Husband and wife sat in silence. Brynn looked at her husband once then shifted her gaze down at the floor. Finally, after an eternity, he rested his hand on her knee. They remained that way, motionless, for some minutes-until a doctor came out of the double door. He looked at the man with the hurt arm and then walked directly toward Brynn and Graham.

HART GOT RID of the car he’d hijacked on the interstate.

He did this as efficiently as he knew how: He parked it in the Avenues West area of Milwaukee with the doors locked but the keys in the ignition. Some kids wouldn’t notice and some would notice but think it was a sting and some-in the quickly redeveloping area-would notice but would do the right thing and pass the car by.

The car, however, would still be gone within one hour. And harvested for parts in twelve.

Head down, exhausted and in agony from the gunshot and the other trauma of the night, Hart walked quickly away from the vehicle. It was a cool morning, the sky clear. The smell of fires from construction site scrap teased his nose. His instincts were still running the show and were directing him underground as fast as possible.

Walking along the sparsely populated streets he found the Brewline Hotel, though it was nowhere near the Brewline. It was the sort of place that thrived on business by the hour or by the week but rarely by the day. He paid for one week in advance with a bonus for a private bath, and was given a remote control and a set of sheets. The overweight woman clerk took no notice of his physical condition or absence of luggage. He trooped up the two flights of stairs and into room 238. He locked the door, stripped and dumped his fetid clothes into a pile that reminded him very much of Brynn McKenzie’s soaked uniform at the second house on Lake View Drive.

He pictured her stripping.

The image aroused him for a few minutes until the throbbing in his arm tipped him out of the mood.

He examined the wound closely. Hart had taken paramedic training courses-because his job often involved physical injuries. He now assessed the wound and concluded that he didn’t need a doctor. He knew several medicos who’d lost their tickets and would stitch him up, no questions asked or gunshots reported, for a thousand bucks. But the bleeding had stopped, the bone was intact and, though his bruise was impressive, the infection was minor. He’d start on antibiotics later today.

Hart showered under a stuttering stream of water, doing his best to keep his arm dry.

He returned to the bed, naked, and lay down. He wanted to consider the night, to try to make sense of it. He thought back several weeks-to a Starbucks in Kenosha, where he was meeting with a guy he’d worked with a few times in Wisconsin. Gordon Potts was a big, hulking man, not brilliant but decent and someone you could trust. And he could hook you up with dependable labor when you needed it. Potts had said he’d been approached by a woman in Milwaukee who was smart, tough and pretty. He vouched for her. (Hart now realized that Michelle had bought the credentials with a blow job or two.)

Hart was interested. He was between jobs and bored. There was a deal going down in Chicago but that wasn’t until mid-May. He wanted something now, needed some action, adrenaline. The same way that the tweaker Hart had killed in the state park last night needed to slam meth.

Besides, the job was a lark Potts told him.

A few days later Potts had hooked him up with “Brenda”-the fake name Michelle had offered-in a coffee shop in the Broadway District of Green Bay. She said, “So, Hart. How you doing?”

She shook his hand firmly.

“Good. You?”

“I’m okay. Listen, I’m interested in hiring somebody. You interested in some work?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. So how do you know Gordon Potts? You go back a long ways?”

“Not so long.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“A mutual friend.”

“Who’d that be?”

“Freddy Lancaster.”

“Freddy, sure. How’s his wife doing?”

Michelle had laughed. “That’d be tough to find out, Hart. She died two years ago.”

And Hart had laughed too. “Oh, that’s right. Bad memory. How does Freddy like St. Paul?”

“St. Paul? He lives in Milwaukee.”

“This memory of mine.”

The Dance…

After his first meeting with Brenda-Michelle, Hart had made phone calls to both Gordon Potts and Freddy Lancaster to verify times, dates and places down to the tenth decimal. A dozen other calls too, after which he was confident that nobody was working for the law. Brenda Jennings was a petty thief with no history of informing on her partners-and was also, Hart now knew, an identity Michelle had stolen.

So he arranged another meeting to discuss the job itself.

Michelle had explained she’d heard that Steven Feldman had been making inquiries about swapping old bills, silver certificates, for newer Federal Reserve notes. She’d looked into the situation and learned about some meatpacking executive who’d hidden cash in his summer home in the 1950s. A million bucks. She gave Hart the details.

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Yeah, it is, Hart. So you’re interested?”

“Keep going.”

“Here’s a map of the area. That’s a private road. Lake View Drive. And there? That’s a state park, all of it. Hardly any people around. Here’s a diagram of the house.”

“Okay…This a dirt road or paved?”

“Dirt…Hart, they tell me you’re good. Are you good? I hear you’re a craftsman. That’s what they say.”

As he’d studied the map he’d asked absently, “Who’s ‘they’?”

“People.”

“Well, yeah, I’m a craftsman.”

Hart had been aware of her studying him closely. He looked back into her eyes. She said, “Can I ask you a question?”

A lifted eyebrow. “Yeah.”

“I’m curious. Why’re you in this line of work?”

“It suits me.”

Hart was somebody who didn’t believe in psychoanalysis or spending too much time contemplating your soul. He believed you felt in harmony or you didn’t, and if you bucked that feeling you were making a big mistake.

God, doesn’t the boredom just kill them? It would me. I need more, Brynn. Don’t you?

Michelle had nodded, as if she understood exactly what he meant and had been hoping for just that answer. She said, “It looks like it does.”

He got tired of talking about himself. “Okay. What’s the threat situation?”

“The what?”

“How risky’s the job going to be? How many people up there, weapons, police nearby? It’s a lake house-are the other houses on Lake View occupied?”

“It’ll be a piece of cake, Hart. Hardly any risk at all. The other places’ll be vacant. And only the two of them up there, the Feldmans. And no rangers in the park or cops around for miles.”

“They have weapons?”

“Are you kidding? They’re city people. She’s a lawyer, he’s a social worker.”

“Just the Feldmans, nobody else? It’ll make a big difference.”

“That’s my information. And it’s solid. Just the two of them.”

“And nobody gets hurt?”

“Absolutely not,” she had said. “I wouldn’t do this if there was a chance anybody’d get hurt.” Brenda-Michelle had smiled reassuringly.

Lots of money, nobody hurt. Sounded good. Still, he’d said, “I’ll get back to you.”

Hart had driven home and researched what she’d told him. Sitting at his computer, he’d laughed out loud. Sure enough, it was all true. And he was confident that no cops in the world would come up with a sting like this. They offered drugs, perped merchandise, funny money, but they didn’t suggest a caper out of a Nicholas Cage movie.

Then came the big day. They’d driven up to Lake Mondac in the stolen Ford together. He, Compton Lewis and Michelle. The two men had broken in and, while they held the Feldmans at gunpoint, Michelle was supposed to come into the kitchen, tape up their hands and start interrogating them about the money. Instead of the duct tape, though, she was carrying a 9mm subcompact Glock. She’d walked past Hart and shot the couple point-blank.