.

“Bucky. You know a guy named Ellis?”

A blink. A hesitation. Then⁠—

“Back in ’Nam⁠—”

“No. Not in ’Nam. Here, in Newark. A homeless guy. He…he stinks.”

I resented myself a little for the final identifier, but in my defense, it seemed to be the one that unlocked the identification. Bucky snapped his fingers.

“Yeah, I know him. Kind of a turd—real salty sailor. What do you want with Ellis?”

“I need to talk to him—and all his friends. Right now.”

“Now?”

“Please.”

“And you think I know where he is?”

I didn’t answer. I just tapped the steering wheel and cocked an eyebrow—not because I really thought Bucky would know, but because I hoped…and had good reason to hope.

Nobody knows a city quite like its homeless population. The heartbeat, the blood flow, the cadence and soul of it. They knew it all like the backs of their own hands. They know each other, also.

“I know where he usually hangs,” Bucky said. “To be honest, I kinda steer clear of him. Like I said, a real salty⁠—”

“Salty sailor, I know.” I hit the unlock button on my door panel. “Climb in, Bucky. We’re gonna find him.”

33

Bucky climbed in—and promptly whooped at the sight of Marielis. She nearly spiraled into a panic attack, and it was all I could do to shut him up while holding her together and driving the Navigator.

Bucky smelled too—not as bad as Ellis, but the street is an unforgiving place, and it leaves a mark. He directed me from the back seat, out of downtown and back into the Central Ward. It was a longer drive than I expected, nearly to the edge of town. I wondered why a population who lived on foot would wander so far…

But then again, what else did they have to do?

The final destination was West Side Park, a block of greenery surrounded by lower middle-class residences, with a playground and a baseball field and a lot of benches. A lot of trees.

Exactly the kind of place where unhomed populations might catch a few hours of uninterrupted sleep before their morning wakeup call, compliments of the Newark PD.

I parked the Navigator and tried to ignore Bucky’s smacking from behind me. I didn’t know what he was eating—maybe the same crumbled bread he’d been feeding the pigeons.

“This is where he’ll be?” I said.

“Almost.”

I squinted. “What does that mean?”

“He’s on his way.”

“How do you know?”

“How the heck do you think I know? I texted his buddy.”

Bucky flashed a cheap smartphone, its screen greasy and cracked. I blinked, then shook my head and settled back into the seat.

Welcome to the twenty-first century.

“What…what are you doing?” Marielis whispered.

There was more fear in her voice than I expected, which was my fault. Over the past two hours, I hadn’t forgotten about the shaken Venezuelan seated beside me, but maybe I’d neglected to consider her emotional state. To do her the respect of cluing her into my thought process.

“I’m meeting with somebody who can help us,” I said.

“Help us how?”

I turned from the window. I met Marielis’s gaze and held it. I wanted her to understand and believe my next words. I needed her to.

“Help us find the people who killed Vinny, so that I can deal with them.”

I wasn’t sure if Marielis found my words comforting or even more terrifying. I only had a moment to consider before Bucky belched from the back seat and thrust a filthy finger over my shoulder, pointing.

“There.”

I looked, and sure enough, it was Ellis—my surly informant from the diner earlier that morning. He wasn’t alone. Three chums accompanied him, each looking as shady and surly as their ringleader, two laden with backpacks and one pushing a battered shopping cart that rattled loud enough to wake the dead.

“Stay here,” I said. “You’ll be fine.”

I wanted to put a hand on Marielis’s arm, but the gesture might be an intrusion. I offered a gentle smile and nod instead. Then, I was out of the Navigator and onto the sidewalk, taking both Bucky and the concealed SIG Sauer pistol with me.

I met Ellis outside the park, and he identified me twenty yards away. I knew, because he cursed, then started to turn.

“Bucky…” I said.

The Air Force vet didn’t leave me hanging. He fast walked ahead, calling after Ellis and pleading with him to stop. Ellis did stop, but he didn’t look happy about it. He turned back with a shake of his head, spitting onto the concrete.

“Man, I thought I told you I was done talking,” he said.

“You did,” I said. “But then you lied, so the way I figure it, you owe me one.”

Ellis didn’t blink. He didn’t object to the charge of dishonesty, either, which was telling in its own way. Instead, he stared at me a long moment. Then he sighed.

“It’s real hard what happened to Vinny. I hate it. But if you really think you can change these streets…”

He shook his head. I kept my voice and posture relaxed.

“Maybe I’m not trying to change them. Maybe I’m just trying to find a little justice.”

“For who? Vinny?”

“Absolutely, Vinny. And while I’m at it, maybe a little justice for the eighty immigrant women working slave labor down on Yellow Street.”

His gaze flashed, and I knew—I’d been right. He’d lied.

“You knew,” I said. “You knew about the factory, and you knew it had something to do with Vinny’s death. Maybe he told you about it. Maybe you’ve seen it yourself. Why did you lie to me, Ellis?”

A snort. A shake of his head. Ellis dipped a hand into his pocket and produced a blunt. One flick of a lighter and the smell of the smoke took me right back to my seventh grade foster home, a place full of kids like me whose government support checks were just about large enough to fund the weed habits of our foster “parents”.

I pushed the memories aside, and I eyeballed Ellis. I gave him a full minute, hoping that the pot would mellow him out. Maybe make him more reasonable. Perhaps Ellis hoped for that, also.

Finally, he stepped off the sidewalk. He led me through a gap in the park fence. We entered the shelter of trees, and Ellis swung up onto a picnic table, sitting on its top and resting his feet on the seat. He exhaled grayish green.

“Look, dude. I didn’t mean nothing by it. You gots to understand—around here, folks get to talkin’, and they wake up dead. There are just some things you don’t wag your gums about, no matter how messed up they might be. It’s about survival. People like you wouldn’t understand that.”

“People like me?” I lifted both eyebrows.

Ellis waved a hand, as though he were erasing the comment. He tugged on the joint again.

“You know who killed Vinny, don’t you?” I said.

“Pigs,” he said.

“You said so before, but you don’t believe it.”

“No, actually, I do. I think the pigs do all kinds of things for the people who pay them. Sometimes that’s mob bosses—sometimes it’s rich businessmen in tall towers with trophy wives. New label, same sauce.”

The vitriol in his voice was so volcanic I couldn’t help but wonder how explosive it might have been apart from the weed. For maybe the first time in my life, I was grateful for grass.

“So, you think corrupt cops killed Vinny on behalf of who? Mob bosses or rich businessmen with trophy wives?”

This time he didn’t pop back. He thumped ash from his joint. It appeared to be going out, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Maybe both,” he said, at last.

“Both?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“And what do you mean?”

A curse. He rolled his eyes. “Man, you really are green. You gots to wise up if you’re gonna play games on the asphalt. You really think you can park people in all these neat little boxes, where the flavors don’t mix? It’s not like that. It’s more like a stew—it all blends together, it all follows the money. It’s all a jumble. One corporate tycoon in the pocket of a mob boss, that mob boss in the pocket of a politician, that politician paying off six or eight cops, those cops donating money to the local food pantry where schmucks like you work—because, like I said, it’s a stew. It’s a circle. It’s all in a blender.”

I was losing track of metaphors, but I thought I knew what he meant. It was actually an astute observation, something I had noticed myself many times before.

The thin blue line is an acrobatic thing—good cops need eyes in the back of their heads.

“So, it’s all a stew,” I said. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“Maybe I don’t know the answer.”

“Maybe you don’t—but you know something.”

He eyeballed me at that, unblinking as the last of the weed smoke drifted away. He stared so long that I almost wondered if I’d lost him, if his brain had just switched off.

But then, suddenly, he swung off the picnic table. He closed in on me with uncomfortable proximity—very uncomfortable, given his smell. When he spoke, there wasn’t an ounce of humor in his voice. No trace of the marijuana, either.

“What do you want from this, man?”

I took my own time in answering. Not because it was a difficult question, but because I wanted him to know I was every bit as serious.

“The cops think I killed Vinny. If I don’t prove otherwise, I’m going away. Small rooms don’t suit me.”

A snort. He rolled the joint between his fingers but didn’t lift it.

“Small rooms don’t suit anybody…but I’m not buying your story. You could have just split. Something tells me a guy like you know knows how to disappear.”

“Maybe I don’t like looking over my shoulder.”

“Again, nobody does. But now you’re the one dodging questions.”

Got me.

Pushed my hands into my pockets. Shrugged.

“Okay. You want the truth? You called this mess a stew pot. Good people and bad people and everybody caught in between all mixed up in the broth. Well, I’m the boot.”

“The boot?”

“Yeah, the one that kicks the pot over. Because I like things simple.”

He considered that a moment, and I thought he might snort again. Maybe roll his eyes or just walk away.

Instead, he smiled. Slow but genuine, a sly lift of his lips. The joint returned to his mouth and he sparked the lighter. Second-hand ganja stung my eyes. I didn’t move. He shook his head.

“The boot, huh? You know what…I can deal with that.” He inhaled deep, held it. Then exhaled through his nose and rocked his head backward. “Over here. Let’s see what my homies know about slave-trading Russian gangsters.”

34

Ihadn’t mentioned slave trading or Russian gangsters. Ellis’s comment was validation that he did, indeed, know much more than he let on.

I might have been proud of my successful investigative instincts if I hadn’t been fighting so hard not to let my head go swimmy with the marijuana smoke. As it was, I just put one foot in front of another, semi-floating on a green cloud that carried me out of the park and back to the sidewalk.

Ellis’s “homies” were still there—two guys and a woman who might have been thirty, might have been sixty-five. She was too dirty and seasoned by street life to tell.

“How did you know I was gonna ask about Russian gangsters?” I pressed.

Ellis jabbed his joint toward the parked Navigator where Bucky and Marielis still waited.

“Because you stole their whip.”

I cocked an eyebrow but didn’t comment. Ellis finished his blunt and stomped it out. He restrained a burp.

He now looked sleepy—a little distant. The weed was working its magic on his consciousness, and I was losing him.

Time to cut to the chase.

“So you know about the Russians?” I said.

Ellis grunted. Nobody else responded, or even so much as glanced my way. I folded my arms.

“What do you know?”

“They’re from a cold country in Europe with not a lot of patience for stupid questions,” the woman said. She was looking sideways at Ellis. He waved a hand.

“Chill, Dililah. I cleared him. He’s wanting to kick over some pots.”

“Some what?”

“He wants to find the people who whacked Vinny.”

“Pigs did that,” one of the other guys said. He was dirty like Ellis, very skinny with dreadlocks reaching beneath his shoulder blades.

“Let’s start with the Russians,” I said, deciding to retake control. “You recognize their vehicle. You know they enslave people. What else?”

“That’s pretty much it,” Ellis said. “And we only know that because Vinny put it together. He had an obsession, like I told you before.”

“With Marielis.”

“Yeah, her. And with her situation. I guess the Russians are bringing them in from South America—although, how they’re keeping them, I don’t know.”

“No papers,” I said. “If they escape, they’re no better off.”

“Yeah, well. Papers are overrated,” Ellis said.

“You joined Vinny’s investigation?” I said.

The woman rolled her eyes. “Of course we didn’t join. He just harassed us about it. Vinny was trying to set up this whole network of lookouts and spies and things to track the Russians. Maybe scrape together some evidence against them—something to get that girl freed. It was a pipe dream from the start, and we told him that. What’s the use in evidence when the cops are crooked?”

It was a fair question, but I was looking beyond the street-centric view of the conflict, and toward the bigger picture. If Vinny was half as smart as I believed him to be, he wasn’t looking for evidence to take to the Newark PD, or even the state cops. He would probably have gone to the FBI, not only because they were detached and less likely to be bought off, but also because the FBI would have connections with immigration.

People who just might issue a Green Card to a helpful Venezuelan witness. It was what I would have done in his shoes, anyway, but I wasn’t in his shoes. I wasn’t in shoes at all.

I was in boots, and all I wanted was a pot to kick.

“You ignored him?” I pressed.

A shrug. A few uncomfortable glances. I could feel that we were driving to the heart of the matter, and for some reason they were clamming up on me.

“You saw something, didn’t you?” I pressed.

“So what if we did?” Dreadlocks snapped. “Smart people wouldn’t talk about it.”

There it was.

I looked to Ellis. Lifted my eyebrows. Waited.

He sighed. “Tell ’em.”

“Ellis—” The woman started.

“I said tell ’em! If he wants to get himself killed, let him do it. No skin off our noses. We’re drawing more attention standing here gabbing.”

I looked to the woman, somehow sensing that she was most likely to help me. Her jaw tightened, her fingers closing around the edge of her shopping cart.

Then she said: “It’s organized crime. It runs real deep. They’ve got connections with the cops—you know that. I think they got connections up in City Hall, too. Real power players.”

“Why do you think that?”

She glanced sideways to Ellis. Then back to me.

“Because I seen those fancy pants suits coming and going from the beehive.”

“The beehive?”

“Yeah—the hornet’s nest. The thick of it. Where all those big shiny SUVs circle up at night.”

My body tensed. I cast an involuntary glance over my shoulder, then lowered my voice.

“You found the mob base?”

“Wasn’t hard. Nobody sees people like us…not unless we ask for a table.”

“So it’s a restaurant?”

Another round of exchanged glances. Finally, it was Ellis who spoke—yet again confirming that he knew more than he admitted.

“Ferry Street, man. It’s on Ferry Street. Do the world a favor and buy your own coffin before you go.”

35

Iwould have left Marielis on the streets with Bucky or Ellis—she would have been safe there, off the radar and invisible to world, just as Delilah had said. But I didn’t have to ask to know that Ellis wasn’t interested in hosting a refugee, and Bucky simply wasn’t stable enough to be depended on. Besides all that, one glance into Marielis’s wide and terrified eyes, and I didn’t have the heart to leave her on a cold street, safe or otherwise. I didn’t have the heart to leave her alone at all. She needed someplace where she could feel as well as be safe, and she needed to know that nobody was abandoning her.

Piling back into the Navigator, I drove Bucky back to his bench, passing him forty bucks from my skinny wallet to get himself a hot meal. He departed with a salute, wishing me smooth sailing, and then Marielis and I were back on the road turning southeast.

Once more headed to Ironbound.

“Did you learn anything?”

Her voice was soft from the passenger seat. Not nearly so emotional as before, but not flat either. She was still feeling things—her gaze was locked on every passing building, every gleaming hotel and shining car, and most especially on the passing pedestrians.

Young couples walking hand-in-hand. A trio of college girls giggling amongst themselves, trailing behind fluffy little yapper dogs. A birthday party gathered around a window table at a restaurant, adorned in pointed hats and comic sunglasses.

It was all so ordinary to me. A cadence of urban life that I barely noticed, perhaps taking for granted. It wasn’t a pace or tempo that I personally enjoyed—perhaps that was my excuse for discounting it.

But the obvious wealth, the ample food, the fearlessness with which ordinary citizens strolled the streets at will, completely unconcerned by passing law enforcement and unburdened by the prospect of sudden and deadly violence…what must that feel like to a woman like Marielis?

It must feel like a fantasy. Like a dream come true and yet, still out of reach.

“I learned where to go digging,” I said, finally answering her question.

“Digging?” She didn’t look away from the window.

“For proof of who these people are and what they’re up to. Once we find that, we can get the police involved. The good police. We can have the factory shut down and the workers freed. We can figure out who killed Vinny.”

I thought it might excite her—the prospect of freedom and justice and that brand new life she had suffered so much in pursuit of. But Marielis didn’t answer. She didn’t look away from the window even as we passed out of downtown and into the darker residential zones of the Ironbound district. She just relaxed, shoulders loose, and when I caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window, I was surprised to see a sad little smile on her lips.

“It’s beautiful here,” she whispered.

I looked away, a sudden hot lump in my stomach. For the rest of the drive we didn’t speak a word, yet there was a contentedness to the silence that took me by surprise. A sort of peace. It wasn’t the knowledge that Marielis was okay, but maybe the belief that she didn’t need to be. That no matter the circumstances, she would keep going.

And wasn’t that better?

I made it through the heart of Ironbound, sticking to the quieter streets over the main drags. At eight p.m. the neighborhoods were quiet but not yet asleep, the avenues uncongested but not empty. Homes displayed warm yellow lights behind their windows, and the occasional passing cars kept my hand near the SIG pistol secured under my shirt, just in case.

In the end we made it all the way to my target address without incident—a two-story brick building wreathed in shadow, standing alone on a grimy old street where industry once flourished. Now that street was quiet, as was the building. There were no cars parked along the curbs, no voices carrying through broken windows.

I took a moment to scope out the surrounding streets, checking for unfamiliar parked cars or indicators of police surveillance. Given my prior experience as a cop myself, I knew what to look for, but there was still a chance I could miss something. Still a chance that Faust and Hightower had anticipated my return and arranged a trap.

It was a risk I would have to take—and really, I doubted it was a big one. Faust and Hightower didn’t seem that smart. I adjusted my attention to the light that shone from one window of the building, where a curtain obscured any view of the interior. As I bent down to look beneath the Navigator’s roofline, I could barely make out a shadow moving back and forth across the light—a human form.

I shifted into park and released my seatbelt. Marielis, still seated beside me, had tensed as we drove deeper into Ironbound. I guessed that she recognized some of these streets, or at least their flavor. Her dark eyes flicked, her hands clenching tight around the tail of her T-shirt.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Only friends here.”

“You…you’re going to leave me?” She whispered.

“I’ll be right back,” I promised.

She didn’t like that. The tension was written all over her face and rebar-posture, but I gave her a reassuring smile and she returned it—bravery in the face of fear.

Outside the Navigator, the breath clouded in front of my face. The temperature had dropped as the sun faded, the air now burning in my lungs. I cast a glance either way, then advanced across the street and scanned the building’s main entrance.

The crime scene tape was still there—the shelter was still closed for business, which was particularly unfortunate on a night this chilly. The one-time-office, now converted into a single room apartment, was most easily accessed via a pair of steps from the former-factory’s main floor, but with the shelter closed and that former-factory floor declared a crime scene, Ed’s only method of entering his residence was to use the exterior steps bolted to the building’s side wall.

Rusty, rickety, downright dangerous. Luckily, Ed was a skinny fellow.

“Ed!” I hissed.

The light still shone from the converted office window, but I no longer saw the shadow. I wondered if Ed had settled into his easy chair for the evening, an episode of his beloved Gilligan’s Island cued up for re-run. Casting a glance around the building’s corner, I surveyed the steps and evaluated the odds of testing them with my two-hundred-pound body.

Probably, I would be fine. But why risk it when I could take a page from Vinny’s playbook?

Stooping, I found a pebble. It sailed overhand like a foul ball, pinging off the glass of the second-story window and zipping back at me.

Ed didn’t answer. No shadows moved. I repeated the process with two more shots, thinking of Vinny doing the very same thing the night before. On the third toss, I finally detected a twitch in the curtain. A sharper glare of light. Then a face appeared and squinted. I lifted a hand—Ed lifted the window.

“Mason?” He hissed. “That you?”

“It’s me.”

“What the…what are you doin’ here? Don’t you know the cops are looking for you?”

“A lot of people are looking for me. Don’t worry about that—I didn’t kill Vinny.”

A long pause. Ed said nothing, he just stared me. My hands fell back to my side.

“You know that, right?” I said.

Ed’s gaze traveled to the Navigator, then back to me. He suddenly looked very old. Very tired. But he shook his head.

“I know you didn’t. You ain’t the killing type.”

I wouldn’t go that far.

I thought it, I didn’t say it. I tilted my head.

“You mind coming down here? I need your help.”

36

Ed was a lot easier to talk into my proposed arrangement than Marielis was—which was predictable. With a heart for the helpless, Ed had never met a stranger, and responded to the unexpected with default love. This was his understanding of the Christlike way, and that passion for charity extended without hesitation to a woman I described as “in need of a place to lay low.”

Ed didn’t even ask me who she was laying low from, which certainly seemed pertinent given my present difficulties with the Newark Police. He simply wanted to know if she spoke English, and if she had eaten dinner. Then I was introducing Ed to Marielis and Marielis to Ed, and doing my best to sooth her nerves for the transition.

She would be safe at the shelter, I promised. I would be back soon myself. Ed would take good care of her.

“Will you be safe?”

Marielis’s final question took me off guard, mostly because of its transparently selfless tone. It wasn’t the question of a friend—we hadn’t known each other long enough to become friends. It was simply the question of a good woman who, despite all logic or fairness, assumed ownership of her own situation and the danger it put me in.

But that danger was my choice—and I wasn’t running from it.

“Bet on it,” I said. “And by morning, we’ll be a lot closer to making your friends safe, too.”

I waited until both Ed and Marielis made it to the top of the rickety steps, then I was back in the Navigator. The handoff had taken longer than I wanted, and I was brutally conscious of fact that I was now deep inside enemy territory.

It was a fact I should have realized long before—a truth that stared me dead in the face. With the factory on Yellow Street, and Marielis commuting by foot to a supplied bedroom on Garden Street, it would have been a reasonable assumption to conclude that Ironbound itself was more than just the random operation zone of the Russian mobsters who enslaved her. This was, in fact, their home turf. Their little slice of Newark—their own personal fiefdom.

If I’d had any doubts about that, Ellis’s confirmation of a headquarters on Ferry Street thoroughly dispelled them. Flowing out of Market Street to the west before dipping south, Ferry Street could justifiably be called the very spinal cord of the Ironbound district—a two lane thoroughfare lined by apartments, drugstores, discount retailers, liquor vendors, urban supermarkets, and restaurants…a lot of restaurants. In particular, those serving international cuisine—everything from Vietnamese to Mexican, Caribbean and Polish.

And Russian.

Яed Autumn Steakhouse sat on the ground floor of a two-story building with a vacant lot on one side and a wireless retailer on the other. Featuring a faded black awning with the restaurant’s name written in a faux Cyrillic style, at first glance I couldn’t tell if the place was trying to be fancy, used to be fancy, or just couldn’t care less either way.

