“Thank you,” I said quietly. “You are the best.” She smiled to let me know that thanks weren’t necessary here, and also that she definitely was the best. “I love her too,” she whispered.

“Eggplant?” Nana held up one of the pages she’d been reading. “You can’t make decent eggplant without salt. It’s just not possible.”

“Well, keep looking,” Bree said, going over to sit down next to Nana. “There’s a ton more recipes. What about the crab cakes?”

“Crab cakes could work,” Nana said.

I just hung back and watched the two of them for a while. It felt like a real circle-of-life moment. I noticed the way Bree leaned into Nana when they laughed, and the way Nana always seemed to keep a hand on Bree, as if they’d been buddies forever. God willing, I thought, they would be for a long time to come.

“Angel food cake with chocolate icing?” Nana said, and beamed mischief. “Is that on your good-to-eat list, Bree? Should be.”

Chapter 34

WHEN I GOT a call from my FBI friend Ned Mahoney the next day, I never would have guessed it had to do with Caroline’s murder case. All he told me over the phone was to meet him at the food court at Tysons Corner Center in McLean. Coming from anyone else, it would have seemed a strange request. Since it came from Ned, whom I trusted implicitly, I knew something was up.

Ned was a pretty big deal who had once headed the Hostage Rescue Team at the FBI training facility out in Quantico. Now he had an even bigger job, supervising field agents up and down the East Coast. We’d worked together when I was an agent at the Bureau, and again more recently, at a bizarre showdown with dirty cops from SWAT and some drug dealers in DC.

I sat down across from Ned at an orange plastic table with white plastic chairs, where he was gulping coffee.

“I’m pretty busy these days. The hell do you want?” I said, and grinned.

“Let’s walk,” he said, and we got right back up. “I’m busy too. Monnie Donnelley says hello, by the way.”

“Hello back at Monnie. So, Ned, what’s on your mind? Why the John le Carré cloak-and-dagger stuff?” I asked as we left the food court at a brisk pace.

“I know some interesting things about Caroline,” he told me, point-blank. “Honestly, Alex, I wouldn’t be talking to you if she wasn’t your niece. This whole thing is getting hinkier and more dangerous every day.”

I stopped walking across from a store with David Sedaris books stacked up high in the window. “What whole thing? Ned, start me at the beginning.” Mahoney is one of the smartest cops I’ve ever known, but information moves through his brain too fast sometimes.

He began walking again, eyes scanning the mall. He was starting to make me nervous. “We’ve had a surveillance team on a certain location in Virginia. Private club. Very heavy hitters. Alex, I’m talking about people who can go over both our heads—in more ways than one.”