Their eyes met.

“So what do you think happened, Neil?”

There was a pen on his desk. He picked it up and started twirling it between his fingers. “Well, that’s why recent developments are interesting.”

“How so?”

“They blow away my theory.”

“Which was?”

He shrugged. “I always figured that Patrick and Rhys were dead. I figured that whatever happened—abduction, break-in, whatever—that the two boys were killed right away. The killers then pretended to be kidnappers and did that whole ransom-drop thing to distract us. Or maybe they hoped that it would be easy money but they realized that they’d get caught. I don’t know.”

“But why would someone kill two boys?”

“Yeah, motive. That’s a tougher nut to crack. But I think the crime scene is the key.”

“Meaning?”

“The Baldwin home.”

“You think Rhys was the target?”

“Had to be. It was his house. The playdate was planned two days before, so you couldn’t know Patrick Moore would be there. So maybe these guys are told to grab a six-year-old boy. But when they break in, there are two of them. So they don’t know which is which or their instructions aren’t so clear, so they figure, let’s grab both. Just to be sure.”

“And again: Motive?”

“Nothing concrete. Hell, not even wet cement. Just wild conjecture on my part.”

“Like?”

“The only parent who we had anything on was Chick Baldwin. The guy’s a crook, plain and simple, and right about then, when his Ponzi scheme collapsed, he pissed off a lot of people. Some of his money came from questionable Russians, if you know what I mean. Chick skated too. No jail time, small fine. Good lawyers. That upset a lot of folks. All his assets were in his kids’ names, so no one could touch him. Do you know the guy at all?”

“Chick? Just a little.”

“He’s not a good guy, Myron.”

Almost word for word what Win had said.

“Anyway,” Neil said, “that’s what I thought. They were dead. But now that Patrick is alive . . .”

He just let it hang there. The two men looked at each other for a long moment.

Myron said, “Why do I have a feeling you’re holding back on me, Senator?”

“Because I am.”

“And why would you do that?”

“Because I’m not sure if the next part is any of your goddamn business.”

“You can trust me,” Myron said.

“If I didn’t trust you, I would have thrown you out of my office a long time ago.”

Myron spread his arms. “So?”

“So this is ugly. We kind of buried this ten years ago because it was ugly.”

“When you say ‘kind of buried—’”

“We looked into it. It came to nothing. I was told to back off. I did so but with some reluctance. In the end, I still don’t think it’s relevant. So I’m going to need a second or two to ponder the repercussions of telling you.”

“If it helps,” Myron said, “I promise to be discreet.”