He eases the Prius away, trailing a block or so behind Eddie and the woman and child.

In a mile or two the neighborhood changes from working poor to rising trendy, with bars and restaurants that are still home to the locals but in a few years will probably be teeming with noisy thirty-somethings and well-to-do college kids.

Eddie drives into a parking lot next to a yellow stucco building. VINCENZO’S FINE ITALIAN FOOD is painted in script on a hanging sign bordered with ironwork in the shape of a grapevine.

“Drive by?” Brian asks.

“Please. Let me off around the next corner.”

As ordered, Brian rounds the corner, then pulls the Prius to the curb. “Do you want me to wait?” he asks as Rose opens the door.

“No, thanks. I might be a while.”

“No charge,” he says.

Rose smiles and closes the car door. Then she calls Mel. “I think this is it. He’s on a date, a woman with a little girl.” She gives Mel the name and address of the restaurant.

“On our way,” Mel says. “Where shall we meet you?”

“I’ll text. You promise you won’t come in?”

Mel sighs gustily. “Not unless we hear gunshots.”

“Especially not then,” Rose pleads.

“Okay, but if you bleed to death with two qualified first responders across the street you’ll only have yourself to blame.”

“I can live with that,” Rose says.

“No pun intended,” Mel says.

“That was not a pun.” Rose puts the cell phone into the front zipper pocket of the backpack Mel lent her. For a moment she dithers. In the morning this had seemed like a brilliant idea. After a long tiring day, aching and weary and seriously in the mood for a good stiff drink and a hot bath, it seems like …

Like the only viable idea.

Either she gives up and lives in terror every minute of every day, or she soldiers on. Rose slips the backpack over her shoulder, turns the corner, and walks purposefully toward Vincenzo’s, whistling the theme song from The Bridge on the River Kwai under her breath.

CHAPTER 21

Before reaching the restaurant, Rose leaves the sidewalk to walk through the parking lot. She notes down Eddie’s license plate number, then continues to the back of Vincenzo’s. She’s never known a restaurant not to have a back door, usually opening out of the kitchen into a garbage collection area, but she isn’t taking any chances.

There is a back door.

In the front of the building, on the sidewalk, are six tables arranged inside a low cast-iron fence. Two young women, both on cell phones, occupy one of them.