As she maneuvered through the heavy traffic surrounding the cordoned-off crime scene, her thoughts were heavy, too. Surprisingly, they weren’t about the suspect on the platform, or the shots Mann fired to save her life. They weren’t even about the profile that she was still trying to shape in her head.

Her thoughts centered on Mike Coletti, and as she made her way down Broad Street, she wondered if he was thinking of her, as well.

His gruff manner was off-putting. His clothes were Goodwill-ready. He looked like an extra from a scene in Grumpy Old Men. Yet she remained drawn to him, partly because of his reputation as the best detective in Philadelphia, and partly because he seemed to be so much more—and so much less—than that.

In the twenty minutes it took her to get to Race Street, her mind wandered to the conversation she’d had with Coletti about marriage. And just as she tried to put those memories back into the space where they’d long been buried, her cell phone rang.

She rolled her eyes. The phone always seemed to be in her purse when she was driving. She reached over to the passenger seat to get it and fished it out in time to avoid rear-ending a Mercedes that had stopped at a red light.

When she looked at the number on the phone’s display screen and saw that the call was from Dunmore—the tiny Scranton suburb that housed her state police barracks and her family—she took a deep breath before connecting the call.

“Yes, Dad?” she said, sounding slightly annoyed.

“I heard about what happened this morning. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I woulda died if something woulda happened to you. Those animals down there in Philly have already done enough to our family,” he said bitterly.

She cringed when he said animals and wondered what he would think if he knew that one of the “animals” had saved her life.

“We asked Father Ryan to pray for you,” he said. “I know you don’t wanna believe it, but I won’t be able to sleep ’til I know you’re back home safe.”

“It’s not about what I want to believe, Dad,” she said impatiently. “It’s about the truth.”

“The truth?”

“Yes,” she said plainly. “The truth is we haven’t seen eye-to-eye since I decided not to spend my life married to a good Catholic boy and having babies named Seamus and Molly.”

It was her father’s turn to cringe. They’d had the same argument too many times over the last twenty years. He didn’t care why she’d left home anymore. He was just glad she’d come back.

“I don’t want to argue, Mary. What you do with your life is up to you.”