Weekend mornings in the summertime, the highways north and south of Boston were jammed with people headed to Maine or New Hampshire or out to Cape Cod for vacation. Fridays were even worse, with the folks headed out of town just for the weekend. But getting into Boston on a Sunday morning in August was like driving through one of those post-apocalyptic movies. Last-woman-on-Earth kind of stuff.

The digital clock glowed on the dashboard of her old Corolla, warning Cait that she was going to be a little late getting into the station, so she nudged the speedometer up a bit. She didn’t really believe Lynette could fire her for last night’s scuffle, but she also didn’t feel like antagonizing the woman.

As she drove south on Interstate 93, her thoughts lingered on the Audi. In her back pocket, she carried a slip of paper on which she had written the license plate number, and though she knew she needed to see her boss, solving the mystery of that car seemed like a much bigger priority.

Cait didn’t like it, that car just sitting there, down the street from her aunt’s house. In some ways, she was glad that Auntie Jane was taking Leyla to the supermarket. Uncle George would be home, probably working on some job or another in the garage, but Cait would rather her baby girl not be in the house today. Too many unpleasant possibilities had suggested themselves to her while she was trying to figure out who might be behind the wheel of that car. Some rich guy whose wife was having an affair with someone who lived on Badger Road? Maybe. But, then, who had been in the other car? According to Jane there had been two, working in shifts. And if they were cops or Feds, who were they watching? She would need to make some calls, try to find out what the car was doing there. And if she couldn’t, her approach next time might have to be a little more aggressive.

Cait needed her job, and to keep it she needed Auntie Jane to look after Leyla, but she couldn’t leave her little girl there if she had to worry whether or not the baby would be safe. If anything happened to Leyla …

A year ago, she would have laughed at the very idea of such parental paranoia, but she was a mother now, and even the hint of a threat to her child brought her defenses up.

Sometimes those feelings made her think of her own mother, and she wondered how the woman could have given birth to her and her brother, given them names, held them, and then just walked away as though her children meant nothing.

Cait thought her mother must have no soul. She had never spoken the words aloud, not even to her brother, but nothing else made sense to her. The woman had to have been entirely empty of love; otherwise, she could never have left. Cait had known from the moment of Leyla’s birth that she would be willing to die for her daughter, and she had never felt that way about anyone before—not even Nizam, whom she had loved deeply.

Thoughts of Sean got her mind working. She twisted in her seat, straining against the seat belt as she fished her cell phone out of her pocket. With a quick glance at the road ahead, she flipped it open, skimmed her contacts list, and hit the call button. It rang and rang, and just when she expected the call to kick over to voice mail, her brother picked up.

“Hey, little sister.”

“Hey, yourself,” she said, smiling at the warmth in his voice. They’d done their share of fighting, but Sean had always looked out for her, no matter what.

“What’s going on? How’s my niece?”

Despite the tensions lingering from the night before and the weirdness of the morning, Cait found herself relaxing.

“Leyla’s awesome, thanks. Getting bigger every day. And I’m good. But I had a little excitement on the job last night, so I’m going in to talk to my boss and make sure I’m still employed.”

Sean asked for details, and as Cait drove she regaled him with the tale. Only now, talking to her brother, did she allow herself to truly feel the horror of watching the bastard beat on his wife, knowing how easily the violence could turn deadly.

“You did what had to be done,” Sean said, grimly serious. He had no sense of humor where violence was concerned. “Those other people should be ashamed of themselves.”

“I know, right? It’s like they thought they were watching a show or something, like they didn’t think it was real. I’ve seen enough ugly shit. I don’t want any more, y’know?”

Sean hesitated for a heartbeat. To others, the pause would have been barely noticeable, but Cait knew him better than anyone.

“I do know,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Sean. I know you’re still in the shit—”

“I officially have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, and now she could hear the smile in his voice—a lightness that was also a warning for her to tread carefully.

Four years ago, Sean had been discharged from the Marine Corps and gone to work at the Pentagon. Officially he worked in satellite surveillance, and Cait thought that was probably true, as far as it went. But within months of beginning the job, Sean had started to grow a beard he had never trimmed. It grew so bushy and wild that, with his black Irish heritage—black hair and dark eyes—he looked like a radical Muslim cleric.

Every few months, he went off the grid for a while. Last time it had been five weeks. And each time, he would call Cait beforehand with the same message: I’m going out of town for a while. You won’t be able to reach me. If you have an emergency, call Hercules. She had never had to actually get in touch with Hercules, whose real name was Brian Herskowitz, but it was nice to know someone could get a message to Sean if there really was an emergency. She’d only met Herc a couple of times—he worked on satellite stuff with Sean and had a physique that made the nickname amusing—but she liked the guy well enough.

“Anyway …” she said.

“Anyway,” Sean replied, “you’ll be fine. Probably better than fine. Don’t sweat it.”

“I’m trying not to,” Cait said, watching the signs for her exit.

“You’re going in to see your boss right now, you said. An hour from now, you’ll know one way or the other.”

“Is that your way of brushing me off?” Cait demanded, feigning hurt feelings.

“Just being a realist. It’s what I do.”

“Yeah? When is the realist going to come home to visit? Leyla will be headed off to college by the time you see her again.”

“You know it isn’t as simple as that, Cait,” Sean chided, obviously sensitive to the subject. “I can’t wait to see her, and I’ll get there soon. Before the year is out, I promise.”

“You’d better,” Cait said. “Look, I should focus on driving. My exit’s coming up.”

“You go, then. Call me later and let me know how it goes with the boss. And send me the video of you kicking the crap out of that guy so I can show all my friends. Actually, on second thought, I’m not showing it to them. Half of them might fall in love with a girl who can fight like you can.”

“Yeah,” Cait said. “That’s the last thing I need right now.”