“Yes,” Bolton said.

Phil flapped the photo in his hand. “Well, I’m not.”

“Believe me, Phil,” I said, “you should be.”

He looked at all of us—Bolton, Devin, Oscar, Angie, and myself, packed into Angie’s tiny kitchen—and shook his head. He reached under his jacket and pulled out a pistol, pointed it at the floor and checked the load.

“Jesus, Phil,” Angie said. “Put it away.”

“You got a permit for that?” Devin said.

Phil kept his eyes down, the roots of his hair dark with sweat.

“Mr. Dimassi,” Bolton said, “you won’t need that. We’ll protect you.”

Phil said, “Sure,” very softly.

We waited as he glanced back at the photo he’d left on the counter and back to the gun in his hand and fear began to seep out his pores. He looked at Angie once and then back at the floor and I could tell he was trying to process it all. He’d come home from work and been met outside his apartment by Federal agents who took him over here, where he was informed that someone he’d never met was determined to stop the beating of his heart, probably within the week.

Eventually he looked up from the floor and his normally olive skin was the color of skim milk. He caught my eye and flashed his boyish grin, shook his head as if we were somehow in this together.

“Okay,” he said. “Maybe I’m a little scared.”

The bubble of tension that had hung pregnant in the kitchen popped softly and bled out under the back door.

He laid the gun on the oven top and hoisted himself up on the counter, raised a slightly bemused eyebrow at Bolton.

“So tell me about this guy.”

An agent stuck his head into the kitchen. “Agent Bolton, sir? No signs that anyone’s been tampering with any locks or access areas to the house. We swept for bugs, and it’s clean. Back yard is overgrown and shows no evidence it’s been walked in for at least a month.”

Bolton nodded and the agent left.

“Agent Bolton,” Phil said.

Bolton turned back to him.

“Could you please tell me about this guy who wants to kill me and my wife?”

“Ex, Phil,” Angie said softly. “Ex.”

“Sorry.” He looked at Bolton. “Me and my ex-wife, then?”

Bolton leaned against the fridge as Devin and Oscar settled into chairs and I sat up on the counter on the other side of the oven.

“The man’s name is Evandro Arujo,” Bolton said. “He’s a suspect in four murders in the last month. In every one of these cases, he’s sent photographs to his intended victims or their loved ones.”

“Photos like that one.” Phil indicated the picture of him and Angie which lay on the kitchen table, powdered with fingerprint dust.

“Yes.”

It had been taken recently. Fallen leaves littering the foreground were multicolored. Phil was listening to something Angie was saying, his head down, hers turned toward him as they walked the stretch of grass and pavement which cut through the center of Commonwealth Avenue.