A rap on the glass made Herc jerk upright behind the wheel of his Camry. He tried flinching away from the window but was held in place by his seat belt. A figure loomed outside the car and it took a moment before he realized it was Terry Stanovitch.

“Christ!” Herc wheezed.

Hunched over, Stanovitch raised his fist to bang on the glass again. Pulse thudding in his temples, Herc cracked the door open.

“Get in, for fuck’s sake. You scared the piss out of me.”

“What are you, paranoid?” Stanovitch said, nervous irony draining the blood from his face. He glanced about, then skittered around the front of the car and slid into the passenger seat.

“You’re a funny guy,” Herc said.

Stanovitch pulled the door shut and both of them stared at the light above the rearview mirror, waiting for it to go dim and bathe them in the privacy of darkness.

“Nothing about this is funny,” Stanovitch told him.

Terry had blue eyes and orange hair and freckles he inherited from his Irish mother. Not very inconspicuous for a CIA operative, Herc had always thought. But it just showed how little he really knew about the business he worked in. He gathered intelligence via satellite photography, but in truth he knew almost nothing about real espionage. Despite his friendship with Sean, how it all really worked remained a mystery to him. The number one thing Sean McCandless had taught him was that he didn’t really want to know more than he already did. And if he had ever needed to be reminded of that, Sean’s death had done the trick.

“What’ve you got?” Herc asked.

Stanovitch glanced around as though tempted to search Herc and the car for a wire.

“Come on!”

“Relax,” Stanovitch said. “I’m here. Be grateful for that. I almost didn’t come.”

Anger surged up inside Herc. “What, you think you’re doing me a favor? He was your friend, Terry. Saved your life once, and your career more than once. You told me that yourself, because Sean had too much class to ever mention it.”

Stanovitch nodded. “Yeah, I know. And now Sean’s dead and nobody—and I mean nobody—knows who took him out—”

“Somebody knows, because somebody did it,” Herc snapped.

Eyes narrowed, Stanovitch glared at him. “No shit. Don’t be a prick, Brian. You know what I’m saying.”

Herc wanted to hit him, scream at him, but he knew it was just helplessness gnawing at him. He slapped the steering wheel and swore.

“I can’t believe he’s fucking dead.”

That sobered Stanovitch. “He was one of a kind.”

Herc stared at him, chewing his lower lip, contemplating. “Maybe not.”

“You’re talking about the sister?”

“Her name’s Caitlin. Her baby daughter’s name is Leyla. Sean talked about them constantly. You should remember.”

“I do—”

“Their names, Terry. You should remember their names. Look, maybe Cait McCandless isn’t the person her brother was, maybe she doesn’t have his courage or his smarts or his loyalty—but maybe she does. We don’t know. All we know is that Sean loved her and that baby more than anything else in the world, and he made me promise I would look out for them if anything ever happened to him. And now it has. So you need to tell me, man, what the fuck is going on up in Boston? Who posted a watch on Sean’s aunt and uncle? Who tried to take the baby? Whatever you know, you’ve gotta tell me. You don’t want to go all in, take care of this for Sean, that’s up to you. You’ve got to sleep at night. But at the very least, you’ve gotta give me this.”

Stanovitch stared at him, sort of twitchy, mouth working as he turned his palms up, like he hoped the right words would fall into them.

“What … I mean, did you think we were going to be like Butch and Sundance, going out in a blaze of glory? Because those are the odds,” Stanovitch said.

Herc felt queasy. “No. Not at all. I’m not some action hero. I don’t want to expose anything or even get in anybody’s way. I just want to do what I promised and take care of Sean’s sister and her baby.”

“What if doing that leads to the other?” Stanovitch asked.

The question made Herc flinch. He hesitated, then shook his head to clear it of any doubt.

“Just tell me what you know. The rest isn’t your problem.”

Stanovitch took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said, letting it out. “You wanted to know who’s got the juice to blank those plates, right? I got your answer. But there’s another question you should be asking.” He glanced out the window again, as though afraid they were being watched.

“Which is?”

“Who owns the car?”