Georgetown

Washington, D.C.

Friday morning

Five a.m.

Sean leapt impossibly high, caught the football from his mother, and took off toward the end of a park that was really a baseball field, with Savich on his heels. Savich couldn’t catch him because Sean’s legs were stilt-long, eating up huge swathes of ground, and he was rounding bases for some reason, clutching the football tight to his chest, heading for home, and John Lennon was suddenly singing into Savich’s left ear in his flat whiny-smooth voice about imagining people getting along, like that would ever happen.

Savich reared up in bed and automatically looked at the clock. Five a.m. Not good. No telephone call was ever good at five a.m.

He picked up his cell. “Savich.”

“Dillon, you’ve got to come, quickly, it’s bad, it’s really bad, I’m afraid-” Molly Hunt’s voice, choking and thick with tears and fear. Dillon thought, Not little Emma, who’d survived so much-

“I’m putting you on speakerphone so Sherlock can hear you. Tell us what’s happened, Molly.”

Sherlock was leaning up beside him, her face pale in the predawn, her hair tangled wildly around her face.

“Someone shot Ramsey in the back. I don’t know if he’s going to make it; he’s in surgery. Everyone’s here, but I need you and Sherlock. You’ve got to come and find out who did this to him. Please, please, come quickly.”

Ramsey shot? Savich couldn’t get his brain around it. He hadn’t seen Ramsey for six months, since he, Sherlock, and Sean last visited San Francisco. It had been more than five years, he realized now, since Ramsey had saved six-year-old Emma’s life and hooked up with her mother, Molly.