“Hello, Tom.” The words were heavy and sad and he swallowed again.

I’m sorry. Come back. I’ll try.

But none of those words would come out. Instead he snarled. “Where the fuck are you?”

He could hear her indrawn breath. “At Irina’s.”

I’m sorry. Come back. Please come back.

But once again, his mouth betrayed him. “You were supposed to stay home,” he snapped. “What part of being in a sniper’s sights did you not understand?”

This time the breath she drew was even and measured. “I’m fine. I am not your worry.”

Anymore hung between them.

“I left a note on the fridge along with a check for next month’s rent,” she went on. “I’ll set up autopay through my bank for the future.”

“I don’t care about the fucking rent!” he shouted.

“I do.”

He opened his mouth to say . . . what, he had no idea, but just then his work phone pinged with an alert.

Dammit. Sunnyside Oaks’s patient database had just been updated. “I need to call you back.”

“No, you really don’t. It’s okay. Just find Eden so that Mercy will be safe.”

And then she hung up, leaving him staring at his personal phone while his work phone continued to ping.

Fucking hell. Backing out of her bedroom, he slowly trudged down the stairs, wondering what to do. Wishing . . . but for what he didn’t know.

He locked her door and, after checking to be sure his neighbor was gone, marched into his own house and up the stairs and sat down at his computer. Pulling up the window into Sunnyside’s database, he saw that a new patient had been registered: Timothy Alcalde, age seventy-two, Caucasian male.

Not DJ Belmont, then. It had to be Pastor.

On autopilot, Tom took a screenshot of the file and carefully backed out, making sure he left no trace that he’d broken in. Then he sent the file to his own secure e-mail. He could upload it to the Bureau’s servers when he got into the office.

He considered calling Raeburn, but had no energy for the conversation. So he texted instead. New patient, 72yo man, Timothy Alcalde. Right age for Pastor. He’d been forty-two when he’d fled to Eden thirty years ago.

And “Alcalde” meant “mayor” in Spanish. On another day, Tom might have appreciated the joke. The Eden assholes had already demonstrated that they put thought into names. He supposed “Timothy Pastora” would have been too obvious, even for them.

Excellent, was Raeburn’s reply. We’ll apprehend ASAP.

Um, no. That would be the wrong move. Fearing that Raeburn would go off half-cocked, Tom called his boss. “We can’t just bust in and arrest him,” Tom said when Raeburn answered.

“Why not?” Raeburn snapped. “I can have a warrant in ten minutes.”

“Because we still don’t know where Eden is. Do you want to bet those people’s safety on Pastor rolling over and telling us? They’ve already demonstrated how ruthless they can be and we don’t have any physical evidence on Pastor himself, only DJ. Without leverage, he’s not going to simply give in.”