“I know that he got inside your organization,” Grant said. “That he betrayed Martino and took out several of your men in the process.”

Mr. Black paused for a moment. “What is it you want, Lombard?”

“Pallas is the lead agent in a murder investigation that implicates Hodges. The FBI is hiding something from us. The senator’s chief of staff has asked me to find out what that something is. He would, of course, be very grateful for your help with this matter. As the senator’s primary advisor, he would hope to be able to return the favor some day.” Sure, he’d embellished on Driscoll’s orders, but the way Grant figured it, if Roberto Martino ever came to collect on the favor, that would be Driscoll’s problem, not his.

As if silently beckoned, a waitress appeared out of nowhere and set an ashtray before Mr. Black. He flicked the ash off his cigarette then rolled it against the ashtray, rounding off the cherry. He took another drag, and Grant could tell he was considering his offer.

“Look at it this way—by helping us out, you get to fuck with Pallas’s investigation,” Grant added. “Whatever it is he’s hiding, it’s important enough that he doesn’t want anyone to know about it.”

Mr. Black eased back in the booth with a humorless grin. “You seem pretty confident that we’ll give you this information just for the hell of it. I think you’ve overestimated Martino’s dislike of Pallas.”

“Have I?”

Mr. Black said nothing at first. After another drag of his cigarette, he stood up. “Wait here.”

Grant slowly exhaled. Assuming he didn’t return with a couple of goons and a car with a plastic-lined trunk, it looked like he might be on his way to getting some answers.

Mr. Black returned a few minutes later. He tossed a folded piece of paper onto the table. “This man will help you. Meet him at this address at ten o’clock on Saturday night. You now owe us, Lombard. Not some chief of staff or anyone else—you. So I hope whatever information this man has, it’s worth it.”

Grant felt the anger rise in him, although he refused to show any reaction. He hoped the information was worth it, too. He was counting on it.

He unfolded the paper and saw a name and an address. He looked up, sure he was being played. “This can’t be right.”

“It’s right.” Mr. Black walked away from the booth and disappeared into the crowd.

Grant glanced back down at the paper in his hand. This was a surprising turn of events. He didn’t know the man personally, but of course he recognized the name. Anyone connected to U.S. politics and law enforcement, especially in Chicago, would recognize it.

Silas Briggs.

JACK CHECKED HIS watch as he and Wilkins stepped off the plane. The delay in their flight had put them over three hours behind schedule. The joys of air travel.

Granted, he’d already been in a bad mood before the flight delay. Davis had called to check in while he and Wilkins had been waiting to board, wanting an update on the investigation. Jack knew Davis was getting pressure from the director, which meant Davis was pressuring him. And, unfortunately, Jack hadn’t had much to report.

They’d spent the last three days interviewing witnesses and not learning much in the process. First, they’d tracked down Mandy Robards’s old clients and ex-boyfriends, looking for anyone who might’ve been jealous over her liaisons with Senator Hodges. They’d gotten zero leads on that front. Although Mandy seemed to be a favorite amongst her clients for her professional skills, none of them—nor any of her ex-boyfriends for that matter—seemed particularly troubled by the fact that she had sex with other men. Few, if any of them, appeared to have any significant emotional connection to her. She did what she needed to do as part of her job—quite fantastically, apparently—but had made very few personal attachments along the way.

In an odd way, Jack related somewhat to the picture painted of Mandy Robards. Some jobs required a certain level of detachment; a turning off of emotions in order to do the things that needed to be done. That was one of the reasons his outburst to the reporter about Cameron had surprised him more than anyone—he rarely lost his cool, even under the most high-pressure of situations. She, however, had the most infuriating ability to get under his skin.

And “infuriating” was apparently the theme of the week. Lately, it seemed like Jack couldn’t take two steps without bumping into somebody who clearly had nothing better to do than to seriously piss him off. His trip with Wilkins had been one frustration after the other.

Yesterday they’d flown to New York to follow up on the list of individuals who might hold a grudge against Hodges, a list based primarily on his recent appointment as chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Hodges was a staunch proponent of increased regulation and oversight of financial institutions—most notably Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds. His first initiative as chairman had been to open a series of Senate investigative hearings into improper trading practices and the stock market collapse, an act that had made him extremely unpopular with Wall Street CEOs.

Jack hadn’t thought he could possibly find a more difficult team of lawyers to deal with than those representing Hodges. This trip to New York had proven him wrong. While he and Wilkins had eventually been able to meet with most of the hedge fund and investment bank CEOs on their list, getting face-to-face time with them hadn’t been easy. Most had eventually caved because of Jack’s persistence, others because of Wilkins’s charm. A few stubborn ones, however, just flat-out refused to speak to anybody from the FBI. All in all, it had been a long couple of days.

While he and Wilkins were in New York, he’d had one of the investigative specialists at their office pull together a file of photographs of all the people they had interviewed over the last week. The original plan, before their flight had been delayed, had been that he and Wilkins would drop by the office to pick up the file, then swing over to Cameron’s place to show her the photographs. Jack hoped she might recognize someone she’d seen earlier in the evening, prior to the murder—perhaps someone she’d noticed in the lobby, the restaurant, or even better, on the thirteenth floor.

“What do you think?” Wilkins asked as they strode through the United terminal, heading toward the overnight parking garage where they’d left his car the morning before. He checked his watch. “It’s seven fifteen. Think it’s too late to head over to Cameron’s? I told her we’d be there hours ago. She said she had plans this evening—she might not even be home anymore.”

Jack glanced over. “What kind of plans?”

Wilkins shrugged. “She didn’t say. Why?”

“No reason. Just asking.” Jack pulled out his cell phone and called Kamin. After the fiasco on Wednesday, he’d gotten both his and Phelps’s numbers so that he could reach them at any time.

Kamin answered his phone and confirmed that Cameron was still home. “Should be here for a while—she’s got a few girlfriends over and they look to be settling in,” he said.

Jack thanked him and hung up, not wanting to give the cop any chances to comment on what he’d nearly seen Wednesday night. The “nearly” part was key in Jack’s mind—if he’d actually kissed Cameron, he’d have to acknowledge that fact, even if only to himself. But when it was only nearly a kiss, he could go on pretending that nothing had ever happened. Which was exactly what he planned to do.

“Why don’t you just call Cameron and ask if she minds if we stop by?” Wilkins asked.

“Because she’ll say no, and I can’t do this tomorrow,” Jack said. It would be his first day off since he’d gotten back to Chicago and he’d made plans to take his nephew to the Shedd Aquarium. “And Monday she’ll be back in her office and I’d prefer not to talk there. No one’s supposed to know she’s working with us on this case.”