Mike chuckled. “Let me share something I’ve learned from personal experience. Failure follows you whether you’ve got a shield or a shovel. The important thing is to deal with your shit before it blows up in your face. Tell Kieran Michelson I say hi, you hard-working professionals.”

He brushed past Foreman and left the station. He got two blocks on foot before an unmarked sedan pulled up beside him. The female driver rolled down the passenger window and leaned over. “Get in.”

Mike caught her cigarette smoke from the sidewalk. “Why do I have the feeling I’m gonna get a ticket for a broken taillight?”

The driver threw the car in park, got out. Mike watched the squat woman with the ponytail toss her cigarette only to reach for a fresh one.

“Greenwood can’t get away,” she said, “but he’s sorry for how they’re treating you. Long story short, no one in that room’s gonna look real hard for Bergman. She tore up this town like a tornado.”

“Sounds like her.” Mike caught a strong whiff of the detective’s latest exhale. “Got another one of those?”

She handed him her lit cigarette. “Reporters, am I right?”

He took a drag. “Especially her, with all that quest for the truth BS.”

“Know who likes reporters? Other reporters, especially stories about missing reporters. You know any?”

She took the cigarette out of his hand, popped it back in her mouth, and walked back to her car.

Mike leaned into the open passenger window. “I didn’t get your name.”

“You sure as shit didn’t,” she said, and drove away.

Chapter 68

CHAPTER

68

FROM THE PUPPY-DOG look on his face, Caitlin knew Branford wanted a compliment.

“Good enough,” she said, reaching for her water bottle.

He ate a forkful from his own plate, made a yummy noise. “So tender, how could it be better?”

He’d come into the playroom, cuffed her, bagged her, and led her back to the bedroom where dinner for two waited. Straps bound only her thighs and abdomen this time, leaving both arms free.

She controlled a plastic fork, her plastic plate of food, and a water bottle. Enough to throw a good fit, but not a defense.

She shrugged. “I like to eat outside.”

“Maybe we’ll get to that point.”

The mere possibility sent her mind jumping through the fields of hope. Another manipulation. She pushed a stalk of broccoli around her plate.

“I’ve got twenty years on Chapman, same with Lauffer, maybe even twenty pounds. Why am I the lucky girl? People like you are supposed to have a pattern.”

He shifted forward, excited. “Do you know Shakespeare?”

“The guy who works at the smoke shop in the mall?”

He quoted, “ ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.’ ”