“Yeah, of course. I’ll just knock on his door. He might be on a bender or something.”

“Right.”

Somers returned the Blackhawk and the cartridges to the gun safe upstairs, and then he let himself out through the garage; he drove across town in the Mustang, and tonight, the streets seemed full: an old couple sitting on their front porch, a pitcher of sangria between them; a woman in a hijab, talking on her phone and power walking; a pair of girls strolling together, swinging their clasped hands with excessive force until one of them stopped and turned and kissed the other. How could the world seem so full? It was past nine; why hadn’t everyone gone to bed? Everybody with somebody else, everybody except Somers, driving alone through the darkness.

When he got to Dulac’s apartment, he knocked, and the door swung open.

Somers hesitated; his Glock was in the car.

The inside of the apartment was dark.

The door was still swinging open.

“Gray?” he called, catching the door with one hand to stop it, and then pushing it open the rest of the way. He stepped into the apartment. “Gray? Are you home?”

One by one, he turned on the lights and moved through the rooms. He found stacks of boxes, some of them with their flaps still open. He found the couch cushions bundled, the lamp shades neatly stacked together, a grocery sack full of canned soups on the kitchen table. Dulac might not have been a hundred percent ready for the move, but he’d definitely been getting there.

“Gray, are you sleeping?”

In the bedroom at the back, the twin mattress and box spring leaned against the wall, and the frame had been broken down and taped together. The window blinds were up, and the glow of the streetlights below gave depth to the darkness.

Somers walked through the apartment once more. He came up with Dulac’s laptop and, bundled inside a Savers bag, a stack of mail. But no sign of where Dulac might be. Or what might have happened to him.

When he came outside, a black sedan was waiting halfway down the block. The car had its lights off, but it was idling, and the sound of the engine carried clearly in the quiet night. Through the windshield, he could make out the driver’s face—Somers didn’t know her name, but he recognized the woman as one of Park’s agents. He waved; he got no response.

The sedan followed him all the way home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

JULY 4

THURSDAY

7:21 AM

HAZARD WAS TRYING to shave.

“Anyway, I have no idea where he could be, and I’m freaking out.” Somers poked his head into the bathroom long enough to check himself in his mirror. He yanked on his tie a few times, and after a moment, Hazard grunted and beckoned. He set down the razor, beckoned again, and undid the tie. He knotted it again, slid the knot tight, and flattened the back of Somers’s collar. The blond man observed all this with a wry smile.