There was a long pause, and then Tom said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What? You think I don’t live somewhere?” He turned back from the window, walked over to the door. Unlocked it. “How much?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You bought it, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So how much?”

Tom rubbed at his head with his right hand. “There’s a place for sale down the block for five and a quarter.”

“Half a million dollars.” He whistled, traced the woodwork of the molding with the palm of his hand. “You know the house I grew up in, my dad bought for something like thirty grand? A little place off Archer, with a postage-stamp yard and a crooked roof. My brother and I shared a bedroom until… shit, until I moved out.” He sipped his beer. “It was a big deal, though, him being able to buy at all. Most of the Polacks we knew were renting.”

“What did you mean when you said you thought Anna knew where the money was?”

Jack walked over to the wall, leaned against it. “Two people put something somewhere, one is surprised to find it gone?” He shrugged.

“She wouldn’t do that.”

“Better hope you’re wrong.” Jack rolled his shoulders to loosen them. Long jobs were the hardest. Too much time for foul-ups. A neighbor looking through the window, a civilian growing a spine, you never knew. Forty-three years old now, and more work than he could remember. Time to quit. Once he and Marshall split the money, he was heading for Arizona. See if Eli was still interested in a partner for his bar. Jack unclipped his mobile phone from his belt, flipped it open. The reception was fine. “I know, I know, it’s a bitch. Hard to believe something like that. But it’s funny how money changes people. Even people you trust.”

“If Anna does know where the money is…” The man hesitated, and Jack could see that it hurt him to think like that. “Will you just take it and go?”

“You have a gambling problem or something?”

“Huh?”

Jack finished the beer in a long swallow. “You’ve got a building in a neighborhood that runs half a mill.” He set the can on the ground, then stomped it flat. Saw Tom Reed wince at that. He chuckled, then bent to pick up the can and slip it in his pocket. “You’ve got a job that pays solid bank, and a good-looking wife.”

“So?”

“I’m just wondering, why would you take the money?” He paused, locked eyes with the guy. “I really want to know. I mean, what is it you want” – he gestured in a circle – “you don’t already got?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

Tom shook his head, said nothing.

“Okay, sure, it’s tempting. Money is always tempting. But you had to know life didn’t work that way, right? In your heart? I mean, it was a bag full of money.”

“We…” Tom hesitated. “We didn’t know where it came from. We thought it was his. Like he’d saved it, didn’t trust banks.”

“That make it better?”

“He was dead. We weren’t hurting anybody.”

“That’s the problem with you people.” Jack cracked his thumbs. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t have taken it. I would. Did, as a matter of fact. But I didn’t tell myself it wasn’t hurting anybody. I wanted it, so I took it. You get my meaning?”

“No.”

“Let me put it another way.” He cocked his head. “You really believe you didn’t bring this on yourself?”

Tom opened his mouth, then closed it. The moment stretched. Then Jack felt the phone vibrate on his hip. He drew the.45. “Don’t fuck around. Get me?”

Tom gave the barest of nods.

Jack opened his phone and read the text message.

ANNA FLIPPED ON HER BLINKER, waited for a white construction van to pass, then put the Pontiac in reverse, turned the wheel hard, and backed into the narrow space. Before she moved to the city, parallel parking had seemed like an arcane art. Now she could do it in her sleep.

The sidewalk was dappled with spring sunlight, little patches of flowers beginning to bloom beside the road. A red BMW was offset by an explosion of white tulips, and a flowering bush half obscured a black Honda, the engine running, a man inside fiddling with a cell phone. She strolled easy, thinking about Tom’s voice as he’d suggested they go to a hotel. He hadn’t seemed worried – just the opposite, in fact. Like he’d solved a problem that had been bugging him, and wanted to celebrate. Odd.

Still, a hotel sounded nice. They used to do that every now and then, check into a place downtown just for the change. A vacation in their hometown, complete with big fluffy robes and a swimming pool. It had been years. Should be fun.

She climbed the steps and dug for her keys. Checked the mailbox out of habit – nothing, again, which was getting ridiculous – and figured she’d pack her green bikini with the blue flowers, order room service and a movie.

The door to the bottom apartment yanked open, and a burly blur came through it, a man, she could see that much as she threw her hands up in panic, and then he grabbed her, fingers steel on her arm, and yanked her inside, her feet tangling, struggling just to stay vertical as he half pulled, half tossed her through the open door. She took three or four steps to catch her balance, and was opening her mouth to shriek when she saw Tom starting to force himself up from the overstuffed chair, his hand held at an awkward angle. What was he doing here? What was going on?

The door closed behind them. “Don’t scream, Anna.”

There was blood on Tom’s left hand, and the way he held it was odd, a swollen mess, the pinkie off-kilter. Her nerves felt like she’d bitten metal. She gasped, one hand covering her mouth, and started forward. Then she saw the look on his face, and stopped.

Sometimes it felt like they had known each other for a hundred years. She knew his every gesture, every expression. She could render them in her mind: the easy smile, tilted a little to one side, that drew crinkles around his eyes. The half-lidded head loll, lips barely parted, as they made love in the night. His precise squint when reading, meant not to bring the words into focus but to put the rest of the world out.

She had never seen the look that was on his face now. She recognized fear around the wide eyes. Pain marked in the press of his lips. And concern, concern for her, in the cock of his head and the readiness of his body. But there was something else too. A guardedness like a metal gate drawn across a store window. And through the slats of that, a sharp and sparkling accusation.

And so she wasn’t surprised when the man behind her said, “Funny thing, Anna. Tom really believed it was in the basement.”

She turned, her lips curling in a snarl at this creature, this monster who had hurt her husband, who had smashed his hand and drawn a screen across his eyes. She found herself staring directly into the barrel of a big gun. The hole shallowed the depth of field until everything behind that black circle was just blurry shapes, and one of those blurry shapes said, “Anna, where did you take my money?”

IT WAS TRUE. Jack had told the truth, and his wife had lied.

At first, when Jack had yanked open the door and snatched Anna, snapped her into the room like he was cracking a whip, Tom had reacted on instinct, struggling to get out of the chair. Ready, as always, to catch her should she fall. But then their eyes had met, and he saw what was in hers. She had taken the money.

She had taken the money and she hadn’t told him. As a result, he’d been held at gunpoint on the dirty basement floor. He’d had his fingers smashed and broken. Had a gun held to his belly by a man clearly willing to pull the trigger. And worse than the consequences was the action. His wife had betrayed him.

Stop. Now isn’t the time. He didn’t try to forget his feelings. He just pushed them down. If they were going to get out of this, he needed to focus.