“I thought I did,” she said at last. “But then, I thought my husband was Jason Jones. So I guess we’re both very good at wanting what we can’t have.”

He winced, then forced himself to nod. This is what it came down to in the end. He had started their marriage with a lie, so if she chose to end it with a lie, well, who was he to judge?

He removed his hands from her body. Sat upright, squared his shoulders, steeled himself for what had to come next. “You came back for Ree,” he stated. “So your father can’t have her.”

But Sandra shook her head. She lifted her hand, brushing the moisture from his cheek.

“No, Jason. You still don’t understand. I came back for both of you. I love you, Joshua Ferris.”

D.D. made it out of Roxbury in record time. She had sirens blasting, lights twirling, the whole nine yards. She was simultaneously working her radio, demanding that officers be immediately deployed to the Hastings residence. She wanted Ethan Hastings safely in police custody and she wanted it right now.

In addition, she wanted BPD detectives dispatched to the state police crime lab crime scene, even if that pissed the state off. Wayne Reynolds might be their man, but he was BPD’s witness and whatever he’d known about Sandra Jones had no doubt gotten him killed.

Furthermore, she wanted officers dispatched to the Boston Daily offices. Not a single computer was to be touched until they had further word from Ethan Hastings.

Finally, she had explicit instructions for the two officers watching the Jones residence. If Jason Jones so much as cracked open his front door, he was to be arrested. Pick him up for loitering, late parking tickets, she didn’t care. But he was not to leave the confines of his house unless he was wearing a pair of BPD bracelets.

They had just lost a man, and she was furious.

So it definitely didn’t help when Dispatch returned to tell her that two officers had arrived at the Hastings residence. Unfortunately, the thirteen-year-old boy was not in his room and his parents had no idea where he might have gone.

Three minutes past eleven, Ethan Hastings had vanished.

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“How did you finally figure it out?” Jason was asking his wife.

“Your birthday. I was installing the iPod software on the computer and I found a photograph in the recycle bin.”

“Which one?”

“You were naked, badly beaten. There was a tarantula crawling across your chest.”