“Don’t ever tell him that.”

“Too late. Stephen and I get along. Why doesn’t he call?”

“You asked me to be your representative in this. If you want to talk to them, call them yourself.”

“I just figured they’d be more impressed.”

“They’re impressed, and guess what? So am I. The operation, the size of it. The resources. You impressed me. So no matter what happens, you can count on me, for sure.”

This is, perhaps, the most agreeable exchange he’s ever had with Julia Crispin, and he’s not quite sure how to bring it to a close. Neither is she, apparently. Because after they both mutter a few more thank-yous, she hangs up without saying goodbye.

By day, the glass and steel interior of Graydon’s headquarters feels clinical and stark. Around this time of night, however, when most of the overhead lights are off and there’s little to reflect off the walls of glass, the offices feel vaporous and limitless.

Cole could enter any room at will, rifle through any drawer he wants, and nobody could do a thing about it. These urges are childish and petty, and he’s never once given in to them. But once, at around this hour, he did have sex with Dylan Cody—it’s hard to think of him as Noah in his memories—on the carpeted floor of his office, a few feet from where he’s sitting now.

He wishes they’d left a scuff mark or a stain. Some tiny artifact of a moment when Cole thought Dylan was a mad genius and their relationship might blossom into an unconventional marriage defined by mutual ambition and the devastating expertise with which Dylan catered to Cole’s darker appetites.

But the carpet’s immaculate, and the man walking toward Cole’s office now has never been a lover. He’s no longer what Cole would even consider an ally.

Ed Baker steps through the open door and goes still a few feet from the empty chair on the other side of Cole’s glass desk.

So he’s figured it out, Cole thinks, which isn’t a surprise given I haven’t told him a word about how the Davies operation concluded after I threw him out of the control center.

“I guess I’m not here for an update on Davies,” Ed says.

“There were complications. Your insistence that we not sweep his property in advance turned out to have consequences. Bad ones. I should have overruled you.”

“Well, you’ve been real busy these days, haven’t you?” It sounds like a taunt. Ed’s entwined his hands behind his back, his shoulders rigid. The surrounding desk lamps are too low to give his bald dome its usual shine. “So what’s it gonna be? You moving me to some lab that doesn’t exist?”

“You’re retiring,” Cole says.

For what feels to Cole like a long time, Ed doesn’t blink.

“For telling you the truth?” he asks.

“The truth? About what, exactly?”

“You’re letting that woman run the show, and it’s going to end in disaster.”

“I’m sorry. When did you tell me that? And when would I have ever asked for your opinion?”

“I was keeping her in check.”

“You were drawing her attention to how badly we violated her privacy after one of our former employees slipped her a drug that could have torn her to pieces. And you were doing it at the very moment when we needed her complete participation in an operation we’d been planning for months.”

“I disagree.”

“Who gives a fuck? You’re fired!”

“I thought I was retiring.”

“I’m spinning it. For your sake, so don’t push it.”

“And if I do . . . push it?”

Cole opens his desk drawer, extends a file folder in one hand. It’s bulging with pages still warm from the laser printer. Ed forces a dead look into his eyes as he takes it. He leafs through its contents while he stands. Whether he’s scanning them or reading them in depth, Cole can’t tell. Surely he doesn’t need to absorb the details. The figures are impossible to forget. Ed made considerable money selling confiscated guns back to street criminals during his time as a patrol cop on the LAPD, before he vaulted up its power structure later in life.

Ed clears his throat. But he can’t look up from the folder. He’s like a motorist passing a car accident, only every mangled body is his.

“Your father would never have—”

“People have very complicated feelings about the police right now, Ed. Don’t compel me to make this public.”

Ed lets out a small, unreadable grunt and closes the folder slowly.

“And what do you expect me to do in my new retirement?” he asks.

“You’ll go back up to LA, probably. Use your LAPD credentials to become the security director for a big celebrity. Preferably one who travels a lot and has multiple homes for you to worry about. I’ll write you a sterling recommendation if you want.”

“And what will this recommendation say?”

“Not one word of what you actually did here. Not one. And if you ever consider saying one word about it yourself, if you ever so much as think about consulting an attorney about the language of your confidentiality agreement, and so help me God, if you ever begin a speech in my presence that begins with the words your father again, I will flush your entire LAPD career down the drain, and you’ll spend your retirement on a boat in Lake Havasu cursing my name.”