Down below, in the backyard, Isaac’s senses were razor-sharp as he whispered around to the side of the apartment house and resumed his jog. He didn’t slow his pace until he was a couple of miles away.

Ducking into an alley, the call he made was answered on the second ring: “Yeah.”

“It’s Rothe.”

The fight promoter perked right up. “Jesus Christ, I heard you were in jail. Listen, I can’t bail you—”

“I’m out. We fighting tonight?”

“Shit, yeah! We was gonna have to move from that location anyways. This is awesome. How’d you pull it off?”

“What’s the address and how do I get there?”

The location was some six miles away in a town called Malden, which made sense—the cops in Southie were obviously dunzo with having fights on their turf. And how the promoter hadn’t gotten pinched was a mystery. Unless, of course, he was the one who’d given the tip and gotten out in time.

You never knew with people like that guy.

After Isaac hung up, his next move was to find a bus shelter with a schedule. When the right ten-wheeler monolith trundled along, he boarded it and sat by the emergency exit window.

As he stared out at the apartments and businesses and buildings that passed by, he wanted to scream.

He was getting out of XOps because he’d found his conscience, and that meant he couldn’t take off with Grier Childe having covered him to that extent. She’d looked rich, but twenty-five grand was a lot of cash no matter how much you were worth. Hell, he wouldn’t have felt comfortable with even an anonymous bail bondsman eating that bill. But that elegant woman who he’d lied to? And sent on a dirty errand?

Nope. He wasn’t about to leave her in the lurch.

And didn’t that just complicate everything.

Two hours after she left the jail without her client or any clue where he had gone, Grier stood in the middle of a shindig full of people who were arguably part of her tribe. Everyone was old-money Boston and shared common Mayflower ancestry.

God love them, but some of these blue bloods were old enough to have come over on the boat itself.

Her mind wasn’t on this ballroom at the Four Seasons, however. Or the man in front of her who was talking to her about . . . What was this party for? The MFA or the ballet?

She glanced across at the placards that had been set up. Reproductions of Degas. Which didn’t necessarily help answer that one: All those fuzzy tutus could have fit into either category.

As the bow tie in front of her kept chatting away, she was not tracking. Her mind was stuck back in that hallway at the courthouse . . . when she’d turned around from the elevators and found herself alone.