Hailey slid out of the back of the yellow cab onto the deserted sidewalk, the sea breeze from the harbor, just a hundred yards away, biting at her cheeks. She tried not to think about all the bad decisions that had led her to just that spot; if the past few hours were evidence of anything, it was confirmation of what she’d learned at twelve, when, a runaway with little to her name except a genius for numbers, she’d first set out on her own: Bad decisions compound, like interest.

She watched Nick Patterson come out of the taxi on the other side and pay the driver from a roll of twenties he’d pulled out of his jean jacket. Case in point, her decision to follow this ex-con to an alley lined with warehouses, so deep in South Boston she might as well have been in Dublin. Nick Patterson was one compounded lifetime of bad decisions in work boots and denim, the kind of guy she’d learned a long time ago to stay away from. Apart from math, her greatest skill was her ability to read people. Usually, she could read a face as quickly as she could game a blackjack felt, and she’d been reading Nick Patterson since they’d left the casino four hours ago.

He didn’t seem dangerous or violent, but he was certainly a thief. He didn’t appear sophisticated enough to be a con artist, and he’d seemed sufficiently disturbed by the dead fence in the hotel room to convince her he’d had nothing to do with the murder. But it was also clear that he was involved, and by following him out of the hotel and to this alley in Southie, she’d allowed herself to also get involved—something that went against every instinct she’d developed over the past sixteen years. All because of a photograph of a painting she’d never seen before, and the excited claims of a thief she’d just met.

She watched as Nick came up next to her and nodded toward the boxy, four-story building directly in front of them. The windows didn’t start until the second floor, most were boarded over, and the walls were covered in graffiti, the slurs and gang tags worn down by the constant lick of harbor air. Hailey hadn’t realized there were still forgotten buildings so close to the seaport, which had transformed in recent years from the kind of place you might safely stash stolen art to a bustling, overcrowded playground for entrepreneurs and twenty-somethings, bristling with outdoor restaurants, dance clubs, movie theaters, and posh hotels. No doubt, at the stroke of midnight some well-heeled developer would wave a magic wand, and this boarded-up building, too, would transform into a lab or a coworking space or a Cheesecake Factory or a P.F. Chang’s.