Prologue

Alex Eames stared at the empty chair opposite hers and wondered if, perhaps, any of the knick-knack stores along Broadway or Chambers Street stocked Santa Claus mugs.

Her partner wouldn't want to be reminded of last Thanksgiving, anyway.

"Alex?" Hannah Kolchov, a fellow Major Case detective, lay a hand on her friend's shoulder. "I thought it was quitting time for you too."

She stood up quickly. "Yes, I was just –"

"Daydreaming. Staring at the desk across from yours and daydreaming. Let's get a drink."

"I'm not up for the bar tonight."

"Gary says he'll meet us there, and the baby's with her grandparents, so we've got a few hours. Come on, when was the last time we all sat down together like grown-ups."

Eames had graduated from the academy with Hannah and Gary, and they'd all moved up through vice together. Her friends had been (conveniently) partners before they'd started sleeping together, and, thanks to an understanding captain, they'd managed to hold on to both their jobs and each other, though their professional partnership was over.

Eames, happily married to a cop at the time, thought Hannah and Gary's story was – sort of – sweet.

Sweet until last year, when Hannah was promoted to Major Case and became intently interested in the way her friend Alex interacted with Bobby Goren.

"Open your eyes, woman, and follow my lead," Hannah would joke whenever Alex complained in private about her love life. Or, she would tease her about how Goren was devoted to her like a puppy.

"Where's Mike tonight?" Hannah asked as they settled into a corner booth. "I saw you and Wheeler bringing a couple of perps in before."

"I've been working with Wheeler all week. Mike's got something with this girl – maybe a girlfriend -- who threw herself out a window. I don't know, I try not to get involved."

"And your partner?" Hannah demanded as Gary joined them.

"Y'know, Alex," he started in, "to this day, we're all still talking about how we miss you stumbling off the elevator at 6AM in hooker boots."

Hannah punched her husband lightly. "How's he doing, really?"

"He's … he'll get through this. The funeral, it was him, me, a couple other cops, and some nurses from the home. His brother didn't show. But … three weeks, he'll be back." Despite what she was telling them, she imagined him alone in his apartment, poring over Mark Ford Brady's notebook, outraged and grief-stricken and frozen solid. Maybe he'd asked the M.E. to run a DNA test. Maybe –

Hannah interrupted her thoughts. "You're his best friend. You should be there for him."

"I will never admit you're right," Eames said sharply, "but" – lowering her voice now so that her friends almost couldn't hear her over the sound of the bar patrons – "I think I may be the only person Bobby's got left in the world, and that's why I'm not comfortable going over there right now."

"I've only met the guy once," Gary said, "but he seems … intense."

"And our little Alex is the only one who understands him."

Eames had nothing to say in response. Hannah didn't understand that their partnership was not a game, not a sweet undercover love story like hers and Gary's had been.

After a second drink, Hannah and Gary went home to their daughter, and Alex almost took the Williamsburg Bridge over to Brooklyn, but it was just another almost, and forty-five minutes later, she was home in Rockaway.