“We’re not done looking,” Stone said to the trio when they got back to the dirt road where their vehicles were parked. “But the dogs are beat. We’ll call in the staties and resume searching in the morning.”

“What the fuck for?” George muttered. “Notso’s dead, and you know it.”

“We’re still viewing this as a search-and-rescue mission, son,” Stone said in his soothing drawl. “If your friend is wounded and somewhere out in this cornfield, we’ll find him. I promise you, we’ll find him.”

Cap could no longer hold back his irritation. “And what about the guys who tried to kill us?” he snapped. “You still viewing this as a crime scene for that as well?”

Stone showed no outward signs of losing his cool. “This whole investigation is going to take some time,” he said. “You’ve got to give us a chance to do our jobs.”

None of the three from D.C. bothered to respond. Instead, they climbed into the Prizm and headed east, back to the District.

Cap dropped Lou off at home only after getting assurances that he would call at the first hint of a return engagement from the muscle who had started it all.

Lou trudged up the staircase to his apartment, then fumbled to unlock his door. Between extended shifts on his feet in the ER, and sessions at the gym, he was in better than decent shape. This fatigue, he knew, was something else—a combination of frustration, bewilderment, and anger, mixed with a good-sized dose of fear—fear not so much for himself as for Emily, Renee, and Steve, as well as his father and Graham.

It was hard to believe the thugs who had followed him home and later ambushed the four of them were through with him. It was also hard to believe they would stop at anything to achieve whatever it was they were being paid to do.

One of the most interesting things to come of all that had happened were Lou’s thoughts of his brother. For reasons that were never completely clear, probably Graham’s shame over Lou’s addiction and months in rehab, the two of them had drifted apart over the years since Graham entered college, and Lou’s life began its gradual deterioration. What Graham would never know, Lou hoped, was that the two occurrences were connected.