The man shrugged. “I do not know.”

Olson explained, “Malina happened to see Geiser in a hall over at the U.S. Attorney’s Office during a grand jury prep. It was a fluke-a dedicated elevator stopped and opened on the wrong floor. Malina looks out and recognizes Geiser from seeing him at Svengrad’s estate. We never connected the dots any further than you just did, assuming the meeting had something to do with the caviar, but we’ve been careful to shelter ourselves from the prosecuting attorney’s office. That’s why we’re dealing with the U.S. Attorney’s Office instead-because of this thing.”

This turned Boldt’s world upside down. He now believed that for the past several hours he’d had Foreman’s and Geiser’s roles reversed. None of this fully ruled out that Hayes had been hidden by Foreman as part of a cooperative deal between the state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Geiser’s office, as Foreman had told Liz. It seemed entirely possible that the two agencies might have discovered Alekseevich’s informant status and wanted to protect the “ownership” of the Hayes case by keeping Alekseevich all to themselves. Turf wars could make monsters out of a common investigation.

Even if it proved true that Geiser had taken a bribe, or was still on Svengrad’s payroll, it might involve nothing more than working on Hayes’s parole and the injunction on the caviar. Svengrad’s knuckle man wasn’t going to have the answers to these deeper questions. The bottom line was that Boldt could trust neither Foreman nor Geiser. He knew Svengrad was seeking answers to some of the same questions that he had, meaning the race for the money still seemed to be on, which kept Liz squarely in it. This both excited and terrified him.

“Does Svengrad plan to kidnap my wife?” Boldt asked. The big man shrugged, and Boldt accepted the answer, believing Svengrad unlikely to include his subordinates in his long-term plans. It didn’t confirm or deny the possibility.

“The comment about my son and his playing piano,” Boldt said, distracted from his intended line of questioning. “Is Svengrad willing to play that card? My children? A police officer’s children?” Boldt felt a bubble in his throat. Olson tensed; this was clearly news to her. LaMoia looked unruffled, but Boldt could feel his concern like heat.

“Not me,” Alekseevich said. “I not harm children. This man from bank? The one with heart problem? This was not me.”

He meant Tony LaRossa and the abduction of LaRossa’s family.

Boldt pushed, “But Svengrad is willing to play that card.”

Alekseevich stared across the table and took a long sip of the vodka, draining it.

“Answer the question,” Olson told him more vehemently than anything she’d said yet.

But Alekseevich already had answered the question, whether she’d picked up on it or not. That cocksure silence of his spoke loud and clear.

“What now?” Alekseevich asked, never breaking eye contact with Boldt.

That was Boldt’s question as well.

TWENTY

THE SATURDAY BEFORE THE GALA reception and the ceremonial switchover from WestCorp to MTK proved the longest day of Liz’s life. The waiting for the phone to ring; the surveillance/protection by both uniformed and plainclothes SPD officers, some of whom lingered in her living room; the temptation to call Kathy and the kids, versus Lou’s determination not to make any contact whatsoever for fear of Svengrad somehow tracking it.

The only break in the day arrived in the form of a briefing. Pahwan Riz, the director of Special Operations, asked for a meeting with Liz and Lou to discuss what was expected of her “in the event” she was contacted. Lou agreed to the meeting, in part because he had to, in part because she was looking to relieve the tedium and monotony of waiting for the phone to ring. But Lou’s primary reason for taking the meeting was to gather as much information about Riz’s plan as possible in order to thwart it. If the combined efforts of Seattle Police and BCI prevented Svengrad from getting his money wired out, then the video was certain to surface, damaging if not ending both their careers. Quite possibly Miles and Sarah would be put permanently at risk. Lou had to defeat his own people while figuring out a way to protect his family. If he could double-cross Svengrad in the process-so much the better. Whatever Riz planned played into that.

Lou briefed her before the others arrived. “I’m cooking something up.”

“I thought so.”

“It’s complicated.”

“It is, isn’t it?” She enjoyed the irony, though Lou seemed to miss it.

“It’s going against my own guys. You’ve got that, right?”

Her faced knotted in concern. “You can’t do that, Lou. Not for me. Not for anyone.”

“The kids?” he inquired, silencing her. “Going against the very people who are about to be in this room, which is why it’s important you go along with anything they tell you. It doesn’t mean you will go along with it, but for now you’ll tell them you will.”

She nodded, cringing at the idea of his turning against his own team.

“Danny Foreman is not to be trusted. The deeper I look into all this, Danny keeps showing up.”

“And he’ll be here?”

“I suspect he will.” “

I told you he seemed off when he paid me that visit,” she said.

“The point is, I don’t want us giving anything away, to Danny or any of the others, something they could use later on or something to tip them to my plan, so for now I’m keeping some things from you, and I just wanted to be up front about that.”

“So noted.”

Lou took in a lungful of air and held it, and she knew this to signal something important about to be said. She felt herself brighten with anticipation.

He said, “But you need to know that John and I took Hayes into custody last night.”

She felt faint, unable to speak.

“Private custody. Not downtown. We got him out of a difficult situation, and I’m hoping he’ll repay us by cooperating. That’s a work in progress.”

She clarified, “You got him out of a difficult situation. That’s what you’re saying?”

“However improbable, it’s true.”

“Private custody? What does that mean?”

“The point is, I’m working on something.”

“I never doubted that, Lou. I just regret-”

He interrupted. “It’s a long shot. In all honesty, it probably has only a faint chance of succeeding. But for right now, it’s all I’ve got. And it’s already in motion.”

“In all honesty.” She repeated his words with desperation in her voice. Her own lack of honesty had brought all of this upon him. She hated herself at that moment.

To her surprise, a man named Marc O’Brien ran the meeting. She didn’t recall having ever met the man, and his attendance reinstalled her sense of violation-that some stranger had, at least in his mind, taken control of her life, was here to dictate to her what had to be done and how to do it. Judging by looks, O’Brien belonged in an Irish pub with a pint in hand to fuel his glowing cheeks and bubble nose. His loud voice supported his demeanor of reckless overconfidence. Here was a man who, on a sinking boat, would announce to anyone who would listen what a great day it was for a swim. His next-in-command, Pahwan Riz, the dark-skinned Malaysian, tracked Liz’s every reaction, her every movement with his crisp green eyes, like a cat watching the family dog.

Lou, John LaMoia, and Daphne Matthews all sat stiffly on the same couch together, Matthews in the middle, lined up like Kewpie dolls at the county fair. Maggie, the infant child under Matthews’s legal guardianship, slept in a car seat propped up between two chairs in the kitchen, turning the new mother’s head that direction whenever an errant sound surfaced. Danny Foreman, looking worse for the wear, two fingers of his left hand bandaged, occupied a needlepoint bench against the wall that fronted the stairs leading to the home’s second floor. Unseen up there, a police officer sat near a window keeping watch. Another indignity she could not get used to: the castle keep. Foreman sat forward, resting on thick forearms that pressed into his thighs. He lifted his head every so often looking as if he might speak, but apparently not finding the strength to do so.