I left the Navigator four blocks away, parked behind an orthodox church. With my body pressed close to the shadows and the SIG pistol close to hand, I worked the intersections one at a time, keeping my eyes open for any big, ugly Ivans.

I was rolling the dice in a big way by heading straight into the bear’s den with nothing in the way of backup and a lot that I stood to lose. Identifying the mob stronghold wouldn’t necessarily bring me any closer to bringing them down, but it was still the next right step.

I felt in my gut. These guys were the linchpin of the entire operation—even if they hadn’t killed Vinny, they knew who had, and they probably had something to do with it. I wasn’t the least bit intimidated by the thought of burning their steakhouse to ashes.

Across from Яed Autumn, I entered a drugstore and took my time shuffling through a stand of glossy magazines, monitoring the comings and goings at the steakhouse’s entrance for a full ten minutes. During that span I witnessed only three pairs of legitimate-looking diners arrive—men in business suits, women in evening dresses—but four black sedans and one black SUV rolled to the curb and dropped passengers before disappearing around the corner.

The sedans were a mix of BMWs and Mercedes. The SUV was a Navigator.

How about that.

I purchased a copy of some gearhead magazine and left the drugstore without so much as glancing over my shoulder. I hadn’t seen any surveillance—in fact, with its front windows obscured by thick privacy tint, I hadn’t seen much of anything from inside Яed Autumn. But I had noticed lights flicking on behind heavy curtains on the second floor. They appeared not long after that Navigator arrived.

And I was willing to bet I knew why.

One block away from the steakhouse I hooked a left, crossing the street and passing a bar with no windows. Then another left behind the wireless store that stood adjacent to Яed Autumn, where I found a wide gravel lot occupied by two dumpsters, a rickety metal table covered in cigarette butts, a back door for the restaurant…and parking for those jet black vehicles.

There was nobody around, but the exhaust vent mounted to the rear of the restaurant emitted the clamor of a busy kitchen—perhaps a legitimate operation. A moment after I slid behind the wireless store, Яed Autumn’s back door swung open and I dipped behind the dumpster as a heavyset cook stumbled out. He hefted a clinking plastic bag into the dumpster. Muttered under his breath in Russian, then went back inside, swigging from a flask on his way.

Stereotypes, though.

I waited a few seconds to be sure he was gone, then sprinted across the lot and straight to rear of the restaurant, where a metal ladder mounted to the bricks led two stories off the ground to a flat-topped roof. There was no security gate, nothing to prevent me from shinnying straight up. A few rungs from the top I heard the kitchen door groaning open again, but I didn’t stop.

I climbed over a ten-inch parapet onto a bed of pea gravel that sagged beneath my boot—the roof was flat and rectangular, and soft near the access ladder. Maybe rotting. I scrambled for better footing as I surveyed a pair of heavy-duty HVAC units that chugged like diesel engines while pumping warmth into the rooms below.

It was those HVAC units that interested me most. I’d assumed their position after noting the absence of such hardware behind the restaurant, while also knowing that heating units had to be mounted somewhere. This was Jersey, after all, not Phoenix. I was bound to get a lot colder up here before the year was over, and dinner guests preferred to be comfortable. Maybe, so did mob bosses.

But how were those units serving the lower floors? Obviously, via duct work—a crawl space.

I rose into a crouch, avoided the soft spot, and peaked back over the parapet to find a pair of waiters smoking at the table. I thought the hum of the heating system would obscure the crunch of my steps, but I took my time anyway. I produced my flashlight from my pocket and switched it on to its lowest setting, taking my time as I scanned between abandoned junk and more exhaust vents. My target was some manner of hatch, and I found it on the other side of the steam cloud. Hinged and rusty, held closed by a giant brass padlock.

I clenched the light between my teeth as I shook the picks from my wallet and went to work on the padlock. It was stiff with age and fouled by grit. A wave rake was no use, and I resorted to a turning tool and an angled pick instead, my ankles throbbing as I squatted and worked the tools, marveling at how long it had been since I used them in any sort of a legal capacity.

To be fair, lock picks aren’t the sort of thing that lend themselves to judicious use.

The HVAC cut off just as I got the last pin set and twisted the lock open. It snapped in the stillness, and I froze, listening for any reaction from the smoking waiters. I could still smell their cigarettes. Their voices had faded. Easing the lock out, I waited.

Then I recognized the familiar stomp of shoes mashing out cigarettes. One waiter muttered to the other. The second replied in what sounded like a curse. The door squeaked as it opened, and they were gone.

I turned back to the hatch. I grimaced as the hinges groaned. The flashlight still rode between my teeth, dumping blue illumination into a black pit. I swung the hatch ninety degrees up and the rust and grit on the hinges was enough to hold it in place.

I looked down and found a short ladder. A plywood walkway surrounded by snaking duct lines, cast iron gas pipes, and dangling electrical wires. Someplace beyond, I made out voices. Clinking glasses. Distant laughter.

I was in.

37

Ieased my body weight onto the plywood walkway, unsettled to find it shifting beneath my feet. The crawlspace wasn’t tall enough for me to stand up in—I had to bend at the waist, assaulted by a smell of mildew and aged insulation.

It was dark, too. Inches outside the beam of my flashlight, absolute blackness obscured my view, broken only by the pinholes of light that shot up around HVAC vents and electrical fixtures.

The building was old—even older than its updated exterior facade indicated. Any one of the pine ceiling joists supporting the plywood walkway might creak under pressure. The plywood itself was unsecured and warped—it could rattle.

Take it slow.

I eased ahead, running both hands along overhead rafters for support and still holding the flashlight in my mouth. Ten feet, and I froze as the plywood shifted. A joist groaned. I held my breath.

But the clinking of dinnerware and the music of semi-inebriated voices persisted. Apparently, my intrusion remained undetected. I took another few inching steps forward, identifying one particular pinhole of light leaking from a duct line where it connected to a ceiling vent. I thought the noise from below originated near that spot.

I could make out individual voices, now. Not quite intelligible, but then, they wouldn’t have been even if the conversation was louder. It wasn’t English.

It was Russian.

Six feet out, and I dropped into a squat, extending my arms for balance on the rickety walkway. Slowly, I proceeded into a seated position, then rolled onto my side, and finally onto my stomach.

The plywood still vibrated, and I progressed by inches, using the parallel ceiling joists to either side of the walkway like rails to propel myself along. I reached the duct line, and for the first time since entering the crawl space, I smelled something other than mold.

It was meat. Grilled and seasoned, rich and tantalizing. I hadn’t eaten in hours and just the smell made my stomach growl. I stopped at the duct and tilted my head to look through the nickel-sized hole.

Warm air flowed out, blasting my face. I saw light and the blades of the register—nothing more.

Switching the flashlight off, I returned to my pocket for the Victorinox. Its blade rotated on an oiled pin, locking with a dull click. I started at the nickel-hole and worked my way around, sawing and peeling, progressing by inches.

I cut the duct free of the vent and lifted it away, a rush of welcome warmth pumping from its severed end. Another wiggle along the plywood and I brought my face in line with the exposed vent. I looked down.

I saw everything.

It was a private dining room with a long wooden table and high-backed padded chairs. Wine bottles, bloody plates, greasy knives, and half-empty glasses joined a setting for three.

The meal was prime rib, and with my face hovering only six feet overhead, it smelled even better than it had before. I was worried my stomach might growl again. If I twisted my head, I could see beyond the table, a few feet closer to where I guessed the main entrance to be.

The carpet was crimson and worn. The walls paneled with wood and hung with decorative light fixtures. There were bookcases, mostly empty and dusty. In one corner a giant dog bed supported a sleeping Great Dane—not curled up but stretched out in all its oversized glory.

And there were three men. All seated at the table, all tucking in with knives and forks and a lot of smacking. They were large, heavy, dressed in black blazers on top of black button-down shirts. Dark hair, dark eyes, but light skin.

One of them featured a busted arm, suspended across his chest in a sling.

Well, hello there.

I closed the knife, surveying the feast for a full three minutes. There was burping, there was occasional muttering in Russian. One guy kept checking his watch, shaking his head after each inspection.

I adjusted my position on the plywood and craned my neck for an alternate view.

Then I saw the fourth place setting. A meal growing cold, a wine-filled glass as yet untouched. I checked my watch and found the time as seventeen minutes past the hour—a random point on the clock, probably not a scheduled time of meeting.

So, somebody was seventeen minutes late.

Slipping the knife back into my pocket, I settled onto the plywood and resolved to wait. I had no other place to be—the meeting might be a waste of my time, but it was a better lead than any I had to date, and if it turned out to be nothing I could still drop through the ceiling and break some bones. The sheetrock between the joists was soft, aged and dry. One kick of my boot would punch right through it. They’d never see me coming.

But that was an ace up my sleeve. For the moment, I would bide my time. Endure the mouth-watering scent of the prime rib, keeping perfectly still, and hoping that the tardy dinner guest would be somebody who spoke English. That the resulting conversation might serve as a break in my investigation.

It was a long shot. I didn’t love my odds. But when the door finally groaned on worn hinges, and one of the Russians barked a surly “Finally”, I knew my bet had paid off. The newcomer wasn’t Russian—the conversation would pivot into a language I could understand.

But I still wasn’t ready for what came next. I couldn’t see the new arrival—he hadn’t yet taken his place in front of his cold meal. When he spoke, it was in a defensive snarl.

And I recognized the voice.

“Fundraiser ran late—it’s a time-consuming business filling the gaps in your production, Yuri.”

I blinked, twisting my face. The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. I listened as boards creaked, and a body drew closer. The man who had muttered “Finally”—Yuri, I guessed—waved a steak knife and muttered something dismissive in Russian.

A chair scraped back. My body tensed. I replayed the voice in my mind just as black slacks and polished dressed shoes appeared…

Then I remembered. Just a split second before the newcomer took his seat, and his smug white face appeared.

It was Mayor Kenneth Greene.

38

Iwas surprised only to the capacity that it had taken me so long to place the voice. Blame it on exhaustion, preoccupation, or the distraction of that oh so delicious smelling meat. There was also an argument to be made that I had worked hard to erase Greene’s voice from my memory following his annoying visit to the shelter.

Whatever the case, my identification process hadn’t lagged because I was shocked at his appearance. Actually, I was just pissed off. I remembered his drumbeat at the shelter about “forging new horizons” for the people of Newark…whatever that meant. It was a patently generic campaign slogan, but it was still the kind of thing that any good citizen would hope to be genuine. Nobody wants to believe their leaders are crooks.

But this guy was, not a doubt in my mind. And it wasn’t just because he was here, it was because of what he had said on arrival.

“It’s a time-consuming business filling the gaps in your production, Yuri.”

The term “production” immediately suggested the slave factory in Ironbound, and that brought my mind full circle. The reason I was here, the reason I had a fight with Yuri and his pals from the start.

And now, apparently, had a fight with his honor.

“This is cold,” Greene complained.

“It’s been sitting,” Yuri replied.

Green snorted and shoved his plate away. He rocked his wine glass back and drank like a man who was both overworked and overstressed. The Russians, meanwhile, remained relaxed, mopping up the final bites of their dinner.

“I’m stalling in the polls,” Greene said, finally. “Morrison is gaining ground again, especially with the urban population. I’m just not…connecting.”

“Huh,” Yuri grunted. “Sounds like a personal problem.”

“Well, it’s not, Yuri. It’s your problem. Because if I’m not reelected, you’ll be dealing with a new mayor, and maybe a new police chief. Morrison is making promises of internal investigations—of cleaning out city hall, top to bottom. We’re talking about major exposure here, for everyone.”

“You’re fifteen points ahead with three weeks to go,” Yuri said. “How about you just calm down? There’s no emergency.”

“I’m fifteen points ahead now. Last week it was eighteen. Two weeks ago, twenty. Read the trend, Yuri. All this guy needs is one big boost, and we’ve got a dead heat on our hands. I’m running short on campaign capital. Your contribution checks have been somewhat unreliable of late.”

“Seasonality!” Yuri snapped. “You think we’re printing money? Profits rise and they fall. We had to invest in new equipment, and then there was a problem with one of the shipping companies who transports our staff. Some dock worker threatened to squeal—cost me thirty grand to shut him up.”

I curled my lip, disgusted but unsurprised by the euphemisms of “staff” and “shut him up”. It didn’t take a genius to know what Yuri really meant. It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots of Yuri and Greene’s corrupt arrangement, either.

Campaign cash in exchange for executive protection—one of the oldest schemes in the book. It explained why both mobsters and bad apples with badges were involved in this mess, and why both had pursued Vinny when he became a problem.

It didn’t tell me the specific person who had jammed the knife between his ribs, but I would get to that, guaranteed.

“Your production challenges aren’t my problem, Yuri. Our agreement calls for consistent support, rain or shine. I’m counting on that. Don’t make this election a nail biter.”

I thought Yuri might lash back. He didn’t. He simply sipped wine and wiped his lips on a cloth napkin. Burped and stared at Greene for a long moment.

Then, without a word, he slipped his hand into his blazer. He produced a bank envelope and tossed it onto the table, where it landed with a revealing slap.

Greene took the envelope and opened the top, scanned the contents, then slipped it inside his own jacket.

“Thank you, Yuri. You’re a peach.”

The Russian snorted again, reaching for the wine bottle with the dismissal of a man who was finished with a conversation. Greene, however, didn’t get up.

“Something else?” Yuri demanded.

“You know there is.”

Yuri poured and swished his wine. His large face was flushing above his beard line—the wine was getting to him. I wondered if that would make him more or less agreeable.

“The fugitive, Yuri,” Greene said. “There’s a loose end running all over my city, and my people are coming up empty handed. Yesterday there was a murder-suicide in Forest Hill. Then a pair of burglaries in Weequahic. I can’t task my entire police force with chasing one accused murderer while crime is spilling into wealthier neighborhoods—my voting base. I need you to clean this up, like you promised.”

That final monologue broke the dam. One clenched fist struck the table, jarring wine glasses. The other two Russians sat rigid, eyes fixed on their boss. Yuri extended one thick finger at Greene.

“Don’t tell me what to clean up. It was never my idea to pin this vagrant for murder. That was your scheme. You should have let me bury him in the Meadowlands⁠—”

“Bodies have a way of resurfacing, Yuri.”

“And also of dropping!” Yuri snapped. “I’m down two men today, and I still don’t know why. Your roving loose end is on my hit list, but the list is growing long, Mr. Mayor, and my army is depleted. I will handle this in my own way. You take your money and leave, before I lose my temper.”

I thought he’d already lost his temper, but Greene didn’t argue further. He stood with a jolt, his head and shoulders rising out of my view. His body remained planted across the table from Yuri—the two men were staring each other down. A long moment passed.

“Tell me you have a panic button, Yuri. Tell me that if this spins out of control, you have a way to erase everything—and everyone.”

I waited for the demand to elicit a further outburst from the Russian, but this time, it didn’t. Yuri lifted his glass and took a very deep swallow. His lips glistened with wine as he lowered it again. He never blinked.

But he smiled.

“You’re dealing with Russians, Mr. Mayor. Erasing things is what we do.”

I still couldn’t see Greene’s face, but I knew he understood the promise as clearly as I did. His body tensed, just a little. The room remained frozen in silence. All three of the Russians stared.

Then the mayor reached for his own glass. He drained it. It landed with a smack. And he turned, vanishing from view in a clap of leather-soled shoes.

The moment the door closed Yuri snarled something in Russian—I assumed it to be a curse. He poured more wine and gulped. He snapped something at a compatriot, who answered with a shake of his head. I couldn’t understand a word of it, but I thought I detected a tone of suspended stress, previously masked in the mayor’s presence.

Yuri was strained about something, and I thought I could guess what. I remembered what he said about losing two men and not knowing why—I assumed those to be the two men I killed out in the Meadowlands while rescuing Marielis. That meant their bodies had been discovered. How long would it be before Yuri connected the dots? Before he linked the missing “vagrant” with dropping bodies.

Ready when you are, Yuri.

I placed hands on the ceiling joists and began inching my way backward, taking care not to rattle the plywood. Already I was thinking about my next step—about ways in which I could expose Greene and his cohort of purchased cops. Yuri would be easy to deal with once his cloak of governmental support was dismantled. Maybe I could break into Greene’s office, dig something incriminating out of a computer…

My thoughts cut short with the trill of a cell phone from below. I froze, then strained my neck to look back through the vent. I could barely see Yuri, but I knew it was him who answered the phone. His voice was rough and demanding as he barked a single word.

“Da?”

Long, dragging silence. Then Yuri spoke again, and this time there was euphoria in his voice. Even without understanding the meaning of the words, I instinctually knew, I didn’t like them.

“Atlitchno,” he said. “Privedi ikh syuda.”

He hung up and immediately stood. His men stood with him, and Yuri snapped a brief explanation for his call—also in Russian. All three men started for the door, and on their way, a blood-chilling sound carried through the vent.

The sharp snap of a pistol being racked.

39

The moment the door closed I was on the move, still careful to avoid any groans of old floor joists or rattles of loose plywood. For all I knew, another Russian remained in the room below—but I really didn’t think so. I thought Yuri was the boss, or at least the local boss, and he was on his way to button up a problem.

What problem?

Only one possibility came to mind, and it was a worst-case scenario. But how could that make sense? I’d done my part. I’d covered my bases. Marielis was safe with Ed.

I kept reinforcing my own story, but the nausea burning in my gut argued a different case. By the time I reached the little ladder and emerged through the hatch, I heard voices behind the restaurant.

Russians, grumbling and dark. Boots crunching. A cigarette lighter grinding, followed moments later by a scent of tobacco. I returned to my stomach, moving by inches to the rear parapet, then rising on my elbows to peer over it.

Yuri was there. His two lieutenants, both smoking, were there. The rest of the gravel lot was empty, except for the trio of black vehicles I’d noted before. Yuri was checking his watch, again. Spitting out of the side of his mouth. I didn’t see a pistol, but I noted a bulge beneath his jacket.

And then I saw headlights. Rolling down the street alongside the wireless retailer, churning up a cloud of dust as the vehicle turned onto gravel. It wasn’t a Lincoln, but it was the Cadillac equivalent—a bulky Escalade with tinted windows. It rolled toward the parked sedans, then the reverse light flashed on, and the wheels cut to one side.

The Escalade backed toward the waiting Russians, not stopping until its rear end was sheltered from view of the street, concealed behind the wireless retailer’s dumpster. I could see right down to the rear hatch—I read and memorized the license plate by default, even though I knew it didn’t really matter.

What was I gonna do? Call Faust and Hightower?

The Escalade stopped, but the engine rumbled on. The front doors popped open, and two guys got out. The first openly displayed a handgun. The driver, meanwhile, thumbed a key fob. The Escalade’s rear hatch beeped, then rose.

I held my breath, chest tightening, telling myself that I was not about to see what I knew I was about to see. Lying and trying to believe the lie. The hatch was halfway up, and I knew it would block my view of the cargo bay when it was fully opened, but that didn’t matter, because Yuri’s lieutenants were already bending in to haul something heavy out—two somethings.

Bodies.

First Marielis, then Ed. My fist clenched, and I bit back a curse as the two of them hit the gravel, bound hand and foot, and gagged. Marielis’s face was puffy from punches, and Ed’s face was coated in dried blood. One of his eyes was swollen nearly shut, and his left shoulder was twisted at an awkward angle.

He’d put up a fight—a good one. The mental image ignited a momentary flush of pride in my chest, but it was short lived, because the gravity of the situation was blatant. Both Marielis and Ed were still breathing, and I could think of only one reason why that made sense—they were about to be interrogated.

But how had they been found?

I couldn’t get over the question. I’d monitored my mirrors on the way to the shelter, taking my time. Nobody had followed us. Nobody should have had any idea where I stashed Marielis. How could they have possibly…

My thoughts broke short as one of Yuri’s men reached into the back of the Escalade for a third time. The last figure he produced wasn’t bound but scrambled out under some of his own power. Yuri’s man did the rest, throwing a scruffy little guy with tangled dreadlocks onto the gravel. He landed with a curse. Yuri’s man toed him. He stood and spun, his face flushed with anger.

And then I understood. I recognized him in an instant—he was one of Ellis’s pals, from the park. One of the homeless guys who’d barely talked…but he’d been listening. He knew exactly who I was. He probably guessed where I was going.

Then dialed up the Russians to make a deal.

I cursed myself and reached to the base of my spine for the concealed SIG. Even with the suppressor screwed in place the first shot would disclose my position to the five Russians below, at least one of which already held a drawn pistol.

I could shoot him first, then move down the line. Could I get them all before they returned fire?

Unlikely, but it might be my only choice. I thumbed the SIG’s hammer back and breathed deep to calm my body. Dreadlocks was busy cursing the Russians and shoving at the man who had dragged him out. He was demanding to see the boss, demanding to be paid. He didn’t seem to know who any of the men were and didn’t render Yuri any particular attention.

But Yuri stepped forward anyway. He bent his head and lit a cigarette. I held the SIG just beneath the wall and waited, not so much as twitching.

Then Yuri said: “Who else did you tell?”

I knew the guy’s fate was sealed the moment the question was asked, but Dreadlocks was a lot slower on the uptake. He responded with the worst possible answer.

“Nobody, man. Just you. Now where’s my money?”

Yuri inhaled deep. Breathed out through his nose, blasting Dreadlocks in the face and forcing him to turn his head away, coughing.

Then Yuri lifted his chin. Two of his lieutenants stepped forward without hesitation, and I wrapped my finger around the SIG’s trigger, waiting for any sign of a gun.

One Russian grabbed Dreadlocks by the arms, hauling him sideways and off balance. The second stepped behind him and I rose off the gravel as I realized what they were about to do—realized that a gun wouldn’t be involved.

But I was too late. Before Dreadlocks could even scream, one of the Russians grabbed him by the jaw and the back of the head and wrenched hard to the left. Dreadlock’s neck snapped with a gut-wrenching crunch. His eyes rolled back, and his body went instantly limp. Marielis screamed behind the tape wrapping her face. She kicked and thrashed sideways, fighting to escape as Dreadlock’s lifeless body landed in the back of the SUV.

