Surprised pleasure lit Tony’s face. "Haven’t heard it for a while. What brought that on?"

"I don’t know. Finding my feet on the ground all of a sudden, maybe." There was no pang of regret at the idea. The months she’d spent disbelieving Alban’s absence had kept her untethered. Now that he’d distanced himself from her so sharply, it seemed she might be able to get on with her life. She could find a way to manage both worlds, if she thought of the Old Races as a client whose confidentiality couldn’t be breached. "I’ve got a few minutes. What do you know?"

"More than I ever wanted to about Russell." Tony sighed and tugged Margrit up the building’s outside stairs, sitting down with her and lacing his fingers through hers. "Did you know he used to be a stockbroker?"

"He said something about making money in stocks the night before he died." Margrit shook her head at the awkward construction of her sentence. "I mean, not that he made money the night…you know what I mean. I was giving him a hard time about how well he dresses. Dressed."

"Yeah." Tony squeezed her hand and smiled. "Anyway, yeah, he worked for Global Brokers Incorporated way back when and made a killing. There was some talk about insider trading, but nothing ever got proved. I guess we’re going to have to look into it if we don’t find anything closer to home."

Margrit straightened, surprised. "GBI, that’s my mother’s company. I wonder-no, she couldn’t have known him. She never mentioned it. Small world, though."

"I swear, if you get me singing that song…." Tony bared his teeth threateningly. "Anyway, he went to law school after striking it rich. We’ve had people working on his case histories and comparing them to recent parolees." He hesitated so long that Margrit frowned.

"You found a link, didn’t you."

"Not…no. Not like you’re thinking. Nobody handy who just got out of jail and came to repay the piper. But you wouldn’t-I’m not telling you this, Grit, you know that, right?"

"Telling me what?" She made a moue of innocence.

Tony nodded. "Okay. I know cases get overturned on appeal all the time."

"Yeah…?"

"Yeah. So you wouldn’t believe the number of overturned cases where Russell was the first line of defense for somebody who worked for Janx. He lost so many cases it can’t be coincidence, Grit. Something like ninety percent of them got overturned on appeal."

Cold ran down Margrit’s spine and chilled her hands until Tony’s felt like a furnace. "Janx?"

"There’s no way I’d be telling you this if…" Tony exhaled. "If you hadn’t met him in January. If I hadn’t gotten you into that. But I did and you did, and I’m kinda freaked out seeing a connection between your boss and a pretty major crimelord. I don’t know what enemy of Janx’s Russell was working for, but man, that’s what it looks like to me, Grit. So I gotta ask. Do you know anything that could help us out?"

Every heartbeat sent a new wave of ice splashing over Margrit’s skin. Two minutes earlier she’d thought she could manage the split between her ordinary world and the Old Races. Now the two crashed over her again, leaving her with no way to answer Tony without potentially betraying an entire people. She pulled her hand from his and hid her face, hearing a laugh that bordered on a sob break from her throat. "Are you sure? How do you know these guys worked for Janx?"

"Some of them have turned up dead recently," Tony said grimly. "People we’ve seen associating with him. But more of them-Grit, I’ve been working the Janx angle for years. I know that guy’s organization better than he does. I know all the arrests that’ve been made in conjunction with him. There’s probably only three guys on the force who would see a pattern here, but I’m seeing it. It’s one of those detail things that’s more gut instinct than logic."

"Russell used to say somebody had to keep track of the details, and he was the best man for the job. Somebody else said that to me, too…Oh." Margrit raised sightless eyes to stare over the street, a host of trivial moments cascading together and forming a picture.

Eliseo Daisani had used the same phrase the first time she’d met him, infusing it with humor and self-deprecation. One point didn’t make a line, but there had been peculiar notes in Daisani’s conversation the morning before. Shock and grief had wiped it from her mind, but he had said "you came here to ask me that?" when she’d asked if he’d known about the murders, and then said, "Yes. Of course. I see why you would, under the circumstances." It had been meaningless to her then, but thrown against the context of Russell losing court cases for Janx’s people, it now stood out.

"I know that look, Grit. What’re you thinking?"

She pressed her lips together until they ached. "What I’m thinking could be a huge embarrassment to the police department if I’m wrong. Can I…can you give me an hour or two to follow up on it, Tony?"

"Shit, Margrit." He stood and she followed suit, the two of them eyeing each other without pleasure. "You’ll tell me if it pans out? We need anything we can get." He pushed his hand through his hair and glanced toward the Legal Aid building. "That’s why I’m even here. I’m supposed to be on Kaaiai all week and instead I’m pulling double duty because a couple of those names brought up red flags on our Janx file."

"Oh, God, I forgot. When have you been sleeping?"

"Caught a nap at the station this morning. Grit, are you going to give me what you’ve got?" Tony turned his attention back to her, wary expectation in his gaze. A sizzle of guilt shot through Margrit as she recognized the same pattern of withholding information she’d displayed in January reemerging.

"If it turns out to be anything, I will, Tony, I swear. But believe me, you don’t want to shake the tree I’m thinking of if you don’t have an ironclad reason to. I don’t even want to put ideas in your head."

"All right." Tony nodded, as if he knew that Margrit wouldn’t offer up her thoughts until she was ready to. She caught his hand and held it a moment in apology, irrationally stung when he gently pulled away. "You do your thing, Grit. Tell me if you can."

"I will. I will, Tony, I promise." The words had too much familiar deception. Margrit ducked her head again and hurried down the steps. When she looked back a moment later, Tony was gazing after her, unhappy resignation creasing his features.

CHAPTER 15

Margrit stopped in the coffee shop to tell Sam she’d be out for a while, promising she had her cell phone if anything came up. Then she took the subway across town, neither her shoes nor her time frame allowing her to bolt across the city on foot as she wanted to. Tony’s expression haunted her through the short journey. He deserved better, but she’d told the truth: if she was wrong about a connection between Russell and Daisani, it was better for Tony not to have that worm in his ear. He was a good cop, not likely to be led by unfounded suggestion, but once a pervasive idea took hold it could easily blind someone to things he should be seeing.

And if she was right…

Margrit left the subway still uncertain as to what to do if she was right. Miring Daisani in Russell’s murder investigation seemed absurd, even if the links were there. Tony, if he heard Margrit say that, would see it as truth falling before financial power, and she’d be hard-pressed to argue. She had no other way of explaining the reasons for her reluctance.

Alban’s image rose in her mind, blotting out Tony’s. Margrit made a frustrated noise and ducked into her mother’s building.

Rebecca Knight met her in the elevator lobby, alerted to her arrival by a phone call from the first floor. Surprise and worry etched unusually deep lines around her mouth.

"Margrit, what’s going on?" Her mom pulled her into a hug, then leaned back, gaze searching. "Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go to my office."