THREE

“STEP AWAY FROM the door,” the officer said. I did as I was told. But as I did, I slipped the two pieces of metal down the neck of the sock and let it drop to the ground behind me. I approached with my hands up.

The officer didn’t have a weapon in his hand. Just the flashlight. Up close I could see that his face was handsome, clean-shaven and familiar.

He recognized me too. “Ali Kidd?”

“Hi, Phil. Just making your rounds?”

Phil Kushida smiled. “I thought I saw someone about to break in,” he said.

“Nope. Just me. I’m looking for Dean.”

“You’re not the only one,” Phil said. “He hasn’t been in the restaurant for days. I’ve been asking around. No one seems to know where he is.”

That wasn’t like Dean. If something had happened to him—

I put the thought out of my mind.

“Now that you’re out, we should talk things over,” Phil said. “How about I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“I could use one,” I said. “Sounds good.”

“Okay, follow me.”

Phil started down the alley, then stopped. He pointed at the ground near my feet.

“Looks like you dropped something,” he said. A smile crossed his face. “A sock, it looks like. Don’t want to lose one of those.”

Phil and I were friends. We’d seen a lot of each other at the restaurant, and once or twice he’d questioned me about my other line of work. He was good at his job, fair and, best of all, had never caught me.

Well, the one time. But I’d been set up, and that shouldn’t count.

At an all-night coffee shop down the street from Kidd’s, Phil ordered coffee for us and a grilled cheese sandwich for himself. I was too nervous to think about food. The coffee was warm. I dried my hair with some napkins.

“You just got out today?” Phil asked.

“Somehow I think you already know the answer to that,” I said. “Dean was supposed to pick me up.”

“I was in the restaurant three days ago. Dean wasn’t there. The staff hadn’t seen him. They were worried.”

“So am I.”

“Ali,” Phil said, “did Dean talk to you about any problems he might be having? Anything financial?”

“Nothing like that, no.” Dean hadn’t mentioned any trouble at the restaurant or with his finances. He’d seemed a little nervous the last time he visited, but prison always made him nervous.

“Last week I stopped by Kidd’s for breakfast,” Phil said. “I wanted to say hi to Dean. To ask him when you were getting out.”

“Checking up on me, huh?”

Phil blushed. He hid his face by biting into his sandwich. Still chewing, he said, “Dean was on the phone, talking to someone. He looked worried. I waited till he was finished and asked him what was up. ’Trouble with the bank,’ he said.”

“That’s not possible. Dean is good with his money. He pays his taxes early, for crying out loud.” My voice was getting louder, and I couldn’t hide the worry I was feeling.

“It doesn’t make sense to me either,” Phil said. “Unless maybe he was lying.”

“Maybe he doesn’t trust you,” I said.

“Why wouldn’t he? We’re friends.”

That was true. Dean had always liked Phil. When some neighborhood kids had broken windows and spray-painted the restaurant, Phil had found them and warned them not to do it again. Since then Kidd’s had been graffiti-free.

“There’s no reason for Dean not to trust me,” Phil said.

“You did put me in jail,” I said.

Phil scowled. “I didn’t know I was going to find anything when I searched the restaurant.”

“Neither did I.”

Phil put his sandwich down and looked at me seriously. “If you ever want to do something about the person who set you up—if you ever want to tell me your side of the story—”

“I appreciate it, Phil, but there’s nothing to tell.”

“So Lisa Wan goes free,” he said.

“I don’t want anything more to do with Lisa Wan. I’m done with her. Retired.”

“Very glad to hear that,” Phil said. “I’ll keep asking around about your brother. If you don’t hear from him in twenty-four hours, let me know and I’ll file a report. In the meantime, Ali, do you have somewhere to stay?”

“Dean left me a key to his apartment,” I said. It wasn’t a total lie.

“Good. Stay there, and I’ll call if I learn anything. Promise?”

I didn’t respond right away.

