After he sent them off, he drove away himself and took his phone out. There were a number of voice mails . . . and one high alert.

Well, what do you know . . . looked like Isaac Rothe had turned himself in and his location was the house of his lovely and talented defense attorney. How fucking perfect: Although they could have picked him off standing up in Grier Childe’s kitchen if they’d absolutely had to, this was going to make things much less complicated.

Matthias called his number two, and as the phone rang, he thought of how many times he’d had this conversation: Go. Get the bastard. Cap him. Take care of the body.

He’d done it so many times.

As that pain in the left side of his chest fired up again, he ignored the sensation—

“Yeah?” his number two answered.

“Isaac Rothe is ready for you.”

There wasn’t even a pause. “The Beacon Hill address?”

“Yes. Go there now and get him.”

“I’m out of state.”

“Well, get ‘in state’ and get to him. ASAP.”

“Roger that. Where do you want him?”

Good question. Isaac wasn’t known for great escapes; his reputation was for fast, clean kills in extraordinary circumstances. But you didn’t pull off jobs like he had without being highly resourceful.

“Hold him at that house for me,” Matthias said abruptly.

As he considered the situation, instinct told him that a change in strategy was appropriate. After all, Grier Childe and her father could use some reining in—and nothing got a civilian’s attention more than watching someone get murdered. Good old Albie was proof of that—

For some reason, Jim Heron’s voice popped into Matthias’s brain. No specific words, just a tone that lingered, a grave, imploring tone that made Matthias feel like he had to stop everything and . . . do what exactly?

“Hello?” his number two demanded, like the guy had either said something that hadn’t been responded to or there’d been nothing but silence for a while.

“I don’t want you to kill him,” Matthias heard himself say.

“Oh, I know. You’re going to do that yourself.” Satisfaction. Such satisfaction, like that was the plan all along.

For no good reason, Matthias’s central processor started to spark and smoke, images flitting in and out of his mind in a mad jumble that made him think of dice rolling across a felt table. And then from out of the chaos, he saw Alistair Childe being held up off a filthy rug by two operatives in black as his son was injected with enough heroin to put an elephant into a perma-nod.

Danny . . . oh, Danny, my boy . . . Like that Irish bar song, only not musical at all when a father was hoarsely crying out the words.

“Boss,” his number two cut in. “Talk to me. What’s going on.”