His cornflower Irish eyes leveled on her. “You haven’t given up, Abigail. You won’t toss in the towel on finding your husband’s killer, ever.”

“If you were in my position, would you give up?”

“We’re not talking about me.” He leaned in toward her. “Something’s happened. Something’s changed. What?”

Abigail turned away from him. “Bob…”

He grunted, silencing her. “If you can’t tell me what’s really going on, you can’t tell me. Just don’t give me cleansing rituals.”

“Okay, but the part about fixing up the house-”

“That’s a little better, as cover stories go.”

“It’s not a cover story-”

“Abigail.”

She decided not to push her luck, and Bob didn’t press her further, scowling once more before heading back up to his third-floor apartment. Abigail watched her fire die out, here and there bits of unburned paper amid the ashes. She peeled the lid off her coffee can and noticed that she’d started to cry, almost as if she were someone else.

Using a long-handled spatula, she scooped ashes into the Folgers can.

Not all the ashes fit.

She stirred those left in the grill. All she needed to do was start a fire with two of Boston ’s most respected detectives on the premises. She’d been a detective for just two years. By Bob O’Reilly and Scoop Wisdom’s standards-by her own standards-she was still a novice.

They believed in her, and she proved herself one day at a time, but she’d decided, even before she’d formed her own plan of action, not to tell them about last night’s call.

An anonymous tip.

It wasn’t the first in seven years, and it wasn’t the craziest-but she didn’t need two trusted colleagues, two unwavering friends, to talk her out of following up on it.

Her spatula struck a half-burned page pasted to the bottom of the grill, the words jumping out of the ashes at her in thick, black marker, as if somehow she needed reminding.