Worth didn’t remember thinking about it. He still didn’t remember making a fist. But he’d seen Vargas coming a good three seconds before Vargas had looked up and seen him.

He’d never thrown a punch that came more naturally. It had been almost like watching somebody else do it. Pop.

He remembered the cinnamon twist flying. The bite of his knuckles hitting teeth. When he’d told the story to the Modells in the stockroom, Vargas had ended up on his ass, wondering what had hit him.

But that wasn’t quite the way it had happened. Vargas had stumbled back a step; that was about all. Worth never saw the counterpunch.

Later, somebody else had claimed they’d seen him touch leather after Vargas put him down. His service weapon had been locked up downstairs; his holster would have been an empty hole in his belt. But somebody had claimed the motion had been there.

It was bullshit. Worth remembered catching his own blood in his hands and not being able to see.

They’d recorded the comment at the review out of formality, but nobody else had been able to back up the claim. Not even Vargas, who’d been standing directly over him at the time.

Because it was bullshit. Even if his head had been screwed on crooked for a while there, Worth knew it in his heart: No way had he gone for his gun.

It just wasn’t like anything he’d do.

Vargas dropped the folders at his desk and they walked on, past a uni heading the other direction and a clump of detectives milling around another desk. The meeting room was tucked back in the northeast corner between the coffee station and the cold case library.

Quite a group waited for them inside.

Worth’s heart did a little back flip as he followed Vargas into the room. He saw familiar faces, all seated along the same side of the table, all of them facing the door:

His lieutenant. His union rep. Regina Torres, Vargas’s captain. Roger Sheppard from the South Unit. Briggs and Salcedo’s sergeant, Levon Williams from the Northeast.

At one end of the table sat the Deputy Chief of Criminal Investigations. The Deputy Chief of Uniform Patrol.

There were other faces he didn’t recognize.

Vargas pulled the door closed behind them. “Okay, I don’t know who knows who, so…”

“Let’s just get started,” Deputy Chief Riley said. He nodded to Vargas. “We’ll meet each other as we go.”

D.C. Pullman sat next to Riley. Pullman had headed the Uniform Patrol Bureau the past five years, and Worth hadn’t had much contact with him before now. Mid-forties, salt-and-pepper hair, a smoker’s voice. He motioned across the table to one of the empty chairs.

“Have a seat, Officer.”

Gina Torres had captain’s bars on her collar now.

She and Worth had graduated academy together. They’d always been able to crack each other up. They’d fallen out of touch, but he’d caught lots of good talk about her over the years. It always made him happy to hear.

Last year, she’d made the newspapers. Youngest captain in the department. He’d meant to send her a card, but he never did. Now didn’t seem like the appropriate time to offer his congratulations.

She said, “And when did you meet Miss Mullen?”

“In August,” Worth repeated. “When I started my provisional. We didn’t start…seeing each other until recently.”

Gina—Captain Torres—nodded along. “Five, six weeks ago, you said?”

“About three,” Worth said. “Early October.”

“What was your reason for omitting that information before now?”

The bearded guy in the denim shirt beside her was Narcotics. The guy wearing the necktie was Internal Affairs. Neither of them had said much yet.

“In retrospect, I wish I’d followed my first instinct and radioed the call to another unit,” Worth said. “I let my emotional involvement interfere with my judgment.”

“I didn’t ask what you wish you’d done in retrospect, Officer.” Torres raised her chin. You’re not going to get any breaks here, Matt. “I asked why you chose not to inform your shift commander of your personal involvement with Miss Mullen and the subject.”

Worth glanced at his lieutenant and received an interested gaze in return. He looked across the table. Many faces, few expressions.

“I’m on provisional duty pending clearance,” he told them. The sigh he gave was genuine. It just never stopped sounding pathetic. “I guess it didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would help my case.”

He very nearly added more. Something about the family’s good name in the department, the upcoming memorial. Casting a shadow on his brother’s remembrance.

But he stopped himself. Of all the lines he’d crossed these past days—lines he’d never have considered himself capable of approaching—exploiting Kelly’s death to help save his own bacon wasn’t going to be one of them. Worth decided that then and there.

Mark Vargas unclipped his pager and looked at the screen. He glanced at Captain Torres.

“Excuse me,” he said.

After he’d stepped out of the room, Roger Sheppard said, “For the record, after the break-in at Officer Worth’s residence Sunday night, I did ask if he could think of any possibles. Mr. James was named at that time.”

Deputy Chief Riley said, “Let’s focus on Officer Worth’s account for now. We’ll compare and contrast as things get more formal.”

The meaning in that bit of guidance was clear enough. Keep what you know on this side of the table. The same basics Worth had been taught to apply in the field applied to him now.

Nine liars out of ten will hang themselves if you just get out of their way and let them.

The bearded guy from Narcotics had introduced himself as Detective Neil Granger. Granger glanced at D.C. Riley, eyebrows raised. Riley nodded him clear.

“With all due respect to the, um, love triangle aspect,” Granger said, “how much is the drop?”

“I don’t know,” Worth said.

“How is that?”

He’d told them that Briggs and Salcedo seemed to believe that he and Gwen were in possession of cash. Cash that Russell James had, apparently, either owed them or been meant to deliver to somebody else.

He’d told them that Russell James had, apparently, come to a bad end. He assumed this because Briggs and Salcedo had threatened to frame him and Gwen for the murder if they didn’t hand over the dough. Dough that neither Worth nor Gwen Mullen knew anything about.

“They never verbalized an amount.” He left the rest unspoken. Since I personally have no knowledge of any stolen money, I would have no way of knowing the amount myself.

“Where and when?”

“I don’t know that, either. They said we’d hear.”

“Hear when?”

“Before now.” Worth glanced at the clock on the wall for effect. “It’s past the twenty-four-hour mark.”

“Tell me something.” Detective Granger leaned back and folded his arms. “Who does the talking? Tony or Ray?”

“Mostly Briggs,” Worth said. “Salcedo stays pretty quiet.”

“But you say Salcedo engineered the apartment address.”

“That’s right.”

“Who makes the calls to the apartment?”

“Either or, Gwen says. I’ve never been there for a call.”

At this point, the IAD investigator finally spoke up. “Twenty-four hours?”

Worth hadn’t gotten his name. His tie had a stripe pattern. He couldn’t have been thirty years old.

Worth nodded. “That was the clock Briggs set.”

“Right,” IAD said. “And that clock started when your shift ended yesterday morning.”

“That’s what I said.”

“You approached Detective Vargas at nine o’clock last evening?” IAD leaned forward. “Setting aside the deviation from anything resembling your chain of command, tell me. In your own words, Officer Worth, what took you fourteen hours?”

All this talk of clocks had started the invisible bomb in Worth’s head ticking loudly again.