He’d said yes. Hauck went over the scene again.

Yes, he would help her. Yes, he knew what she needed him to do. Even though he knew in that instant it could never be accomplished with him on the job.

He took the Merrily out on the sound that night. He sat in the dark with the engines off, the water calm, the lights of downtown Stamford flickering on the shore.

Why? he asked himself.

Because he couldn’t get the image of her out of his mind? Or the feel of her softness when she leaned into him. Her sweet scent still vibrant in his nostrils, every hair on his arm on edge, every nerve awakened from its long slumber.

Was that what it was, Ty? Is that all?

Or maybe it was the face that crept into his head as he sat with his Topsiders up on the gunnels, drinking a Harpoon Ale. A face Hauck had not brought into mind for months but that now once again came back to life for him, frighteningly real.

Abel Raymond.

The blood trickling out from under his long red hair. Hauck kneeling over him, promising he’d find out who had done this.

Charles Friedman hadn’t died.

That changed everything now.

Thomas Mardy. He’d been a supervisor at a credit-checking business. He’d gotten on the 7:57 that day out of Cos Cob and had died on the tracks in Grand Central, in the blast.

Yet somehow one of his credit cards had been used for a limo ride up to Greenwich three hours later.

Now Hauck knew how.

He wondered, could the Mustang just have been a coincidence? Charlie’s Baby… It had thrown him off. It would have thrown anyone off.

But now, seeing Charlie’s face on the screen, he knew—more clearly than Karen Friedman could ever know—just how her husband had spent the hours between being caught by that camera coming out of that station and ending up hours later in the vault of that bank.

The son of a bitch hadn’t died.

That afternoon Hauck had run Charlie’s name through the NCIC system. The usual asset check—credit cards, bank accounts, even immigration. Freddy Muñoz brought it back, knocked on the door wearing a quizzical expression. “This guy’s deceased, LT. On April ninth.” His look sort of summed it up. “In the Grand Central bombing.”

Nothing. But Hauck wasn’t surprised.

Charles Friedman and AJ Raymond had been connected. And not by the copper Mustang. That much he now knew. They had lived different lives, a universe apart. Yet they had been connected.

What the hell could it be?

Hauck drained the last of his IPA. The answer wasn’t here. The kid had family. Pensacola, right? His brother had come up to claim his things. His father was a harbor captain. Hauck remembered the old man’s photo among AJ’s things.

Yes, he would help her, he had said. Hauck pulled himself up out of the chair. He started the ignition. The Merrily coughed to life.

He’d help her. He only hoped she wouldn’t regret whatever he found.

“CARL, I’M GOING to need a little time.” Hauck knocked on his boss’s door. “I have a bunch built up.”

Carl Fitzpatrick, Greenwich’s chief of police, was at his desk, preparing for an upcoming meeting. “Sure, Ty. C’mon in, sit down.” He swiveled his chair around his desk and came back with a scheduling folder. “What are we talking about, a few days?”

“A couple of weeks,” Hauck said, unconfiding. “Maybe more.”

“Couple of weeks?” Fitzpatrick gazed at him over his reading glasses. “I can’t authorize that kind of time.”

Hauck shrugged. “Maybe more.”

“Jesus, Ty…” The chief tossed his glasses on his desk, looked at him directly. “What’s going on?”

“Can’t say. Things are pretty clean right now. Whatever comes up, Freddy and Zaro can cover. I haven’t taken more than a week in five years.”

“Is everything all right, Ty? This isn’t something about Jess, is it?”

“No, Carl, everything’s fine.” Fitzpatrick and he were friends, and he hated being vague. “It’s just something that’s come up I have to see through.”

“Couple of weeks…” The chief scratched the back of his head. He pieced through the file. “Gimme a few days. I’ll shuffle things around. When did you need to leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” Fitzpatrick’s eyes stretched wide. “Tomorrow’s impossible, Ty. This is totally out of the blue.”

“To you, maybe.” Hauck slowly stood up. “To me it’s long overdue.”