Hailey felt an excited tremble move through her shoulders as she stopped next to Nick on a corner of manicured grass, facing an open, sloping glade speckled with tourists, groups of schoolkids, refreshment carts hawking hot dogs, pretzels, and bottled water, and the odd uniformed park ranger. Even with so many people about, Hailey wasn’t worried that anyone was going to notice them; one of a card counters’ most important skills was the ability to take advantage of natural—and unnatural—distractions. It wasn’t hard to hide your play when there was a drunk at the end of the table, making a scene. Your disguise didn’t need to be perfect if there happened to be a famous rock star sitting at second base.

And it wasn’t likely anyone was going to pay attention to a couple of fugitives strolling across a lawn, with a goddamn 220-foot granite obelisk looming over them, two-and-a-half-ton, pyramid-shaped capstone piercing the midmorning sky.

“Now this definitely looks Egyptian,” Nick continued. “I mean, other than the guy with the hat and the sword up front.”

Hailey wasn’t interested in the statue resting on a pedestal a few yards in front of the massive obelisk; William Prescott might have been an important enough figure during the American Revolution to warrant a bronze effigy in such a premier jag of real estate along Boston’s vaunted Freedom Trail—the two-and-a-half-mile historical stroll that snaked through many of the city’s neighborhoods, showcasing touristy sites with even the faintest connection to the events of the War of Independence—but Hailey knew, from her research, that the statue was a late addition to this last stop along the trail. Molded in Italy in 1880, shipped to Boston a year later, Prescott’s sculpture was an irrelevant detail, like an extraneous puzzle piece tossed into the box to throw her off balance.

Hailey was well past the point where she could have been swayed to break focus; from the moment she’d noticed the two symbols engraved into the bronze eagle, something inside of her had flickered to life. A familiar drive—a need, really—had kicked into gear. It was the reason, she supposed, that she’d gone into mathematics in the first place; an unfinished puzzle, an unsolved equation, an answer just out of reach—these things could cause her real, physical distress.

“The design is Egyptian. It’s called an obelisk. The Egyptians used to put them at the entrance to their temples. But this one wasn’t designed in Cairo; it was made right here in Boston.”