“I know just how many counts Merton was charged with. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to know he had my girl kidnapped and forced her to open your office,” Peter roared, swinging around the room to put his nose almost against mine. “If any harm comes to her because of you, whatever it is, I will inflict it on you tenfold. Do you hear me?”

I stood very still, not speaking. If harm came to Petra because of me, I didn’t think I could live with myself anyway, but her father’s wild rage was impossible to respond to. His phone rang, and he finally backed away from me to answer it.

I turned to face Rachel. “You go see Derek Hatfield. He’s a good field agent.”

“What will you do?” she asked.

“I’m putting my own best agent on the case,” I said bleakly.

My best agent had been unable to find Lamont Gadsden. My best agent had left a trail of desolation at the Mighty Waters Freedom Center. I hoped she could do a better job looking for Petra.

3 - NO GOOD DEED REMAINS UNPUNISHED

3

NO GOOD DEED REMAINS UNPUNISHED

LAMONT GADSDEN AND MY COUSIN PETRA. IT WAS HARD to imagine two people with less in common: an old buddy of Hammer Merton’s from Chicago’s South Side, a Millennium Gen text messager from an upscale Kansas City suburb. If it hadn’t been for me, and some terrible luck, their lives would never have collided.

Petra being my cousin, it wasn’t surprising that she looked for me when she showed up in Chicago at the start of the summer, a fresh-minted college graduate with an internship in her daddy’s hometown.

It was sheer luck, the bad kind, that I agreed to look for Lamont Gadsden. Sometimes when I want someone to blame, someone outside my family, I snarl unfairly at a homeless guy named Elton Grainger.

Elton was the unwitting deus ex machina who led me into the Gadsden morass. Elton had been working my street off and on for several years. I knew him to say “Hey” to. I bought Streetwise from him, bought coffee or sandwiches for him from time to time. Once, during a blizzard, I’d offered him shelter in my office, but he turned me down. Then, one golden June afternoon, he collapsed in front of my office.

If I’d let him lie, maybe Petra would never have vanished, maybe Sister Frankie would still be alive. There’s a lesson in that about the fate that awaits the Good Samaritan.

It happened as I was tapping in the code to my office building.

“Vic, where you been? I haven’t seen you in weeks! You’re looking good.” He flourished a copy of Streetwise. “New issue today.”