That was the real problem now. I didn’t look forward to seeing her face when I sneaked my way home. I was going to break her heart.

I changed buses twice. In Washington and New York. At every sudden stop my heart would clutch, freeze. This is it, I figured. There was a roadblock, and they were going to pull me off! But there never were any roadblocks. Towns and states passed by, and none too fast for me.

I found myself daydreaming a lot. I was the son of a small-time crook, and here I was returning – wanted, a big-time screwup. I’d even outdone my old man. I’d have surely been in the system growing up, just like Mickey and Bobby, if I didn’t know how to skate. Hockey had opened doors for me. The Leo J. Fennerty Award as the best forward in the Boston CYO. A full ride to BU. More like a lottery ticket. Until I tore up my knee my sophomore year.

The scholarship went with it, but the university gave me a year to prove I could stay. And I did. They probably thought I was just some dumb jock who would drop out, but I started to see a larger world around me. I didn’t have to go back to the old neighborhood and wait for Mickey and Bobby to get out of jail. I started to read, really read, for the first time in my life. To everyone’s amazement, I actually graduated – with honors. In government. I got this job teaching eighth-grade social studies at Stoughton Academy, a place for troubled youths. My family couldn’t believe it. They actually pay a Kelly to be in the classroom?

Anyway, that all ended. In a single day – just like this.

Past Providence, everything began to grow familiar. Sharon, Walpole, Canton. Places where I had played hockey as a kid. I was starting to get really nervous. Here I was, back home. Not the kid who’d gone off to BU. Or the one who’d been practically run out of town – and wound up in Florida.

But a hunted man, with a collar on a whole lot bigger than my old man ever managed to earn.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I was thinking as the bus hissed to a stop at the Atlantic Avenue terminal in Boston. Even when you throw it.

Even when you throw it as far as you can.

“SPECIAL AGENT SHURTLEFF put the whole thing together,” Ellie’s boss, George Moretti, said, and shrugged, like, Can you believe it? to Hank Cole, the assistant director in charge. The three of them were in his top-floor office in Miami.

“She recognized implements at the murder scene that could be used for prying open picture frames. Then she found numbers in the victims’ personal effects that matched Stratton’s alarm code. We located the stolen uniforms a short time later, stuffed in a bag in a car down the street.”

“Seems you finally put that art degree to some real use, Special Agent Shurtleff,” ADIC Cole said, beaming.

“It was just having access to both crime scenes,” Ellie said, a little nervous. This was the first time she had been in front of the ADIC for any reason.

“The victims were all acquainted, from the Boston area with minor rap sheets.” Moretti slid a copy of the preliminary report across his boss’s desk. “Nothing like a crime of this magnitude ever before. There’s another member of this group who lived down here who’s apparently missing.” He pushed a photo over. “One Ned Kelly. He didn’t show up for his shift at a local bar last night. Not surprising – since police up in South Carolina found an old Bonneville registered to him in some strip mall just off of I-95, four hundred miles north of here…”

“Good. This Kelly have a record?” the ADIC inquired.

“Juvie,” Moretti said, “expunged. But his father’s a different story. Three stints on everything from bookmaking to receiving stolen goods. As a matter of routine, we’re gonna flash the kid’s photo around that hotel in Palm Beach, where that other incident took place. You never know.”

“I actually took a look at that scene,” Ellie volunteered. She told her bosses that the times of death didn’t match up. Also, the Palm Beach police were treating the murder as a sex crime.

“Seems our agent here has designs on being a homicide detective as well,” Hank Cole said with a grin.

Ellie caught herself and took the dig, her cheeks coloring. They wouldn’t be anywhere on this case without me.

“Anyway, why don’t we just leave something for the local authorities to clean up.” Cole smiled at her. “So it seems this Ned Kelly may have ripped off his old buddies, huh? Well, he’s sure graduated to the big time now. So whatya think, Special Agent,” he said, turning to Ellie, “you ready to fly up North and put yourself on this guy?”

“Of course,” Ellie said. Whether they were condescending or not, she loved the attention of being on the A team for once.

“Any ideas where he’d be headed?”

Moretti shrugged. He went over to a wall map. “He’s got family, roots up there. Maybe a fence, too.” He pushed in a red pin. “We figure Boston, sir.”

“Actually,” said Ellie, “ Brockton.”

KELTY’S, ON THE CORNER of Temple and Main in south Brockton, usually closed around midnight. After the Bruins’ postgame report or Baseball Tonight, or when Charlie, the owner, finally pushed the last jabbering regular away from his Budweiser.

Tonight, I was lucky. The lights dimmed at 11:35.

A few minutes afterward, a large guy with curly brown hair in a hooded Falmouth sweatshirt yelled, “Later, Charl,” and closed the door behind him as he stepped onto the sidewalk. He started to head down Main, a knapsack over his shoulder, leaning into the early April chill.

I followed on the other side of the street, a safe distance behind. Everything had changed around there. The men’s store and the Supreme B Donut Shop where we used to hang out were now a grungy Laundromat and a low-end liquor store. The guy I was following had changed, too.

He was one of those thick, strong-shouldered dudes with a cocky smile who could break your wrist arm wrestling if he wanted to. His picture was up in the local high school. He’d once been district champ at 180 pounds for Brockton High.

You better plan how you’re going to do this, Ned.

He made a left on Nilsson, crossing over the tracks. I followed, maybe thirty yards behind. Once, he looked back, maybe hearing footsteps, and I huddled in the shadows. The same rows of shabby, clapboard houses I’d passed a thousand times as a kid, looking even shabbier and more run-down now.

He turned the corner. On the left was the elementary school and Buckley Park, where we used to play Rat Fuck on the basketball courts for quarters. A block away on Perkins was the ruin of the old Stepover shoe factory, boarded up for years. I thought back to how we used to hide out in there from the priests and cut classes, smoke a little. When I turned at the corner, he wasn’t there!

Ah, shit, Neddie, I cursed myself. You never were any good at getting the jump on somebody.

And then I was the one being jumped!

Suddenly, I felt a strong arm tighten around my neck. I was jerked backward, a knee digging deep into my spine. The sonuvabitch was stronger than I remembered.

I flailed my arms to try and roll him over my back. I couldn’t breathe. I heard him grunting, applying more pressure, twisting me backward. My spine felt as if it were about to crack.

I started to panic. If I couldn’t spin out quickly, he was going to break my back.

“Who caught it?” he suddenly hissed into my ear.

“Who caught what?” I gagged for air.

He twisted harder. “Flutie’s Hail Mary. The Orange Bowl. 1984.”

I tried to force him forward, using my hips as leverage, straining with all my might. His grip just tightened. I felt a searing pain in my lungs.

“Gerard… Phelan,” I finally gasped.