She peeked out like a child through one eye—then both flew open wide. Myron dangled the heroin in the clear plastic bag in front of her—the bag he’d gotten not long ago from Beefy. Kitty tried to snatch it from his hand, but he pulled away just in time. She started clawing at him, screaming for it, but he pushed her back.

“You tell me the truth,” Myron said. “And I will give you the bag.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

She started crying. “I miss Brad so much.”

“I know you do. That’s why you started using again, right? You couldn’t face life without him. Like Mickey said, some couples aren’t built to be apart.” And then, with tears running down his cheeks, still thinking about that five-year-old cheering his lungs out at Yankee Stadium, Myron said, “Brad is dead, isn’t he?”

She couldn’t move. She collapsed back on the bed, her eyes staring up, unseeing.

“How did he die, Kitty?”

Kitty stayed on her back, her gaze on the ceiling trancelike. When she finally spoke, her voice was a faraway monotone. “He and Mickey were on Interstate Five heading down to an AAU game in San Diego. An SUV lost control and crossed the divider. Brad died on impact—right in front of his son. Mickey spent three weeks in the hospital.”

So there it was. Myron had braced himself—had known that something like this was coming—but the confirmation still sent him reeling. He collapsed into a chair on the other side of the room. His baby brother was dead. In the end, it had nothing to do with Herman Ache or Gabriel Wire or even Kitty. It had just been a car accident.

It was almost too much to bear.

Myron looked across the room. Kitty was motionless now, the quakes momentarily gone. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“You know why.”

He did. He knew because that was how he put it together. Kitty had gotten the idea from Gabriel Wire. She had seen him killed—but more important, she saw how Lex and the others had pretended that he was alive. She learned from that.

Pretending Wire was alive gave her the idea to pretend Brad was too.

“You would have tried to take Mickey away from me,” Kitty said.

Myron shook his head.

“When your brother died”—she stopped, swallowed hard—“I was like a marionette and suddenly someone cut all my strings. I fell apart.”

“You could have come to me.”