The cop ignored her. “Ever hear of unlawful discharge?” he said. He flipped the cylinder shut again. “Doesn’t matter if you own the land, you’re still inside city limits.” He zipped the pistol back in its pouch but made no move to hand it back to Keegan.

The mower down below sputtered and stopped. In the sudden quiet, birds sang and parched brush rattled in the hot breeze. Nora trotted over to the cottage’s white picket fence and lay down in the shade of a rosemary bush, panting.

“There shouldn’t be a problem,” Keegan said, adjusting his voice to the hush. “Just get on the radio. Call in for Lieutenant Moore.” Keegan thought he caught a reaction in the boy cop at the mention of the lieutenant’s name. “Louis Moore. You know him?”

The cop offered a slanted smile. “I know the man,” he said, “but we don’t exactly swim in the same pond.”

“The lieutenant’s an old friend of mine,” Keegan said. It was gratifying to see that Louis Moore’s name still opened doors. “He’ll vouch. Just tell him you’re with Jim Keegan.”

The cop looked Keegan over, sizing him up—just so they both knew who was still in charge here, friend of Louis Moore or not. Keegan just smiled back at him, and the kid went to the open squad car door, still holding Keegan’s gun. The cop leaned in the cruiser’s doorway, elbows on the car roof and talked into the radio’s microphone.

Keegan crossed the road and opened the front gate in the picket fence to let the dog through. She trotted up the shady porch steps to her water bowl and started lapping it up. Keegan closed the gate behind her. He stood with his arms crossed and watched a couple of finches hop and flit among the rosemary bushes. He could feel the sun on his shoulders through his last clean button-up shirt. He put his hand in his pocket and felt the blunt weight of the six bullets he’d saved from the ammo box—just enough to fully load the gun for Eve.

The kid cop finally signed off the radio and hung the microphone back on the dash. He waved Keegan over and offered him a conciliatory nod. “The L.T. says I should tell you you’re a dumbass,” he said, clearly uneasy with his role as messenger. “Said to remind you that your astonishing lack of common sense is not an excuse in a court of law.”

Keegan grinned. He was a little impressed that the kid seemed to be using Lieutenant Moore’s exact words. He’d have to buy the lieutenant a beer sometime soon. It had been too long. “Copy that,” he told the kid cop.