The key to any strategy is not to overplay your hand.

Bobby arrived at my side. The female CO who’d been standing guard relinquished my arm. He seized it, leading me back to the Crown Vic.

D.D. had finished the paperwork. She arrived at the cruiser, staring at me balefully as Bobby opened the back door and I struggled to slide gracefully into the backseat with my hands and legs tied. I tilted back too far, got stuck like a beetle with its legs in the air. Bobby had to reach down, place one hand on my hip, and shove me over.

D.D. shook her head, then took her place behind the steering wheel.

Another minute and the massive garage door slowly creaked up. We backed up, onto the streets of Boston.

I turned my face to the gray March sky and blinked my eyes against the light.

Looks like snow, I thought, but didn’t say a word.

D.D. drove to the nearby hospital parking lot. There, a dozen other vehicles, from white SUVS to black-and-white police cruisers were waiting. She pulled in and they formed a line behind us. D.D. looked at me in the rearview mirror.

“Start talking,” she said.

“I’d like a coffee.”

“Fuck you.”

I smiled then, couldn’t help myself. I had become my husband, with a Good Tessa and a Bad Tessa. Good Tessa had saved Kim Watters’s life. Good Tessa had fought off evil attacking inmates and had felt, for just one moment, like a proud member of law enforcement.

Bad Tessa wore prison orange and sat in the back of a police cruiser. Bad Tessa … Well, for Bad Tessa, the day was very young.

“Search dogs?” I asked.

“Cadaver dogs,” D.D. emphasized.

I smiled again, but it was sad this time, and for a second, I felt my composure crack. A yawning emptiness bloomed inside. All the things I had lost. And more I could still lose.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.…

“You should’ve found her,” I murmured. “I was counting on you to find her.”

“Where?” D.D. snapped.

“Route two. Westbound, toward Lexington.”

D.D. drove.

We know about Trooper Lyons,” D.D. said curtly, talking from the front seat. We’d taken Route 2 past Arlington, exchanging urban jungle for suburban pipe dreams. Next up, the old money of Lexington and Concord, to be followed by the quaint, country charm of Harvard, Mass.

“What do you know?” I asked. I was genuinely curious.

“That he beat you up, in order to substantiate your claim of spousal abuse.”

“Have you ever hit a girl?” I asked Detective Dodge.

Bobby Dodge twisted in his seat. “Tell me about the hit man, Tessa. Find out how much I’m willing to believe.”

“Can’t.”

“Can’t?”