So all morning she’d watched a team of polite technicians cut into their drywall and run sensors to their windows. One of them had walked her through the system, showing her how to enter the code, how to change it. Tom had asked for the top of the line. It even had a feature that let her enter her code one digit higher. The alarm would shut off, but it would shoot a panic signal to the police. Slick. And once she took care of the money, they’d be safer still.

The thought sent guilt coursing through her, but she pushed it aside again. She was just being careful. If Tom found out, he’d be pissed and hurt, and she didn’t want either. But then, they had agreed that it would be safer if neither of them touched the money. It kept them above suspicion. So the only way Tom would find out what she had done would be if he cheated, tried to act without her.

No victim, no crime.

Her cell phone rang. The office. She looked at it, thought about answering, didn’t.

“WHY NOT JUST GRAB HER?” Marshall spoke around a mouthful of chips. “She knows anything, it’s not going to take long to get it.”

“We don’t know if they’re connected. Not for sure yet.” He waited for her Pontiac to turn from Racine to Wolfram before he merged to follow, a couple of cars between them. “She gets hurt, the cops will assume it had something to do with Will. They’ll come down hard, and we’ll lose our shot.” He always called them cops, never pigs, had known too many good Polacks who went that route. “We need to be sure.”

“She’s stopping.”

“I can see.” Jack slowed beside an empty spot. God bless the city. In the suburbs, even a civilian might notice they were being followed. Here, especially in this stolen black Honda, they were anonymous. Just neighbors. Jack flipped his signal and reversed. Anna Reed didn’t even look in their direction as she closed the trunk of the Pontiac, slung a duffel bag over her shoulder, and strolled up the walk to one of the graystones. He watched her go, the good sway of her hips. A nice-looking woman, with that serene glow that came with a sense of safety.

“Now what?”

Jack spread his hands. “We watch.”

“RAGGEDY ANNA.” Sara threw the door open, then stepped forward with her arms extended. She wore a men’s flannel shirt, something from an ex-boyfriend no doubt, and her hair was pulled into a ponytail.

“Hey, honey.” Anna dropped the duffel bag and let Sara gather her into her arms. Tom had once said Sara was the best hugger in the world, and though at the time it had slammed a spike of jealousy into Anna, now she thought of it whenever Sara embraced her. The girl just had a way of squeezing without reservation.

“How are you?” The question whispered, concerned.

“Good.” With everything that had happened in the last few days, it took Anna a minute to realize that Sara was talking about the failed IVF. Normally the thought would have had jagged edges, but things were different now. “Better than last week.”

Her sister leaned back from the hug, smiled. “I’m glad.” She squeezed Anna’s arm, then stepped away. “Come on in.”

Anna followed, knowing what was coming. Bracing herself, trying to grit her teeth without actually moving them. The apartment smelled of milk and diapers and talcum powder, of late nights spent soothing and cooing, of afternoon naps for two. Of hope and promise and dependence and love. Of spit-up and sweat and late golden sunlight.

It smelled of baby.

And as always, something in Anna just broke, fluttered away like a kite cut free. Same as all the times she’d been invited to showers, or had to buy onesies for near-forgotten college friends, or sometimes even when she just saw pregnant women, that happy flush as they neared the end. To cover it, she did what she always did, which was say meaningless things. “Place looks nice.”

Sara, on her way to the kitchen, threw the words over her shoulder. “I know, right? One minute I’m dropping E with the shower boys at Spin, next I’m Betty Crocker.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I’m not sure how I got here.”

Her voice was weary, but there was nothing like regret in it. Anna forced a smile. “Yeah, well, I don’t know about Betty Crocker. She can cook.” A baby seat hung from bungee cords in the hall entrance. She tugged at it, and the thing bounced up and down. “Where’s the Monkey?”

“Julian’s sleeping, thank God. Coffee?”

“Sure.” She moved a bright plastic rattle and sat at the table. Sara returned with two mugs and a box of Girl Scout cookies pinned beneath one arm. “What’s in the bag?”

“Sweats,” Anna said. The lie came easily, just falling off her tongue. “I thought I might stop by the gym afterward.”

Sara nodded, tore open a sleeve of cookies. “So how are you really?”

“I’m okay.” She sipped at the too-hot coffee. “It gets easier every time. That’s a terrible thing to say, isn’t it?”

“Oh, honey.”

“I don’t know. Maybe next time.”

“You guys are going to try again?”

“Yeah. Sooner or later the odds have to work in our favor, right?”

“But I thought…” Sara cocked her head.

Shit. She’d forgotten talking about how broke they were, how they couldn’t afford to pay their bills. “Well, you know. We can live on credit cards for a while.”

It sounded lame, but Sara didn’t pursue it. They sat in awkward silence for a moment, and then Sara said, “Come on. I need help picking an outfit for my interview.” She grabbed the coffee and led the way. Anna dropped on the bed while her sister went into her walk-in closet.

“So how are things with Tom?” Sara’s voice disembodied.

“Okay. It’s tough.” She fiddled with the edge of the duvet. “We’ve been together forever, and we love each other, but sometimes marriage seems like so much work.”

“That, sweetheart, is why I’ve got a strict six-month dating policy.”

Anna laughed. “It’s weird. The longer you’ve loved a person, the harder it is to articulate why.” She looked up as Sara stepped out, holding a bright red dress cut for cleavage. “No,” she said.

“No?”

“Not unless you’re applying to be a secretary-with-privileges.”

“If I could only find a boss that looked like George Clooney.” She vanished again. “So what does that mean, hard to articulate?”

“It’s just, you get so used to loving each other as an idea, you sometimes forget to do it.” She leaned over to look at a picture on the night table, Sara and three girlfriends in a bar booth, her sister’s head flung back in laughter.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Are you sure Tom wants a baby as much as you?”

She was glad Sara couldn’t see her wince. “I don’t know. How much is him wanting one and how much is him doing it for me gets kind of murky.”

“How about this?” Sara’s arm extended out the door, holding a pin-striped suit.

“Mehh.”

She pulled her arm back. “Does that scare you?”

“Are you kidding?” Anna opened her sister’s night table drawer, peered in, part fidgeting, part nosiness. Lip balm, tissues, a silver vibrator, okay, didn’t need to see that, some postcards. “Of course it does.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I think he’d be a great dad, but-”

“I know,” Anna said, cycling through the postcards: a black-and-white shot of a flamenco dancer, a pattern in avocado and orange, a flock of birds in flight. “I get scared by it, like I said. But to be honest, I don’t think that’s the problem. Have you ever seen him with kids? He goes totally-” She turned to put the cards back in the drawer, and her mouth fell open.

“Totally what?”

“Why do you have a gun?”

“Huh?”

It lay beneath where the postcards had been. A revolver, short, like the kind cops in old movies carried. Anna stared at it, wanting to touch it, wanting not to.

Her sister stepped out with a white blouse and a guilty expression she covered by going aggressive. “Snoop much?”