“Ali,” Phil said, “the worst thing you can do right now is get yourself jammed up all over again. You just got out today. You don’t want to go back, do you?”

“I’m never going back,” I said.

“I really hope that’s true, Ali.” Phil smiled. He patted my hand. “I promise you I’ll do everything I can to find Dean.”

“Thanks,” I said. But his comments only made me worry more. If the police couldn’t find Dean, then where could my brother be?

Phil insisted on walking me back to Kidd’s. Thankfully, he didn’t stick around to make sure I got inside. I didn’t want to have to explain why I was climbing over the gate.

Inside Dean’s apartment, I put two pieces of frozen bread into the toaster and searched through the kitchen and living room. There were a few bank statements in the trash, along with some junk mail. Nothing suspicious. It looked like the restaurant was making a profit, and Dean was paying his bills on time.

I had toast and jam and continued looking around. Dean had wrapped the toaster’s cord with electrical tape. Aunt Jessie would have been happy that the machine was still getting used. She liked to repair things rather than throw them out. Dean was like that too.

There was nothing hidden beneath Dean’s bed. I looked through his clothing. Nothing told me where he’d disappeared to or why. The problem was simple, I thought. I was looking in the wrong place.

The apartment might have been Dean’s home, but he spent most of his life in the restaurant below. That was where I should be looking. I still had the makeshift lockpicks rolled up in my sock.

I’d promised Phil I’d leave it alone. But what Phil didn’t know wouldn’t bother him. And besides, Kidd’s was Dean’s real home. I was in the same building already. All I was doing was going downstairs.

Picking a lock is like painting a picture from memory. Instead of a brush you have a pick and a tension tool, sometimes called a wrench. Instead of using your eyes, you rely on feel. The pick goes inside the chamber and lifts up these little things called pins. They’re often on springs, so once you raise one with the pick, you have to keep it up while you work on the others. There are all sorts of tricks and surprises to a good lock. When you’ve got all the pins up, you turn the wrench, which turns the chamber and opens the lock.

I guess that sounds nothing like painting, does it?

What I mean is that both are about trusting your instincts. To do that you have to practice. How do you paint a face? Or a landscape? By painting each part a thousand times. Whether it’s eyes and a nose or trees and clouds, you practice each little part, from every possible direction. That way when you have to paint an entire picture, your brain treats it as a bunch of little problems to solve rather than one big impossible problem.

I can’t paint at all. My faces look like scrambled eggs on a plate, and my landscapes look like a child drew them. Hands and cows defeat me every time. But before I went to prison, I could open a lock, any lock, even a tough one and even with bad tools like these.

It’s a gift. I’m good at it, and I practice.

It took fifteen minutes, and I nearly broke the pick, but the lock on the back door finally, finally yielded. I walked into Kidd’s for the first time in a year.

The kitchen and storeroom were neat. Dean insisted on a good cleaning before anyone went home. Nothing looked out of place. In the restaurant the chairs were piled on top of tables. The till was empty. Opening it brought back memories.

When Phil Kushida had opened the till on the day he found the necklace, I’d confessed to him right away. I had to. If I didn’t, Dean might have taken some of the blame. Lisa Wan had counted on that. She’d known I would protect my brother by confessing. What had happened to me wasn’t fair, but I’d deserved it more than my brother did.

Dean had never done anything to anyone. All he cared about was Kidd’s. And me, I suppose. He wouldn’t leave me, and he definitely wouldn’t leave the restaurant, without saying something.

His office door was locked. I had it open in seven minutes. The skills were coming back. I didn’t know how to feel about that—happy, worried or both.

Inside the office I saw papers piled high on Dean’s desk. The small room wasn’t messy, but it was too full to be comfortable. His old computer was turned off. A stack of new menus covered the chair.

In the center of his desk was his cell phone. Dean used it for deliveries, for working out payroll. He’d never leave it behind.

Not unless someone forced him to.