“Maybe we’ve got this all wrong,” Gus said. He could see the traffic light at Hollister straight ahead. It was red. He gunned the car, figuring to make the next green. “How do we know this was a setup?”

“Do you really have to ask?”

Gus checked to make sure Shawn was wearing his seat belt. He was. Which meant there was no point in slamming on the brakes to watch him go flying through the windshield. Instead he pressed his foot on the accelerator as he turned right through the green light onto Hollister.

“Are you asking if I have to ask why anyone would send us to a public garden to be held up by a mime?” he said through clenched teeth.

“It was a rhetorical question,” Shawn said. “Because the answer is so obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention.”

“I guess I’ve been a little distracted,” Gus said. “Little things like being kidnapped do that to me.”

“You should work on that,” Shawn said. “You let the bad guys know they can throw you off with a little gunplay and you’ll never have a moment’s peace.”

“That’s good to know,” Gus said in a close approximation of the tone his mother used to use when she caught him feeding his brussels sprouts to the dog. “Thank you so much for the advice.”

The light ahead was turning yellow. Gus floored it and made a fast left onto Storke Avenue.

“It’s the least I can do,” Shawn said. “As an experienced private detective, I have a duty to train the generation that’s going to follow me.”

“You’ve been a private detective for five seconds longer than me,” Gus said. “And that’s only because you said my fly was unzipped when we were walking up to the licensing window, and I stopped to look, so you got your license first.”

“Which is why I feel I should share my experience and knowledge with you,” Shawn said. “So let’s walk through what we already know.”