“Well, that’s okay,” Martine said. “Next time.” And she sang a few more folk tunes, then packed up the guitar.

Martine and Steven took some leftovers that Boling had bagged for them. Everyone said good-bye, hugs and kisses, and headed out the door, leaving Boling alone with Dance and the older boys. Wes and Donnie were now texting friends as they sat around their complicated board game, gazing at it intensely. At their phone screens too.

Ah, the enthusiasm of youth…

“Thanks for the food, everything,” Dance told him.

“You look tired,” Boling told her. He was infinitely supportive but he lived in a very different world from hers and she was reluctant to share too much about her impossible line of work. Still, she owed him honesty. “I am. It’s a mess. Not Serrano so much as Solitude Creek. That somebody’d do that on purpose. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s not like any case I’ve ever worked. It’s already exhausting.”

She hadn’t told him about the run-in with the mob outside of Henderson Jobbing. And chose not to now. She was still spooked—and sore—from the encounter. And, to be honest to herself, just didn’t want to relive it. She could hear the rock shattering Billy Culp’s jaw. And see the animal eyes of the mob as it bore down on them.

Fuck you, bitch…

The doorbell rang.

Boling frowned.

Dance hesitated. Then: “Oh, that’d be Michael. He’s running Solitude Creek with me. Didn’t I tell you he was coming over?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Been a crazy day, sorry.”

“No worries.”

She opened the door and Michael O’Neil walked inside.

“Hey, Michael.”

“Jon.” The men shook hands.

“Have some food. Greek. Got plenty left.”

“No thanks.”

“Come on,” Boling persisted. “Kathryn can’t eat moussaka for a week.”

She noted that he didn’t say “We can’t eat moussaka,” though he might have. But Boling wasn’t a chest-thumping territory staker.

O’Neil said, “Sure, it’s not too much trouble.”

“Wine?”

“Beer.”

“Done.”

Boling prepared a plate and passed him a Corona. O’Neil lifted the bottle in thanks, then hung his sports jacket on a hook. He rarely wore a uniform and tonight was in khaki slacks and a light gray shirt. He sat on a kitchen chair, adjusting his Glock.

Dance had known and worked with O’Neil for years. The chief deputy and senior detective for the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office had been a mentor when Dance had joined the Bureau; her background wasn’t law enforcement. She’d been a for-hire kinesics expert, helping attorneys and prosecutors pick juries and providing expert testimony. After her husband’s death—Bill Swenson had been an FBI agent—she’d decided to become a cop.

O’Neil had been with the MCSO for years and, with his intelligence and dogged nature (not to mention enviable arrest and conviction record), he could have gone anywhere but he chose to stay local. O’Neil’s home was the Monterey Peninsula and he had no desire to be anywhere else. Family kept him close and so did the bay. He loved boats and fishing. He could easily have been a protagonist in a John Steinbeck novel: quiet, solid of build, strong arms, brown eyes beneath dipping lids. His hair was thick and cut short, brown with abundant gray.