Chapter 6: Lake View

On the fourth morning Ray woke with Nico's face in his neck and daylight on the wall.

He lay still for a full minute, stunned.

He had slept six hours.

Nico stirred against him, warm and heavy, and mumbled something into his collarbone.

"What?" Ray said.

"I said you snore."

"I do not."

"You do, a little. It's nice." Nico propped himself up and squinted around for his glasses. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you've never slept before."

Ray had no answer, so he kissed him.

The phone rang on the nightstand before it went anywhere.

It was Vera, calling at eight in the morning instead of nine at night, and she sounded brisk.

"Ray, I don't like Rogers Park. Two of my people saw a man loitering on the corner yesterday."

"I didn't see him."

"That's what worries me."

"I have a client who owns a unit on Lake Shore Drive. It's on the thirty-first floor, with a doorman and lobby cameras."

"It's empty. Take it."

Ray sat up.

He thought about Joan saying only her.

"I'll tell the prosecutor," he said. "Then we move."

"Of course. Always the prosecutor first."

Joan agreed in four minutes.

By dusk they had moved, the way Ray always did it.

They took a rented van, stopped at a car wash, and changed vehicles again in a parking garage.

The apartment was more glass than wall.

The lake lay below it, flat and gray and endless, and the city lights were coming on in strings along the shore.

Nico stood at the window with his palms flat on the glass.

"I haven't seen the water in months," he said.

"Step back from the window."

"It's thirty-one floors up."

"Step back anyway."

Nico stepped back, grinning, and Ray felt the grin land low in his stomach.

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