As Leah drove past the apartment building where Bill Halvorsen lived, she was tempted to stop her car, get out, and ring the bell. She could see a light on behind the curtain in a second-floor window. She kept going.

Halvorsen was a marine who had been out of the country more since high school than he had been in it. She had been about eight years older and had watched him growing up. Two years ago, when he had come home from Afghanistan, he had gone to the police station and knocked on her door. When she said, “Come in,” he had stood in the doorway for a moment.

She said, “Bill! Come in. I’m so sorry about Nick.” She got up and went to the door, closed it, and gave him a hug. He was shorter than she was by about four inches, so his chin was on her shoulder, but he was muscular—even more than when he was young—and she sensed he could pick her up with one hand. Nick was his older brother, who had worked in the prison.

Bill hugged her back, then released her. “Hi, Hawk. I’m sorry about—hell, everybody.”

On the basketball court they’d called her the Hawk, but she hadn’t heard it in years. “Did you just get back?”

“I flew into Denver last night and made it here this morning.”

She accepted that the responsibility to bring it up was hers. “You know most of it, right?”

“Some,” he said. “What I saw was a week-old television report that lasted maybe five minutes, and a couple of newspapers. I figured the only person who would know everything and still tell me the truth is you.”

She told him. “There were two thousand four hundred and ninety-eight inmates housed at the prison. About twelve hundred left the prison that night. The FBI, the state police, and our department managed to account for nine hundred and sixty-two of them during the first night and most of the rest within forty-eight hours.”

“Pretty impressive. You did a good job.”

“Not really. Those were all the easy ones. What happened was that there were a dozen men who broke out of prison. On the way out, they jammed the gates and doors and left the gun room open, so the others would go too.”

“That was to make it harder to find the twelve?”

“I think so. The smart inmates stayed in the prison and waited. About half of them saw what was going on and went back into their cells to wait it out.”

“And the other ones?”