He kept walking. He didn’t want to talk to people right now. He didn’t want to be anywhere near people right now. Well, maybe one person. Come to think of it, he couldn’t wait to be very close to Ivan Patrick.

“Jon!” When Jonathan didn’t slow, the priest trotted to catch up. “Look, Dig, I really think we need to talk.”

Jonathan forced a smile. “Is that your priest hat or your shrink hat talking?”

“It’s my friend hat. And I’m tired of you walking away from me when I’m trying to help.”

Jonathan turned on the priest. “Gonna analyze me, Father? Gonna take my confession? Gonna hold my hand, kiss my boo-boo, and make it all better?”

Dom’s eyes reflected the anger projected toward them. “Yeah,” he said. “A little of all of the above.”

“Well don’t bother. I’ve seen death before. Hell, I’ve wallowed in it.”

“A superhero,” Dom mocked.

“A realist. Ellen’s dead. I got it. And she’ll still be dead tomorrow and a year from now. If I need a psychiatric couch along the way, I’ll look you up.” In his peripheral vision, he could see Boxers arriving and pulling up short next to Venice.

“Jon, for God’s sake-” All around them, other passengers swerved to avoid them, a human current flexing to avoid rocks in the stream. Those who were observant enough responded to the obvious tension with a concerned second look.

“Do you want me to walk you through all the stages of grief, Dom? I know about the anger and the guilt and the denial. I’ve lived ’em all before, and I’m sure I’ll live them all again. would just be stuck with the awkwardness of it all.

“You okay, Boss?” the big man asked.

Jonathan pivoted his head to look at him, but he said nothing.

Boxers sighed. “I’m sorry you’re hurting like this.”

“You didn’t even like her,” Jonathan said. He could hear the whininess in his own voice and it embarrassed him.

“No, I never did,” Boxers confessed. “I never came close to liking her. And the way she treated you when she left, well, that didn’t help. But that don’t mean I don’t hurt when you hurt.”

This time, when Jonathan turned to face the big man, he allowed himself a gentle smile.

“You’re my friend, Dig. That makes you a rare friggin’ breed. I hate seein’ you in pain.”

A feeling of warmth washed over Jonathan. He didn’t think he’d ever heard a more heartfelt expression of empathy.

“There’s somethin’ else you should know,” Boxers continued. “Time comes you want to get revenge on the asshole who killed her, you know I’m there.”

Glow Bird beat them home, and when Jonathan and his chauffeur entered the firehouse, Venice, Dom, and JoeDog were already in the living room, waiting for them. Jonathan paused in the entryway and sighed as the dog scrabbled off the sofa and charged to meet him. He knew they were there to see him through his emotional crisis, but he was not in the mood.

“Not tonight, guys. I really want to be alone.”

“I don’t think you do,” Venice said.

Jonathan scowled.

Dom elaborated, “Before we got the news about Ellen, we did some brainstorming.”

“We?”

“Dom and I,” Venice said. “We were trying to make the pieces fit. And I think we did.”

Jonathan waited for it.

“We know that Stephenson Hughes needed the GVX as ransom,” Dom began.

Venice quickly interrupted, “And that Ivan Patrick worked for Carlyle in a special capacity for something called Special Projects.”

Dom leaned back in his seat, and let her have the floor.

“So, working from the assumption that there are no coincidences in the world, since Angela Caldwell worked for Carlyle, too-”

“She was the one who knew how to get their hands on it,” Jonathan said, connecting the dots for himself.

“So, the Hugheses did kill her,” Boxers said. “They tortured her to get the information.”

Venice shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. She had a family. She was a mother. I think all they had to do was tell her what they were up against, and she gave them the information. Somehow, Ivan Patrick must have found out about it, and then he was the one who tortured and killed them to find out what she’d told the Hugheses.” Her eyes bored into Jonathan, seeking assurance that her logic was sound.

“It certainly explains the brutality-Ivan’s MO,” Jonathan agreed. “If that’s the way it went down.”

“Tell him about the other shootings,” Dom prompted.

Venice leaned forward, her eyes wide. “No coincidences, right? Well, using this hunch, I did a little more poking around the ICIS network and I found even more activity around the“No, but a shooting-sort of. A half of a shooting.” Jonathan’s face showed his waning patience, so Venice picked up the pace. “A 9-1-1 call reported a shooting at a place called Apocalypse Boulevard in a town I don’t remember. Then, while units were still responding, the call got canceled. The caller called back and said that they were mistaken, and that everything was okay. The dispatcher turned the ambulance around, but the cop car went on in anyway just to check things out. According to their report, the people they met there at the gate-employees of a security firm-seemed agitated, but they swore that everything was fine, and the cops had no grounds to press their suspicions any further.”

“But you don’t believe that things were fine,” Jonathan concluded for her.

Venice nodded. “Exactly. Because there are no coincidences. I did a Zillow search on the address.” Jonathan recognized the name of the real estate search engine. “Care to guess what that address used to be?”

“An Indian burial ground,” Jonathan grumped.

“A Nike missile launch facility. It’s all in the public record. Back in the eighties and nineties, we got rid of all our Nike missiles, and the sites went up for sale. This one, on Apocalypse Boulevard, was bought by Secured Storage Company out of Wilmington, Delaware.”

“Interesting company name,” Boxers poked. “I wonder what they do.”

“Delaware,” Venice stressed. Clearly, she was frustrated that they hadn’t already leaped to where she was going. “Carlyle is a Delaware company.”

Jonathan coughed out a laugh. “Jesus, Ven, half the companies in the world are Delaware corporations.”

“Which makes it that much easier to do the search,” she countered. “Secured Storage Company is a subsidiary-several steps removed, of course-of Carlyle Industries. They’re the same company!”

Finally, Jonathan got it. “Missiles mean underground storage magazines,” he said. “That’s where Carlyle was storing the GVX.”

“When the Hugheses went there to get it, there must have been an exchange of gunfire,” Dom said.

“So what’s with the phone call to 9-1-1?” Boxers asked. “And if there someone was shot, why un-call?”

“Because they didn’t want the publicity,” Jonathan explained. “Every state requires gunshot wounds to be reported to the police, mandating some kind of investigation. That’s the last thing a company like Carlyle would want.”

The room grew silent except for JoeDog’s snoring as they each put the puzzle together for themselves.

Finally, Jonathan test-drove his own theory aloud. “Desperate to get their kid back, the Hugheses reach out to Angela Caldwell. She points them in the right direction, and pays for the decision with her life. Obviously, they visited her at her house, or else their fingerprints wouldn’t be all over the place. Then they went to this Apocalypse Boulevard place and took what they needed for ransom.”

“Shooting the place up while doing it,” Boxers said.

“Right,” Jonathan agreed. “So now the Hugheses are hiding somewhere. They can’t call the police without walking into a murder charge, and they’ve either stashed their GVX somewhere, or they’refolder. “Facial recognition software turned up bupkis on your pal Leon Harris. Absolutely nothing. So, I decided to run the other faces. This is what I got.”