“You’re saying it wasn’t about me? You wanted to kill her?”

“Oh, yeah, I wanted her dead, but I figured what I was seeing was pretty interesting, so why not see where it led me? Hey, kill one bird and save the other.”

He opened his mouth, but the man raised a gloved hand. “No reason for you to ask me any more right now. Maybe if we become BFFs, I’ll tell you everything.”

The medication was numbing the pain in his arm but blurring his brain as well. Xu said, “Were you the one who tried to kill Judge Hunt?”

The guy nodded. “I thought I nailed the bastard, but he turned at that last second. Can you believe the rotten luck? But still, it was a good shot, he should have died.”

“But he didn’t. Did you try to take him out again in the hospital?”

Xu would swear the guy puffed up with pride.

“I gave that plan a lot of thought, even got me some blood from a patient in the hospital to smear on the walls of the elevator shaft to drive the Feds nuts, but—”

Xu interrupted, “It was a ridiculous plan.” He stopped talking at a fierce jab of pain, held himself perfectly still, waiting for the meds to kick in and kill the pain once and for all. This idiot who’d shot through an elevator hatch wanted to help him?

Xu said, “I want to see you. Take off those sunglasses and that ball cap now or I’ll drill you between the eyes.”

“Okey-dokey, fair enough, but ready yourself. You’re in for a big whopper surprise.”

The ball cap and the sunglasses came off. Xu stared, so stunned that for a moment he didn’t feel the pain in his arm.

“Got you, didn’t I?”

Xu could only nod.

“Fact is, I mean, who can you trust in this sad world?”

“You,” he said. “Maybe I can trust you. You’re as bad as I am.”

“No, you’re wrong about that. I’m worse.”

Judge Sherlock’s home

Pacific Heights, San Francisco

Wednesday evening

Sean was teaching Cal and Gage how to play Flying Monks, the latest computer game his grandmother had presented to him when they’d first arrived. It was always a treat for Sherlock to watch her five-year-old teaching younger children, and three-year-old Cal and Gage looked utterly absorbed, nodding and all serious about the rules Sean was laying on them. Flying Monks—another new game Sherlock would have to master.

She caught herself thinking that kids were so different now, an observation probably made by every single generation in man’s long timeline. She smiled to herself. Time always passed, and everything always changed. No kid today could imagine the world without a small device called a cell phone that would soon do everything but make them Kool-Aid. And now you could ask your phone a question and it would answer. But people, she thought, people themselves never changed.

Cal shouted, “I got you, Gage. I’ve moved up two ranks. I’m flying! I’m a Major Monk now.”

Sherlock felt bone tired, and was trying not to show it, but she didn’t mind, because she’d succeeded in fooling Sean. She’d hidden her bandage well enough—thank God for all her curly hair—and he’d accepted her being gone Tuesday night, inquiring only if Emma had wondered why he hadn’t come to see her. Sherlock had lied to him cleanly. “Of course Emma wanted to know where you were, Sean. I told her you’d promised yourself to your grandparents and you’d never break a promise.”

“You didn’t tell her I went to see Rory and the Last Duck, did you, Mama?”

“Nope.”

“She doesn’t know Grandpa and I ate two buckets of kettle corn, does she? I don’t want her to think I’m a pig.”

“Nope.”

Sean looked thoughtful, an identical expression to his father’s. “There’s so much to do, Mama. Sometimes I just don’t know.”

His grandmother had walked in then with a freshly baked plate of chocolate-chip cookies, and Sherlock forgot to ask him what he just didn’t know.

She sensed Dillon behind her and heard his deep voice. “Here, sweetheart.” He leaned down, kissed her mouth, and handed her a cup of hot tea. “Drink it down. Then I’m thinking it’s time for you to hang it up for the night.”

“But—”

“Dr. Kardak said you’d give me grief and I was going to have to be the enforcer. You’ve done well, stayed nice and quiet all afternoon and evening. Now it’s time to let your brain and your body knit themselves back together while you have pleasant dreams.” He paused for a moment. “I’m thinking I have some good ideas on how to help you make that happen.”