Larkin had struggled with polite small talk his entire adulthood. It was only another form of sensory stimulation, another conversation he’d automatically catalogue, memorize, another opportunity to be hurt by words that’d be with him forever, like a wound that never scabbed over. And what made it worse was knowing he missed the subtle cues the rest of polite society picked up on without needing a nudge in the right direction. Larkin could remember the sensation of this process before August 2, 2002—it’d been so natural and so seamless. But now, it was like watching old home footage of his younger self speaking in tongues and Larkin simply couldn’t interpret those well-mannered speech patterns his parents had once been so proud of.

His brusqueness was part of an uncontrollable defense mechanism. And sometimes, after a difficult day, it was triggered by even the most well-meaning of people in Larkin’s life. Like Noah. Noah had always taken it personally. That Larkin must have forgotten to ask how his day was because he didn’t care to know, or was unpleasantly direct merely to get the niceties over with. And that hadn’t been true. Of course Larkin had cared to know about Noah’s day. They’d been married. They’d been in love.

Larkin might have had irreversible brain trauma, but it didn’t make him stupid.

And after spending the last fifty-one days in the company of Ira Doyle, he was beginning to find the words to describe how Noah had made him feel for the last year of their relationship.

One of them was small.

“I’m not clear on the specifics of what exactly was stolen,” Doyle began. “But I know the security footage at the diamond store was corrupted.”

“Inside job,” Larkin answered.

Doyle laughed but held a hand out. “Let me finish the story. Major Cases pulled footage from the subway entrance at Rockefeller Center and got a few guys who vaguely fit the description of the suspect—”

“But they called you,” Larkin interrupted. “Which means something about the witness’s story didn’t look right. So instead of blasting the faces of most likely innocent people who, let me guess, were described as dark-skinned and wearing a hoodie, someone opted to pull their head out of their ass and employ in-house support first.”

“That’d be Detective Weaver.”

Larkin spun his Rolodex and stopped on Weaver, Erik. His memory had bullet pointed: foul-mouthed Ryan Gosling look-alike who’d provided Larkin’s card to his own CI last October—an equally foul-mouthed redhead who’d been trying to light a fire under the cold case of his mother’s murder. “He’s decent,” Larkin admitted.

“And smart,” Doyle confirmed. “He brought in the vic to sit for a composite sketch. Even with recent trauma taken into account, the process is usually two or three hours.”