The cop nodded and handed the gun pouch back to Keegan, but he made no move to get back in his squad car. “That thing’s department-issue for detectives,” the kid said. He folded his arms so that his hands were tucked into the ovals of sweat at his armpits. “Were you a jack?”

Keegan shook his head and smiled. “Not in any official capacity,” he said. “Just one of the lieutenant’s many well-wishers.”

KEEGAN WALKED EVE past the cottage and down to the gravel drive behind her uncle’s spread. He let her carry the gun pouch. He counted three cigarette butts lying in the gravel outside Ormsby’s back gate. Keegan took that to be a good sign. The sedan he’d seen last night hadn’t stayed very long, and it probably hadn’t returned later when he was back in the cottage trying to sleep.

“So, he just turned around and left?” she said.

He liked that she seemed so impressed with how easily he’d handled the cop. “I have friends in lofty places,” he said. “You’re new in town, so you don’t know the kind of clout I have.”

Eve stopped at the gate and turned to him, smiling.

He dug in his pockets for the loose bullets he’d put aside. He held them out. “Six rounds,” he told her. He dropped them in her open palm and closed her fingers over them. “That’s all you need. Load it up when you get home. Put it on your nightstand and forget about it.” He looked through the chain-link gate at the great house that shimmered in light reflected from the swimming pool. The heat seemed to intensify the smell of cut grass and new fertilizer. “You do have a nightstand in that dump, don’t you?” he asked.

Eve smiled coyly. She slipped the bullets into the pocket of her slacks. “Eighteenth-century Italian walnut, if you must know.”

Keegan liked the tone she’d taken on today in his company. It felt impish and intimate—maybe even flirtatious, if he looked at it a certain way. It had been years since a woman had spoken to him the way she did, and he felt rusty, keeping up with her banter.

“Don’t worry,” Keegan told her. “It may be old, but it’ll work just as well as the new plywood model I got at Sears.”

They then stood a few awkward seconds, both of them smiling, neither speaking, as if unsure how to end this outing. Eve shaded her eyes with her hand. A hot breeze tousled her dark curls. “And I don’t have to worry?” she said. The gleam in her eyes seemed anything but worried just then, but Keegan knew what she meant. She had a dark night ahead of her in a big empty house.