“You ever think of blowing the doors off Matthias?”

Grier’s dad went stone still and he stared into Isaac’s eyes like he was trying to see into the future. “As in . . .”

“Helping someone come forward to spill every single thing he knows about that fucker.” Isaac glanced at Grier. “ ’Scuse my mouth.”

Childe’s eyes narrowed, but the McSquinty routine wasn’t in offense or mistrust. “You mean testifying?”

“If that’s what it takes. Or shutting them down through back channels. If Matthias isn’t in power anymore, everyone”—read: Grier—“is safe. I’ve turned myself in to him, but I want to take it one step farther. And I think it’s about time the world got a clearer picture of what he’s been up to.”

Childe looked back and forth at him and Grier. “Anything. I’ll do anything to get that bastard.”

“Right answer, Childe. Right answer.”

“And I can come forward, too—”

“No, you can’t. That’s my one stipulation. Set up the meetings, tell me who to go to, and then disappear from the mess. Unless you agree, I’m not going to do it.”

He let dear old Dad put up a fight about that and spent the time looking at Grier in his peripheral vision. She was staring at her father, and though she stayed quiet, Isaac was willing to guess that the great chill was defrosting a little: Hard not to respect her old man, because he was dead serious about blabbing—if given the chance, he was prepared to spill everything he knew as well.

Unfortunately for him, however, the choice wasn’t his. If this plan went tits up, Grier didn’t need to lose the only family she had left.

“Sorry,” Isaac said, cutting off the chatter. “That’s the way it’s going to be—because we don’t know how this is going to go and I need you . . . to still be standing at the end. I want you to leave as few fingerprints as possible on the rollout. You’re already more involved than I feel comfortable with. Both of you.”

Childe shook his head and held up a hand. “Now, hear me out—”

“I know you’re a lawyer, but it’s time to stop arguing. Now.”

That gave the man pause, as if he wasn’t used to being addressed in that kind of tone. But then he said, “All right, if that’s what you insist.”

“It is. And it’s my only nonnegotiable.”

“Okay.”

The guy paced around. And paced around. And . . . then he stopped right in front of Isaac.