She made it barely two feet before a boot slammed into her ribs. The air rushed from her nose. She convulsed. Ed threw his body sideways, like a flopping caterpillar, helpless to aid her but trying anyway. He was kicked also. The Russians were hauling Marielis to her feet, propelling her body toward Yuri.

Enough.

I pushed off the concrete with teeth gritted, sweeping the pistol toward the parking lot. Leaning ahead, planting my knee into the roof, reaching for the trigger just as Yuri ripped the tape from Marielis’s face.

Then two things happened in sequence, one after the other like toppling dominos. First, my right knee landed on the roof right at the base of the ladder—and it didn’t stop. The soft spot I’d felt when I first arrived collapsed beneath my bodyweight in a shower of loose gravel and rotten wood. I tumbled forward, popping off a shot that I already knew would miss just as the second domino fell—not a shot or a movement, but a desperate scream from Marielis.

“Mason! Help me!”

She shouted. I continued to tumble and flailed for the parapet. The Russians behind the building vanished from view as a thunder of collapsing wood exploded from beneath me.

Then I was falling—straight through the roof, into the crawlspace. Landing on dry sheetrock that was every bit as brittle as I imagined…

And punching straight through, into the bear’s lair.

40

Ilanded on the hardwood flooring of the same room where Yuri had met with Mayor Greene barely ten minutes prior. I didn’t punch through that floor, which was better for my health but maybe not better for my overall predicament.

Because now the enemy knew they had an intruder, they knew where that intruder was, and I had no direct way to engage them.

I rolled onto my side, choking on insulation dust and still clinging to the SIG. The room was bigger than I expected, filling most of the building’s total footprint. There was a sitting room and a minibar beyond the dining table—a full Hollywood gangster’s movie set, complete with a bearskin rug and an actual human skull resting next to an assortment of liquor decanters.

I saw it all, and then I heard the voices. They sounded from the floor below, and then heavy boots were pounding up wood steps. I rolled to my feet and scrambled to the left, sliding into cover behind the end of the minibar only a moment before the door exploded open.

They rolled in like a herd of charging bulls, like a battalion of main battle tanks. Wood splintered even as Marielis screamed from outside. I heard her through the hole in the ceiling, but I was distracted by the sweep of sub machine gun muzzles affixed with suppressors, a field of gaping mouths searching the upstairs room for any sign of the intruder. There were three men, and one looked to the hole while the others kept their attention on the room around them, searching both left and right.

Good tactics—an organized assault. But not enough to stop the snap of my captured SIG Sauer Legion.

I unleashed a 9mm slug across hardwood and punched a perfectly round hole straight between the eyes of the guy nearest to my position. The gunshot wasn’t loud—not by handgun standards, and certainly not considering the enclosed environment. But it was a heck of a lot louder than the soft pfft of suppressed handguns in Hollywood movies, and more than enough to blow my cover. The first Russian was dead before he hit the floor, but he took time to tumble. The leader, still looking at the hole in the ceiling, was closest to swinging his weapon on me, and swiftly executed on the opportunity.

But he didn’t make it. I exploded out of cover, firing two-handed as I advanced across a floor growing slick with blood. Two shots to the leader, nailing him in the throat and face. Swinging left and still firing even as the third guy wised up and dove for cover behind a couch. I caught him in the torso and the leg. He screamed and kicked. I knew he would roll and bring his sub gun to bear on me, shooting straight through the couch.

I didn’t give him time. I cleared the bearskin rug and orbited the couch, driving my own bullets through velvet and stuffing and not stopping until I was on top of him—until I was dumping lead into his gut, his chest, his face. The body lay still. My pistol locked back over an empty magazine, smoke pouring from both the muzzle and the exposed chamber. I tasted its sour flavor on my lips—I tasted blood on the air.

And from the hole in the ceiling, I heard a heavy engine roar.

Marielis. Ed.

I dropped the SIG without concern for the fingerprints left on its grip—I didn’t have time to be concerned. I snatched up the nearest submachine gun from the lifeless hands of my first target. It was an HK UMP chambered in 9mm—iron sights, a folding stock, and a vertical foregrip. Another nice gun, and not easy to find in America. The selector switch was set to full auto, but I flicked it back to semi-auto on my way to the breached door.

I only had thirty rounds. I didn’t have time to scavenge for more. I had no idea how many more people I’d need to shoot before sunrise.

The door opened into a short hallway with stairs on my right. From beneath me I detected the distant clamor of a commercial kitchen—pots, pans, shouting voices—an entire ecosystem apparently oblivious to the bloodshed only a few walls away. Sixteen narrow steps later and I reached the entry to another hallway.

To my left stood a closed door with a porthole window looking into the kitchen. White hats, smoking flat top grills, and a bustling staff. To my right the hall ran another ten feet before reaching another door that stood open. It was the rear exit of the building, and I saw gravel beyond, the bumper of a black sedan—then a flash of movement.

I retreated into the stairwell just in time to avoid a burst of UMP fire, suppressed but still barking, hurling copper-jacketed lead across the tile and into dry wall. Dust exploded into my face, leaving me choking. I slammed my own UMP into my shoulder and attempted to lean out—the next burst of fire drove me back into cover.

Then I detected a change in the voices from the kitchen to my left. Confused shouts—barked orders in an angry Russian voice. More heavy footfalls.

It was a pincer movement, an ambush. Mobsters on both sides, time running out, and Marielis and Ed vanishing into the morass of Newark with every passing second.

No way.

I flicked back to full auto, ignoring my limited ammo supply, and barged out of the stairwell like I was made of solid titanium. Swinging to my right and turning my back to the kitchen door, I zeroed on the space just outside where I had first detected movement and I dumped fire. I ran. I crossed the ten feet and reached the door, spraying empty brass against the walls and exploding into the gravel lot exactly like the main battle tanks I’d left dead on the second floor.

A scream tore the night. A body tumbled sideways just as I orbited a corner. Behind me a shout rang down the hall and a suppressed pistol snapped. Bullets whizzed over the lot, but I was already outside, already swerving out of line with the hallway, and I wasn’t stopping for anything. There was one guy lying sideways in the dirt, scrambling backward and fighting to pull the charging handle on his UMP with only one hand. He got it halfway back and then I shot him in the chest, a blast of four rounds that finished out my magazine.

Then I was hitting my own knees just as the guy from the kitchen reached the door. His muzzle appeared first—I dropped my UMP and snatched up a replacement from the hands of the guy I’d just shot. I pulled the bolt. The newcomer exploded through the door, sweeping first right, then swinging left…

Then he caught a three-round burst, straight to center-mass. He jerked and stumbled, eyes growing wide. His mouth fell open, and his arms dropped. His body was dropping also, but I wasn’t waiting for that. I was already digging through the pockets of the corpse at my feet, searching for keys. I found a Mercedes key fob and mashed the lock button to identify a jet-black E-Class sedan.

Then I was sprinting for the driver’s door—hot on the heels of Marielis and Ed’s kidnappers.

41

The sedan was dirty on the inside, covered in dust with fast food trash littering the floorboards and the smell of the same clouding the air. The seat—mercifully—was already rolled back to admit an oversized Russian. The turbocharged engine ignited with a push of a button, and one flick of the gear selector stalk protruding from the steering column put me into drive.

Then I was slamming on the gas, throwing gravel and heading for the street. I hooked a hard right onto the asphalt, blowing through a stop sign and hesitating only a moment before I turned left—east, away from downtown, deeper into Ironbound.

It wasn’t a guaranteed good idea. For all I knew, Yuri and his surviving soldiers had opted to return to the Meadowlands to complete their original plan of burying Marielis in the muck, this time alongside Ed and Dreadlocks. If so, I was headed directly away from them.

But I didn’t think they would return to the Meadowlands—not after two Russian bodies had been discovered in Mill Creek Marsh. It was a needless exposure, and besides, the Meadowlands were miles away.

No, if I was in Yuri’s boots and I had three bodies to dump as soon as humanly possible, I wasn’t headed out of the city, I was headed deeper into it. Across the heart of Ironbound to the waterfront, where the Russian’s sweatshop operation offered infrastructure for whatever murderous methods they had in mind. Away from downtown, away from the police sirens I could already hear racing toward the Яed Autumn Steakhouse and the exposure they promised.

Into the dark—exactly where I would meet them with overwhelming force.

I hit Ferry Street with a scream of all-wheel drive tires and planted my foot into the accelerator. Whatever powerplant was parked beneath the Mercedes hood, it wasn’t a big one, but in the hyper-efficient style of German engineering, it didn’t fail to deliver. The turbo kicked in and the car launched ahead of intersecting traffic, horns blaring even as the dash-mounted touchscreen displayed a sprawling map view of Newark.

Ferry Street ran southeast for half a dozen blocks before intersecting with Wilson Avenue and subsequently turning into the East Ferry district. That was close to the water, but not close to the factory, and with a thousand possibilities of where my target could be going, I knew that sticking to my original theory on their destination was by far my best chance of striking gold.

So I didn’t follow Ferry Street past Wilson—I hooked a hard right at Van Buren, a one-way that cut between two-story residences, discount retail stores, and a lot of cars parked along the curb. It was dark, the Mercedes headlights bouncing with every dip in the asphalt, and I laid on the horn as I approached a glaring red traffic light over the Lafayette Street intersection.

I didn’t have time to stop. I barely had time to pray. I exploded across the path of an oncoming bread truck, a horn blaring as the Mercedes caught air over Lafayette’s road crown.

Then I was slamming to earth again. My teeth crunched. I raced back onto Van Buren, twisting the wheel to clear stacked trash cans. Darkened windows flashed past, a pair of smoking teenagers shouting and jumping back from the street as the racing black missile of the E-Class cut within a yard of their position.

I cleared Elm Street. I cut a left on Walnut, tires sliding and another horn blaring. I was still routing via the digital map on the Mercedes infotainment system, and I identified my final turn as displayed by a dirty green sign.

Pulaski Street.

The street where Marielis used to walk home. Where she first met Vinny. Where I pounded Faust and Hightower. Where it all began, then spilled out of control. The most direct avenue from the heart of Ironbound to the forced labor factory near the water.

I made the turn with a grind of brakes and more howling rubber. Smoke filled my rearview mirror. I nearly slid into the far sidewalk, correcting just in time and punching the accelerator again. The German turbocharger surged, planting my spine against the seat back. I clung to the wheel and rushed back to sixty miles per hour. I was looking ahead, blowing past block after block of two-story houses, tangled power lines, compact barbershops and grubby little sandwich dives that served incredible sausage and pepper subs.

And then I saw the taillights. Two of them, bright and bold and bouncing a little as the heavy vehicle they were mounted to crossed a dip in the road. They were two hundred yards away, blurring through my windshield.

Four seconds later, though, I’d cut that distance in half. Two seconds after that those bouncing taillights dipped toward the pavement as the driver of that heavy vehicle dumped on the gas, exploding past the speed limit and barreling straight through another red light.

But it didn’t matter. It was already too late for him—I’d already identified the make and model of that jet black blob.

It was a Cadillac Escalade, and the moment I recognized it, I floored the E-Class.

42

Iexpected police interference—I just didn’t expect it so soon. Within seconds of my identification of the Escalade a flash of blue lights in my rearview mirror signaled the arrival of the Newark PD, which I assumed meant the arrival of corrupt elements of the Newark PD. Specifically, those bought and paid for by Yuri and his goons, now deployed to get me off his tail.

Why should the Russians gun me down when underlings could do it for them?

But I wasn’t being gunned down—not but Russian mobsters, not by Faust and Hightower, not by anybody. Even as the Escalade hooked a hard left turn onto Oliver Street and the Newark cruiser accelerated from a half mile behind, I was ready. I pushed the E-Class to its limit, enjoying a rush of turbocharged power. My shoulder blades slammed into my seat back. I held the gas against the floor all the way to the Pulaski/Oliver intersection where the Escalade had disappeared. I saw a green light switching to red, a homeless guy with a shopping cart scurrying for cover, and two street cats vanishing into a storm drain.

Then, finally, I slammed on the brakes. I wrenched the wheel and threw out the Mercedes’s back end, launching into a slide that carried me right over the white line while turning me ninety degrees. I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt and my body slammed against the console. I clung to the wheel with both hands and released the brake—one punch of the accelerator broke the slide, and then I was going again.

Engine roaring. Tires smoking. Lights and sidewalks and street signs blurring together as I fixated on that Escalade. It was barely a block ahead now, and I was gaining ground. I made out its license plate—the same license plate I’d memorized from the roof of the steakhouse. I recognized the possibility of a shooter taking position behind tinted rear glass, and I shrank a little lower behind the steering wheel.

But no. It wouldn’t go down like that. These guys didn’t want to shoot me—didn’t want to create a messy scene that guys like Faust and Hightower would struggle to sweep under a departmental rug. The Russians only wanted to hold me off long enough for the cops to get ahead of me, throw down a spike strip, and maybe do some shooting of their own while the mobsters escaped.

I was running out of time, but I still had a trick up my sleeve. I knew that Oliver Street was short, and that Elm Road capped it at an angle. Turning left would require the Escalade to decrease speed. Turning right would be much easier, much faster—but Elm Road is a one-way, and turning right would be turning against the flow of traffic.

Bottom line: one way or another, that Escalade was about to slow way down.

My body relaxed as I prepared to execute on either move. The Escalade was almost to the end of Oliver Street, and as predicted, it was slowing. The driver was hesitating, confused and unsure. I swept my left hand to the headlight control switch and flicked on my high beams just to add to the chaos. Piercing LED light consumed his mirrors, reflecting in his face. The Escalade snatched left, but I didn’t buy it—he was still moving too fast to negotiate a switchback turn. I braced myself for a reverse of direction, and I was right.

The Escalade hit Elm at an angle, hopping the curb and bouncing over a manhole cover before settling into the middle of the road, pointed against the flow of traffic. I knew it hadn’t been a planned maneuver, because only a second before I reached the same intersection I heard a horn blasting. Brakes squealing. The Escalade’s engine surging.

Then I was making the same turn. I found the Escalade barely fifty yards ahead, barging through a slot between an oncoming sedan and the minivan parked on the left side of the road. Metal scraped and the Escalade’s lefthand mirror tore off—the minivan lost its driver’s side window in a cascade of rupturing glass. The oncoming sedan honked and spun toward the curb.

I just flattened the accelerator, driving for the gap and content to allow the Escalade to do the dirty work. I knew that Elm Road terminated in a six-point intersection with a massive patch of asphalt spread across the middle. It was another point of decision, another space for the Escalade’s driver to hesitate, maybe snatch an impulsive turn.

More than that, it was a place for cops to gather, ready to block our advance. In mere minutes I might be out of both time and options. My only hope of surviving arrest was to rescue Marielis and Ed first—proof of the spider’s web I had tangled with, and all the real villains at play.

I needed a break. I needed a trump card. What I had was an HK UMP loaded with twenty-something rounds of nine-millimeter.

Light ‘em up.

I hit the Mercedes’s window switch and the glass glided down. I found the UMP with my right hand and flicked the selector to full auto, then passed the weapon to my left hand. The muzzle rested over the Mercedes sideview mirror, the buttstock braced over my left forearm. I trailed the Escalade by thirty yards as icy cool New Jersey wind ripped through my window. It stung my lungs, stung my eyes. I rammed my left foot into the driver’s footwell, pinning my hips against the seat and steadying my body. I dropped the muzzle a few degrees, aiming well below the Escalade’s rear hatch and the precious cargo it shielded. Down to the asphalt and those spinning rear tires. I punched the accelerator to close another five yards.

Then I opened fire.

43

We reached the terminus of Elm Road just as I dumped twenty rounds of racing hot 9mm over the blacktop and beneath the Escalade’s gleaming chrome bumper.

A fire station passed on our right. More houses on our left. A huge patch of asphalt lay dead ahead with five additional streets shooting off in various directions—like the nucleus of a planned neighborhood. Streetlights gleamed over black paint and the UMP in my left hand snarled like a fire-breathing dragon, spewing hot brass casings straight into my lap and across the console as I swept the muzzle in one planned pass.

Sparks as copper-jacketed slugs skipped off the pavement. A bullet ricocheted and whined past my window. Then the first tire blew—not with a pop or a hiss but a bang. Rubber exploded and the back left corner of the Escalade dropped. The rim shrieked as it met the asphalt, then it bounced back off it. The vehicle jerked and entered the intersection. The second tire blew—a quieter sound but a more violent jerk. The Escalade’s driver lost control of the SUV’s back end, and it began fishtailing. It swung sideways, losing speed and hopping toward the middle of the intersection, looking like it might roll.

I evaluated for only a moment, weighing the odds of busting my own head versus missing my target altogether and then watching it limp away on rims while the cops swept in like diving falcons. I could hear them from not far away, twice as many sirens as before and every one of them bearing right toward us.

Maybe they were being directed by somebody in that Escalade —Yuri, perhaps, with a cell phone that would contain a call log, or better yet, text messages. Real, final proof.

It was worth the risk. I slammed on the accelerator.

The E-Class reached the intersection at a blazing forty miles per hour just as the Escalade’s driver fought to turn out of my path—a last, desperate attempt. He swung the SUV’s nose to the left, both back wheels spitting sparks even as they slid sideways on the asphalt. The hopping I’d observed before increased, the top-heavy vehicle rising off its driver’s side suspension. I raced within twenty yards—ten.

Then I flicked the steering wheel to the left. I swung to the Escalade’s driver’s side just as it reached the middle of that asphalt patch. I measured the passage of time by the thunder of my own heart in my ears—two beats stacked dead on top of each other.

Then I jerked the wheel right again, just as I passed the Escalade’s rear bumper. The E-Class responded on command, and I slammed into the SUV with something a lot less like a pit maneuver and much closer to a roundhouse kick from Bruce Lee.

Metal met metal, and my air bag detonated—it hit me right in the face even as the of the force of the collision drove me into the seat back. With my foot still smashing on the accelerator, the Mercedes struck its target and just kept driving, shoving the Escalade sideways and finalizing its roll.

The oversized vehicle landed on its side. More glass exploded. My speed vanished and I struck the airbag again, this time in my chest. Air vacated my lungs and the Mercedes itself went sideways, my door crashing against the Escalade’s chassis as the smell of raw gasoline and hot oil and so much burning rubber nearly suffocated me.

I couldn’t see—my brain buzzed, and my hands felt a little numb. I clawed the bag away and shook my head to clear it, looking into a rearview mirror that danced and bobbed right before my eyes. Both engines had stopped—all I could hear was the persistent ringing of my own ears.

And sirens.

They sounded ironically quieter than they had only moments before, but that had to be because I was stunned. I knew the cops must actually be much closer, maybe only seconds away. They would take the intersection from all sides, establishing an instant perimeter with guns drawn.

I had until then to save Marielis and Ed.

I clawed my way out from behind the airbag and into the passenger seat even as I fought to recover my air. I reached the door and slammed my shoulder into it, fighting to get it open. I ran my left hand along the glove box, searching for a button or a lever and praying to hit the jackpot.

It was a reasonable bet—if there’s one population on Planet Earth that is more likely to keep a handgun in their glovebox than Southern rednecks, it’s European mobsters. The box fell open, and I jammed my hand into the dark.

I hit pay dirt. It was 1911 pistol—something custom with a polished slide and a lot of fancy engraving that I couldn’t care less about. I could tell by its weight that the weapon was loaded, and I worked the slide for good measure. A bullet slammed into the chamber. I got both feet on the pavement and hauled myself out of the Mercedes, turning over its roof.

Only just in time. The burst of handgun fire rang from beyond the overturned Escalade’s nose—likely where the driver or some other occupants had already escaped through a ruptured windshield. I fired back, avoiding the rear of the Escalade where Ed and Marielis must be huddled and focusing instead on enemy muzzle flash. Moving left to keep my body from becoming a static bullseye—leaning low to minimize my profile. My head still buzzed, but these actions weren’t things I needed to consider or plan. This was all muscle memory, compliments of the United States Army’s famed 75th Ranger Regiment. My body knew exactly what it needed to do and even with a buzzing brain and lungs still fighting for air, I executed. I moved to the Mercedes’s trunk, changing my angle of attack all while driving my enemy into cover. Pausing for just a beat—just long enough for a desperate mobster to think that maybe I had run out of ammo.

Right on cue, the Russian appeared, leaning over the Mercedes’s roof to open fire on where I had stood only seconds before. I was no longer there—I was now in his blind spot, and I shot him through the chest. The body pitched sideways, and already I was on the move again. Circling the Escalade’s nose and looking through its busted windshield, I searched for Yuri or another of his lieutenants. I detected a shadow to my left and swept in that direction just in time to see two men fleeing up Gothardt Street—already out of handgun range. A pair of Newark police cruisers screamed down the same street in the opposite direction, but they didn’t even pause as they blasted past the escaping Russians.

I was out of time. There were NPD Explorers blazing toward me from every direction with only seconds remaining until, guns drawn, they demanded my surrender or terminated my life. Chasing the two surviving Russians was a non-option—I only had barely enough time to answer the question of whether my rescue mission had backfired into a body recovery mission.

I circled to the back of the Escalade. Turned the gun in my hand and slammed the butt into the back glass, as hard as I could. It shattered into a cascade of tinted cubes, exposing a cargo cavity turned on its side, with three bodies tangled over a busted passenger’s side window.

Dreadlocks. Marielis. Ed. And the last two, though stunned and bleeding, were alive.

I met Ed’s gaze. Still gasping for air, I lowered the pistol, then offered a sheepish smile. I wasn’t sure why—what else was I going to do?

Behind, tires squealed and a spotlight blazed. A voice blaring through a loudspeaker commanded me to drop my weapon.

I complied. The 1911 clattered to the street, and I turned, both hands raised.

44

It wasn’t Faust or Hightower that arrested me, but that didn’t much matter. With two wrecked cars, one dead Russian, one dead homeless guy with dreadlocks, and brass casings everywhere, nobody wearing a badge was much concerned with what my story was or who was to blame for the mess.

