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I come out of the shower with a towel around my waist.

Delilah’s gone.

Her clothes are still in the pile where she left them. My shirt is gone off the floor. I hear her voice downstairs. Then the front door.

I get dressed fast. Trousers and a sweater, no socks, shoving my feet into a pair of loafers. A feeling of wrongness is worming its way through me.

I race down the stairs and almost bowl over Niko, who’s standing at the bottom with a pale, stricken expression.

“She’s gone,” he says. “Stepan took her. She wanted to go to the bakery.”

“Why?”

“Her baker called. Their supplier dropped them. The whole account, with no warning and no reason given.”

I stop. Suppliers don’t fire their best-paying customers on a Friday night in February. Not without a phone call from somebody with a reason to make one.

“There’s more,” Niko says.

I glare at him. “Then spit it the fuck out.”

“She was in there with the map.” He takes a pull off the beer and then sets it down on the hall table. “She had enough time to find her lot.”

Finally, I stop moving.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

This is all fucking wrong.

“What did she say?”

“She asked what it was. I told her it was your property work. She said, That’s my street. I said, It’s a lot of streets. But she’s not stupid, man. She asked why it’s the only one that isn’t colored in.” He shrugs helplessly. “I told her to ask you.”

“That was your grand intervention? What the fuck do I pay you for?”

“What was I supposed to do, Kane? Lie to her face while she’s standing there in your shirt?” He scowls at me. “I told you, dude! Two months ago, I told you to tell her before somebody else does. Well, too late for that now.”

There’s no point in arguing with him. He was right then and he’s right now, but it doesn’t do anybody a damn bit of good.

There’s no point in hoping this all blows over, either. Lilah isn’t stupid or passive. She ruined her ex-husband’s life with dogged persistence, so she’s certain to keep digging until she finds a real answer, too.

“Get Yuri,” I say. “Have him meet me in Sunset Park.”

“What about Delilah?”

“I’m going to her myself.”

I take the Escalade. Stepan is already gone with her, but that’s fine, because I don’t want a driver tonight. I want the wheel in my hands so I have something to do with them.

The bakery lights are on, even though it’s midnight. The back door is propped with a milk crate. Josef stands in the alley with his hands in his coat. He straightens when he sees me.

“She came in fast, sir,” he explains. “Didn’t say a word to me. Everything alright?”

“Get back to your post and keep your eyes peeled,” I bark as I stride past him. “If anything strange happens, come right to me.”

Inside, Priya sits on a stool with her phone cradled in both hands and her eyes red. Delilah has a legal pad on the steel table and her laptop open beside it.

She’s changed into work clothes and tied her hair up. She looks up at me with a squint-eyed glare. “Do you know anything about this?” she demands.