“Okay, so we agree,” he said.

“We agree. No doctors, no drugs, no hospital,” Nina said flatly. “If anything goes on the record, I’ll never work on the teams again. I’ll do this on my own.”

Broker understood. He had once dated an FBI shrink, a profiler. She had diagnosed him as a fugitive from modern psychology whose emotional development had been arrested when he read Treasure Island at age eleven. But he recalled her observation that an otherwise healthy person could tough their way through severe depression, given enough time and seclusion.

“We should send Kit to stay with your folks. It’ll be hard on her to lose dance class, swimming. At least with them she can keep up with piano,” Nina said, grimacing.

“No.” Broker was adamant. “She’ll handle it. We’ll all three go away. Up north. Someplace safe where no one knows us. It’s better if we work through it together.”

Too weary to argue, she nodded; then she got up and went into the porch and tried to talk to Kit. Broker watched Nina through the windows, saw her struggle in silent pantomime, head downcast; saw Kit embrace her mother, face upturned, nodding encouragement. Christ. It was almost like they were switching roles.

He took a deep breath, still having difficulty seeing Nina as…fragile. But she was right. She had to beat this thing with a minimum of interference.

Still…

He’d been around cops for over twenty years and watched as some of them peeled off and started to descend into themselves, drifting down this dark internal staircase. Usually it was the dead little kids-butchered, starved, abused-they encountered on the job that put them over the line. The main cop taboo was to show weakness, so they medicated with alcohol and hung tough till the pension kicked in. But once in a while a guy would find the dead kid he was trying to forget waiting in the basement at the bottom of those dark stairs, and he’d eat his gun.