“No sense you going alone,” he told Ricci. “Better you and me get a look at things together.”

“I can handle it myself.”

“That ain’t the matter. We got to figure the local police won’t be thrilled by our visit. Be tougher for ’em to shake off two of us than one.”

Megan was quick to move in.

“Rollie’s right,” she said. “He should go, too. I’ll make some calls and pull whatever strings I can from here.”

Ricci regarded her closely. “That a suggestion or an order?”

“It’s how I want it,” she said.

Ricci kept his eyes on her a moment longer and then shifted them to Thibodeau.

“She can give you directions to the shelter,” he said, and stood. “I’ll wait down the hall.”

Thibodeau caught up to him as he was holding his palm to the biometric scanner to bring an elevator for the garage level. He looked to be sure Megan was still back in the safe room before putting a hand on Ricci’s arm.

“Keep talkin’ to me like I’m some junior rover, it’ll get settled between us in good course,” he said in a low voice. “But what you said about the boss’s girl being killed . . . you don’t want to give touch to that around Megan. Don’t want to go near it.”

“You think it’s something we should rule out?”

“I think we all got experience enough to know the could-be’s, and Meg sees things clearer than anybody you ever gonna meet. But ain’t no cause for you adding to her pain.”

Ricci shrugged.

“Fine,” he said. “Next time we meet on the subject I’ll be sure to raise the possibility the boss’s daughter took off on a cruise to nowhere.”

Thibodeau brushed his gaze over Ricci’s face.

“Take a look in the mirror some day,” he said. “You going to see one cruel son of a bitch.”

Ricci stood there a second or two without a word. Then the elevator dinged its arrival.

“Sure enough,” he said, and turned to enter the car, leaving Thibodeau to follow him through its open doors.

There were two Sonoma police cruisers parked across the foot of the drive as Ricci’s VW Jetta approached in the falling rain. Pulled abreast of each other, the black-and-whites faced in opposite directions and had sawhorses erected on either side of them.

About thirty feet west of the blockade, Thibodeau nodded toward the right shoulder of the road.

“We might want to stop here, stroll on over to them,” he said, ending a silence that had lasted for their entire ride to the rescue center. “Be less apt to get their backs up.”

Ricci said nothing in response, but whipped the car onto the puddled shoulder.

They got out and continued toward the drive on foot, raindrops rattling hard against their umbrellas.