They just wanted to secure the scene, as quickly as humanly possible. They wanted every gun collected, every potential belligerent handcuffed and locked in the back of a squad car. Actually, it was a nice bit of police work, organized and calm. I couldn’t help but think that most of these guys couldn’t be bad apples, because they obviously cared about the quality of their work. They cared about their city.

And yet two Russians—Yuri presumably being one of them—had been allowed to escape.

Somebody was dirty.

Secured in the back of an Explorer, I sat without comment or complaint for nearly fifteen minutes while additional cops arrived and the survivors were sorted. Marielis and Ed were handcuffed, same as me, and secured in separate vehicles—but that wouldn’t last long. Neither one of them had done anything wrong or been framed for doing anything wrong. After receiving medical care and giving their statements, they would be released. At most, they might be held overnight.

My situation, by contrast, was much bleaker. I was wanted by the police, and even though I hadn’t killed Vinny, I had evaded arrest and most recently gunned down a series of Russian mobsters who were on great terms with Mayor Greene himself. Without a lot of careful maneuvering on my part, and no small amount of what Ed called “providential arrangement”, I was finished. I would never see the outside of a jail again.

And that was if I was lucky enough not to be shanked sometime in the next twenty-four hours.

Focus, Mason. You know the truth. One step at a time.

With the crash scene secured and criminalists on site to collect evidence, two cops returned to the Explorer I was secured in, and got into the front seat without comment. Both doors slammed—one of them looked into the rearview mirror and eyeballed me, but didn’t say a word. He didn’t Mirandize me.

I thought it was a bad sign.

45

The cops drove me first to the 3rd Precinct Newark Police Department station, where I was searched, fingerprinted, and photographed before being locked into a holding cell for something like ninety minutes.

I couldn’t be sure of the exact time—they took my wristwatch. In fact, they took everything, leaving me in an ill-fitting jumpsuit that smelled of other men’s sweat. The provided shoes were foam flipflops. The cell didn’t have a bed or chairs, just a toilet.

So, I leaned against the wall, silent, and waited. They hadn’t asked me any questions, and they still hadn’t Mirandized me—again, more bad signs. From the bullpen down the hall, I detected a buzz of activity that I interpreted as fallout from the car wreck/gun battle off Elm Road, but none of the voices were clear enough for me to determine whether Yuri had been caught, or what had become of Marielis and Ed.

Probably, they were being held at this same facility. Maybe in an interview room, where some veteran sergeant with an easy-going demeanor disarmed their concerns of being charged, and collected their statements. That was how I would play it, if I were in the shoes of the Newark PD. Back in Phoenix, I kept a veteran sergeant with an easygoing demeanor on standby for just such occasions. Whatever Ed and Marielis said could only serve to exonerate me, at least in terms of the car chase and subsequent shootout. Both were justified.

But that wouldn’t help me with Vinny’s murder charge, and the very nature of my escort to the precinct told me that nobody on the front lines had been authorized to handle my case directly. Pretty soon, I expected to be moved.

And then to meet the big guns.

I was right on both counts. The same pair of Newark cops who originally took me into custody returned to the holding cell, shackled my ankles one to another and my hands to a chain around my waist, and took me to the back of the same Ford Explorer. We drove eight minutes south and then east, out of Ironbound and into the riverside district not far from where I’d jumped into the Newark Bay after interrogating Dimitri. Only this time, I knew an encore escape performance wouldn’t be an option. I wasn’t being transferred to another precinct holding cell.

This was the Essex County Correctional Facility—a sprawling county jail fully equipped with high fences, concertina wire, and very few windows. I’d seen it all before back in Arizona, and I knew exactly what to expect inside. I knew how to handle it, also.

But my stomach still tightened as the Explorer rolled through the gate and a voice in the back of my head whispered: Maybe you never come out.

Another processing center, another body search. Then I was frog-marched down an industrial hallway lined by cameras and secure-access doors with reinforced glass. I thought they might take me to another cell, hopefully one with someplace for me to stretch out and catch up on some much-needed sleep. It wouldn’t be easy to rest, but it would be much harder to confront this situation with a tired mind.

I wasn’t taken to a cell, however. I was taken to an interview room. Blank walls, a steel table and a camera in the corner with a blinking red light. A two-way mirror and no windows, along with a smell like a high school gym from the wrong side of the train tracks.

All the stereotypes, all the cliches. I was marched to the far side of the table and directed to sit. Then the Newark cops, still not Mirandizing or addressing me, locked my handcuffs through a ring on the table. They left me, and the door smacking closed.

I slumped into the chair, flexing my neck to fight cramping muscles. Once again, I had a pretty good idea what came next, and it irritated me—not because waiting intimidated me, but because the chair was hard and the table cold.

But this time I was wrong. The Newark police didn’t keep me waiting. A middle-aged sergeant—not at all easy-going—barged in barely five minutes later and dropped a worn leather portfolio on the table with a sound like a gunshot. He scraped a chair back and slurped coffee—he did not offer me any. He didn’t look me in the eyes, either. He shuffled through paperwork, taking his time. Circling something. Finally glancing my way, then jotting a note with a knowing grunt.

Very probably, he was doing a lot of nothing—trying to amp me up. Make me speak first. Break my nerve.

I’d used the same tactics as a homicide detective and wasn’t impressed by the attempt. If he’d run my background he should have known who I was and attempted a more nuanced approach—maybe a professional introduction. An appearance of confusion, of uncertainty. A “one cop to another, help me out here” kind of angle.

Not that I would have fallen for that either, but I would have at least respected it.

“Mason Lewis Sharpe?” the guy said.

I didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to care. Without any change in tone, he finally Mirandized me—again, I didn’t answer.

“All right,” the cop said, finally look up from his pad. “So, let’s get a few things clear and see if you want to rethink the silent approach. My name is Detective Sully, and I’ve got you on murder one, slam dunk. Bloody knife, fingerprints, witness statements, everything. You can pitch the DA for a plea deal or go to trial and hang yourself with your own noose—I couldn’t care less either way, my job is done. What I’m here about tonight is the business on Elm Road. Multiple bodies, lots of bullet casings, with more back on Ferry Street at the Яed Autumn Steakhouse where we already know you jacked that Mercedes. So that’s at least four, maybe six or seven additional murder counts headed your way.”

Sully dipped his chin and lifted his eyebrows. He seemed to be waiting for me to respond, maybe to refute the accusations.

No way, officer. You’ve got it all wrong. Let me explain.

I wasn’t nearly so stupid. This guy had already bragged about burying me for a murder I didn’t commit—why should I think he wouldn’t happily put me away for half a dozen more contrived charges? Especially if he, like Faust and Hightower, was paid under the table by big men who drank strong vodka.

So I said nothing. I just stared.

“You really just gonna accept that?” Sully said.

Still, I didn’t answer. His jaw tightened.

“Listen to me,” he said, his voice suddenly dropping. “I don’t know what you think this is, but I promise you, you’re missing the full picture. That steakhouse on Ferry? Maybe you know who owns it. Maybe you know what kind of people they are. You were never transferred to a regular cell because half the inmates in this facility would jump at the chance to make friends with those guys. Your body, cold and lifeless and totally unable to take the witness stand, would be a favorable offering. Do you understand me? If I put you in there, you’re history.”

I smirked—I couldn’t help it. Maybe it was arrogance or maybe I was just blown away by how overtly transparent Sully’s tactics were. Whatever the case, he didn’t like the look. His teeth clenched.

“Don’t believe me?” he challenged.

“Where is Marielis Cedeño?” I said.

“What?”

“Edward Clark. Where is he?”

The guy leaned back. Folded his arms and seemed to be thinking. It wasn’t quite the response I expected. I interlaced the fingers of my cuffed hands.

“They were kidnapped. I rescued them. The men who own that steakhouse are running a forced-labor operation on Yellow Street near the wharf. Eighty imprisoned immigrants, all undocumented. Some very powerful people who work for both the city and this police department are involved. If you doubt me, just ask Marielis. She’s been enslaved by these thugs for fifteen months.”

The words hit him, and I watched his eyes. Unblinking, fixated on me, and never averting. He was frozen in place, like a statue.

Something I’d said had hit him—I didn’t know what, and there was no way to be sure whether his reaction was a good sign or a bad one. He could be shocked at the story. He could simply be alarmed at how much I knew about an operation he was already involved in. Whatever the case, I didn’t have a chance to find out. Knuckles rang on the back side of the two-way mirror before Sully could select an answer. His gaze snapped toward the reflective glass—not like he could see anything.

Then he stood. He took the portfolio and left the room without ever looking my way again. I was alone for maybe twenty seconds before the door opened a second time.

The guy who walked in was average height, average build, average middle-America Caucasian appearance. His suit was black and unmarked. He didn’t wear any badge, name card, or embroidered departmental seal.

But I knew exactly what he was the moment our gazes met. It radiated from his every movement, his entire aura. I’d seen a few hundred of his kind in my time, maybe over a thousand. Different bosses and different titles and different missions—but always the same flavor, the same spirit.

He was a fed. He pulled Sully’s vacated chair back and sat without a word, never breaking eye contact. One leg crossed over the other, his left hand contacting the tabletop with one finger tapping. One vein pulsating in his temple. His relaxed posture seemed forced, and when he finally spoke, the tension in his tone gave the whole game away.

“You have no idea what you’ve stumbled into.”

46

His name was Dean Champin, and he was ATF—the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, although in my experience the A and T part took a major back seat to the F category. This was the twenty-first century, and the days of rum runners were history. Anyone could smoke.

But bullets and explosives are more of a problem than ever before, depending on your perspective and politics. Certainly, fully automatic HK UMP submachine guns on the streets of a major American city would draw the ire of most law enforcement.

I connected the dots, and I realized I should have expected the ATF to be involved. They’d likely been involved long before I bumbled into the shelter, three months prior—then bumbled straight into the heart of their investigation.

“Yuri Gorbachev,” Champin said. “No relation to the Soviet politician. He’s thirty-eight years old and the captain of all Russian mob presence in north New Jersey. That steakhouse you barged into is his headquarters—or it used to be, anyway. Now it’s the headquarters of the largest Newark homicide investigation in recent memory, and that, my friend, is a huge problem for me.”

Champin hadn’t repeated my Miranda rights before launching into his spiel. He hadn’t asked if I wanted an attorney or set the stage for his interrogation with preliminary questions. In fact, none of this approach reflected the practice of a seasoned investigator, which meant that Champin was either incompetent…

Or his back was against wall, and he was slashing red tape. Maybe both.

“So you work for him?” I said, my tone semi-sarcastic. “Yuri Gorbachev, that is.”

A snort. Champin understood the jab but didn’t seem insulted by it. He uncrossed his legs and produced a cell phone from his interior jacket pocket.

“No, I don’t. But until tonight, I thought you did.”

He unlocked the phone and opened a photo application. Without ceremony he slapped the device onto the table, and I looked to the screen. Squinted, swiped, squinted harder.

It was me—they were all photographs of me. Taken at a distance with a high-powered zoom lens. The images depicted me on Garden Street at Marielis’s old apartment. They showed me behind the wheel of a captured Lincoln Navigator, driving across downtown. They showed me approaching the Яed Autumn Steakhouse, stooped with my face pointed to the ground.

All points of connection with Yuri’s outfit, I realized. Like lines of Scripture snatched out of context, one of Ed’s greatest pet peeves.

I looked up. “Seriously?”

“Seriously, what?”

I didn’t answer. My mind spun. I couldn’t decide what to think—whether I was more confused about Champin believing that I worked for Yuri, or by the fact that he’d somehow followed me for most of the past two days, presumably knowing I was wanted by the Newark PD…and yet he hadn’t arrested me.

There was only one logical explanation, I decided. Champin hadn’t been following me at all. He’d been surveying the Garden Street address and the Яed Autumn Steakhouse. Maybe he’d tagged the license plate on that Navigator and pulled my photo from a traffic cam. Now that I thought about it, the windshield shots did kind of look like toll booth photos, and there were so many toll booths in New Jersey that I’d learned to ignore them.

No, this wasn’t about me at all. Champin’s notice of my activity was just an accident, maybe a sideshow.

Until tonight.

I remembered Champin’s words, and I thought they made sense.

“You’re investigating Yuri’s outfit for gunrunning,” I said. “Automatic weapons, illegally possessed, and likely being imported from overseas. You were surveying these addresses and didn’t know who I was—just a random newcomer you couldn’t explain, which led you to believe that I might be part of the gunrunning operation. Until tonight, anyway.”

I looked up from the phone. I waited for Champin to acknowledge my hypothesis, or maybe to correct it. He didn’t. He just stared and his jaw clenched. I thought he looked like an overworked mule pushed and pushed and about to kick.

“You were there tonight, watching Яed Autumn,” I said. “That’s how you knew about the gunfight and the resulting car chase. When I was arrested by the Newark PD you obtained my file. You learned that I am an ex-Army Ranger and an ex-cop, and suddenly your whole theory about me being involved in a gun running operation felt tenuous. Then you talked to Marielis, and you talked to Ed, or you had Newark cops talk to them, and you learned about the shelter. You learned about Vinny and my outstanding charges. Now you’re so confused you don’t know which way is up, and also, you’re good and pissed off because the Russian operation has been turned upside down, which means your investigation has been turned over with it. Maybe you’ve got some ornery boss in DC who is cussing you out, because you were supposed to have this thing done—buttoned up and finished. Instead, CNN will be reporting a mass shooting involving automatic weapons tomorrow morning. A news story which could very easily lead to your early and permanent retirement. Did I miss anything?”

I hadn’t. I saw the truth in Champin’s flaming eyes, and half expected him to lurch across the table at me. He seemed like he might be that kind of man.

But Champin didn’t move or speak, and I pushed the phone back, reviewing my every collision with Yuri’s gang and remembering what I’d encountered. What I’d observed. What I’d learned.

Specifically, I thought of the firearms I’d witnessed—a smorgasbord of expensive, even flashy weapons ranging from out-of-the-box HKs to a customized 1911. At first glance, it felt like damning evidence of gunrunners at work.

But it wasn’t. Actually, it was the opposite. Because if Yuri’s crew were running a major firearms trade, most of their gear would likely be uniform, even utilitarian. Skimmed from larger shipments headed to cash-paying customers. The elite, curated collected I’d found instead made me think they weren’t the middlemen at all, but the end users. They were ordering specific weapons based on specific, elite tastes.

Just like their taste in vehicles—Lincolns, Cadillacs, BMWs, and Mercedes. Top end rides for top end criminals. Their money originated elsewhere.

That was my theory, anyway. Maybe I was wrong. The truth was, it didn’t matter either way. Not now.

“You’re chasing the wrong rabbit,” I said. “Yuri isn’t running guns—not as his primary business, anyway. The heart of his operations involves a sweatshop on Yellow Street—that’s the eighty enslaved migrants I told Sully about. Marielis was one of them and she can give you the details. They’re running sewing machines, manufacturing goods without labor cost. Mayor Greene is in on it—you need to call the FBI.”

I waited for a response, but Champin said nothing. I lifted my eyebrows. His jaw worked as though he were chewing gum, but only his teeth clicked.

“Did you hear me?” I said.

“Who do you work for?” Champin said.

“What?”

“Who do you work for?”

Each word was emphasized, spoken through his teeth. I squinted, semi-confused but mostly just caught in disbelief.

“The shelter,” I snapped. “Did you not hear me? There’s a mass slavery operation operating under your nose. Here, on US soil. The mayor of a major American city is involved. This is way bigger than some petty gun smuggling⁠—”

“You don’t think I know about the factory?” Champin cut in. “It’s a legit commercial enterprise, documented and approved. Every one of those migrants possess work authorization—visas or Green Cards. They might work cheap, but they don’t work free, because there’s no money in T-shirts. There’s money in guns, funneled through a legit enterprise⁠—”

“It’s not legit,” I cut him off. “It’s being covered for by Mayor Greene. All that documentation you saw was cooked. I watched the mayor in a meeting with Yuri earlier tonight. Didn’t you see him enter the steakhouse? They’re in bed together, churning profits off of free labor—a way safer operation than moving guns or drugs, as proven by your refusal to take it seriously.”

That finally got him. Champin exploded out of his chair, his face washed the color of cinnamon candy as his palms slammed against the tabletop. He leaned close, teeth bared, but I didn’t flinch. I stared up at him, still seated, because I knew I was right. I knew it in my bones—the ATF was missing the forest for the trees, ignoring slave labor because the ATF doesn’t hunt human traffickers, they hunt gunrunners.

Hammer, seeking nail.

“You think I don’t take this seriously?” He snapped. “I’ve got three dozen federal agents on their way from Washington and New York as we speak, armed with search warrants. In the next two hours we’re going to bust Yuri Gorbachev’s operation like a rotten watermelon. That means the steakhouse, his private residence, the residences of his men, their known hangouts—everything. We’re going to find evidence of their gun trade, one way or the other, and you, my friend, can either help or hinder. You can tell me what you know and who you work for, or I can throw you to the Newark police and leak a rumor that you’ve been very helpful. How long do you think you’ll last in gen pop with Yuri’s friends on standby?”

He was roaring by the time he finished, spitting in my face and snarling like a rabid dog. I’d have been a fool to think his threats were idle; to think I wasn’t actually in danger in gen pop with a sharpened hairbrush handle rammed between my ribs.

But I wasn’t thinking about that—I was thinking about three-dozen federal agents en route to Newark with search warrants in hand. A veritable army, by investigatory standards. A hurricane bearing down on a criminal organization with ties to the mayor’s office.

And then I remembered Greene’s words at the Яed Autumn Steakhouse:

“Tell me you have a panic button, Yuri. Tell me that if this spins out of control, you have a way to erase everything—and everyone.”

“You have to stop them,” I said.

Champin blinked. “What?”

“Stop the agents,” I said. “Recall them all. If they storm this city now, Yuri’s going to massacre those migrants—every one of them. It’s his panic button, his emergency pull cord. They’ll disappear and the paperwork will vanish with them. No evidence, no crime, and Greene skates away. Call those agents back!”

Champin withdrew from the table. Slowly, a smirk stretched his lips. A knowing, condescending sneer.

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“What?”

“More time for Yuri to cover his bases, to hide the guns⁠—”

“There are no guns,” I snapped. “Stop being an idiot! You’ve got eighty lives on the line. Eighty innocents scattered across the city who will all be dead by sunrise if you don’t call this thing off.”

Champin didn’t answer right away. He straightened and folded his arms.

Finally, he said: “That’s your story?”

“That’s the truth.”

A grunt. A nod. Then he turned for the door.

“Fair enough. Enjoy gen pop, Mr. Sharpe.”

47

The door closed with a slam, and I bolted out of the chair. My hands caught on the table chain, and I shouted at the mirror, demanding for Sully to return. Demanding to speak with a captain. Echoing my former warnings of a massacre to come.

Nobody was listening—I could feel it. When the door opened sixty seconds later, two burly correctional officers barreled in, and neither had the look of officers ready to hear me out.

They carried night sticks with tasers holstered on their belts. They were already glaring, already demanding for me to sit down, to shut up, to submit under threat of fifty thousand volts. Pushed into the chair, I kept my body loose as they disconnected my shackles from the table, then hauled me back to my feet and propelled me toward the door.

One chewed gum, hooking my right arm with his left while his free hand carried a baton. The other hooked my left arm, turning sideways for us to make it through the door. Our gazes locked—and he unleashed a wicked, anticipatory smile.

So that’s how it is.

I relaxed my body. My heart still thumped, but my mind calmed. We returned to the hall and marched past that lineup of secure access doors. Fifty yards ahead, a turn in the hallway was marked by an overhead sign, like a hospital directory. An arrow pointed right along with the message:

GENERAL POPULATION DETENTION

The arrow pointing in the opposite direction was similarly labeled, and I much preferred its offering:

MOTOR POOL

“You smell that, Sharpe?” The smirking guard said. “That’s hot bodies and small rooms. Sweaty sheets and guys twice your size who like what they see. You sure you don’t have anything to say?”

I glanced his way. I held his gaze.

“You sure you don’t?” I said.

Something crossed the CO’s face, a flash that came and went in almost a blink, but it was there, and I saw it. It was all the confirmation I needed, all the justification to erase any guilt I might feel for what came next.

His face hardened. His grip tightened around my left arm. He shoved me forward—then I struck with the force of a freight train. Snatching free of both escorts, pivoting on my hip, and driving my knee straight between the smirking guard’s legs.

Hard.

My kneecap met flesh and he puked—immediately. A volcano of half-digested dinner as his body folded like a cheap suit. Still chained hand and foot, my arms were held close to my waist, but I caught his holstered taser by the grip on his way down. The less-lethal weapon broke free with a snap. Barely two seconds had passed since I initiated the attack, but I didn’t have time to turn and direct the taser on the second guy—I could already feel his body twisting as he reached for his own less-lethal, shouting in panic.

I just flipped the captured taser around, pointing it beneath my arm and pulling the trigger.

Fifty thousand volts launched with a pop. The second guard stopped shouting, and I released the taser. His body hit the floor and I twisted—I bent and my hands found his belt even as he continued to twitch, his eyes wide and flooded with pain.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Then I took his keys. I spun them in my hands and loosened my wrists first, disconnecting my hands from my waist and from the chain linking them to my feet. I lifted one foot and got the leg shackles free.

Six seconds. An alarm sounded, loud and long and desperate. I dropped the keys and exchanged them for the tasered guard’s ID card—then I was sprinting. Down the hall and to the left. A secure access door. I swiped the ID card and a green light blinked. I shoved through to find a desk and a computer with a wall of keys hanging on pegs behind it. The woman in the chair threw both hands up the moment she saw me, her face washing pale.

“Keys!” I said, snapping my fingers and pointing to the wall. “Something with gas in the tank!”

She didn’t argue. A pair of Chevrolet keys, complete with a county-identifier tag and a key fob, landed in my hand. I turned for the next door, a bold red EXIT sign mounted above it, and shouted over my shoulder.

“Yellow Street in Ironbound! Send every unit you have.”

