“Do you care?” he repeated. “Do you care?”

Suddenly, it was if time downshifted into low gear, and the noise of the crowd receded. Andrew’s right arm appeared to move in slow motion as he began pulling something from the pocket of his windbreaker.

One face in the blur of people behind Andrew swam into focus. Even without the deep bruise, I would have recognized the mysterious dark-haired stranger. Our eyes met, and we rushed forward at the same moment.

“Noooooooooo!” I cried, lunging for Andrew’s gun arm as the shots rang out.

W e hit the floor in a tangle: Andrew, the mysterious stranger, and me.

My fingers scrambled for purchase on the slippery nylon of Andrew’s windbreaker. “Stop,” I pleaded. “You don’t want to do this.”

“I have to do this,” he said between clenched teeth. “And I don’t want to hurt you, so let go.”

He shook me off and raised his arm, pointing the gun toward the dais again.

Then I saw the mysterious stranger’s hand descend, chopping fiercely at Andrew’s wrist. He gave a shout of pain and dropped the gun. I kicked at it, sending it spinning down the cold concrete floor.

Andrew struggled to his feet, intent on recovering the weapon. The stranger and I both leaped to tackle him, but he was too fast. My arms closed around empty air, and I hit the floor again, but this time the stranger cushioned my impact.

The audience finally started to react. Somebody grabbed Andrew’s gun, and a couple of people grabbed Andrew.

On the dais, the board of directors began cautiously emerging from the chairs they’d dived behind, and Perry pulled himself up from where he’d ducked behind the podium. He was clutching at his arm. It was a good thing that I couldn’t see that well, as I had a feeling there was blood involved, and I’d gotten more than my fill of gore seeing to the mysterious stranger’s cut the night before last.

“Are you okay up there?” asked the mysterious stranger. His voice was surprisingly deep.

“What? Oh. Sorry.” I rolled off him.

Wordlessly, he helped me up before melting into the crowd.

Andrew was confessing to Gallagher’s murder even as the authorities led him away, assuring them and everyone else within earshot that he wouldn’t rest until Perry and Brisbane were also six feet under. We found out later that his brother, Bobby, had made a similar attempt on the good senator’s life that very morning, intercepting Brisbane outside of his Washington home. An off-duty Secret Service agent on his morning run had jogged by at just the right time-at least, the right time for Brisbane. Otherwise, the brothers would have been two for three.

Their original plot had been much more elaborate than what eventually played out, the product of more than a year of careful planning. Just as Andrew had insinuated himself into Gallagher’s workplace, Bobby had recently secured an internship in Senator Brisbane’s office. They intended to make their respective employers’ deaths look like accidents before moving on to Perry.

But once Perry launched the Thunderbolt buyout, they had to scrap their careful plans. They couldn’t let Perry and his cronies do to other families what had been done to theirs. They were willing to sacrifice their futures to avenge their mother’s death, but there were three targets, and only two of them. They had to kill one of the men on their list without being caught so that they could remain free long enough to finish the job.

They were fortunate in that there was a long line of people who wanted to kill Gallagher, and Andrew improvised a murder that could have been committed by a number of them. This left the brothers free to kill Brisbane and Perry in parallel, at which point they would confess to the Gallagher murder, as well.

The irony, of course, was that their only successful murder was the one for which they didn’t want to be caught. Killing people should have been a lot easier when they weren’t concerned about the consequences.

Peter and I spent the rest of the morning and a significant chunk of the early afternoon making statements to the police. They seemed willing to suspend my fugitive status now they had the real killer in custody, and by midafternoon we’d said goodbye to the extended Kryzluk family and were back in Luisa’s car, heading east on the Interstate. This time Peter knew better than to order a salad at the McDonald’s drive-through.

Traffic was light, and the weather was clear, so the drive back was pleasant and relatively quick. We’d called from the road to update my friends, and they were waiting for us in my apartment. They’d also already ordered dinner.

Over the past several days I’d eaten Big Macs, pierogies, bacon, sausage, pancakes, coffee cake, various forms of fried potatoes (including several bags of salt-and-vinegar chips), enchiladas, guacamole, pad thai, spring rolls, and lasagna. At this point a normal person would probably be craving vegetables, or at least liposuction.

Fortunately, I wasn’t normal, and I’d squeezed in a number of unintended workouts escaping from the police and assorted other pursuers. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do justice to the samosas and curry that arrived shortly after Peter and me.

“Anybody want a beer?” Hilary called out from the kitchen.

“You told her to say that,” Peter accused me.

I gave him my sweetest and most innocent smile.

We all took our plates into the living room, where Peter and I recounted everything that had happened since we’d last checked in.

“Was it like The Bodyguard, only you were Kevin Costner and Perry was Whitney Houston?” asked Hilary.

“And what is a pierogie, exactly?” asked Jane. She’d never lived anywhere but Boston, and her exposure to Eastern European cuisine had been limited, although she could probably discourse at length on clam chowder and baked beans.

“There’s something I don’t get,” said Emma after the topics of Kevin Costner and pierogies had been thoroughly exhausted. “Why would Andrew attack Dahlia?”

I turned to her. “That’s exactly what Peter and I were wondering. And we don’t think he did. I mean, Andrew’s small enough that he could pass for me if he was dressed in the right outfit, so he probably could have done it, but that doesn’t explain why he would do it in the first place, much less why he would try to frame me. Meanwhile, the police seem ready to blame him, given that they let me completely off the hook.”

“This Andrew person and his brother-their actions were fairly principled,” mused Luisa. “In a somewhat twisted way, but still principled. Some might even find their reason for killing Gallagher honorable given the context. But that wouldn’t extend to killing Dahlia, would it?”

“Even if it did, it still doesn’t add up,” said Peter. “Why would Andrew care if Dahlia had realized something fishy was going on with the Thunderbolt deal? If anything, he would have welcomed it. But how could he even know what Dahlia suspected?”

“Which brings us back to Jake and Annabel,” I said. “Which also brings us back to the fact that Jake tried to shoot me at the boat basin.”

“Rach, you’re practically blind,” Hilary said. “Are you absolutely sure Jake was shooting at you?”

“And if you’re practically blind, why did you assure me that you were fine to drive my car?” added Luisa pointedly.

“It was Jake at the boat basin. I’m sure of that. And it was Mark-I mean, Andrew-who rescued me from him. There’s only one possible explanation. Jake and Annabel may not have killed Gallagher, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t jump at the opportunity to make the most out of his death.” I explained my theory about the likely terms of Annabel’s prenuptial agreement. “The Thunderbolt deal had to go forward, at least if the two of them wanted to make sure they would have sufficient ill-gotten gains on which to live happily ever after. They wouldn’t want to have to work for the rest of their lives, would they?”