Luther had known Danny long enough to know you’d have to be insane to take the guy on in a fair fight. He was too big, too fearless, too impervious to pain. So he’d never be dumb enough to question Danny’s strength, but he’d never been close enough before to feel this capacity for violence that lived in the man like a second, deeper soul.

The other men on the car stopped giving them funny looks. Stopped giving them any looks at all. Danny just sat there, staring out at the rest of the car, never seeming to blink, those eyes of his gone dark, just waiting for an excuse to let the rest of him erupt.

They got off in the North End and walked up Hanover toward Salem Street. Night had come on while they rode the el, but the streets were near empty due to the State Guard presence. About halfway along Hanover, as they were passing the Prado, someone called Danny’s name. It was a hoarse, weak voice. They turned and Nora let out a small yelp as a man stepped out of the shadows of the Prado with a hole in his coat that expelled smoke.

“Jesus, Steve,” Danny said and caught the man as he fell into his arms. “Nora, honey, can you find a guardsman, tell him a cop’s been shot?”

“I’m not a cop,” Steve said.

“You’re a cop, you’re a cop.”

He lowered Steve to the ground as Nora went running up the street.

“Steve, Steve.”

Steve opened his eyes as the smoke continued to flow from the hole in his chest. “All this time asking around? And I just ran into her. Turned into the alley between Stillman and Cooper? Just looked up and there she was. Tessa. Pop.”

His eyelids fluttered. Danny pulled up his shirt and tore off a length of it, wadded it up and pressed it to the hole.

Steve opened his eyes. “She’s gotta be…moving now, Dan. Right now.”

A guardsman’s whistle blew and Danny saw Nora running back down the street toward them. He turned to Luther. “Put your hand on this. Press hard.”

Luther followed his instructions, pressed the heel of his palm against the wadded-up shirt, watched it redden.

Danny stood.

“Wait! Where you going?”

“Get the person who did this. You tell the guardsmen it was a woman named Tessa Ficara. You got that name?”

“Yeah, yeah. Tessa Ficara.”

Danny ran through the Prado.

He caught her coming down the fire escape. He was in the rear doorway of a haberdashery on the other side of the alley and she came out of a window on the third floor onto the fire escape and walked down to the landing below. She lifted the ladder until its hooks disengaged from the housing and then latched onto the iron again as she lowered it to the pavement. When she turned her body to begin the climb down, he drew his revolver and crossed the alley. When she reached the last rung and stepped to the pavement, he placed the gun to the side of her neck.