“Drug Enforcement Administration. We’re here to speak with a Mr. Peralta, ma’am,” Ray-Ray said.

“ La Dea ! ” the old lady shouted.

From inside the apartment came the sound of pounding footsteps, followed by the screech of a window being thrown open. Ray-Ray lowered his shoulder to hurl himself against the door. Melanie grabbed his arm.

“Exigent circumstances!” he barked, looking at her accusingly.

He was right. They could hardly afford to wait for a warrant. A young girl was missing, and someone who might have information was escaping out a window.

“Go!” she yelled.

Ray-Ray threw himself against the flimsy door several times in quick succession until it burst open. Inside, curtains flapped in the wind as a dark head disappeared from view down a metal fire escape.

Ray-Ray blew into the room and out the open window. Melanie raced after him, leaning out the casement in time to watch him clamber down the fire escape in hot pursuit of his quarry. The dark-haired kid reached the end of the metal railing and jumped the remaining six feet or so, hitting the ground and rolling. Ray-Ray leaped right behind him, scrambled to his feet at the same instant the kid did, and lunged for his legs, yanking them out from under him. In a second Ray-Ray had the cuffs on him and looked up at Melanie with a huge grin on his face. She saw what Albano meant. Ray-Ray lived for this shit, you could just tell.

Melanie turned back to the room. They were entitled to search anything in plain view, incident to what was, if nothing else, a lawful arrest on immigration charges. Unfortunately, the only things she saw were a gruesome painting of Christ on the cross, a table with a half-eaten breakfast of cold tortillas, and a squat, prune-faced abuela in a shapeless polyester dress.

The old lady glared at Melanie. “Why you bother my Juan Carlos? He no sell drugs. He good boy.”

If there was one thing marriage had taught Melanie, it was that you could live with a person for years and still not have a clue what they were up to.

“Well, if he’s such an altar boy,” she replied, “why did he just jump out the window?”

MELANIE RUSHED INTO the big conference room carrying her Starbucks and muffin, only to find she was stressing out for nothing. Ten past nine, and nobody else had arrived yet. Ray-Ray Wong must still be where she’d left him fifteen minutes earlier, when she decided she couldn’t possibly survive this meeting without caffeine-sitting in one of the interview rooms on the sixth floor with Juan Carlos Peralta. Peralta had signed a waiver of speedy arraignment and agreed to talk. And they had plenty to ask him about, starting with the twelve glassines of heroin found stuffed in his sock at the time of his arrest. That would be the first order of business as soon as the meeting ended.

Much as Melanie sympathized with Luis Reyes, maybe this whole thing was cut-and-dried, after all. She didn’t want to believe it. Carmen had looked so sweet in that picture, and Melanie couldn’t help identifying with her. La raza and all that, being a poor girl in a rich kids’ school. But facts were facts. Carmen’s boyfriend was undeniably a heroin dealer. Carmen wanted to hang with the cool girls, and she’d found the ticket. It made sense.

The second Melanie dropped into a chair, it hit her how much she missed that little niña at home. Maya would’ve woken up by now and found her mommy gone. Melanie glanced around the empty room, then jumped up and hastily dialed her house from the telephone on the credenza. Sandy Robinson, her baby-sitter, reported that Steve had just left and that Maya’s fever was down. The medication was working this time, gracias a Dios. Sandy held the receiver up to Maya’s ear, and Melanie talked baby talk into the phone. Bernadette glided in, caught her doing that, and looked at her like she was crazy. People with no kids didn’t get it. Or maybe it was just that Bernadette didn’t. Melanie hung up fast and took her seat before she got yelled at.

Bernadette was even more heavily made up than usual, wearing a tight crimson pantsuit with gold buttons that matched her brightly colored hair and showed off her chest. She sat at the head of the table.

“So, what do you think?” she asked. “Great color for TV, right?”

“You’ll stand out,” Melanie said diplomatically.

“You, on the other hand, look like something the cat dragged in.”

“Gee, thanks. Maybe you forgot, but I’ve been up all night.”

“Honestly, girlfriend, one late night and you’re toast. It takes stamina to play with the big kids.”

Ray-Ray Wong strode in and shook hands with Bernadette.

“By the way, two new agents are coming to this meeting,” Bernadette said as Ray sat down next to Melanie. “Vito and I agreed it’s worth staffing up so we can resolve this case quickly. One is a detective named Bridget Mulqueen, who’s on your squad already, I understand, Ray-Ray.”

“Jeez Louise! Not Gidget!” he exclaimed.

“That’s more emotion than I’ve seen from you since we met, Ray,” Melanie said. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Nepotism hire,” he muttered.

“Oh, come on, that’s an exaggeration,” Bernadette said.

Ray-Ray fixed her with a withering stare.

“All right, maybe,” Bernadette conceded after a moment. Melanie was impressed. Not everybody could stare down Bernadette.

“Her one previous assignment was IAB,” Ray-Ray said, “and they wouldn’t even keep her. We got her because the lieutenant owed Jimmy Mulqueen a favor. This chick is wicked connected.”

“Bridget does happen to come from a family that has quite a few members on the job, including Deputy Commissioner Mulqueen,” Bernadette conceded.

“Who’s her father,” Ray-Ray put in.

“If you want to be the one to tell him his little girl isn’t good enough for this case, be my guest. There’s a nice traffic post in Queens that needs filling. You want my advice, keep your mouth shut and give her some rap sheets to run. Meanwhile, I’m making it up to you with the other new team member.”

“Who’s that?” Melanie asked, taking a sip of her Starbucks.

“You’ve worked with him before, Melanie. Dan O’Reilly from the FBI.”

Ray-Ray and Bernadette both stared at her as she choked on her coffee, turning bright red, unable to catch her breath.

OF COURSE, Dan had always taken her breath away, from the very second they met. But that was something she’d been trying to put out of her mind.

The phone on the credenza rang, and Bernadette got up to answer it. Ray-Ray turned to Melanie, who was still wheezing.

“You okay?” he whispered.

“Yuh,” she managed through her choking fit.

“This guy incompetent, too?”

“No, no. He’s very good. It’s just…” She trailed off into another round of hacking.

Ray-Ray nodded as if he understood. “Got it. Hate the fuckin’ Feebs myself. I was hoping they were off narcotics permanently, post-9/11, but now they sleazed their way back in with this narcoterrorism BS.”

Bernadette returned to the conference table.

“Okay,” she said, sitting down, “they’re here. They’ll be up in a minute.”

A minute? Melanie was nearly hyperventilating. Bernadette couldn’t know what she’d done by assigning Dan O’Reilly to this case. In fact, her boss probably thought she was doing Melanie a favor, had doubtless handpicked Dan precisely because she thought he and Melanie worked well together. What a disaster! Little did Bernadette know.

It was months since the two of them had seen each other, but Melanie still had it bad for this man. The second they met, she’d felt like something big was going to happen between them. And it started to, but then it got all mucked up. She sobbed herself to sleep some nights, regretting that she’d ever let him go, longing for him, wondering if she should try to call. Here she was divorcing Steve, the father of her child, and yes, she was sad about that. But it was Dan she cried for. And the worst part was, it was her own fault.