Jarman drove up Boston Avenue, pleasantly full of chicken wings. The Cajun rub were the best, but he knew he would regret them later, along with the huge order of fries dusted with Cajun spices. Already his belly had begun to rumble queasily. He imagined his breath must be hideous now—a combination of beer and spices that would wilt houseplants and humans alike.

Just a quick pass by the McCandless house, and then straight home. Tomorrow he would take a fresh look at the weird pieces of the puzzle surrounding the attack on Jane Wadlow and her niece’s baby. In the light of day, with a good night’s sleep and a fresh cup of coffee, maybe he would see something he had missed. Or maybe he would find it easier to accept that some mysteries were never going to be solved.

He doubted it, though.

Even as this thought crossed his mind, he spotted the car parked just ahead—a black Lexus with dark-tinted windows. Probably nothing, Jarman thought, but the small hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and he let his beat-to-shit Saturn coast a little, slowing down.

The car parked right in front of the Lexus was a charcoal-colored Saab. Same tinted windows. Brand new. Both vehicles looked as though they had just rolled off the lot.

“What’s this, now?” he muttered.

He had the radio up loud, ’80s alt-rock playing on The River, but now he turned it down and tapped the brake, approaching Cait McCandless’s house at a crawl, peering into the darkness between houses and the deeper shadows thrown by trees and cars along the road.

A block and a half from Cait’s apartment, he heard the first shots.

“Son of a bitch,” he snapped, pulling into a space between two cars, blocking a driveway. He killed the engine, silencing the Smithereens.

Jarman didn’t have a police radio in the car. He grabbed his cell phone off of the passenger seat and called for backup. It took three rings, and when the line was picked up, he did not wait for the voice on the other end to identify itself. He snapped off his name and badge number and Cait McCandless’s address.

“Shots fired!” he snapped.

“All right, Detective. Backup’s on the way.”

“Good. And someone call my partner.”

Protocol demanded that he observe and report before taking any action. Screw that. He hung up the phone, jammed it into his pocket, and climbed out of the Saturn, closing the door as quietly as he could.

Jarman hustled into the cover of a pair of trees, trying to get a view of McCandless’s apartment house, but he was too far away. In a house up ahead, a couple of stoner-looking college guys came out on their front stoop, apparently curious about the gunshots, maybe not really understanding what they had heard or too stupid to keep their heads down.

“Get your asses back inside,” Jarman hissed.

They jerked back inside, probably more at the sight of his gun than because he’d ordered them to, but when he reached into his open collar and yanked out his badge—which hung from a chain around his neck—they stepped out again. They figured a cop wouldn’t shoot them, too stupid or too high to realize he hadn’t fired the shots they’d already heard.

More gunshots punctured the darkness. Jarman darted toward the front of the nearest house and raced across the yards, keeping close to cover. When he was two houses away from Cait McCandless’s apartment, he ran low across the grass to take cover behind a car parked in the driveway, which would give him a better view.

A skinny little guy in a dark suit went up the stairs and through the front door, gun at the ready. Gunfire cracked in the air like fireworks—Jarman could feel the sounds echoing in his chest.

Two others stood outside the house, ducked down so they couldn’t be sighted through the well-lit apartment windows. Jarman listened to the shots being fired inside and felt himself torn by indecision. The numbers were against him. At least three people were involved in a gun battle inside the house, and the two apes in the yard were obviously armed. Protocol and wisdom said he should wait for backup. They couldn’t be far. He’d called it in at least a full minute ago. Any second he’d hear sirens.

Any second.

But he didn’t hear them, and now the gunfire had fallen silent in the house. He cursed himself for waiting, hated the way his stomach churned—though he blamed Sparky’s wings for that—and despised the little ball of cowardice that had curled up like a whimpering dog in his gut.

Cait McCandless had a baby.

“Screw it,” Jarman whispered, and he started to run.