Chapter 14: Two A.M.

Cain's POV

At two in the morning I was standing on Frank Dolan's porch in Roland Park, and I had not rung the bell.

I had driven myself.

I had left Gus asleep with his phone off, because Gus would have said something sensible.

The house was brick, with a flag and a lit porch light.

A wreath of plastic pumpkins hung on the door.

I had prepared a speech in the car.

The first version listed the leases Dolan's company held on the south piers.

The second was shorter, and it ended with the word "tonight."

By the time I parked, the third was one sentence.

It was not a sentence I could say in front of a pumpkin wreath.

I lifted my hand to the bell.

"No," Mara had said, on the sidewalk, with a pry bar across her shoulder.

She had not said it loudly.

She had said it cheerfully, which was worse.

Because then it's yours, she had said. And I want it to be mine.

I had spent twenty years being the man people called when a thing needed to be made to stop.

No one had ever told me no and then waited to see if I would listen.

I put my hand down.

There was a small black dome above the door, with a red light.

I looked at it for a while.

"Good evening," I said to the doorbell camera, because I could think of nothing else.

Then I went back to the car.

My phone lit in the cupholder, next to the old black umbrella with the bent rib that I had never replaced.

Lydia. Can't sleep either. Coffee tomorrow? I want to tell you something before I lose my nerve.

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