“Three, one a baby.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah,” Freddie said with a weary sigh. “It’s bad. The father was seen running from the house covered in blood. But, um, you might want to get over here.”

“Why’s that?”

“We found a bunch of stuff about your dad’s case in the house, newspaper clippings and other stuff about the shooting. I thought you might want to take a look.” He rattled off the address.

“I’ll be right there.” Her eyes became hard and dispassionate, the way they got when she worked a case. She returned the phone to her pocket and looked up at Nick. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Of course not.” Nick could see that she had already slipped into her zone. “Do you want me to come with you?”

She shook her head. “You have guests. I’ll call you.”

Leaning in to kiss her, he said, “Be careful.”

“I always am.”

Sam did her best to stay calm as a taxi ferried her to the southeast corner of the city. They had waited so long for a break in her father’s case. Could this be it? After many disappointments, she refused to allow herself to hope.

Just over two years ago, Deputy Chief Skip Holland had been on his way home from work when he pulled over an erratic driver on G Street. The last thing he remembered was reporting in to dispatch and then approaching the car. A bullet lodged between the C3 and C4 vertebrae had left him a quadriplegic with just one slightly functioning finger on his right hand. A week after the shooting, a mild stroke rendered the left side of his face paralyzed.

They hadn’t a single clue—no witnesses, no ballistics since the doctors decided removing the bullet could kill him, the car hadn’t had a license plate, and they had no description of the driver since Skip was shot before he saw the driver’s face. A long time ago Sam and her colleagues concluded that the only way the case would be solved now was if someone bragged about shooting a cop and one of their snitches passed it along. As the case went cold, Sam had learned not to get her hopes up.

If her newfound media notoriety had any upside it was the opportunity to remind the press that her father’s case remained unsolved. Someone knew something. If only they’d come forward. They just needed a thread. One thread to pull and the whole thing would unravel. Her sisters and even her father, to some extent, were resigned to the fact that they might never catch the shooter. Sam would neither rest nor retire as long as the case was unsolved.