“You think he has people watching me?”

“I’ve wondered about that,” Ron said. “He knows we’re watching you, so in order to avoid detection he’s got to hire solid professionals who have experience in this area. If he doesn’t, he runs the risk that we’ll spot one of them. Which brings me back to my previous point about getting you out of the way as soon as possible. When that happens, he can relax.”

“You think Paul might come after her? For retaliation?”

“More like it’s smart business. If you have her stick close to you, it’ll make our job easier, covering you both.”

Sebastian settled into the chair next to him and watched Faye Simpson eat a softball-sized blueberry muffin like it was an apple, taking great big bites. She used a remote to thumb through cable TV channels, her face relaxed, maybe serene.

“How much do we really know about her?”

“I ran the background check myself, when Anton hired her,” Ron said.

Sebastian said nothing.

Ron took the silence as an accusation. He tilted his head to him, ready for a fight. “If she wasn’t one hundred percent clean, I wouldn’t have told Anton to bring her on. Everything on her checks out.”

Sebastian nodded absently, watching Faye and reviewing what had gone down at Long Beach. “When the flash-bang grenade hit the floor, she didn’t hesitate. She turned and wrapped her arms around me and threw me to the floor.”

“Like she said, it was a smart move. If you were dead, she wouldn’t be able to collect the reward.”

“But when things escalated into a full-blown shit show, she didn’t scream or cower or cry or try to run away or find someplace to hide. Then, when Paul killed—” Sebastian’s voice caught, the images of what had happened to his childhood friend constricting his throat and squeezing his heart. “When Frank went down, she didn’t so much as pause. She grabbed a handgun from the floor and returned fire.”

“Sometimes people can surprise us when the shit hits the fan.”

Sebastian rubbed a finger across his bottom lip, thinking, watching Faye on the screen. “Way she acted—that’s muscle memory. She’s had training. If she isn’t military, she’s something else.”

Ron’s eyes turned hard. “You think she’s a cop?”

“How many women you know who can handle a gun?”

“If she is Miss Undercover for LAPD or the Feds, then people are watching her, and they would have put a stop to what went down at the house. They wouldn’t have let it escalate. They would have intervened because they knew she was in trouble.”

Maybe Ron’s right, Sebastian thought. Maybe I’m overthinking this. The bane of every alcoholic.

Still . . .

Sebastian reached into his pocket. “There’s also this,” he said, and handed Ron a folded picture of a young boy of three or four sitting in front of a Christmas tree; the camera captured the look of wonder and expectancy on his face. The photo had been folded and unfolded so many times, the white crease marks were beginning to fray.