“I’m well aware of how much you like guns, thank you very much. And in spite of your piss-poor opinion about me, I have all the intel on Marie-Terese right here.” Matthias, to his credit, got to the point. “Born Gretchen Moore in Las Vidas, California. Age thirty-one. Graduated from UC San Diego. Mother and father deceased.” There was a shuffling sound and a grunt, as if Matthias were switching position—and the idea that the guy had to deal with chronic pain was satisfying as hell. “Now for the interesting part. Married Mark Capricio in Las Vegas, nine years ago. Capricio is a bona fide card-carrying member of the mob, a real sick shit who has a personality disorder and a half, given his rap sheet. Total skull cracker. She evidently tried to leave him about three years ago and he beat her up, grabbed the kid, and split. Took her a couple months and a PI to find him. When she got the son back, she divorced the asshole, bought herself the Marie-Terese ID, and disappeared, eventually ending up in Caldwell, NY. Since then, she’s kept her profile ultra-low, and with good reason. Men like Capricio don’t let their wives go.”

Holy. Shit. So…chances were good that those two dead boys and that beaten man in the alley last night meant Capricio had found her. Had to be. Vin had said the second attack had been on a guy seen with her—

“But when it comes to her ex-husband, she has nothing to worry about in the short term.”

“Excuse me?” Jim said.

“Capricio’s been doing twenty in federal prison for a salad bar of felonies including embezzlement, money laundering, witness intimidation, and perjury—and after that he’s got a bunch of state felonies to serve out, including accessory to murder, assault, battery. Guy could be an exam question in law school, for fuck’s sake.” Another shift around was marked with a soft curse. “Apparently, it was all crashing down on him right about the time Gretchen/Marie-Terese was going to leave him. Which is logical. He was probably getting more and more violent on the home front as the feds and the Nevada staties closed in on him. When he snatched the son, he was running from the law, not just his wife—which made the fact that he managed to disappear for three months a testament to the depth of his connections. Clearly, someone ratted on him, though—maybe her PI applied the right pressure at the right time by threatening to turn one of his protectors in. Who knows.”

“But I wonder if his family’s coming after her now.”

“Yeah, I read about those two gunshot murders in that alley. Doubtful it’s his family. They’d just kill her and take the son. There’d be no reason to expose themselves to any added risk by wiping out innocents.”