Lights went on up and down the street.

“It’s okay now,” I said.

Devin’s gun was drawn and he stepped up beside Grace. “Where’s the child?”

“What? In her bedroom.”

He went into the house in a target shooter’s stance.

“Hey, wait.” She rushed in after him.

Angie and I went in behind her as agents tramped through the surrounding yards with flashlights.

Grace was pointing at Devin’s gun. “Put that away, Sergeant. Put it—”

Mae began to cry loudly. “Mommy.”

Devin was sticking his head in and out of doorways, his gun held tightly next to his knee.

I felt nauseous as I stood in the warm light of the living room, my hands shaking with adrenaline. I heard Mae weeping from the bedroom and I followed the sound.

A thought—I almost shot Nelson—passed through my brain with a shiver, and then was gone.

Grace held Mae to her shoulder, and Mae opened her eyes and saw me and burst into a fresh peal of tears.

Grace looked over at me. “Jesus Christ, Patrick, was this necessary?”

Flashlight beams bounced off her windows from the outside.

“Yes,” I said.

“Patrick,” she said and her eyes were angry as they stared at my hand. “Get rid of that.”

I looked down, noticed the gun in my hand, realized it had brought forth Mae’s last burst of tears. I slid it back into the holster, then stared at them, mother and daughter as they hugged on that bed, and I felt soiled and foul.

“The first priority here,” Bolton told Grace in the living room as Mae changed in her bedroom, “is to get you and your daughter to safety. A car’s waiting outside and I’d like you two to get into it and come with us.”

“Where?” Grace said.

“Patrick,” a small voice said.

I turned and saw Mae standing in her bedroom doorway, freshly dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, shoelaces untied.

“Yeah?” I said softly.

“Where’s your gun?”

I tried to smile. “Tucked away. Sorry I scared you.”

“Is it fat?”

“What?” I bent by her, tied her shoes.

“Is it…” She fidgeted, groping for the word, embarrassed that she didn’t know it.

“Heavy?” I said.

She nodded. “Yeah. Heavy.”

“It’s heavy, Mae. Too heavy for you to carry.”

“How about you?”

“Pretty heavy for me, too,” I said.

“So why do you have it?” She cocked her head to the left, looked up into my face.

“It’s sort of equipment for my job,” I said. “Like your mom uses her stethoscope.”

I kissed her forehead.

She kissed my cheek and hugged my neck with arms so soft they didn’t seem as if they could come from the same world that produced Alec Hardimans and Evandro Arujos and knives and guns. She went back into the bedroom.

In the living room, Grace was shaking her head. “No.”

“What?” Bolton said.

“No,” Grace said. “I won’t go. You can take Mae and I’ll call her father. He’ll—I’m sure of it, yes—he’ll take time off and go with Mae so she won’t be alone. I’ll visit until this is over, but I won’t go myself.”