“My dad and I love baseball. We go to lots of Feds games and last year we saw the Red Sox play at Fenway. That was so cool.”

“I’d love to go to Fenway sometime,” Josh said wistfully.

“You should. It’s awesome. We sat in the Green Monster seats, and I got to see Big Papi. He’s my favorite player. I liked Willie Vasquez from the Feds, but he got murdered.”

“I know. I liked him too.”

“All because he dropped a ball.”

Sam didn’t mention that there was a lot more behind Willie’s murder than the error he’d made on the field. The loss of one of her son’s favorite ballplayers had been traumatic enough for him at the time. There was no need to revisit that now.

“Do you have homework you need to do before you go back to school?” she asked.

Scotty frowned. “I don’t know. Probably.”

“You ought to check in with some of your classmates so you can find out what’s due.”

“I’m sick. I don’t have to do it now.”

“You’ll have to do it eventually,” Nick said. “If you do some now and some later, it won’t be as awful.”

“I guess. I’ll see if I can find out.” To Josh, he said, “Do you like Xbox?”

“I guess.”

“You wanna play?”

Josh glanced at Sam, who nodded. “Sure,” he said.

“I’ll get the dishes,” she said. “You guys go ahead.”

“Thanks for dinner,” Scotty said, taking his bowl to the sink.

“Yeah, um, thanks,” Josh said as he too delivered his plate to the sink.

They left the room, and Sam forced herself to meet Nick’s questioning gaze.

“This is weird,” he said.

“I know, and I’m sorry, but this place is like a fortress with the Secret Service surrounding us. It was the best place for him until we figure out what’s going on.”

“This might be the strangest case you’ve ever been involved in, and that’s saying something in light of some of the crap you’ve dealt with.”

Sam poured herself a glass of wine. “It’s bizarre. I’m hoping the DNA will be back tomorrow so we can get some answers for Josh—and the Rollings family.”

“You haven’t told them anything yet, have you?”

She shook her head. “I talked to the detective in charge of the kidnapping case, and we agreed to keep it between us until we had proof one way or the other. I let him know about Josh as a professional courtesy.”

“It would be quite something if you could help to solve the mystery for Taylor’s family, but the possibility of Hamilton being involved in something like this is...”

“It’s hard to comprehend.”

“Yeah.”

Sam got up to deal with the dishes and was standing at the sink when his arms encircled her waist, making her smile.