Then I was outside. Down a short flight of steps as the sirens blared from all around. Hurtling across concrete toward a row of sedans, light pickups, and panel vans backed against a concrete wall. Only about a third were Chevys—most of those were panel vans. I hit the key fob and identified a late model Chevrolet Express parked near the end. Halfway there I heard a shout from someplace above and behind me, and swerved automatically hard right, knowing what was coming.

I was only just in time. A rubber bullet smacked the ground inches from my leg—the next whizzed over my shoulder. I reached the line of vans and slid into cover beyond the driver’s door. It was already unlocked thanks to the key fob. I clambered inside just as half a dozen COs barreled into the parking lot with tasers—and real firearms—drawn.

The engine turned. The first shots cracked. Glass broke and tires spun. I hurtled across the lot with my body held beneath the dash, cutting my wheels toward the exit onto Doremus Avenue. A reflective gate exploded over my hood even as the bullets pinged against the van’s back doors and ricocheted off concrete.

I was through, hopping and lurching and slamming past a county squad car. Metal screeched on metal and my left sideview mirror vanished.

Then I was on Doremus. I hauled a hard right—south, toward Ironbound and the river.

I was headed for Yellow Street.

48

Iknew I had minutes at best before the bulk of the Newark PD, the Essex County Sheriff’s Department, and anybody else with a badge and a gun bore down on me like an army of bloodhounds. Truth be told, I didn’t blame them a bit. The guy I had groin-kicked had the vibe of a Yuri-sellout. His companion might well be just an average Joe with a family back home and football parties on the weekends. He didn’t deserve the wrath I’d unleashed on him.

But if I didn’t move quickly, eighty innocent lives would receive much worse. I believed that in my very bones, and I was headed to Yellow Street because if I was Yuri Gorbachev and I wanted to erase all evidence of my human trafficking crimes, I’d begin at the factory. I’d call everybody in to work a midnight shift—maybe promise a paltry pay bonus, something to get them out of bed. I’d corral them inside.

Then I’d unleash my goons, herding everyone into trucks or vans or whatever I had available. Haul them off site, someplace dark and quiet where the slaughter could commence. Maybe if the threat of door-kicking federal agents passed, the enslaved migrants could be returned to their homes, good and scared and reminded of their place in this world.

But if the rumors were true—if Yuri’s informants, who had no doubt warned him of the falling federal net, were speaking the truth—well, Yuri would be ready. He would deliver on his promise to Kenneth Greene.

“You’re dealing with Russians, Mr. Mayor. Erasing things is what we do.”

The memory of Yuri’s ice-cold voice was enough to keep my foot jammed into the Chevy’s accelerator, looking through a windshield pockmarked by bullet holes as I screamed down Doremus and into the industrial district just west of the port. Yellow Street wasn’t that far away but accessing it would require negotiating a roundabout path of connecting streets cutting past darkened warehouses and rail yards. Without my phone I couldn’t be sure of the correct path, but I recognized a few landmarks. I re-entered Ironbound to the sound of distant sirens growing gradually closer, not coming to rescue Marielis’s friends but coming to capture me. I knew someplace in the back of my mind that if I was wrong about Yuri’s plans, or failed to prove my theory, that any final chance of avoiding serious prison time was history.

And I couldn’t care less. I could only think about those terrified faces, each of them concealing a story every bit as heartbreaking and brutal as Marielis’s. A path of promise, of deceit, of brutal bondage, and now…

Death.

South Street. I recognized the name and hauled a hard left, bouncing over the oncoming lane and nearly colliding with a screaming Essex County patrol car. The vehicle braked, tires screaming, and I swung into the right-hand lane even as the car slid into a panicked turn, winding up nose-first in a ditch.

Then I forgot about it. I looked ahead and punched the gas. The panel van roared, surging up to sixty miles per hour. I flicked my lights to high beams and monitored the passing landscape, remembering the hard left turn onto Yellow Street. Passing beneath a bridge. Leaning low.

Then slamming on my brakes and yanking the wheel. The top-heavy vehicle swayed. I clung on and made it across an empty oncoming lane. My front wheels slammed into a flooded pothole and gray water cascaded over the gunshot windshield. I didn’t even bother with the wipers—I killed the lights instead, conscious of the looming shadow of the factory directly ahead.

There was a light on, shining through the monitor roof windows. Like a beacon it drew me onward, my heart thundering as I suddenly remembered that I was completely unarmed—no gun, no charged taser, not even my trusty Victorinox.

I glanced over one shoulder to the back of the vehicle, scanning empty seats and floor lugs designed to secure shackles. There was nothing I could use in a fight.

But I’ve got a van.

I looked ahead again and lowered my body behind the questionable shelter of the steering column. Then I burst into the same parking lot where I’d stolen that Chevy Corsica the day prior. That lineup of shabby cars and converted school buses, presumably Yuri’s mechanism for moving his slaves, was present and accounted for in the lot next to the building.

Two buses. Five cars. All parked in a row with nobody around, but the light still shone from those roof-mounted windows. I was fifty yards from the rolling steel door that covered the factory’s front end.

It was ground level. It was a white bullseye framed by brick. I deliberated for only a split second, then I floored the van and roared straight toward it.

49

Ileaned on the horn only a split second before making impact. It was likely a worthless warning—if anyone was gathered behind that door there wasn’t much I could do to get them out of my way. If memory served me correctly, and if the occupants of the building were arranged as they had been when I had climbed to the roof the day prior, then the only person near the freight entrance should be the guy with the submachine gun—the overseer.

I didn’t mind running him over. I wouldn’t mind taking his chatter gun and going to work on his buddies, either. I mashed the horn just in case it offered any innocent a moment’s chance to take cover, and then I hit the door.

Sheet metal erupted over the van. It buckled and folded and tore from the doorframes. The door landed on my roof and obscured my view and became trapped beneath my front wheels. The van lurched and slid, dropping from forty miles per hour to a grinding stop in mere seconds. I was fully inside the factory and smelled nothing but burning rubber and engine heat. I was slammed against the steering wheel, the breath exploding from my lungs. Head spinning. The space ahead still invisible.

And nobody shouted, nobody screamed, nobody opened fire. I pushed off the wheel and gasped, then grabbed the door latch and kicked the door open. In another second I was out, crouched low with empty hands, that smelly prison jumpsuit swishing against my legs as I rushed out from under the mangled door. My only strategy after turning the corner was to engage the first of Yuri’s men I found with brute force—to bull him down, smash his head, take his weapon.

But as I cleared the door frame and swept the interior of the sprawling factory…I found nothing.

No Russians.

No enslaved migrants.

No sewing machines, even.

Every workstation, cutting table, fabric bin, and industrial clothing press was gone, leaving the factory empty. Bare walls and a nearly bare floors, with only scattered trash strewn across empty concrete.

No people. No weapons. Just silence.

I stopped, frozen at the end of the folded door with my ears ringing and my chest heaving. I was still fighting to gain control of my breathing, and fighting just as hard to gain control of my thoughts. Everything I saw conflicted so completely with what I expected to see that nothing would compute. It was like my mental process had crashed.

What?

I stepped out from the folded door, looking to the ceiling and the row of industrial lights that hung there. They buzzed, like distant bumble bees, casting fluorescent light and illuminating the floor far below…

And proving me right.

The thought broke free of the fog, cracking like the slam of a judge’s gavel. A final ruling. Final proof.

Yuri’s people had been here. They had cleared out the tools, erasing evidence. They’d cleaned this place up but neglected to switch the lights off. The cars and buses parked outside indicated that the migrants had been here, also. Assembled for a midnight work shift, just as I thought. But now they were no longer here.

So, had I missed them? Had Yuri moved quicker than I expected, smashing his panic button the moment word of the impending federal sweep reached his ears? If so, only one further question really mattered—where had he taken them?

There was something on the floor. I saw it twenty yards away as I took another few strides inward. The distant sound of police sirens, growing steadily louder, warned me that I was already running out of time—but I couldn’t afford to worry about that. I was fixated on the problem at hand, on solving the only question that could keep me out of jail and, so much more importantly, could save those migrants.

I reached the middle of the room and squatted. Sweat dripped from my lip despite the autumn chill, and I reached to the concrete, tracing two wide black lines, each the width of my palm with a narrow space in between. They were heavy truck tracks, from either a semi or a semi-trailer. I touched the mark and rubbed two fingers against my thumb. My fingertips came away black—the mark was fresh and still tacky.

Semi-truck…to transport the migrants?

But there was something else scattered across the floor. Little chunks of metal, each about the size of a grapefruit, but not perfectly round. They were painted dusty red, all with jagged edges that bore the trademark touch of a cutting torch.

And all stamped with irregular ribs. Some in the middle, some on the left or right edges. It was corrugation—structural reinforcement. I reached the nearest disc, and ran my thumb across its surface, noting a stenciled line of letters about half an inch tall.

MADE IN CHINA

I squinted. In the background, the whoop of closing sirens sounded less than half a mile away. A voice in the back of my head warned me of the handcuffs and handguns closing in, but the core of my brain was fixated on that chunk of metal. On what it was. On what it meant.

And then I understood. In a flash of cortisol, in a rush of sudden panic. I saw Yuri’s scheme in all its hideous genius, and turning for the door, I bolted into the dark. Right past the van, swinging away from the oncoming ranks of city and county police cars, stretching out and giving my legs every ounce of energy I could muster.

Hurling myself straight for the wharf, and the inky depths of endless black water beyond.

50

Iknew Port Newark would be awake and alive, even in the dead of night. Surrounded by fences I’d already seen, many choked by grass and some knocked down and never repaired, it wasn’t a highly-secured place because it didn’t need to be. No street gang is going to jack a semi-truck laden with a shipping container. Tools and hardware are secured in sheds, vehicle keys held in lock boxes. Most of all, there was always somebody around. Always forklifts unloading containers and cranes swinging them off and on bulk carrier ships from far, far overseas.

As far as China, for instance.

It was over a mile from Yellow Street to the port and the wharf beyond—a heck of a long way on foot with flimsy flip-flops smacking my heels and cold night air burning in my lungs, but I knew I’d never make it in the van. The army of cops responding to my jail break had already descended on the garment factory, blocking off Yellow Street. My only hope now of catching Yuri before the unthinkable occurred was to put my body on the line and hurtle through the dark, legs tearing on passing brush and one flip-flop flying off my foot as it caught on a rock, the other only a few strides behind.

I was barefoot. I was bleeding. My heart thundered and I exploded out of a ditch and onto a narrow street that turned into the port. I ran with everything I had, envisioning eighty precious lives encased in a communal coffin with grapefruit sized holes cut into its sides, just waiting to be pushed into the sea, and never found again.

Not one of them is forgotten by God.

The motto Scripture from back at the shelter rang through my mind and I found a little more fuel. I settled into a smooth sprint, my feet so numb that I didn’t even notice the jab of loose rocks and uneven pavement into my unprotected soles. I saw a guardhouse at a hundred yards, illuminated with its occupant kicked back behind a magazine. Behind the shack sat a John Deere Gator, cloaked in shadow with an ice chest resting in its bed.

I ran straight toward it, arriving so quiet and so quick that the guardhouse sentry didn’t even know I was there until I had already hurtled past. I slid into the Gator’s seat and found the keys dangling from the ignition, right where I expected them to be—why remove them? The guy was sitting ten feet away.

The motor fired up just as he shouted from the guardhouse. Tires spun and I cut the wheel as I whizzed backward. Then I was yanking the Gator into drive. A moment later, I hurtled down the busted asphalt track with my bloodied right foot planted into the accelerator and port facilities flashing by on either side.

Warehouses. Mechanical sheds. Vast fields of shipping containers illuminated by security lights. Rolling forklifts, whining cranes, shouting men. Nobody noticed the Gator as it bounced over a culvert bridge, and I turned left at a sign that directed me toward the nearest wharf.

Half a mile farther—there were two mid-sized container ships tied up beneath the shipping cranes, with a third slip standing empty. No vessel, but an oily patch of water where one might have rested at anchor not long before.

Is that it?

I pushed the Gator to its limit, searching along the concrete docks and between the crane legs for smaller slips where smaller boats might be tied up. I found a couple of pilot vessels, each forty or fifty feet long, with lights shining behind their windshields and crewmen walking their decks. Yanking the wheel to skate past an oncoming forklift, I was assailed by curses and a blaring horn. Longshoremen and port authority workers who I passed were now looking my way, lifting radios and pointing. Word had leaked out—the police were right on my heels.

And then I saw what I wanted. At the end of a concrete finger overlaid by tangled ropes and a mound of rusted chain, the twenty-foot utility skiff bobbed in the wake of a passing freighter, its low windshield reflecting moonlight. There wasn’t anybody on board, only one guy standing thirty feet away bent over and digging through a bucket. Maybe he’d come from the boat—maybe he’d left the keys, just like the guard had left his keys in the Gator.

One way or another, this was both my best and last shot.

I turned for the concrete finger. I hurtled right past the ropes and the chain, never slowing as I bore down on the guy at the bucket. He saw me coming, and his body snapped upright. He shouted, lifting a hand. I laid on the brakes and slid the final ten feet before bailing out, leaving the Gator running.

“Keys in the boat?” I shouted.

“What? Stop! You can’t be here!”

I didn’t repeat my question—I found the answer as the boat’s control console came into view, moonlight glinting off a polished keyring.

I blew past the dock worker as he continued to shout. I jumped straight into the skiff—it lurched sideways. I caught myself on the low windshield and snatched the tether rope free of its dock cleat. Then I swung behind the center console. There was no seat, just soggy fiberglass flooring littered with tools and oil bottles and another tangle of rope. I found the ignition and shot a glance over my shoulder.

A one-hundred-horse Mercury was already planted in the water. It turned over with a lazy cough, and the guy on the dock was headed my way—waving a hand.

“You can’t take that!”

I ignored him, hitting the key again. The boat started with a burst of oil smoke, and I wrapped one hand on the wheel. The dock worker reached the end of pier and dove for the dangling tether. I rammed the throttle just a split second before his fingers snatched at the rope, and he missed. A rooster tail of water erupted behind the boat as the bow shot skyward. The dockworker tumbled over the end of the pier and went right into the water. I looked over my shoulder again as I yanked the wheel hard right, turning away from the harbor.

He disappeared. A second passed. Then he surfaced, treading water and shaking his fist. He could swim.

I mumbled a meaningless apology just as the boat reached plane. I was running at twenty, maybe twenty-five miles per hour. It wasn’t fast for a boat, but it was fast for a boat in this port—far faster than any maritime ship maneuvering through the narrow channel should be steaming.

One quick sweep of the horizon, and I saw several such vessels. Two ocean-going container ships churned half a mile away, one coming in and the other headed out. Deeper into the port, closer to the docks, a handful of tugboats and utility craft similar to my commandeered skiff cruised in and out of slips, marked by navigation lights and the glow of their pilothouses.

None of those were the sort of vessel I was looking for—none fit the profile I had already built in my mind. It was a loose concept, hastily constructed and held together by a metric ton of guesswork.

But in the most twisted, evil way, it made sense. If I was wrong, a jail cell and a carousel of state-appointed defense attorneys still awaited me in Newark.

If I was right, I was already running out of time.

With the nose of the skiff pointed south, toward the bottom of Newark Bay, I pushed the skiff to full throttle.

51

Ididn’t know a thing about navigating the shipping channel out of Port Newark. In fact, I knew nothing about maritime navigation in general, and very little about boats. Life in Phoenix doesn’t lend itself to any form of aquatic activity, and the 75th Ranger Regiment is more concerned with jumping out of airplanes than driving stolen dock skiffs.

That left me with only the bare minimum in terms of technical ability. I knew how to start the boat, how to control the throttle, and how to steer. I knew it was a bad idea to turn too sharply too quickly, and I knew that if I encountered any waves, I should point my bow into them to keep from rolling the boat.

Maybe that knowledge was enough. For the moment, I was only concerned with finding my way out of the harbor and into wide, open, and deep water—the kind of place where psychopaths might dump a shipping container full of kidnapped migrants.

The harbor wasn’t that kind of place. I could see land on all sides, which meant that anyone on land could see me. If I was right about Yuri and his scheme, I knew he would want privacy, which meant a longer trip offshore.

I could only hope that whatever boat he was using, it was a lot slower than mine. At full throttle I thought the skiff was doing about thirty miles per hour, and that was as much as I could coax out of the worn engine. I strained my tired brain to recall maps of the Newark Bay area as displayed on my now-impounded cell phone, but details were vague.

I knew I needed to turn east at the bottom of the bay, following a narrow strait just north of Staten Island before reaching the Upper Bay, south of Manhattan. From there the open Atlantic was within easy reach.

A massive, uncharted graveyard waiting to swallow those eighty lives.

I clung to the wheel as light chop passed beneath the hull, vibrating the deck and sending empty oil bottles dancing. I caught the glare of a bright searchlight streaming from what looked like a police craft off my port bow, and I instinctively swerved right to remain beyond its reach.

The police boat passed by me, and I turned the skiff east and slid into the strait. The lights of both Staten Island and Bayonne, New Jersey glared from either side with only a narrow slice of darkness running in between. Every couple of minutes I glanced over my shoulder, ready to see the New Jersey State Police, or that guy from the dock in a faster boat with a shotgun close at hand.

And not one of them is forgotten by God.

I kept repeating the verse in my mind, over and over, and thought of Vinny. Of the shelter and the forgotten legions. Of Marielis and her friends from the factory—an invisible legion. My heart hammered and I wove through a gentle curve in the strait. Ahead I could see the waters widening, a vast horizon of empty blackness only vaguely framed by Brooklyn lights to the east and more of Staten Island to the west.

I was headed south again. The chop beneath the skiff was worsening, and I braced myself against the console as intermittent spray erupted over the bow. It saturated the jumpsuit, washing away the stench of sweat and blood and misery. It stung my eyes as cold air flooded my lungs. My muscles turned rigid, my teeth gritted to prevent chattering. I kept the skiff dead in the middle of the channel, marking another massive container ship bearing down on me at one thousand yards.

I didn’t yield. I wanted the shelter of his bulky cover. It had been twenty minutes or more since I’d taken the boat, and even a slow police force would respond eventually.

The container ship blew its horn. I swung right at the last moment and skated past his port side, a wall of blackened steel glimmering with salt spray. The horn blew again and I spat sea water. I hit the ship’s wake and bounced like a rubber ball on concrete, the Mercury howling in unrestricted fury as the propeller temporarily left the water. For a split second, I thought I was going under. The nose was pointed down. I returned to the bay and black water cascaded over the gunnels. It washed oil bottles and a plastic crate overboard. I rolled and one foot slipped out from under me—I nearly lost the wheel.

Then the skiff righted, slamming back on its keel. The Mercury caught and thundered. I emerged from behind the console, shaking and drenched, my eyes so flooded I could barely see. I blinked and choked up water. I looked through the low windshield, then squinted. Hauled myself above it. Leaned into the spray.

And I saw it. One thousand yards distant, just a blob on the black ocean surface, only visible by virtue of its glowing pilot house. It was much too far away to discern a name or even what type of vessel it was. I couldn’t see figures on board.

But two things were clear. On a flat deck beyond the glowing pilot house, a large, long, and rectangular object was silhouetted by dim lights. It was about the size and shape of a single shipping container—a forty-footer, like the kind hauled by a semi-truck. Also, I marked the general course of the vessel by a churning white wake visible in dim moonlight.

It was headed out to sea.

52

The Mercury had nothing more to give, but I didn’t need anything more. Within seconds of identifying the pilot house lights and the frothy wake behind, I knew I was gaining on my target by a ratio of at least three to one. It wasn’t a quick ship—it wasn’t a large one, either. By the time I drew to within six hundred yards, I could estimate its total length at about seventy-five feet, its beam at maybe twenty. It was nearly rectangular, like its clarifying cargo, which sat just forward of the pilot house, sheltered behind low walls.

Something about that silhouette unleashed a tingle up my spine—a dull sense of familiarity. I couldn’t place it until I’d drawn within the final three hundred yards, by which time the lights of both New York and New Jersey had all but vanished, the vastness of the open Atlantic spreading before us.

The boat was a landing craft. Quite similar to the LC’s used by the US Army to park weapons, supplies, and vehicles onto hostile shores in support of infantry and armor units. I’d never sailed on one myself—vessels of any sort represent only a tiny slice of the behemoth that is the United States Army—but I’d once seen them at Fort Eustis in Virginia. I remembered, because who wouldn’t remember a boat stamped with an Army stencil?

The vessel ahead of me was something else—not a military boat, but a civilian one, painted dirty white with a much taller pilot house than any combat boat would need. From the back of that superstructure an American flag fluttered in the night wind. At its base, a name I still couldn’t read was printed in block letters.

But what mattered most—what chilled me anew to think about—was the broad ramp that covered the flat nose of the boat, operated by hydraulics and able to be lowered for offloading machinery and supplies.

Or, in this case, for offloading a single shipping container packed with eighty precious souls.

My hand hit the throttle just as the first blink of muzzle flash, blazing from the pilot house, erased all possibility that I might be wrong. I ducked instinctively behind the console as the bullet whined overhead, followed almost immediately by a second that produced a geyser from the torn surface of the sea. At three hundred yards I was a small, moving target, and I could already tell by the tone of the near miss that it wasn’t a heavy caliber round. Probably it was a submachine gun, like the UMPs I’d seen before. I was relatively safe at this distance.

But the gap was still closing, rapidly. In mere minutes I would draw within easy range, still unarmed and unarmored and without any plan except to throw my body aboard the vessel and improvise from there.

The Russians, meanwhile, would punish me for every conquered yard, as content to sink my boat as to shoot me through the head—both options would net the same result.

Dropping to my knees behind the console, I guided the skiff using the bottom of the wheel, beginning a zig-zag pattern that decreased the speed of my approach but offered some slim protection from the increasingly accurate fire. The bullets no longer came as sporadic shots but as regular sprays of full auto wrath, sweeping back and forth across the open water with the obvious intention of catching my skiff somewhere in the middle. A trio of slugs found the bow on one sweep and blew straight through the fiberglass, knocking away a fist-sized chunk of the gunnel. The resulting hole reminded me of the chunks of metal left behind at the factory on Yellow Street, and I thought about how quickly that vented container would sink.

