Spencer didn’t want his daughter to see the state he was in, but Chris said she needed him, so he cleaned off the worst of the damage and went to join her in Chris’s room.

“Abby, listen to me,” he said to her. “All this stuff that’s happening to us? It isn’t your fault. It’s mine. And I’m sorry, to you and to Chris. Those men today, they were going to find us wherever we went. And because they know how much I care about you, they were always going to threaten to hurt you, to make me do what they want me to do.”

“What do they want you to do?”

Spencer looked at her. She’d be twelve in less than a month. He tried to figure out what she could be expected to understand.

“They want me to do something bad . . .”

He trailed off when he saw her face. That wasn’t going to cut it. She was her mother’s daughter.

There was something uniquely humiliating about sharing living space with someone who’d just beaten the crap out of you. Spencer looked at the Yo-Yo kicking out on their couch, TV remote in one hand and Spencer’s beer in the other.

He limped out onto the fire escape, grabbed a bag of ice from the fridge, and collapsed into the couch. As he stared at the chalk outline on the floor, Spencer’s mind flicked back to McGrath’s office, back to when he thought he was getting ahead of the game with his big ideas and oh-so-cleverly damaged cars. But McGrath had been ahead of him. Always. Spencer hadn’t decided to get back in touch with McGrath. Dominic McGrath had brought Spencer back, back to his lair. And when he’d suggested they not call each other on their own phones and paid Spencer in cash, he wasn’t doing Spencer any favors. He was making sure there was no record Spencer ever worked for them, because Spencer was always going to be just one of the costs of his Max Petrovsky thing.

Chris appeared. “He said he’s sleeping on the couch, so he can watch the exits I guess. How long’s he staying?”

“A week.”

Just then there was a knock at the front door. Chris moved as if to go answer it, but before he was off the balcony they heard the door open. He frowned.

“Who is it?” asked Spencer.

“Pizza delivery guy for our new friend,” said Chris. “He’s not interested in my cooking.” He pointed at Spencer’s swollen face. “If I’d seen this, I wouldn’t have been so hospitable.”

“You offered him dinner?”

“I thought it might help get him on our side.”