He pulled into what had once been Mike Nash’s driveway and threw open the door again. This time he put on a fedora and raincoat before walking hunched toward the house’s front door. It would be hard for anyone else in the neighborhood to make out much more than his outline, but even if they did, the coat and hunched shoulders would keep him from being recognized. As would the fact that, as far as the world was concerned, he was dead.

They would, however, recognize Irene Kennedy, whose boots he could hear overtaking him from behind. No one would ask questions, though. Every one of them had spent enough years in the business to know better.

Kennedy caught him on the porch but neither looked at the other nor spoke. He knocked on the door and a few shouts from inside preceded the beat of someone coming down the hallway. Shoes on the wood floor he himself had walked across so many times before. The entry light that he and Rory had been forced to repair after an overly spirited lacrosse session came on a moment later.

Maggie opened the door, holding her two-year-old son in one arm. She took a hesitant step backward when the light caught Rapp’s face.

“Oh my God! You’re alive!”

She threw her arms around him, crushing a writhing Chuck between them for a moment before pulling back. “What happened? What are you doing here? Mike’s—”

She suddenly fell silent, taking in his expression and then looking at Kennedy standing silently next to him.

Maggie Nash was not a stupid woman. Very much the opposite. And she’d lived with a former Marine and CIA operative long enough for her razor-sharp mind to absorb a great deal about the business. More than was necessary to determine the purpose of their visit.

For a moment, she looked like she was going to collapse. Her arms lost their strength and Rapp took Chuck while Kennedy reached out to steady her.

“Let’s go inside,” she said gently.

By the time Rapp had closed the door, Maggie was standing under her own power again. She turned and walked stiffly down the hall to a cluttered home office she used when she didn’t want to make the trek downtown.

He and Kennedy stood by motionless as Mike Nash’s widow cleared files and children’s toys from two chairs. She was a take-charge woman and this was her way of preparing for what she knew was coming.

They sat and she positioned herself behind her desk, back straight and chin thrust slightly forward.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Chuck squirmed a bit when he heard the unfamiliar tone of his mother’s voice. It was as though he understood that his life—his future—had just been transformed.

“I’m sorry,” Kennedy said.

Maggie stared straight forward for a few seconds, fixated on the door behind them. “What happened?”