If it ever made it over the ramp of that LC, it was over for everybody inside. Even in shallow water I wouldn’t be able to get them out in time—a crew of rescue swimmers couldn’t. The container would be locked, a sure method of termination.

“Erasing things is what we do.”

Yuri’s words returned to my mind, and I gritted my teeth as the next burst of fire blew away the skiff’s windshield. I was one hundred yards out and the zig-zagging was no longer an effective method of evasion. Now they knew what I was doing—they knew who I was. Each sweep of their sub guns was more effective than the last, and any shot might be the one that drove a bullet through the Mercury’s cowling and left me dead in the water.

Game over.

Swinging out from the console, I risked a look over my shattered bow to the pilot house, now clearly visible with a pair of silhouettes standing behind open windows. They opened fire the moment I showed my head, and I yanked back into cover.

But fiberglass is really no cover at all against a well-placed nine-millimeter. Even squatting in the bottom of the skiff, I was little better than a sitting duck, becoming more so by the moment. As the reality of my situation finally penetrated my overworked brain, I realized how hopeless this pursuit had been from the start. How I might as well be a Native American warrior charging a battleship in a canoe—brave, fearless, and doomed.

I needed to reevaluate. To trail the LC within constant visual range, and wait for the cavalry to arrive. I didn’t see a radio anywhere on the skiff’s console, but there might be some kind of emergency transponder mounted beneath it, or perhaps housed in a locked compartment. I reached for the throttle, ready to back it down.

Then the landing craft groaned. It was a deep, rumbling sound that drew my gaze like a magnet. I looked across moon-lit white tops and found my target vessel slowing. It rotated in place until I was looking at it broadside, with a starboard deck wall lined by the dim lights, the pilot house rising to my left, the shipping container to my right, and a skid steer loader sandwiched in between.

I saw figures, also, rushing about. No more gunfire from the pilot house—the LC bobbed barely a hundred yards away. My stomach plummeted in sickening dread.

Then the landing craft’s ramp hissed open.

53

Iran the skiff straight for the LC’s nose—there was nothing else to do. With a puff of exhaust rising from the skid steer’s tailpipe, and a vague growl of its engine barely audible over the howl of my own, it didn’t take a genius to know what would happen next.

The Russians were going to push that shipping container right off the ramp and into the water. One large splash, and ten seconds later, it would be gone. They would use the threat of that massacre to draw me in, where they would shoot me and skuttle my skiff.

By the time the police arrived, the LC would be chugging back to Newark, or north to New York, or south to Havana for all I knew. It wouldn’t matter—the evidence would be erased, and unless somebody deliberately went looking for that container, it could rest in fifty or eighty feet of murky water for decades without ever being discovered.

And the eighty lives trapped inside, undocumented and invisible, would never be missed. That was the plan, obvious and simple.

I had no choice but to play along.

At full throttle I cut the skiff’s wheel hard right, still kneeling behind the console as I curved first away from the now-static LC, then spun the wheel in the opposite direction to scream back toward it. The gunfire I expected rained in right on schedule, a fever-burst of full auto 9mm rounds that tore the water, tore the skiff’s fiberglass bow, and shredded the deck. Wadded up behind the console with little more than a hope and a prayer standing between me and certain death, I didn’t aim for the side of the LC or even its stern, where a wide deck covered the propellers. I aimed for its bow, right where the loading ramp dropped toward open water, exposing the shipping container just behind.

It was the container that would be my shield. Tall, blocky, and rising between my skiff and the pilot tower, by the time I had roared within fifty yards of the LC’s open mouth the glowing pilot house had vanished from view altogether—and the shooters dug in there had vanished with them. Sporadic gunfire still burst from between the LC’s port side and the wall of the container, but the bullets lacked the high-ground trajectory that had left me so vulnerable only moments before. With the ramp now riding just a foot off the tossing waves, looking like a pirate’s plank waiting to admit its first victim, I was thirty yards out and still alive. Still screaming in. Just seconds away from smashing straight onto that ramp and driving the skiff onto the LC like a missile.

The Russians identified my scheme—I knew, because shouts rang from the deck. A grumble of engines signaled a panicked attempt to turn the LC. The hiss of hydraulics preceded a twitch in the ramp, and then it rose by inches.

But not soon enough. The hull of the battered skiff struck the ramp’s edge at full speed, metal meeting fiberglass just a few inches beneath the shattered navigation lights. It was a high mark—I would have preferred the lip of the ramp to be at least at water-level, if not beneath the surface. The moment the skiff made impact I hurtled forward, slamming into the console.

But then the light utility boat hopped. It rode over the ramp’s lip and just kept going, screaming straight up the ribbed driving surface and into the LC exactly like the missile I had envisioned. In a split second I went from crashing through the swells to blazing across an aluminum deck, the LC’s port and starboard walls closing around me. I kept sliding at thirty miles per hour, the Mercury outboard catching on the ramp and tearing free of the skiff.

I kept sliding, braced against the console with my head lowered. I smashed into the front wall of the shipping container just as the roar of the skid steer shoved it toward the sea.

54

Fiberglass exploded. Railings bent. The metal face of the shipping container contorted and popped like a gunshot of its own. I slammed so hard into the console that its base tore free of the deck.

My head spun, my heart hammered. From somewhere not far away shouts rang in now familiar but still unintelligible Russian. I heard screams, desperate and terrified, echoing from inside the container.

And then I heard the screech of metal on metal and felt the shift of what was left of the skiff being shoved back toward the LC’s open bow.

Clawing my way over busted gunnels, I exited instinctually from the port side—the last string of active enemy gunfire had poured in from my starboard side. A quick roll dropped my body two feet to an aluminum deck slick with spray and littered with maritime junk. A hammer bit into my ribs and I clenched my teeth even as the skiff shifted a foot past me.

It was being pushed by the shipping container even as the skid steer audibly strained against what must be five or six tons of human cargo ready to be exterminated.

But I was still in the fight.

On my knees, I fished for the hammer and found a wrench first. Not an automotive wrench—this was another maritime tool, eighteen inches long with jaws large enough to turn a one-inch bolt. It was rusty and damp in my hand, but the balance was good. I grabbed it by the handle and pushed off the deck, thrown off balance as the LC heaved over a swell.

Then the gunfire returned. A blast from the pilot house hurled bullets over my head and past my arm, wider rounds skipping off the container’s roof and whining into the night. I threw my body against corrugated wall even as it shifted another eight inches closer to uncharted depths. The next burst of bullets missed me by feet, the shooter once again thwarted by the bulk of the container.

But bootsteps pounded toward me, voices shouting in Russian. And just before I could sprint for the surging skid steer, fingers closed around my ankle—strong, clawing, desperate.

“¡Ayúdennos! ¡Ayúdennos!”

I knew that one—it was Spanish for help us. One glance to my bare feet revealed a bloodied, clawing hand protruding from a grapefruit sized hole recently blowtorched in the side of the container.

My gut tightened. Adrenaline flooded my brain. And I jerked free. I threw myself down the deck of the LC, staggering as the next swell rocked us hard to starboard and threatened to throw me back into the line of fire. The closer I drew to the pilot house, the less cover I maintained against the elevated shooter. Another shove of the skid steer produced nearly two feet of movement, and I heard the skiff crunching and collapsing as it was jammed against the LC’s wall.

I was out of time.

I reached the back of the container just as the Russian gunman who had engaged me from the opposite side of LC exploded from behind the roaring skid steer. Armed with a UMP sub machine gun, his face and long black hair dripping with salt spray, he wasn’t Yuri, but I’d seen this man before, back at the Яed Autumn. He was broad, muscled, mean as a snake. His wild eyes snapping toward me, he jerked the gun into his shoulder.

I never gave him the chance to fire. I threw the wrench with everything I had in me, an overhanded hurl that sent it spinning for his face like a steel boomerang. He saw it coming before he could get off a shot, and he panicked just the way I hoped he would. He ducked and twisted, three rounds cracking from his muzzle and spitting past my left arm. The wrench missed him and slammed against the base of the pilot tower, where I could see the sniper adjusting for a better angle of fire.

None of that mattered. I was already moving, my raw feet shredding against the rough deck as I hurtled past the skid steer and rammed the guy with the force of a careening bus. My shoulder hit his sternum, my bunched calf muscles maximizing my existing momentum. He lost his balance and lost the UMP all at the same time, slamming against the pilot tower with a muted shout as I carried the tackle all the way to its brutal end.

His head smacked against steel—hard enough to stun, not hard enough to knock him out. I twisted and prepared to drive my elbow straight into his face, ready to finish the job so that I could retrieve the UMP and unload on the skid steer.

But he was better than that—despite his bashed skull, he expected the move. Even before I could cock my arm, he was ducking. Bouncing off the pilot tower. Diving into a crouch and pushing me back. I twisted and drove my elbow into empty air above his scalp. He got a foot on the pilot tower and shoved off, reversing my charging attack and launching a charge of his own.

His shoulder hit my ribcage. I flipped backward and we were both headed to the deck—just as the eighty lives trapped in that shipping container scraped another foot toward eternity.

55

Ilanded on my back and the Russian landed on top. Bone met aluminum decking and the breath exploded from my lungs even as an ugly face framed in long, dripping black hair leered over me. His left hand went for my throat—his right hand dropped to his hip and producing a knife in a glimmering flash of stainless steel.

I twisted, breathless but desperate, forcing my right hip off the deck hard and fast enough to compromise his balance. It was an emergency move with no prayer of incapacitating him, but it was enough for the first stab of the knife to miss my neck and scrape against the deck instead. He swayed and swore, spit and sea spray showering my face as the LC crested a swell and then dropped into a valley. To my right, the skid steer was still going, reversing six feet and then ramming the container until all four of the skid steer’s wheels spun over slick metal, then the driver repeated the process. Through my peripheral I tracked the container as it edged ever closer to the open mouth of the LC—the skiff I’d ridden in on, now smashed and twisted, already overhung the depths.

And the guy pinning me down was yanking his knife back, ready for another strike.

I hit him before the blade could drop, throwing everything I had into one right hook that smashed into unprotected ribs and returned the favor of driving wind from his lungs. He gasped and twisted but didn’t release me. His knife snatched past my face and the blade scraped my lip, breaking the skin.

I tasted blood. I heard the skid steer crashing into the container once again, this time in sequence with a dip in the LC’s bow. The container slid two feet, and the wrecked skiff fell off the ramp with a crash of ocean water that drenched us both.

Seconds more—it was all I had. With the Russian’s left-hand closing around my windpipe and his right yanking the knife back for another plunge, I was almost out of options.

Almost.

My right thumb hit his left eye with the force of a punch—not driving for the eye at all but driving for his brain. For the back of his skull. For the planet Mars someplace far across the Milky Way. I threw everything I had into the blow. He screamed and blood sprayed my face. I twisted my hips again, and this time I threw him.

He tumbled off me, crashing into the LC’s wall. I rolled onto my knees, still gasping, still shaking, blowing blood from my lip. And finding the marine wrench.

It lay less than a yard away, bounced off the base of the pilot tower. I grabbed it just as he found his pistol. He turned, wrenching the weapon toward me.

I swung one-armed, cracking the wrench head over his hand and sending the pistol flipping into black water. He shouted, fingers busted, and threw his free arm up to protect his head.

It wasn’t nearly enough. My next blow shattered his forearm and then the wrench head reached his skull. A sickening crack preceded eyes rolling back in his head—his body collapsed.

And I didn’t have a split second to spare. I heard the pilot house door exploding open six feet overhead, and I knew what was coming. I threw myself close to its base, shoulder blades crashing against metal only a split second before a chatter of submachine gun fire blazed across the deck.

Bullets ricocheted and whined into the dark. I shielded my face, making my body as small as possibly in my imperfect cover as the blaze continued, bullets dumped irrationally into the space between the shipping container and the starboard wall.

The whole time, the skid steer was still running. It slammed into the container yet again, a lengthy screech signaling another two feet of slide. I lowered my arm to catch a glimpse, blinking past the salt spray and the grit in my eyes.

The container had reached the end of the ramp. A full foot of it overhung the great blackness beyond. The skid steer was winding back again.

And then I saw the black-clothed figure shinnying down the pilot house ladder to my left. Still popping off shots with his UMP trapped between his chest and the ladder rungs, already halfway to the deck, his body bunching as he prepared to jump.

The yellow deck lights, still glowing through the spray, illuminated his face. Our gazes locked—I recognized him.

Yuri Gorbachev had joined the fight.

56

Ithrew myself off the tower’s base and toward the ladder with no regard for the UMP.

There was nothing to do about the submachine gun. With its frame trapped between Yuri and the ladder, his point of aim was limited. Also, he couldn’t have reloaded on his way down, and he’d been dumping rounds like the magazine would never run dry. He might be out of lead.

Or he might have three rounds left, ready to drive through my chest. What was the difference? The skid steer slammed again, its driver sheltered behind a steel roll cage and only seconds away from completing his mission. I needed to be inside that cage. I needed to bludgeon him to death.

But Yuri stood in my way—so I charged him.

Around the pilot house, sprinting with another sea swell and headed straight toward the ladder. Yuri threw himself off, dropping the final yard. He landed with a heavy grunt, already swinging the UMP. Frantically pivoting it toward my gut, opening fire even before the muzzle was aligned.

Two rounds cracked. The first flew wide while the second scraped my ribcage. Then I was on top of him, backhanding the UMP with my wrench and driving it back against his chest. The final two rounds smacked the rear of the skid steer as Yuri shouted. Stumbled. Dropped the UMP and lifted his arms to block my next blow.

Then it was over. I hit him in the arm. In the elbow. Across the stomach. In the shoulder.

The strikes fell like lightning, landing and bouncing and slamming again. With each stroke, bones cracked—Yuri shouted, then began to scream. But he didn’t lower his arms, and I couldn’t get to his head. Every stroke sapped a little more of my dwindling energy, the next smash of the skid steer unleashing a terrifying long scrape of the shipping container. I heard the screams, also.

Loud. Long. Desperate. Eighty people promised hope for a brighter future. Taken from their homes. Thrown into a large, overwhelming American city where almost nobody spoke their language. Forced to work long hours manufacturing goods for a cheapskate American economy, actively funding the political empire of a man who would only perpetuate their bondage.

Now trapped inside a steel box, like animals for the slaughter. Like sparrows—five for two pennies. Hauled offshore and about to be drowned because they had become an inconvenience.

And this pig was standing in my way.

I found something else. Something deep, something buried, something hot. It burst through my muscles and reached my hand. My fingers tightened around the wrench. I hit him straight in the hand—the same hand that covered his face. Bones collapsed and he howled. He hit the port side wall of the LC. He choked. He dropped his head deeper to his shoulders, still desperately protecting his face and skull.

But I wasn’t going for his head—not anymore. I dropped the wrench, and I dove. I grabbed him by the legs and I hauled upward. I flipped him. Yuri shouted and then he was over, riding the top of the rail before vanishing with a shriek. Crashing into the black abyss, his shattered hands and arms useless to keep him afloat. Bobbing and then vanishing in the blink of an eye—erased.

The Russian way.

I caught myself on the wall and gasped, so short on breath that my head spun. I was light on my feet, ready to drop. I was staggering, gripping the railing. Heaving.

Then I heard the next crash, and my gaze snapped back to the shipping container. The skid steer had just made impact—its bucket struck the end of the container at full speed and pushed six tons of precious life another yard over the ramp. Half of the container now overhung the water—the hands that had flailed through the grapefruit holes now thrashed the deck in search of something to cling to.

Like that would do any good. The skid steer was reversing again, withdrawing fifteen feet on slick, bouncing tires. I looked into the vehicle’s rearview mirror, mounted just outside the roll cage, and I saw the face. Wild eyes and gritted teeth—bent on the mission at hand.

And he was one charge away from finishing his job. The skid steer bounced to a halt. The LC crashed into a valley between swells and water poured over the ramp as the container shifted sideways. The skid steer’s engine surged.

I snatched up Yuri’s fallen UMP and threw myself forward.

57

Ireached the skid steer just as it lurched forward. With a roll cage constructed of plate steel with little squares cut out of it, I could barely see inside the cabin. I could only make out the silhouette of the driver’s head and body, pressed into his seat, both hands on the control sticks. He was surging forward faster than I could run, and even if I reached the roll cage, all I could do was cling on while he proceeded to ram that container one last, fateful time.

It was useless. I stopped. I slammed the UMP into my shoulder and locked the muzzle on the moving roll cage and selected a two-inch square opening all in one split second of a last-ditch effort. My mind, trained by tens of thousands of hours spent on Uncle Sam’s gun ranges, locked on what felt like the perfect moment.

I didn’t deliberate. I aimed just ahead of my moving target and squeezed the trigger. The UMP spat the last of its 9mm ammunition. The buttstock popped against my shoulder and the bolt locked back over an exhausted magazine. The bullet raced through that two-inch hole at a lightning fourteen-hundred feet per second.

And it struck the driver right in the side of his head. Blood sprayed the roll cage. He rocked sideways, pulling against the lefthand control stick and sending the skid steer veering right, toward the landing craft’s hull wall.

But it was still too close to the container. The bucket hit the base the LC’s wall and the container’s end at the same time, nudging the corrugated steel box another foot—past midway on the ramp. The LC heaved over another swell, and the container rocked forward just a few degrees.

Screams howled through the holes, and I ran, dropping the UMP and reaching the container just as the LC dipped into an ocean valley. I jumped—I grabbed the top of the container with both hands, dropping my full body weight against it. My torso slammed into the metal and the container’s rear end slammed back into the deck. The LC hit the bottom of the swell and groaned. Rocked. Started over the next.

I clung on, digging my fingers into the steel and leveraging my entire Spanish vocabulary to shout through the metal.

“¡Ven a mí! ¡Ven a mí!”

Come to me.

It was a desperate, semi-illogical command given the absolute containment of those eighty migrants. I wasn’t sure if they knew that their prison was teetering on the edge of brutal death, and that the position of every individual body now mattered more than anything. I need them all jammed against the rear wall.

They got the message. I heard their feet shuffling just as my fingers gave out. My body hit the deck, but the container didn’t rock forward again. The LC was crashing through the bottom of a swell, fully ten inches of water now washing over the lowered ramp and into the hull. We would sink in another ten minutes—sooner with a big wave.

But none of that mattered if I couldn’t get that container off the gate. I ran past the skid steer and its dead driver to a ball of heavy chain swamped by sea water. I dragged it back to the container, heart thundering as I searched for a hooked end. I found a pair of twin cut-outs, intended for use with chains just such as this to lash the container to a deck.

The chain fed through. I secured it with the attached grab hook, then launched myself back to the skid steer.

The LC was groaning again. It was headed to the top of another wave, and I could feel the container shifting, its progress marked by vibrations in the deck. My bare feet caught the rough aluminum, and I threw the chain around the skid steer’s semi-flooded loading bucket—once, twice. Hooked as before.

Then the LC reached the crest of the swell and the container passed its point of balance. The rear of it left the ground, shooting three feet off the deck and snapping the chain tight. The trapped migrants screamed and I heard them sliding—away from me, beyond the container’s fulcrum point. Sealing their fate even as the skid steer shifted, then began to slide.

I shoved myself off the deck. Clawed my way over the bucket, tearing my jumpsuit and flailing into the cab. There was no time to move the dead driver—I couldn’t even turn to sit in his lap, but I didn’t need to. I’d never operated a skid steer before, but I remembered that when his body shifted right, jerking the left stick, the vehicle had pulled in that direction. I assumed that meant this stick provided directional control—I shoved it backward.

I was right. All four tires, bald by heavy use and slick with water, spun on the ribbed deck. The skid steer strained. It slid another inch toward the open ocean as the LC crashed into the belly of the swell and another six inches of water surged over the ramp. We rolled—my legs slid over the top of the bucket as I clung to the roll cage with my left hand and forced the control stick backward with my right. The diesel engine behind the dead Russian mobster howled.

And I closed my eyes. I gasped for breath. My left hand shook as my fingers began to slip free of the roll cage. I envisioned the LC crashing through the water and knew the next dip would finish everything off.

I needed a swell bigger than anything that night. Enough to lift the whole boat out of the water, providing gravity to assist my effort. I gritted my teeth—I asked for it. I jammed against the stick one last time.

And then the LC lifted. With a groan and a shriek of steel against aluminum, the bow rose from the water and the stern dropped. The spinning wheels of the skid steer caught on and the vehicle strained against the chain—it gained six inches. I kept pushing. It gained a foot.

Then momentum took over. The container broke past its fulcrum point and returned to the deck with a slam. It shot backward, plowing through eighteen inches of flood water and crashing into the skid steer’s bucket—driving both myself and the dead Russian toward the pilot house. I looked over my shoulder, beyond the LC’s hull wall, and could see nothing but a starry night sky. No water at all.

We were almost at the top of the wave—next came the big dip.

I rolled and scrambled off the Russian just as the LC began to level off, the core of the swell massing beneath us. As I landed in the lake of water occupying the deck, the bow began to drop again. The water rushed past my legs, surging for the open mouth of the boat as I tore through it, clawing my way along the skid steer and reaching the pilot house.

I was nearly swept away. Nearly knocked over. I caught the pilot house ladder and wrenched myself up it with the last strength I had in me. I didn’t look back—it wouldn’t do any good. I could feel the LC dropping, gaining speed toward the next valley. I heard the container beginning to shift yet again, now resting inside the lowered ramp but headed back for the sea.

I climbed hand over hand. I hauled myself to the open door and threw myself inside, landing behind the landing craft’s controls. The vessel rolled left, and my body threatened to slide out again. I caught the base of an anchored captain’s chair and yanked myself up.

I found the throttle. The engine gauges. A steering wheel and a field of useless controls—only one mattered.

RAMP UP

I mashed the switch. The LC groaned. I pulled myself over the control console and looked through a windshield covered in ocean spray to see the ocean valley I had predicted rocketing toward us—enough dark water to swamp the boat, claim the container, and erase us all.

But the ramp was headed up. The hydraulics pumped. The metal lip rose even as the container scraped toward it.

