Alicia stepped to the door and pulled her mask down to her chin. “Harry. What have you got?”

His expression was grim. “Candida in the CSF.”

Alicia sighed. Damn. That explained the seizure. Although not a complete surprise, she’d been hoping the pediatric neurologist would find something easier to treat.

“Any more seizure activity?” he said.

“No. But there will be if I don’t get this yeast under control. Trouble is, his immune system’s in free fall.”

“I’ll keep looking in. Good luck.”

“Thanks, Harry.”

She turned and looked back at Hector. She was losing him. Damn it, this was her home field, this was the only place in her life these days where she called the shots. But she seemed to be losing here as well.

There had to be a way to turn this around. Had to be…

2.

2.

Ramirez showed up a few minutes early, but Jack was ready and waiting at the town house, decked out in his green blazer, white shirt, striped tie, Dockers, loafers, and shit-eating grin.

He’d been here for an hour or so already, familiarizing himself with the place. The house itself didn’t need any window dressing; it was in perfect shape. All the closets and dressers were filled with clothes. Whoever had inherited this from the late Dr. Gates hadn’t removed a thing.

The only touch he added to the place was a photo he’d picked up in a secondhand shop—two men sitting side by side on a log. He left it in the master bedroom. Then he outfitted the sitting room off the front hall with a card table, and on that arranged manila folders, deposit receipt forms, Xeroxed from the original Hudak Realty form.

Ramirez wore a full-length black leather overcoat. A single, heavy gold chain gleamed through the open collar of his golf shirt. He had broad shoulders and a thick middle. He flashed Jack a bright, wide grin, showing off his caps, but his dark eyes were on the move, taking in every detail of the front hall—the etched glass in the front door, the crystal chandelier, the brass carpet rails on the steps leading up to the second floor.

Jack handed Ramirez a card—an exact copy of Dolores’s except that the name had been changed to David Johns—and gave him the tour, regurgitating much of the patter he’d heard from Dolores on Thursday. He watched Ramirez run his hands over the fine wood of the antiques as they went from room to room.

As they returned to his makeshift office in the sitting room off the front hall, Jack mentioned that a condition of the sale was that the closing had to be in thirty days.

“Thirty days,” Ramirez said. “Why does this owner wish such a quick closing?”

Jack paused, as if debating how much to say, then shrugged.