“Tough for a guy like that to feel helpless.”

“It was more than that. He felt…”

In grasping for words, Gage saw what habit and familiarity had obscured when he’d spotted Burch three weeks earlier climbing out of a limousine in front of the tsarist-era Baltschug Hotel in Moscow. His cheeks hung on his thinned face, his square shoulders had rounded, his gray tailored suit was ill-fitting and misshapen. Where they once faced each other eye-to-eye at six-two, Gage remembered looking slightly down as they waited to check in.

A lump in Gage’s throat caught him by surprise when he found the word. He swallowed hard. “Fragile,” Gage finally said, struggling to keep his voice even. “I think he felt fragile for the first time in his life.”

Spike folded his arms across his chest, as if trying to resist seeing Burch, and maybe himself, through the eyes of Gage, a man who’d never felt the least bit invincible, even as a young cop kicking doors and always the first one in.

“Jack was terrified that he might leave Courtney a widow,” Gage said, “sick and alone. So he kept himself out of harm’s way and tried to control everything around them.” His eyes caught the glitter of fine drops now settling on Spike’s roof. “He would’ve stopped the rain when she stepped out of the house if there was a way to do it. They just adored each other.”

“Why was he willing to leave her and go to Russia?”

“He wasn’t,” Gage said. “She insisted because she missed the joy he took in his work. He recovered some of the old Jack in Moscow, and life seemed secure enough to start running the hills again when he got back.” Gage glanced in the direction of Pacific Heights, then shook his head slowly. “I wish he hadn’t, or at least-”

“Don’t even think it. You can’t be everywhere.” Spike flipped his notebook closed. “I know it looks grim, but it’s not over yet. There’s still a chance he’ll make it.”