The second the car stopped in the circle at the end of a dead-end residential street, Voss popped the door. She muttered a thanks to the Connecticut state trooper who had picked them up at the airport—he’d driven like hellhounds were on his tail to get them there—and then started for the hole in the fence. Turcotte hurried after her but did not call out. They needed speed and silence now.

A dozen cars filled the circle and lined the street. A handful of people, woken from sleep by headlights and the prowl of engines, looked out windows or stood on front steps, but nearly all of the duplexes were still dark.

Uniformed officers flanked the hole in the wooden fence where a four-foot segment had been removed. Voss and Turcotte produced their IDs—one of the cops squinted at hers, obviously clueless as to what ICD was—and were waved through. Beyond the stockade fence stretched maybe seven feet of trees and bushes, and then a chain-link fence that had been cut and rolled back, and past that was an alley that ran behind a dry cleaners. Uniformed cops lined the back of the dry cleaners and were scattered up and down the alley, along with Bureau agents wearing navy jackets with FBI emblazoned in yellow on the back. Times like this, they wanted to be conspicuous so the wrong people didn’t get shot.

“Siegel?” she asked the nearest agent.

He pointed her to the left and she picked up her pace. She and Turcotte jogged to the corner of the building, where a cluster of agents stood with a cop wearing captain’s bars. Two of the men seemed to recognize Turcotte and then focus on Voss. She figured the tall fiftyish guy with the mustache to be Siegel, but it was the shorter man—plump, pale, bald spot, a forty-year-old future department store Santa—who spoke up.

“Agent Voss?”

She nodded. “I assume we made it?”

“Supervisory Special Agent Siegel,” the man said, holding out his hand. Voss took it, and then Siegel looked at Turcotte. “Hello, Ed.”

“Todd,” Turcotte said, nodding. He coughed. “Jesus, what’s that smell?”

Siegel cocked his head. “Fish market, half a block down.” He gestured for them to follow and walked to the corner. As he spoke again, he lowered his voice.

“You made it, but only because the McCandless woman’s friends are late. She and her accomplice rolled up almost ten minutes ago. They parked in front of a small office building right next to the Wendy’s, not in the lot. Obviously she’s not stupid. The others probably won’t park in the lot, either. McCandless and her partner are sitting in the Cadillac, apparently waiting for visual on Mellace and Katz. If they try to drive off, we’ll take them. Otherwise we’d rather wait for them to get out and move a fair distance from the vehicle.”

Voss nodded, glancing around. “What have we got on the other side of the street?”

Siegel looked at Turcotte, as though waiting for him to speak. When he didn’t, the portly FBI agent continued. “We’ve got people at both ends of the block and on intersecting streets, ready to move in. There’s a block of storefronts across from us—half of them empty—and we’ve got agents and state and local cops on either side of the building, but there’s nowhere else for them to stay out of sight over there.”

Voss caught his gaze and held it. “And what about Lieutenant Arsenault? Did you get word he was on the way to observe? Along with a consultant?”

Now Siegel really did look confused, but Turcotte still didn’t jump in to rescue him. “We did. It seemed a little strange, but other agencies are always stepping on our cases.”

“I know,” Voss said. “I was FBI for years.”

Trying to hide his disdain for her career choice, Siegel smiled. “You got a better offer?”

“Actually, yes,” she said, and turned to Turcotte. “Whatever strings Norris or Arsenault may be pulling, they’re not here yet. If they do show up before this goes down, I want them detained. Unless they have a goddamn army with them, I don’t want them anywhere near this situation.”

Turcotte did not smile, but she had the sense that he wanted to. He nodded. “Whatever you say, boss.”

That got everyone’s attention. Voss didn’t have time to get them up to speed on chain of command.

“SSA Siegel, gentlemen, here are the rules. If Sergeant McCandless and her companion—not accomplice, because I can’t think of a crime we know they’ve committed—attempt to drive off, they will be surrounded by police vehicles, so they cannot mistake our stopping them as anything but an official act. No weapon will be pointed at either of them unless they open fire first. Even if one or both of them does open fire, all of your people are to choose their shots carefully. There’s a baby in that car, and I don’t want to see her in my dreams for the rest of my life. Similar rules apply to apprehension if they do exit the vehicle. I want to talk to Caitlin McCandless without all of this getting out of control. I have a lot of questions for her, and I’m not going to be able to ask them if bullets are flying. Is all of that clear?”

The police captain and the agents stared at Siegel, who looked at Turcotte, who nodded once.

“The case belongs to ICD, Todd. Rachael’s ex-Bureau. She knows what she’s doing. And we don’t have time for hesitation,” Turcotte said.

Voss gritted her teeth at his use of her first name and fought the urge to kick him. “They know their job, Agent Turcotte.” She turned to Siegel and repeated herself. “Is all of that clear?”

Stoic and grim, he nodded. “Crystal.”

“Do it,” she said.

Siegel lifted a handheld radio and rattled off her instructions, turning them into his own orders, leaving no possible uncertainty as to how they were all to conduct themselves.

While he did that, Voss turned to Turcotte. “No one calls me Rachael,” she said, voice low.

“It makes you more human,” Turcotte whispered, trying to reason with her.

“I can’t afford to be human.”

Seconds later, a radio crackled and the news came through. Mellace and Katz had arrived. McCandless and her companion were out of the car, the woman carrying her baby.

Answers were within reach.