The ramp slammed closed, and we slammed into the trough. Water exploded over the bow in a colossal spray. For a moment I couldn’t see anything at all—the entire deck vanished, and I just clung to the captain’s chair, panting and waiting and hoping.

Four brutal, endless, crushing seconds…

Then the LC rose again. The spray crashed back into the sea and the open deck became visible once more.

The container was still there. The ramp still closed.

I slumped to the floor. Leaned against the pilot house wall, I couldn’t do anything but breathe for a very long time.

Eyes closed. Hands trembling. My lips slick with my own blood. We crossed another two swells, but nothing was as big as that one wave that had saved, then nearly claimed, the lives of everyone on board.

The sea calmed. After sixty seconds, my heart began to calm with it. I reached for the radio clipped to the control console, and without checking to see what channel we were switched to, I thumbed the mic.

“Mayday, mayday. Landing craft somewhere south of Long Island. Just…send everybody you got.”

58

Whoever heard my call understood the message loud and clear—and they did indeed send everyone.

Coast Guard. New Jersey State Police. New York State Police. Harbor Police. There was even a Pennsylvania National Guard helicopter conducting a nearby training mission who voluntarily responded.

I returned to the deck to confirm that the shipping container was padlocked. Without my lock picks I didn’t have a way to open it, so I just reassured the captives in what broken Spanish I could manage, then leaned against their prison recovering my breath while armed state and federal officers stormed the landing craft.

And then the chaos really commenced. Backup was called. I was approached by a pair of Coasties who noticed my bleeding feet and shouted for medical. They carried me to their cutter and wrapped me in a towel and handed me hot coffee. I felt a little like an honored guest, actually.

Then a radio crackled, a discussion was held. My face was identified—the Coasties turned quiet. Five minutes later the New Jersey State Police boarded the cutter, and the next thing I knew, I was back in handcuffs.

No good deed unpunished.

It was another one of Ed’s favorite sayings, although he always repeated it with a dry laugh, as though it was more a joke than a proverb. Maybe Ed, like any wise man, understood the futility of screaming against the wind.

Maybe that was a lesson I had learned myself. Whatever the case, I didn’t bother protesting the cuffs or the custody or the direct ride back to the Essex County Correctional Facility. I really didn’t mind the fresh jumpsuit, fresh flip-flops, or even the jail cell.

It wasn’t gen pop. It was a windowless box with a solid steel door, a stainless-steel toilet that had somehow still been stained, and—best of all—a two-inch mattress covered in sour sheets.

I hit that bunk like it was a king size bed in a five-star hotel. Whole body, my flipflops dangling from my feet. Pillow jammed beneath my head and neck, eyes closed.

And I slept like I hadn’t in weeks. Like a rock, like a dead man. Totally content to be locked up so long as I was left alone. I didn’t dream of Marielis or Russians, of Vinny or corrupt mayors. I didn’t dream of anything at all.

I just let the hours stack, maybe snoring as Ellis had accused me of. Maybe not breathing at all. I didn’t care.

I was good.

When I finally awoke it might have been eight hours since I passed out, or it might have been fifteen. My watch had never been returned to me, and there was no clock in the cell. This was a place for forgetting—a place where time itself didn’t matter, even while it was the only thing that mattered.

But even for all that, I hadn’t woken naturally. I’d woken because somebody was calling through the observational window in my door.

“Hey. Sharpe!”

My eyes blinked open, and I twisted my head. It wasn’t until the toilet came into view that I remembered where I was.

The knowledge wasn’t met with any particular dread—just more exhaustion.

Right.

“Sharpe!” The voice repeated. “Wake up. Time for a meeting.”

I looked through the window at the guy’s face. I couldn’t see much…but what I saw was telling.

The eyes were bloodshot. The face still flushed and swollen. It was the CO I had tased, and he was staring right at me, unblinking. Yet I didn’t think I saw any malice in the gaze…

Maybe just confusion.

The window snapped shut and I rolled out of bed. One flipflop had fallen off during my slumber and I retrieved it—my battered feet throbbed as I applied pressure, but the Coasties had done a good job with the bandaging. I wasn’t bleeding.

I splashed water over my face from the toilet-mounted sink and ran my fingers through my hair. I sat on the bed for another five minutes, slowly waking up. Then the door opened and two COs that I didn’t recognize entered. They marched me out of the cell and down a hallway without a word, eventually bringing us to an interview room that looked exactly like the one where I’d met Agent Champin of the ATF.

Maybe it was. Champin, in fact, waited for me. He glared but didn’t speak as I was seated across from him, my restraints linked to a ring in the table as before. Then the COs left, and the door closed. Champin kept staring but didn’t speak. The coffee sitting in front of him was still warm, still steaming. It looked good.

I took the mug and indulged in a long gulp. When I lowered it again, I found Champin staring at me exactly as he had a moment before—angry, silent, brooding.

“Believe me now?” I asked.

Before Champin could answer, hinges groaned. A new figured stepped in, clothed in a black suit similar to Champin’s, but better tailored. The newcomer was male, short and stocky with an olive complexion and deep brown eyes. He carried a folder beneath one arm and settled into the chair alongside Champin, smoothing his tie and opening the folder on the table.

He took a moment to flip through it, and I recognized some of the pages. The top one was my DOD file—US Army, honorably discharged. Next came my personnel file from the Phoenix Police Department. Then there was a series of internal files from the Newark PD.

Finally, the guy looked up. He met and held my gaze. I noted the watch on his wrist—seven-thirty p.m.

Did I really sleep a full eighteen hours?

My gaze switched back to the newcomer. I thought his stare was a searching one. An evaluating one, as though he was struggling to decide what he thought of me.

Honestly, I didn’t much care what he came up with.

“Mr. Sharpe, I’m Special Agent José Flores with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I understand that you’ve been read your rights, but I would like to repeat them before we proceed. Is that all right?”

I ducked my head, both in submission and acknowledgment of the prudent police work. Flores recited the rights from memory. I acknowledged that I understood them and declined a lawyer.

Why not? I couldn’t afford a lawyer, and something in my gut told me that I wanted to hear what Flores had to say.

“You’ve had quite the week, Mr. Sharpe,” Flores said, not taking his eyes off me. “The Newark PD has you on charges of murder, resisting arrest, assault on correctional officers, and grand theft auto. My colleague from the ATF, Agent Champin, would like to charge you in connection with his investigation into a Russian criminal organization operating here in Newark, and their possible felonious firearm trafficking.”

“Not possible,” Champin snapped. “It’s definitely happening, and this guy was definitely in on it.”

Flores seemed unfazed by the outburst. He rocked his head in a “maybe so, maybe not” way and consulted his notes.

“I spoke with a Mr.…uh, Edward Clark. He’s the president and manager of a shelter for the unhoused in Ironbound. Is that correct?”

“The homeless, yes,” I said.

“Right. Well, according to Mr. Clark, I’m not sure how you could have become involved with the Russian mob because you’ve only been in Newark for about ten weeks and you’ve been working your tail off at his ministry the entire time. He’s volunteered a truckload of witnesses to testify to your general activities and character.”

“Homeless people,” Champin snapped. “Hardly reliable witnesses, and it’s not like they were with him twenty-four hours a day.”

“Actually, some of them were,” Flores corrected. “It seems Mr. Sharpe sleeps at the shelter, so I think it might be a challenge to confirm any associations, nocturnal or otherwise, with organized crime on Ferry Street.”

Champin flushed. His mouth opened. Flores raised a hand.

“Of course, I’ll leave that to the ATF. My concern with this case is entirely focused on charges of human trafficking. Specifically, the unlawful kidnapping and detainment of Central and South American migrants by the aforementioned Russian crime ring for the purpose of forced sweatshop labor.”

I looked to Champin at that, lifting both eyebrows. He turned crimson, but before he could interject again, Flores resumed.

“Over the last six months, the FBI has received four credible tips regarding human trafficking of migrants into Ironbound. As the special agent tasked with investigating these reports, I conducted interviews of multiple alleged victims, and scrutinized both employment and immigration paperwork to ensure their legitimacy. I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Sharpe, that something didn’t sit right with me. But ultimately, the documents checked out and I couldn’t get anyone to talk.”

“They were terrified,” I said.

“I’m sure they were. Migrants from countries like theirs are accustomed to deeply corrupt governments staffed by dishonest officers. It can be very difficult for them to trust anyone with a badge.”

There was something in Flores’s voice—something about the way it softened as he described life from south of the border—that hit harder than anything he’d said yet. There was an empathy, there. A genuine understanding.

A personal connection.

I caught the moment but didn’t say anything. Flores shifted his paperwork and cleared his throat.

“Anyway, I followed up for three months, and never could nail anything down. It seems likely that a man named Yuri Gorbachev, captain of the Russian crime ring, was operating under the established cover of corrupt local officials and perhaps even police—people who manufactured the documents he needed and shielded his operations from federal investigation. In that capacity, I guess his victims were right to mistrust authorities.”

“He worked with Mayor Greene,” I said. “They had an established partnership—Yuri helped to fund Greene’s election campaign, and Greene covered him the way you described. There are corrupt cops, also.”

“You said so before,” Champin snapped.

“That’s because it’s true,” I said.

“And yet you can’t prove any of it, can you?”

Before I could respond, Flores lifted a hand.

“If anyone could prove it, Greene would already be behind bars, and this case would be in the hands of a US Attorney. Obviously, any corrupt government officials are well covered, and so is Gorbachev…who I understand is no longer with us.”

Flores shot me a look. I said nothing.

“This is an arms case,” Champin said. “Always has been an arms case. Whatever eighty migrants were doing in a shipping container off the coast of Newark with this guy standing alongside, none of that subtracts from the reality that automatic weapons were found with Mr. Sharpe’s fingerprints⁠—”

“Will you shut up?” Flores cut in, the first hint of irritation spilling into his voice.

Champin blinked. Flores looked his way.

“This is my interview, Special Agent Champin. You’re here as a courtesy. Now sit quiet and see if you can learn something.”

Champin’s face darkened—he looked ready to explode. But he didn’t say anything as Flores turned back to me.

“Now,” he said. “I’m going to shoot straight with you. I know nothing about the ATFs arms’ case, and the only thing I know about your problems with the Newark PD comes from what they put in this file.”

He thumped the police report. Waited. I let him stare me down, and I didn’t blink.

Finally, he said: “Did you kill John Doe?”

“Vinny?” I asked.

“We don’t have a legal name. I’m talking about the man found stabbed at the homeless shelter.”

“No. I didn’t.”

“But you ran.”

“Yes.”

“You evaded arrest, assaulted correctional officers, and stole a van.”

“Yes. I did.”

I didn’t even think of denying it—what was the point? It was all on camera, and I’m not a liar.

“Why?” Flores said.

He was gazing at me even more intently than before, and there was something in his voice that told me he really wanted an honest answer. He cared about the truth.

“I evaded arrest because I knew it was a setup,” I said. “I knew there were at least two corrupt cops inside the Newark PD, and as a former cop myself, I knew the hunt for the true killer would end the moment the District Attorney charged me. I assaulted the COs because it was my only way to break out of here and save those eighty lives you mentioned. I took the van because I thought it would help me pick up chicks.”

The last bit was a joke—to Flores’s credit, he smiled. Just a little. And he still didn’t look away.

“He’s lying,” Champin said. “Everything he says is a lie. The ATF will charge him with arms trafficking and⁠—”

Flores’s gaze snapped left. Champin broke off mid-sentence, freezing over. Slowly, Flores looked back to me.

“Can you prove that Mayor Greene was involved with the Russians?”

“Can you erase those police charges if I do?” I asked.

It was a big ask, but why not swing for the fences?

To my surprise, Flores didn’t immediately answer—and that was a lot better than a no.

“I can’t erase a murder charge,” he said.

“I’m not guilty of murder.”

“You’ll have to prove that.”

“If I prove Greene is guilty, I’ll prove he set up the murder. What about the other things?”

Flores glanced to the document. Pursed his lips.

“I can make some calls. No promises. You may owe some correctional officers a year’s worth of cold beer.”

“Are you serious?” That was Champin again. We both ignored him.

“Can you prove it?” Flores said again.

I mentally retraced my steps from the moment Faust and Hightower jumped Vinny, straight through my collisions with the Russians, and finally to Greene’s appearance at the Яed Autumn Steakhouse. I took my time.

And maybe…just maybe, I had an idea.

“I think I can,” I said.

“How?”

“I’ll need to meet with Greene. Off the books, someplace quiet. You’ll need to let me go.”

“Are you insane?” Champin barked. “You think we’re gonna just let you⁠—”

“Okay,” Flores said. “Let’s say that I can make that happen. What then?”

“Then I bring you what you need,” I said. “And you throw that guy in jail.”

Long pause. Flores was measuring me again. I waited, not bothering to remind him that he could re-arrest me if things didn’t pan out. That there was no place I could really run or not much I could do on foot in a city full of people who now knew my face. That I had no incentive to run, anyway—I’d willingly called the authorities from the landing craft. I hadn’t resisted arrest.

These were all things Flores knew, but he would either believe me, or not.

Finally, the special agent said: “Assuming I can make that happen⁠—”

Champin looked ready to explode. Flores shot up a finger.

“Assuming. What would you need?”

“A watch,” I said, not even hesitating. “But not the one you took from me. I want an upgrade.”

59

Branch Brook Park was as quiet at four a.m. as the night I slept there, hidden in brush like a Ranger caught behind the wire, holding his breath while the enemy marched by.

Twenty-four hours later, a lot had changed, but one thing remained the same—I still needed to avoid the Newark PD. I was still, in some ways, a man on the run. If caught by any one of the hundreds of law enforcement officers who were unaware of my mission and the tenuous arrangement I had made with Special Agent Flores, I would be back behind bars and further up the creek than before.

That was why I chose the park. I knew it was quiet, I knew it was isolated, I knew the Newark PD let the homeless sleep, at least until sunrise, and nobody would be around for my covert meeting with the esteemed Kenneth Greene.

Taking the walking trails past the lake, beneath Bloomfield Avenue, and into the same northern reaches of the park where I’d slept in the bushes, I found the jet-black SUV waiting in a parking lot all alone, its headlights switched off but exhaust still boiling from the tailpipe.

It wasn’t a Lincoln Navigator, and I was a little disappointed in that. There would have been some poetic symmetry to Greene’s use of the model, but instead he drove a Infiniti crossover with glossy rims.

Close enough.

I stopped in the shadows between towering live oaks and waited for Greene to exit. He took his time, glancing across the parking lot and between the trees, perhaps searching for hidden FBI agents or panel vans printed with the names of plumbing companies that didn’t exist. He already knew I wasn’t working with the Newark PD—his corrupt minions would have informed him of that.

He was right to be worried about the feds, but I hadn’t brought any of the FBI with me, or any of Champin’s friends from the ATF. In fact, I’d made a point of cutting all communications with law enforcement the moment I was “released”. I walked everywhere I went from there.

First to a twenty-four-hour Walmart. Then across town to this park. I made the phone call somewhere in between and was initially ignored.

When I sent a text message from my brand-new burner, Greene called me back within seconds. Now, he was here.

Soft mist hugged the ground as the mayor approached, alone and wrapped in a trench coat that made him look like a gumshoe from a sixties Hollywood murder mystery. The buttons of that coat were unfastened, probably to leave easy access to a firearm.

I wasn’t concerned. If he tried to shoot me, I would have him on attempted murder, which would open the floodgates of warrants and subpoenas as surely as the scheme I outlined for Flores back at the jail. In fact, maybe things would be easier that way.

Then again, I was pretty tired of being shot at.

“Mr. Mayor,” I said, ducking my head.

Greene didn’t answer. He didn’t say anything at all. His eyes were still sweeping the surrounding park, probing the darkness between streetlamps, his jaw crushing a wad of gum in a mechanical pattern as regular as the sewing machines on Yellow Street.

“Did you bring what I asked for?” I said.

I knew he had—why else would he be here? Mostly, I just wanted to get him talking.

But Greene was smarter than that. He advanced, still silent, and jabbed a thumb toward the sky. I pretended not to understand, frowning. His gaze hardened and he lifted my arms by force, patting me down and sweeping beneath my shirt. Checking my belt. Emptying my pockets.

All my usual hardware was there—wallet, knife, flashlight, and the new burner phone. Everything I should have had if I was truly cut loose by the police. He examined every item, actually stripping the wallet of each dollar bill and expired credit card, dispensing them on the ground, shaking his head at my driver’s license, and finally taking the cell phone.

He switched it on—it wasn’t locked. He searched momentarily through the apps, the text messages. Then he threw the phone on the ground and smashed it with a hard-soled dress shoe.

One stomp, then two. The phone was history, and he pointed to my shoes.

“Seriously?” I said.

He glared. I rolled my eyes and kicked the boots off. He looked into each of them, patted down my legs and tender feet, then finally stepped back.

Not satisfied, but willing to proceed.

“Why’d they cut you loose?” Greene demanded.

Absolutely none of the easy-going, everyday-Jack charm he’d manufactured at the shelter appeared in his tone. He sounded as cold and vicious now as Yuri himself.

I shrugged. “Well, I made bail on the minor charges. As for your scheme to frame me for a homeless man’s murder, it seems there was a little mishap down at the Newark PD evidence locker—the knife was ‘incorrectly processed’.” I made air quotes. “The DA doesn’t have nearly enough to charge me…for now, anyway. Knowing your people I’m sure they’ll think of something, which is exactly why I’m here.”

It was best story Flores and I could concoct, and I thought it just might work…assuming I could keep Greene off his phone. That I could keep him amped up and agitated enough to ignore his better judgment.

His next question gave me faith that the scheme was working.

“Where did you get my phone number?” Greene said.

“Same place I got your emails,” I said. “You should really consider a better firewall.”

He chewed. Glared. I could see the calculations spinning behind his eyes like formulas on a mad scientist’s chalkboard, but there was no secret solution that would get him out of this one. I had him on the ropes already—I just needed to lead him another few steps before knocking him off balance. He’d hang himself.

I lifted my eyebrows. “Well? You gonna play ball, or am I going to the feds?”

“How do I know you’re not already working with them? How do I know you’re not making everything up?”

“I’ve already demonstrated what I have,” I said. “I know you were in business with Yuri Gorbachev, shielding his sweatshop while he fueled your campaigns. I’ve got all the emails I need to prove it, and unless you accept my offer and erase this murder investigation once and for all…I will contact the FBI. Bank on it. I’m not somebody you can push around.”

Better than half of what I said was a total ruse—I didn’t have any emails, and I hadn’t hacked into Greene’s personal computers to steal his phone number. The phone number came from Flores, who had his own way of obtaining it. I knew Greene was in bed with Yuri because I’d witnessed their meeting at the steakhouse. Maybe Greene even knew I was there—maybe Yuri had called to tell him even as he fled the scene.

If so, Greene might suspect a bluff…but the only way to call me on it was to admit to the steakhouse meeting, which was still a win for me. I could hang him that way, also. The most important thing was to keep Greene talking, and I knew that my claim of compromising emails offered strong odds of backing him into a corner.

A guy like Greene sends thousands of emails every year. Way more than a single person could keep track of. Maybe he was careful, and was ninety-nine percent certain he had never disclosed his illicit business dealings in any of them.

But that one percent? It was working on him. Nagging at his mind. Wearing him down and leaving him wondering if maybe, just maybe, my claims were legit.

If so, he couldn’t afford to let me walk. He had to figure this thing out, right here on the spot. He had to talk.

“Let’s say I can terminate the murder investigation,” Greene said. “Permanently.”

“And the money,” I lifted a finger. “Twenty grand in small bills.”

It was important to reinforce my cash grab—it served as smoke, distracting him from what I really wanted. Making me look sleazy, just another guy on the take.

Greene bought it, rolling his eyes. “Yes, and the money. Let’s say I make it happen. How do I know you won’t pop out of the woodwork next year, hungry for more? How do I know…it’s gone?”

It wasn’t an admission—not yet. But we were getting closer.

“You won’t know,” I said. “I can’t prove that I erased everything. So, what I’m going to do instead is solve one of your other problems, and give you a little leverage against me, all at once. Then we both know things—mutually assured destruction, if you like.”

This was most tenuous part of my entire scheme, a sort of hinge that the whole plan turned on. I didn’t know if it would work. But if I could push him just a little farther…

“What problem?” Greene said, squinting.

“Faust and Hightower,” I answered without hesitation. “Your two little goons dressed in blue shirts. I’m guessing one of them actually killed Vinny, or maybe both of them. They’ve been pulling strings on your behalf, and on Yuri’s behalf, from the start. But now Yuri is gone, his whole operation is under investigation, and Faust and Hightower are losing sleep. Tossing and turning. Wondering just how far the FBI will dig, and whether it might be time to consider a backup plan. I mean, where are they now, Greene? Do you have people watching them? Can you trust those people?”

Long before I concluded the monologue, I knew I had hit pay dirt. Greene chewed his gum a little faster, his face losing color. No longer searching the darkness around us, he was now focused entirely on me.

Measuring every word. Debating, evaluating. Scrambling…

I took a step forward. I lowered my voice. “You’ve built a house on the beach, Greene, and there’s a hurricane coming. If you don’t board up the windows now, you’re finished.”

“They would never talk,” Greene snapped.

“You sure about that? Because it only takes one, and then the other’s loyalty won’t matter. I’m offering you a solution, here, and a cheap one. I’ll whack your minions, and you’ll have their deaths chalked up to an accident. You’ll handle my murder charge. Then I take my twenty grand, and we’re finished with each other. No leaked emails. No arrests made. All loose ends tied up. Take it or leave it.”

Another brutally slow pause. Greene was wrestling, fighting with himself. Debating and measuring the odds and resisting the siren call of my sales pitch. Telling himself that he could handle this without me. That me stacking bodies wouldn’t make anything better.

But all that logic took a back seat to a developing wave of emotional desperation, just the way I knew it would. The loss of Yuri, the swarm of federal agents infesting his town, the questions of what I might know and how much he could really trust his minions…

It was all swirling into a judgement-swamping cocktail. Another few seconds of debate, and then three, two, one…

“Okay,” Greene said. “Do it.”

