Tom’s head fell back to hit the laundry room door. “Tell him not to worry about it. I’ll go.”

Irina’s smile was smug as she slipped her phone into her pocket without saying goodbye. “Good.”

Tom scowled. “Did you even call him?”

Irina just chuckled. “Go and make sure she is okay, Tom. You know you want to.”

Hell of it was . . . he did.

Which was not a big deal. At all. It’s what friends do for each other. Like she’d taken care of him when he had the flu in January when they’d first arrived in California and knew no one but each other. Or like he held her every time he heard her cry out in the night through the duplex wall they shared, her nightmares making her shudder and tremble in his arms.

Or like she took care of “his dog.” Except that before today, Pebbles had been “our dog.”

Today she’d said “his dog.” He’d just realized that, and his heart hurt. Something had happened. Something new. Something that I did. He needed to figure out what that was.

He looked to Croft, noting that Abigail no longer sat at the table. Amos was gone as well. “Did you get what you needed from Abigail?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’m about ninety-five percent sure it’s a Chicos tat. I don’t think there’re many tattoo artists in the area who’d ink that design. They don’t want negative gang attention. Mr. Terrill said he hadn’t seen the tattoo, because he hadn’t seen DJ without his shirt in a very long time. Abigail must have caught DJ at the right moment. Terrill said he knew that DJ has an Eden tattoo because he was there the night they tattooed him.”

“On DJ’s thirteenth birthday,” Tom said, recalling Mercy’s brother Gideon talking about the night he got his Eden tattoo.

“If not many artists would do the tattoo,” Mercy said, “do you know who would?”

“I have a few ideas,” was all Croft would say as she put her sketchbook into her briefcase and locked it. “Agent Hunter, let’s make sure Miss Barkley made it home all right, and then you can drop me off at the field office so I can get my car.”

Mercy frowned and Tom wanted to sigh. This was an example of information civilians didn’t need to have, so Croft was right not to share. He also knew Mercy would be looking before he and Croft had left the Sokolovs’ driveway.

It wasn’t Mercy that was bothering him, though. It was Rafe. He looked like he wanted to say something but was holding his tongue. Maybe because Croft was there. Or Rodriguez.

Or even me. Tom would ask him later. Once he knew that Liza was all right, he’d call Rafe. And then he’d get to work doing what he did best—hacking. He still had Cameron Cook’s e-mail to trace.

Karl followed them to the door, tugging on Tom’s sleeve to hold him back when Croft jogged to the Bureau’s SUV.