Then Danny smiled. “Detective,” he said, his voice calm, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Forty minutes later, Nolan was still smoldering. Back in the observation room, that smug expression of Danny’s hung in the shadowed air in front of him. On the other side of the glass, Detective Jackson was talking to the man, getting the same stonewall answers. Danny had made his decision. He was hiding behind a pretense of normalcy.

And the part that burned was that no matter the fact that Nolan knew, just knew that the guy was dirty, all he had to connect the two was a phone call that wasn’t nearly as incriminating as he’d tried to make it sound. In fact, on the surface, the call was completely innocuous.

The door opened, and Matthews stepped in to join him. He was silent for a moment, then nodded toward the glass. “Willie taking a run at him?”

“I sent him to ask the same questions, see if anything changes.”

“Any luck?”

Nolan shook his head. “He’s sticking to it.”

“Maybe he’s got nothing to stick to.”

Nolan looked over at Matthews, then back through the glass. He could see his own reflection in it, very faint in the darkness. He paused, then spoke softly. “You ever know anybody in the Program?”

“AA?” Matthews hesitated. “Yeah. My daddy was in it.”

Nolan nodded. “Mine, too. He stick with it?”

“For a while. Till the Zenith plant moved to Mexico. He went on a three-day bender. Ended up cutting a man in a bar fight. Went on the run, never came back.” The detective’s eyes seemed distant, like he was grappling with the demons of long ago. Then he shook his head, looked over. “How ’bout yours?”

“He stuck with it. Did his twelve, went to commitments twice a week.” Nolan paused. “It worked for him. But you know the whole basis of the thing? You pledge not to drink today. That’s all. Tomorrow, you get up and do it again. You’re never really cured.”

“So?”

“It’s all about avoiding temptation. The thing about recovering alcoholics, you put a glass in front of them, sooner or later they drink it.” Nolan nodded through the glass. “Danny’s the same way.”

“You think someone put a job in front of him.”

“And he took it. Yeah.”

Matthews nodded, shrugged. “Okay. So what you want to do?”

Nolan shrugged. “Let him go.”

“We can keep him here, sweat him. Wake him in the middle of the night and go through it again. He might slip.”

“He might not. And if he doesn’t, we’d end up dealing with the state’s attorney before we could pick him up again.” He straightened, checked his watch. Almost five. “When Willie’s done, turn him loose.”

“You’re going to let him walk clean?” Matthews sounded incredulous.

“Hell no.” Nolan reached for the door handle. “I’m going to let him go and see where he leads me.”

40

The scream he’d been strangling for hours was starting to scrabble and tear at his insides. But Danny kept his citizen face up, trying to strike a pose of annoyed politeness as the old cop fumbled in a manila envelope.

“One wallet, leather. One pair shoelaces. One ring of keys.”

He noticed that his toe was tapping impatiently and made himself stop. Almost out. But then, frying pans and fires. Somewhere beyond this police station, Evan held all the threads of Danny’s life clenched in a callused fist.

“And one cell phone. Sign here, please.”

He snatched the pen and scribbled his name on the clipboard. “Where’s my car?”

“Sir?” The officer blinked at him.

“My car. One of the detectives drove it here.”

“Let me check on that.” The man reached for the phone with the alacrity of drying cement.

Danny swallowed the scream, bent down to lace his shoes. He tried to avoid looking at the watch as he fastened it, but couldn’t help himself. Jesus. Five thirty. In a day when every second counted, he’d just lost seven hours.

Karen spent that time with Evan.

The thought made his hands quiver, a pale anger rising in him, the scream almost escaping, making him want to shake the white-haired cop till his eyeballs rattled.

Instead, he took a breath and adjusted the plastic smile on his face.

The cop hung up the phone. “Sir, I believe you’ll find your car in the visitor’s lot in front of the station.”

Danny turned away before the man finished. Everything in him wanted to run, but he forced himself to take measured steps, to move swiftly but not recklessly. He skipped the elevator in favor of a flight of steps he took in four leaps. In the lobby, a fit black beat cop stood behind the desk, patiently explaining something to a finger-pointing Latina. The evening’s crop of homeless and lost filled the benches, staring with wary eyes. Danny hurried past, opened the door, and stepped into the evening air. Traffic on the Dan Ryan buzzed white noise. As soon as he was out of sight, he broke into a run, sprinting past broken-down pickups and old Caddys. In his mind, the slaps of his feet were the ticking of a clock, tick-TOCK, tick-TOCK. He found his truck and had it in gear almost before the engine finished cranking. Roaring out of the parking lot, he swerved across two lanes and jumped on the highway.

The whole time he’d been at the station, his mind had been racing, trying to think of a way to track Evan down. The man didn’t have a cell phone, had carefully kept his address from Danny. The last time he’d needed to get in touch with him, he’d called Murphy’s and left a message with the bartender. Evan wasn’t likely to return his call this time.

Which left only one route that Danny could think of. Slaloming through traffic with his left hand, he flipped open his mobile phone with his right. He pulled up the menu, then the call register, and selected CALLS DIALED.

There it was, dated just three days earlier. Felt like years. He punched DIAL and whispered a silent prayer as he counted rings. The line went to static as he shot under a bridge, swerving to the left shoulder to dodge a long line of traffic. A chorus of honking counterpointed the third ring. “Come on, Debbie. Pick up the phone.”

Her voice truncated the fifth ring. “Hello?” She sounded tense, high-strung with panic.

“Listen, I don’t have much time. I need you to pay attention. Evan has lost it. He went to my house and kidnapped my girlfriend.”

There was a pause. “I know.”

“What?” His ears seemed to ring. He couldn’t process what she had said.

“He… he made me help him. He hit me, told me he’d kill me, that he’d-” She broke off in a choked sob.

The image played out in his mind, Evan caressing the gun, Debbie wanting to do the right thing, but too scared, too weak to defy him.

“It’s okay.” He spoke soothingly. “I understand. I’m coming. Where are you?”

“The bathroom. I needed to pee, and… he just tied her up. He didn’t hurt her any.”

“Debbie, what bathroom? Where are you?” The highway ahead was a parking lot, and he exited to surface streets, scanning for patrol cars as he jumped the light.

She took a deep breath. When she spoke, her voice was an accusation. “You said you’d take care of everything.”

The words cut. He remembered the parking lot the day before. Telling her to go home, telling her he’d end this. Saying it with a certainty, a bravado, which today seemed faint as dawn stars. “I tried.” He paused. “Yesterday was different.”

There was a long pause. “Danny, I’m scared.”

He sighed. “I know.” Stoplight after stoplight was mercifully green. “Me, too. It’s okay. Just tell me where you are.”

“No.” Her voice was at once faint and resolute. “I can’t. If you show up, Evan will kill me.”

His stomach seemed to shrink. Somehow he’d never considered that she might not help him – that she might decide Evan was the safer bet.