“Both of them?”

A hesitation. He licked his lips. “Yeah.”

“Which one killed Vinny?”

“Why do you care?”

“Because he was my friend, and I’m inclined to be vengeful.”

A curse. A shake of Greene’s head. Then: “Faust did it. Hightower planted the knife. He’s good with locks.”

“Seems so—that was a good one on my locker. Where do you want the bodies?”

Hesitation. Swallow. “Hightower has a fishing boat. Faust goes with him sometimes. You can make it look like an accident.”

“No problem. And my money?”

Another breath through clenched teeth. Greene reached into a trench coat and produced a stack of twenty-dollar bills about an inch thick—four grand, maybe.

He offered it to me. I reached to accept with my left hand, exposing the brand-new watch held to my wrist with a metal bracelet.

Stainless bezel. Exterior buttons. A classic look. But as I twisted my wrist the watch face came to life, glowing in the dark—and it didn’t display clock hands. It displayed an active phone call.

Greene’s gaze snapped to the screen and his eyes went wide.

“Did you get all that, Special Agent Flores?” I said.

Flores took his end of the phone call off mute. “Yeah, buddy. Loud and clear. Tell the mayor we’re thirty seconds out—and he shouldn’t bother trying to run. I’ve got Newark’s finest on the job, and Faust and Hightower are already in handcuffs.”

I whistled in admiration and ended the call, shaking my wrist.

“Modern technology, Greene. Truly a marvel. Did you know you can make calls with watches now?”

Greene was stumbling backward, his face washing pale. From not far away, blue lights appeared between the trees, and a pair of NPD patrol cars raced to surround his Infiniti. He looked back, breathing hard. His face snapped to mine once more.

“You never had any emails.”

“Nope,” I said. “But now that you’re about to be arrested on murder-for-hire charges, I have a feeling that the FBI will obtain search warrants for all your devices. Based on your reaction when I claimed to have hacked your computer…I’m sure they’ll find something.”

I winked. Greene began to shake, fists clenched. Newark cops—the good apples—bailed out of their cars and began rushing into the park, hands on their weapons.

Then Greene snapped. He charged me, screaming like a wild animal. I twisted and drove a fist into his gut hard enough to knock his spine out of alignment. He fell like a tree, winded and worthless, and I calmly descended to my knees.

Hands behind my head, not fighting. Ready to be taken back into police custody.

60

Ispent four days in solitary confinement at the Essex County Detention Facility.

Confinement, because the DA was still sorting a menagerie of charges against me, trying to determine which to pursue and which would be dropped. Solitary because, for all anyone knew, the Russian mob still had soldiers on the ground in Newark and perhaps also in the jail. I was now a key witness in a sprawling racketeering/human trafficking/murder for-hire-case and keeping me alive was in the best interest of the State.

Honestly, I didn’t mind being a bum for a change, sleeping late and churning through the stack of paperback novels supplied by the jail librarian. The food was bad, and my clothes stank. The room was small and the most I could manage in terms of physical exercise was pushups and crunches on the floor.

But it was all good, because I knew Flores was doing everything he could for me. Whether or not it would be enough remained to be seen. My recorded conversation with Greene should be sufficient to dismiss the manufactured murder charges against me, and as a token of good faith the DA might waive the related charges of resisting arrest.

But I’d crotch-kicked one CO and tased another, and that would be a harder pill to swallow for any self-respecting prosecutor. Truth be told, I understood.

On the afternoon of day four—I was yet again without a watch and had lost track of exactly what day of the week it was—I was checked out of solitary and transferred to the same meeting room where I’d originally met Flores.

Champin, mercifully, wasn’t there. I wondered if his arms trafficking case had fallen apart yet, or if he had scraped together just enough Class III firearms to save face with his bosses and keep his job.

I really didn’t care either way.

Flores waited for me in the interview room alongside a slender woman with pale blonde hair wrapped into a bun so tight it stretched the skin of her forehead. She looked tired—she looked overworked and underappreciated. She looked like a prosecutor.

Flores spoke first.

“Mason, this is Assistant DA Julia Pink from the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office. She’s the one handling your case.”

Cases, you mean.

I thought it, I didn’t say it. Why highlight my own predicament?

DA Pink didn’t extend her hand or rise from her chair. Flores and I sat, and the two of them exchanged a glance.

Pink was messing with her phone, jabbing out a text message or maybe an email with the impatience of a woman who was on her last nerve with the world. Finally, she set it down and nodded to Flores. He cleared his throat.

“Since we last talked, there have been several developments in the Yellow Street investigation—that’s what we’re calling it. All of the eighty migrants recovered from the boat have received medical care and are now in the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I’m not up to speed on where each of their cases stand, but I do know that given their status as victims of human trafficking, they will all be issued T-visas and be given asylum in the United States at least until the DOJ concludes its case against the Russians and Kenneth Greene.”

I said nothing. It was what I hoped for, even if I hadn’t been so confident as to expect it. The T-visas were a short-term arrangement, but it was a much better option than immediate deportation, and maybe temporary status could lead to permanent residency.

If anyone asked me, they deserved it.

“Speaking of the Russians,” Flores continued, “We found Yuri Gorbachev’s body. A couple of fishermen snagged it two days ago—obviously, it was in bad shape. But ID was confirmed and the breaks in his arms and hands match your description of the fight on the landing craft. I’ll let Julia speak as to the DA’s position on the matter, but the FBI has no interest in perusing a homicide investigation on behalf of any dead Russians, either on the boat or at the Яed Autumn Steakhouse. You’re in the clear for that.”

I glanced to Pink. She simply sipped water. Still, no comment.

“That leads us to Mayor Greene,” Flores said, shifting his notes. “As you know, we leveraged the recording of your conversation with Greene at the park to obtain search warrants for his home, office, and all his personal communications devices. The resulting evidence was…well⁠—”

“Magnificent,” Pink said, entering the conversation for the first time. She wasn’t smiling, and her voice was monotone, but there was still some unfamiliarity to the way she said the word that made me think she wasn’t in the habit of issuing praise.

“That’s one way to put it,” Flores said. “Greene had a private server set up at his house to manage an internal email system. I guess he thought he was extra secure that way, and if he had destroyed the server he would have been. We got to it first, and we found everything. Messages between him and Gorbachev, and messages between him and the two cops you named, Faust and Hightower. There were also messages involving a corrupt campaign manager, and details of cash payoffs corresponding to euphemistic service requests. There’s no doubt in our minds that Greene was every bit as involved with Gorbachev’s operation as you suggested, to include the human trafficking of migrants and the manipulation of government regulators. The DA’s office should be filing official charges within the week—Greene is going away for a very long time.”

I grunted. It was all very good, and in a way, kind of bad, also. I hadn’t achieved any written agreement with the FBI or the DA’s office prior to setting Greene up. Now that they had all the hard evidence that they needed to prosecute him, there was no concrete reason to cut a deal with me.

If DA Pink wanted, she could have her cake and eat it too. Lock everybody up.

I lifted both eyebrows, signaling my question without voicing it, and Flores sat back. He looked to Pink.

“Mr. Sharpe,” Pink began, interlacing her fingers. “I really don’t like people like you.”

Not a good start.

I wanted to ask what defined “people like me”, but decided it was better to keep my mouth shut. Pink stared and didn’t blink.

“You think you can bend the rules and get away with it—color outside the lines, and all’s well that ends well. I’m here to tell you, that’s not how our society works.”

Sure it is, you just don’t like it.

It was another thought I kept to myself. Pink breathed deeply, still staring. Then her gaze flicked to her notepad.

“Concerning the murder of John Doe, whom you call Vinny, the District Attorney’s office is dropping all charges in light of new evidence against Officers Faust and Hightower of the Newark PD. Recovered emails from Greene’s private server show each man was paid twenty-five-hundred dollars to make both yourself and John Doe disappear in support of Yuri Gorbachev’s operation. So that’s pretty cut and dried.”

Excellent.

I still didn’t speak. There were loose threads dangling.

“In appreciation for your cooperation in this case and assistance with exposing Mayor Greene, my office has also agreed to drop the charges of evading arrest. Off the record, I don’t mind telling you that Special Agent Flores cashed in a favor to influence that decision.”

I glanced at Flores. He wasn’t looking at me. My stomach knotted, and I felt the gut punch coming.

The big remaining offense.

“Finally, we come to your assault of Correctional Officers James Cordoroy and Miles Pink of the Essex County Detention Center.”

My gaze flicked up at that second last name—Pink. I looked at Flores, but he was still avoiding my gaze.

No freaking way…

“To refresh your memory, you assaulted Officer Corduroy and tased Officer Pink, and this is the part I really can’t swallow. A man such as yourself, with a decorated police and military record, should know better than to lay a hand on an honorable public servant in the execution of his duty. Frankly, it disgusts me.”

Pink locked eyes with me. She wasn’t blinking. She was just as monotone as before, but there was a hint of crimson creeping up her neck. Her nostrils flared a little. She took her time getting to the next part, as though she was struggling to spit it out.

“Regrettably, Officer Corduroy wasn’t so honorable. His name was also discovered amid Mayor Greene’s emails—apparently, he was a low-level assistant of Gorbachev’s organization, serving needs inside the Essex County Correction Facility. So, while your assault is still a violation of law, it would be pragmatically difficult to prosecute that offense while also prosecuting Corduroy, and it just so happens that I prefer nailing corrupt civil servants to vigilante vagrants. It seems you’re lucky again.”

A rush of satisfaction flooded my chest as I remembered Corduroy—his threats about big men who liked what they saw, and my fate when I reached gen pop. I’d never known his name but wasn’t surprised that he was bent. I’d smelled it on him.

What about the other guy?

The DA seemed to read my mind.

“Your final charges boil down to your tasing of Officer Pink—who was perfectly honorable—and your subsequent theft of a government vehicle. For those, assuming a conviction at trial, I would expect a sentence of five years imprisonment, and a twenty-five-thousand dollar fine.”

My gut plummeted. I inhaled a deep breath and forced myself to stay calm.

Fair is fair—you tased the guy.

But Pink wasn’t done. The crimson rising up her neck had reached her cheeks. Her teeth were clenched.

“Unfortunately,” she continued, “I owe Special Agent Flores quite few favors…and my brother—” she spat the word as though it was bad chewing gum, all the undertones of a love-hate relationship concentrated into a single word like a shot of espresso— “is a pigheaded fool who delights in making my life difficult. He’s waffling on pressing charges.”

She muttered a curse. I squinted and turned to Flores.

“So…” I started.

He shook his head, cutting me off. Pink looked back to her notes, sucked her teeth, then produced a document and slid it across the table with a pen.

“Mr. Sharpe, this is a plea agreement. By signing, you plead no contest to the charges of simple assault on a correctional officer, theft of state property, reckless driving, and escape from custody. This means you are accepting sentencing without admitting guilt. Under the terms of this plea, you agree to serve twelve months of probation, suspended upon the completion of four-hundred hours of documented community service. If you would like an attorney to review this document or provide counsel prior to your acceptance of these terms, the State will provide one at no cost to you.”

I blinked. I took the document and scanned the first page. Then the second, the third.

It said exactly what Pink claimed it said—a very simple arrangement, practically a golden parachute. I hesitated another moment, then reached for the pen.

Flores stopped me halfway.

“There’s…one other thing.”

I lifted an eyebrow. Pink clenched her teeth again. She leaned forward over the table.

“My brother would like a word with you. Off the record.”

61

Special Agent Flores gave me a ride out of the Essex County Detention Center in the shotgun seat of his government-issue Chevy Malibu.

It smelled exactly like all government cars do. Of street meat and sour coffee, with just a hint of body odor thrown in as garnishment. Flores threw his cell phone onto a mount before shifting into gear, and as the screen illuminated, I saw a happy family gathered in front of a cartoon character at a theme park.

Flores was there, joined by a Caucasian wife and two biracial children. There was also an older woman, whose complexion was darker than Flores’s, and her smile somehow even wider. The happiness in her eyes, and the peace, even deeper.

I glanced left, realizing that I was staring, and Flores caught me. He fed a stick of gum into his mouth and said nothing, steering us onto the highway and cruising in silence for the first five minutes with gentle Spanish guitar music rippling from the Malibu’s speakers.

Finally, he said: “Honduras. I was two years old. My mother journeyed all the way through Mexico and found a job cleaning hotel rooms in Ciudad Juárez. It took her twenty-three months to obtain a US Green Card. She’s lived here ever since—earned her citizenship, worked to put herself through college. I believe you call that the American Dream.”

I wanted to laugh—not because it was a funny story, but because men like Flores had such a wildly different view of what constituted the American Dream than your average white collar, multigenerational domestic citizen.

It wasn’t about two cars and a house in the suburbs with a membership to the golf course. It was about freedom. Opportunity. A chance to raise a family without fear of cartels kicking down your doors in the middle of the night.

It was hope.

“I thought you might have connected the dots,” Flores said. “About why I went to bat for you.”

I had—not with certainty, but I was confident in my guess. The story of his mother’s journey to the Land of the Free still hit me like a roundhouse kick. I hoped stories like that would always hit me so hard.

“They call me a bloodhound at the Bureau,” Flores said. “I’ve spent the last decade hunting human traffickers, specifically those dealing in undocumented migrants. It’s a huge problem…but coming from Phoenix, maybe you know that.”

I did, but I kept quiet. I wanted Flores to keep talking. He drove another half mile, across the heart of Newark, back into Ironbound and the port district. Then he shook his head. Muttered a curse.

“It’s…it’s not about nailing the bad guys, you know. It’s about the people. The victims. They’re just like my mother—practically invisible. And I guess, I just feel like…”

“They matter,” I finished.

He glanced my way. Nodded slowly.

Then he drove the final block. Eased to a stop near a curb on a lonely street with nothing but two vacant warehouses, a seedy bar standing between them. As the brakes squealed, the bar’s door opened. Two guys stepped out and they looked right at us. One looked like a drinking buddy—the other carried a neon yellow device in his right hand.

The guy with the device grinned. Winked. Then they both headed for a nearby alley, and I sighed.

“Sorry about this,” Flores said.

“Eh, what can you do? Beats jail.”

I eased the door open. Stepped out. Flores called back after me.

“Hey, Mason.”

I ducked to the open passenger side window. “Yeah?”

“It helps if you fall quickly.”

I snorted. “Gee, thanks.”

Flores shrugged, a little sheepish. I turned for the alley and found my two friends waiting, each with a beer.

“Well, hello there, Mr. Sharpe.”

It was the guy with the neon yellow device who spoke—Officer Miles Pink of the Essex County Correctional Facility. There was a little slur in his voice, a little shimmer in his eyes. I looked to his buddy…then to the neon device. Then I sighed.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”

I placed my back against the nearest brick wall. I turned to face the pair of them, arms at my sides. I lifted my chin.

“Any last words?” Pink asked.

I smirked. “Yeah. Thank God for sibling rivalry.”

He laughed, spraying beer. He raised the neon device.

Then he hit me with fifty-thousand volts, and I dropped like a tree.

62

My last day in Newark was spent at the shelter.

I didn’t want to stick around town, even thought I could have satisfied my four-hundred hours of community service working with Ed. I wouldn’t have been paid, but that was okay, because I still could have slept on the cot and eaten with the homeless. I could have played my violin in the evenings and risen early in the mornings to join Ed’s Bible studies. It would have been good.

But I didn’t want to bring any more negative energy to an organization already wracked by murder, kidnapping, and the abuses of corrupt police officers. The longer I stuck around, I figured, the longer Julia Pink had to come up with something else to nail me for, and I thought she would be happy to do so just to needle her brother the way he had needled her.

No, I was better on the road. I could find some place else to serve. Ed had already made phone calls to an organization in Upstate New York that supplied impoverished rural people with life-saving supplies during the crushing grip of impending winter. They needed somebody with a truck who could tow a box trailer and move those supplies.

My truck, recently repaired and road-ready, was up for the job. All I needed were tire chains and a tank of gas.

The last night before I hit the highway, Ed held a special dinner at the shelter which he insisted was not a going away dinner. A giant pot of chili was served with corn bread from a local grocery store, a little stale and crumbly, but free. I sat at a plastic table surrounded by half a dozen members of Newark’s invisible society and laughed as they swapped war stories from lives past.

One used to be a banker. Another had served in the Peace Corps. A third claimed to have a PhD. For one reason or another, they all found themselves toppling off a societal ladder and crashing to earth. To some degree, they all found peace with that.

Now they were just living, one day at a time. Maybe trying to fight their way back to independence and financial stability, maybe accepting their fate and surrendering the fight. I understood both choices. I’d been faced with them myself.

When life is a war, everyone is just trying to get by. They just want to know that they’re not forgotten.

At the end of the meal Ed called for my violin. I didn’t want to play without Vinny, but Marielis had joined us as a special guest, and she shot me a look I couldn’t refuse. I played many of the same hits that Vinny and I had performed the night Mayor Greene pretended to be a good guy, and the shelter guests clapped and danced. Some sang in raspy voices, way off key. Marielis cried.

But it was good. It was human. Nobody could be blamed for that.

When at last the evening wound down and all the guests were ushered to bed, I stood alone on the sidewalk, leaning against the brick wall and breathing in night air flavored by gasoline fumes and damp concrete. I looked into the sky and couldn’t see many stars. I listened to the ceaseless hum of traffic, interspersed with blowing horns, and thought I would enjoy a change of pace in rural New York. It might be good for my soul.

Maybe I could stay out of trouble, for a change.

The door creaked behind me, and Ed appeared. He was sipping on a can of root beer, groaning a little as he shuffled. He followed my gaze up to the sky and we stood in silence a long time.

Then Ed said: “So that you may become blameless and pure, ‘children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.’ Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky.”

I didn’t recognize the verse, but I knew that’s what it was. I grunted and shook my head.

“Well, I’m a long way from shining.”

Ed laughed. It was the expression I expected, but it made me feel a little better despite myself. He slurped root beer, and the following silence hung thick. A pit opened in my stomach, a nagging thought I’d been ignoring all day finally getting the best of me. Eating at me. Threatening to boil out.

Finally, I just said it.

“I went to the jail. I…went to see Faust and Hightower.”

No answer. I glanced left, but Ed wasn’t looking at me. He was looking into his root beer can. His voice was soft when he said, “I thought you might.”

“I wanted to get rough on them,” I said. “I mean, I couldn’t get my hands on them. But I wanted to tell them who they were. What they were. How bad prison was going to be for a couple of ex-cops. I wanted to see them squirm—make them break. But when they brought me to the cell, I just…”

I stopped. My throat was thick. I didn’t know what to say, because I couldn’t explain how I felt. I couldn’t explain what had happened in front of that cell—how I’d stared through the bars, ready to hate, and yet…

“You couldn’t,” Ed said.

I looked his way. My eyes stung. I shook my head.

“I couldn’t say a thing,” I said. “I looked Hightower in the eye, and he was already broken. Faust wouldn’t meet my gaze. Neither one would speak. And I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t make myself angry. I was just…” I stopped again. I couldn’t force out the last word.

I was going to say sad, but sadness didn’t scratch the surface of the sensation I felt looking at those two. It was less like hurt and more like grief. Like staring, yet again, into the face of a broken world…and feeling overcome by it.

“Are you asking me something, Mason?” Ed said.

I was—I just didn’t know what. I took the time to untangle my thoughts the best I could. I stared at dark concrete and tasted the flavor of the city…then I knew. It embarrassed me to say it, but I knew.

“All my life I’ve been a fighter. I don’t know how that works without the anger part. It’s like…I don’t know myself. Like I’ve lost something.”

I looked to Ed, and to my surprise, he was smiling. Softly, gently. Very warmly.

“Lost something?” Ed repeated. “Or finally found something?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t even know where to begin. Ed stepped forward until we were just inches apart. His head titled back until our gazes met.

“Ten weeks, Mason. For ten weeks I’ve watched you dodge. Duck. Deny. Have these conversations and read these Scriptures…but you’re scared to commit. You’re scared to surrender the anger, because there’s a hole inside of you and the anger seems to fill it—but not really, and when it fades, there’s the hole again. There are the questions, the emptiness.”

Ed’s voice was calm—not the least bit accusatory, but matter of fact. I was without an answer, but that was okay. He had one.

“You wanna know what you felt at that jail? You felt Jesus calling you. Ready to heal—to erase that void.”

Ed’s smile softened. He placed a hand on my arm and squeezed.

“Tell him yes, Mason. Step through that door. It’s the only way you’ll ever be whole.”

The words hung in the air. I stared, but I couldn’t speak. The pit was too large, my body too stiff. Ed offered a single nod. Then he released me. Without another word he turned and shuffled back into the shelter, leaving me alone on the sidewalk. Moments ticked by and my gaze drifted across the concrete. I stood, barely breathing, listening to my heart thump louder. Replaying Ed’s words in my mind—repeating the challenge. The invitation. Visualizing it as an open door.

All those years of heartbreak. Of drifting aimlessly from place to place. Of searching for meaning, for answers, for purpose. And now…

I looked up. I wasn’t sure why. My gaze traveled back to those stars. I inhaled cold air, and it stung my lungs but somehow felt good. Like life—like hope. Like an opportunity.

Closing my eyes, I saw the door Ed described. It stood open in my mind, the path beyond not dark but opaque. A mystery. A question.

A chance. For redemption, for hope, for meaning. And in that moment, I knew. I wanted that chance.

I opened my eyes and fixated on the sky again. Silently, in my mind, I accepted. I said yes.

I ran through the door.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Logan Ryles was born in small town USA and knew from an early age he wanted to be a writer. After working as a pizza delivery driver, sawmill operator, and banker, he finally embraced the dream and has been writing ever since. With a passion for action-packed and mystery-laced stories, Logan’s work has ranged from global-scale political thrillers to small town vigilante hero fiction.

Beyond writing, Logan enjoys saltwater fishing, road trips, sports, and fast cars. He lives with his wife and three fun-loving dogs in Alabama.

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Razor Edge