"Briefcase?" Jason glanced in either direction down the empty hall. They'd gotten off on the second floor rather than ride it all the way to the kitchen. "Yeah, we did. Everything's under control, buddy. You're going to be okay."

"What about you?"

Jason smiled. Dropped to one knee. "I'm going to be okay, too."

"That's good." The boy sounded tired. "So you'll be home soon?"

"Very soon."

"Good." Billy hesitated. "Will you come to see me when you do?"

"Sure thing. But you'll be asleep."

The boy shook his head, looked at the floor.

"You having trouble sleeping, buddy?"

Billy nodded.

"Bad dreams?"

"Uh-huh." Billy's voice little boy earnest.

Jason felt the weight of the moment. An everyday moment of fatherhood, the kind of thing Michael probably had dealt with effortlessly. But Michael was gone now. It was up to him.

"You know what you do?" Jason put one hand out, took the Transformer from Billy, started to fold it. Surprised to find his muscles remembered exactly what to do with his long-ago toy. He turned it into a gun again, and passed it back to Billy. "Take this to bed with you. No bad dreams will come near you then."

"That's silly. You can't kill a nightmare."

Jason laughed. "Maybe not. But I bet you feel better anyway." He stood up, looked at Washington. "You'll watch out for him?"

The man nodded. "We both will." He took Billy's hand. "Ronald's probably got the car pulled around – you ready to go see him?" Billy nodded and let Washington lead him away. Jason stood and watched them walk away. Felt a tug in his chest.

"You okay?" Cruz touched his arm.

He nodded. "Just realized I have a family." He turned to her. Smiled, and kissed her again. She returned it, her lips soft with promise, not the fever of earlier, but something lasting, the kind of kiss that might go for years. Finally, he broke it, glanced at his watch. "We better get moving."

In the lobby, men and women waited with valet tickets, or kissed cheeks in final good-byes. A table of tourist chicks sat sipping Cosmos and playing at Sex and the City. The uniformed cops were gone; he supposed they'd probably been clocking overtime.

"What if DiRisio came down?" Cruz asked.

"He couldn't be sure we would come through the lobby. My bet is he's still watching the ballroom exit, hoping to bottleneck us." Jason had a twinge of that same feeling he'd had upstairs, something about DiRisio that didn't fit. Shook it off and stopped to study a fire evacuation map. "Looks like the service garage is this way."

The volume turned down with every step away from the lobby. They passed a restaurant, the air heavy with the smell of french onion soup and filet mignon, and took a side corridor to a door marked "Employees Only."

The garage was dreary, the buzzing sodium lights draining color. Several panel trucks were backed in against the wall, followed by rows of staff cars, Hondas and Fords, most a couple of years old. The air was stale with old exhaust and cigarettes.

The alderman's car sat twenty feet away, beside a delivery truck. The Towncar was running, a trickle of exhaust rising from the tailpipe. Lightly tinted windows screened the interior, but he could make out a man in the rear seat. "Right on time," Jason said. They started toward the car, Cruz's high heels clicking on the concrete. "Let's get this over with, get home. I could sleep for a week."

Jason opened the car door and leaned in, opening his mouth to say hello.

In the splinter of a second it took to process the man pointing a gun at him, a thin face marked by a white ridge of scar tissue, it hit Jason what had been nagging at him.

Anthony DiRisio had been wearing a tuxedo. If he'd followed them here, where would he have come up with a tux?

Then something hard and heavy cracked his skull, and the world shivered into night.

CHAPTER 42

Back in the desert.

The street was winding and filled with children. They laughed, wrestling, tumbling in the dust, all almond eyes and shining smiles. But beyond them he could hear a noise, a humming, crushing sound, something coming closer. It was death, he knew that, and he yelled, tried to warn them. The children wouldn't listen, none of them would listen, even as it came around the corner, a juggernaut of creaking metal treads and armor plates the color of disease, spitting gouts of flame in a tide of red and yellow. The children played, never looking at the machine drawing closer, this terrible engine that had its own momentum, that ruined everything in its path. Martinez was in the street, too, the children squealing with delight as they climbed on him and over him, and he hummed a single steady note as he stared at Jason, hummed it as the flames reached him, hummed it as fire ate the world, hummed a single droning note like the end of everything.

Then the car hit a bump, bouncing Jason Palmer's head against the window it lay on, and he came to, the hum transformed into the buzz of tires, the vibration of glass against his ear. His eyes opened, bleary, swimming, too wet. The car seat fabric. Headlights through the glass. His hands, in front of him and touching at the wrists.

Voices.

It came back in a flash, and he closed his eyes, head and heart racing. Pain blossomed with consciousness, a throbbing flower with roots unmaking his brain. It was worse with his eyes closed, color and shape playing against the darkness as they passed other cars, nothing to focus on but creeping scarlet pain.

Voices again, from the front. "I'd like to get there tonight, Grandma."

"Don't be an idiot. We can't afford to get pulled over."

"Why not? You could chat with them, you know, bullshit about the job. Pretend you're still a cop."

"Fuck you."

Jason's skull was filled with concrete. He was in a car. Slumped on the right side. The men in front of him were talking. Bickering. His body hurt, every crack and divot in the road ringing up through his temples, and his hands were bound together. Zip-tied, by the feel of it; his hands bloodless and numb. There was something warm leaning against him. Warm and heavy and soft.

He waited for the next set of headlights to pass, then risked opening his eyes a slit.

No.

It was Cruz. He could just make her out in his peripheral vision. Her eyes were closed, but he didn't see any obvious wounds. Whoever had taken him out must have done her just as fast.

Pain had come first. Now anger followed. He cherished the burn, the black powder heat. Owned it, bank up the fire inside. He was going to tear someone's head off. He owed Cruz that much. He could lunge forward, try for the wheel. Or if he could get his arms up and over one of their heads, he could-

Stop.

The voice in his head was familiar, but it wasn't his own.

It was Mikey's.

You aren't clearing a room, rifle in hand and squad at your back. You're dizzy. Unarmed. Your hands are bound. Go easy, little bro. Think. Figure out what you're fighting. I'm depending on you.

Billy is depending on you.

Jason took as deep a breath as he dared. Closed his eyes to focus, then opened them again, looking forward this time. He remembered Billy's description of the men he'd seen murder his father: one big, muscular and balding; one slim and normal-looking, hair black and gray.

Anthony DiRisio sat on the right. Thinning hair and hard jaw, the casual weight of working muscle. An air of cold menace. Calm, cracking jokes as he rode shotgun. The driver more nervous, his fingers tapping the wheel, his shoulders tensed. His hair was black giving way to gray. Galway, Cruz's old partner. A cop gone to murder and worse, but not used to it yet. Not comfortable.