"This is where you'll be staying," Henry stated, as he ushered Tommy through the door. "Detective Martinez and I are in the master bedroom. You can stay in Abraham's room. We'll change the linens before you head off to bed. Abraham tends to run cold at night—it's his age, I presume. The elderly do seem to lose their tolerance for the cold—so there are ample blankets on the bed. I'm certain there's a small lamp around here somewhere we can press into service as a night light…" With that goal, he began searching among the accumulated antiques that filled the apartment, muttering to himself as he looked.

"Abraham?" Tommy asked, turning big, helpless eyes to Jo. "Who's that? I thought you said no one else was here? I'm not going to be in the way, am I?"

Shutting the door, Jo carried the paper bag that contained Tommy's meager belongings over to the coffee table, which happened to be the nearest flat and mostly-empty surface. The corner ripped as she set it down, and the handle of Tommy's toothbrush jutted out. The green lumps of a plastic ninja turtle face stared up at her. Tommy was going to be in the way, but she could never tell him that; he was just a kid-and one who didn't have anywhere else to go.

"Abe is Henry's roommate," she explained. She couldn't quite manage to look Tommy in the eyes as she explained. She freed the toothbrush from its rip and twirled it idly between her fingers. "He's on vacation and won't be back for a couple weeks, so his room's all yours. We should have everything figured out before he gets back, so we'll be able to find some place for you to go permanently then. Which turtle is your favorite?" As an attempt to change the topic, she thought it was a pretty good one. She'd watched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles growing up and, while it had been a few years, she thought she could still hold her own in a discussion. Anything to connect to the kid would be useful in getting him to open up, which would help the police close the case. She held the toothbrush out for Tommy to take.

The helpless look blanked, and Tommy turned away as if she hadn't spoken, leaving her still grasping the molded plastic. "There's a lot of really old stuff in here," he commented. "I guess you guys didn't expect to have me around. People usually hide their good stuff when they think there's going to be a kid near it." He drifted toward a cabinet pressed up against one wall, his hand already out to touch whatever caught his eye—which happened to be a selection of animal figurines that looked to be carved out of bone or ivory. "You musta done something pretty bad to get stuck with me."

"Bad? Why would you think that? Your being here isn't a punishment." She had to remember that. Reece hadn't put Tommy in her care because of any decision Jo had made, no matter how closely the two event were linked. "You're here so we can keep you safe."

"So that's why you didn't put any of the expensive things away?" Tommy shook his head as if he'd expected better of them. "Where'd he get these from, anyway? They look neat." He reached for one of the figurines, and it was all Jo could do to not dive across the room to catch anything he might accidentally knock from the surface. What Jo knew about antiques could fit on a Post-It note, but breakable was breakable, no matter how old it was.

"Uh, Abe is an antique dealer. Henry helps him run the shop. Be careful," she warned, taking a jerking step toward him despite herself. "I don't think those are meant to be handled."

Tommy swiveled his head around as if to see who she was talking to, then ostentatiously stuck his hands in his pockets, just as Henry spoke.

"Ah, here we go." Henry reached for a small lamp on the top of a bookshelf and lifted it down. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he began rubbing smudges only he could see off the colored glass pieces that made up the shade. He stopped to dampen the corner of the handkerchief with his tongue. Only then did he notice where Tommy was. He made a small squeaking noise and started forward, less able to resist his urges than Jo had been. "Those aren't for touching. They're very fragile." The cord of the lamp, still plugged into the wall, yanked him to a stop.

Jo got a good look at what he was holding—and that was it; that's what she knew about antiques. "Uh, Henry," she started, a wild gesture at the lamp. She was suddenly less concerned about Tommy carelessly breaking anything than she was about Henry doing so. "Maybe the Tiffany lamp isn't a good idea. We can pick up a light from the Walgreens later. I'm pretty sure I've seen them there."

Henry looked down, aghast at his oversight and immediately backpedaled with a series of inarticulate noises. He managed to get the lamp replaced on the shelf without fumbling it and turned back, at a loss for what to do next.

"I don't need a night light, anyway," Tommy stated. "I'm not a child and I'm not afraid of the dark. I've slept in lots of worse places, you know." On his fingers, he ticked off those places like he was trying to fulfill a memorization exercise. "On benches in the park, in the back seat of abandoned cars, in alleys-lots of alleys-, in people's sheds, in a graveyard…" He stopped, looked in surprise at his fully extended hand, then asked in the same tone as the list, "Is there anything to do around here? Detective Hanson's house had video games."

The recitation should have been heartbreaking, except there was a cruelty behind the words that gave Jo the sense Tommy was trying to make them feel bad. Even his request for video games felt like a calculated punch.

