"With some people, maybe it does. What else do you do when they're pulling shit like today? You fight back, is what."

Roake had her hands back in her lap. "Then you're both still fighting. And what's that prove?"

"When somebody wins, it ends. And I intend to win."

"And that's what it's all about, is it? Who wins?"

"Yep." Defiantly. "What else?" he asked. "What else is there?"

Roake sat with it for a beat. She blew out in frustration. Finally, she looked down at him and stood up. "How very male of you."

"There's worse ways to be, Gina. What else do you want?"

She looked down at him. "I want you to be smart. Don't get drawn into playing their games. This doesn't have to continue being personal, especially if they believe in doing things like today, in actually hurting people. That's all I'm saying. File your papers, keep out of it, and let the law do its work."

"That's exactly my intention. What else would I do?" Freeman patted the bed. "Come, sit back down. I'm not self-destructive, you know. I'm not going to fight anybody physically."

Roake lowered herself down next to him again. "That's what I thought you were saying." She took his gnarled hand in both of hers.

"No, no, no. I'm talking what I do. The law. That'll beat up on 'em good enough. But I will tell you one other thing."

"What's that?"

"Whatever else it might look like, it's going to be personal."

Lieutenant Abraham Glitsky, once the powerful head of San Francisco's homicide detail, was half-black and half-Jewish, and in his job he'd groomed himself to exude a threatening mixture of efficient competence and quiet menace. His infrequent smiles would even more rarely get all the way to his piercing blue eyes. A Semitic hatchet of a nose protruded over a generous mouth, rendered unforgettable by the thick scar that bisected both lips.