I thought about what Siegel had said to me on the roof of the Moore Building tonight. These guys are guns for hire. I hadn’t ruled it out then, and I was a step closer to ruling it in now. I just didn’t like thinking that Siegel had beaten me to it. Usually I’m not like that, but he just rubbed me the wrong way.

There was obviously some kind of specific and disciplined agenda behind these killings. If a shooter as skilled as this one had wanted Rebecca taken out, she would have been dead for sure. But she didn’t fit the profile; her only crime had been to land in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not so for the others. By the apparent rules of this game, Rebecca didn’t deserve to die, but Skip Downey and the other Washington “bad guys” did.

So whose game was it? Who was writing the rules? And where was it all heading?

I still couldn’t dismiss the possibility that our gunmen were operating on their own. But I also was just paranoid enough by now — or maybe experienced enough — that a list of scarier alternatives was taking shape in my mind.

Could this somehow be government backed? Some domestic agency? An international one?

Or was the Mob behind it somehow? The military? Maybe even just a very well-connected individual, with deep pockets and a serious ax to grind?

In any case, the most important questions were still left hanging: Who did they have their eye on next? And how the hell were we supposed to protect every high-profile scumbag in Washington? It just couldn’t be done.

Unless we got very, very lucky, someone else was going to die before this was over. And it was most likely somebody who many people wouldn’t mind seeing dead. That was the beauty of this terrifying game.

Chapter 37

THE NEXT DAY was a benchmark for Nana and me. Things had been chilly between us since I’d brought in the security at the house, but when I came down and found her cooking breakfast for Rakeem and his guys, I knew we were at least partway over the hump.

“Oh, Alex, you’re here. Good. Take these plates outside,” she said as if breakfast delivery were something I did every day. “Scoot, while it’s hot!”

When I came back, my own plate was waiting for me — scrambled eggs with linguica, wheat toast, orange juice, and a steaming cup of Nana’s chicory coffee in my old favorite #1 Dad mug with the dent where Ali had thrown it against the wall.

Her own breakfasts were a lot more heart-healthy these days — grapefruit sections, toast with unsalted butter, tea, and then one half of one sausage link, because as Nana liked to say, there was a fine line between eating smart to live longer and boring oneself to death.