“This is the place,” Nick said. “Things might get a little dicey. The plan wasn’t to show up empty-handed.”

The plan. Nick had gone over the rough details in the cab ride from the casino to the all-night diner where they’d spent the last few hours waiting for daylight, and Hailey still wondered why she hadn’t told the driver to pull over and dump her out right into the Ted Williams Tunnel. Bad decisions piling up, like a chain-reaction crash on the expressway. Hell, chancing her way on foot through the 3:00 a.m. traffic in the tunnel seemed more logical than the story Nick had been spinning. But still, she’d kept on reading that narrow, hardened face, those deep-set eyes. There was no doubt, as crazy as the story got, Nick believed every bit of it. The guy was a thief, but he was also sincere.

The photo in his jean jacket was of a stolen painting, part of a stash worth maybe a billion dollars. Though the theft had taken place thirty years ago, the paintings had finally surfaced, and were now sitting in this warehouse in South Boston, in the hands of some associates of the redheaded kid Nick had met in prison. Nick had taken over the kid’s role in the scheme and had arranged to move the paintings through a fence, who was either planning to sell them himself, or turn them in for the reward—$10 million—and give Nick a hefty cut. But now the fence was dead, tortured and murdered in that hotel room.

“The guys holding the paintings,” Hailey said. “They’re connected to the original crime? The Gardner heist?”