, because in fourteen yea

of a man setting down something that might go off. Kingsley House was quiet around them, a limestone townhouse on East Seventieth Street with eleven

of untouched whiskey, watching the rain. He had come stra

nted them tonigh

d

jaw. He wore a dark suit, a plain earpiece he never removed, and the faint, permanent stiffness in his left knee that he refused to discuss. Nine years in the NYPD's Organized Crime Control Bureau and fourteen wi

hese t

say yes. And no

he three folders for a moment without touching them, and then pulled th

tched him

cus himself had not liked it. But Alexander Kingsley did not ask for permission. He asked for results. The criteria had been precise: female, twenty-one to thirty-five, unmarried, no connection to anyone in Kingsley's

lyst at a mid-sized hedge fund, Stamford office. Very bright. Divorced once. Her ex-husband'

N

n't fin

page of the thin folder without lookin

y money, most of it spent. Charming and impulsive. A career in being useful to

N

s the one yo

the rain, caught mid-turn by a long lens, her dark hair coming loose from its elastic and one hand lifted to hold a paper cup. She l

at the photograph

or interest, or attraction. It was the stillness of a man reading the

n accounting degree at Baruch when she took a leave to care for her mother. Her mother has relapsed leukemia and has run out of insurance. There's a clinical trial, there's a deadline. The out-of-pocket figure is one point four million. She has six

sto

gain on Saturday, and again this afternoon in the back of the car wi

ter. Absent since 201

e," Marcus said, in a voice he ke

said. "I don't

der. He did not o

side, the rain ticke

er," Alex

e seconds. "You haven't l

n't ne

financial data. Archer has the social polish to stand next to you at a gala without anyone asking where she ca

what s

In fourteen years, he had questioned Alexander Kingsley's decisions perhaps four time

not look away

the profil

the oth

s an easy

xand

tirely off duty. For a long moment the room held its breath. Then Alexander lifted his eyes. They were steel-gray and perfectly composed, and Marcus, who had interrogated

ions. Someone who needs this badly enough to keep her word and is intelligent enough to know exactly what she's

nig

diner. He'll kn

surface. We haven't walked her bloc

again, studied it, and set it down. "Sixty-eight days, Ma

cond. Then he nodded, once, and ben

ot take

d, without looking up. "I

since six o'clock, engine idling, and by twenty past

d them with

who did not talk and did not fall asleep, and he had told him to go home. Now Marcus sat alone

were two men at the counter and a table of college kids in the back. And in the corner booth, in a gray apron with a

tartled thing that transformed her whole face, and then it wa

aph. She also looked, from this dis

d at her for

nty years to jot down things he did not want to put in a phone. He clicked a pen, held the card against th

11-

e wouldn't, he would never. A captain, two weeks later, who had come to Marcus's desk with a friendly smile and a pat on the

at it was a coincidence he'd ended up on

t, behind his driver's license, between a photograph of his dau

harcoal overcoat had gotten out of a cab and

off the engi