It's just survival, Jo told herself. He's only acting like this to protect himself. How many places had he lived in his life? How many different families had he lived with? And how had he come to living on the streets? Tommy had revealed to Rhonda that he'd been on his own for at least two years. His memory that far back had been surprisingly detailed. As soon as the topic of his parents came up, though, he relapsed into silence. As tempted as Jo was to press him on that point now-and to remind him that he Child Services existed to make sure he didn't have to sleep in alleys-Rhonda had warned her not to, since they were trying to get his defenses down, not raise them higher. Jo drew a steadying breath and brought her professional facade to bear. "I'm sure we can think of something."

Henry, who'd had the same warning impressed on him, clapped his hands together. "There're no shortage of activities to keep us occupied in our free time. Between my private collection and the stock in the store, we have a number of excellent books that are appropriate for a young boy. Are you familiar with the works of C.S. Forester? No? We also have a fine selection of games. Abraham and I often enjoy a nice game of chess in the evenings…."

Tommy rolled his eyes and resumed his circuit of the living room, dragging his fingers along every surface as he went.

So, he wasn't interested in reading or playing board games. That sounded perfectly normal for his age to Jo-the only perfectly normal thing about him-though she made a note to ask Rhonda if anyone had assessed whether the boy could read. If he hadn't been in school for two years, he might never have learned. It was but one of an increasingly long list of details they didn't know about the child-and with that lack of knowledge she now she had to figure out how to keep him occupied.

What did people do with kids in their evenings? Usually Jo was so exhausted when she got home from work that she was happy to relax in front of the TV for an hour before dragging herself off to bed. Some nights she chose to relax in the bath instead. It wasn't exciting, which was the whole point. She had enough excitement at work. Neither mindless TV nor bubblebath were going to be options with Tommy around. "There's a children's museum," she said, "and a Y right off the subway. I'm sure we could get short-term memberships." She scowled; those weren't going to work. Tommy wasn't just a kid, he was a protected witness. They couldn't take him places with crowds that compromised the police's ability to keep him safe.

"Do you know how to skateboard?" Henry asked suddenly. "I've recently become aware of a rather fine skate park. The half-pipe was a bit beyond my capabilities, though I did manage one pass on it without killing myself."

"You what?!" Jo's efforts to think of a kid-friendly, and witness-friendly, activity vanished at the image of Henry skateboarding. She was starting to come to terms with the idea that Henry had no discernible survival instinct, but this was still a step too far. "You went skateboarding? When did that happen?"

Henry brushed a thumb over his eyebrow. "I'm afraid it was Abraham's idea."

"I don't like skateboarding," Tommy declared, pulling himself deeper into the over-sized hoodie he insisted on wearing, "or children's museums or swimming." He looked like he was ready to stomp off to his room, if he knew which one it was.

Jo felt her patience fraying rapidly. She'd known the weekend was shot. Now it was looking like it would be turning into hell. "Well, what do you want to do?"

Tommy's head tilted and his face scrunched up, a city full of options that she'd have to shoot down at his disposal. For someone who whose life was focused on attaining the basic needs of survival, he was slow to pick one. At last he asked, "Can we get ice-cream?"

As a cop, Jo was deeply familiar with the adage that everyone has a price. Over the years, she had seen any number of fellow police officers find their price and succumb, whether it was the lure of a different job with a bigger paycheck or regular hours or less stress … or whether it was an outright bribe in the form of money or drugs or status. Find the right price and a person could be convinced to do any number of things he'd have declared appalling, ridiculous, or even impossible under any other circumstance.

Tommy's price, it turned out, was a triple chocolate fudge sundae with extra sprinkles.

Jo called the order in and a uniform picked it up and delivered it. She wasn't going to risk taking Tommy outside at night at all. When Henry raised an inquiring eyebrow at her, she claimed weariness after a long day, and he chose to believe her.

They threw a blanket out onto the fire escape and had an impromptu picnic in the slowly darkening twilight. The chill of the ice-cream seemed to push the muggy evening air away, and to Jo's surprise Tommy was the one who melted.

"I like it up here," he declared after a few minutes of careful eating. He clutched the bowl tight to his chest, as if afraid that the dessert was going to be stolen from him any second. Yet with each bite, he uncurled from the hunkered position he'd assumed in the corner of the fire escape. Soon he had his jean-clad legs and dirty white sneakers swinging fearlessly over the edge.

The fire escape looked out on a side street that wasn't much more than a glorified alley. Parked cars were crammed along the brick walls that bordered the other side while electrical and telephone wires ran overhead. Jo felt a sense of timelessness; she could have been sitting in this spot, looking at the same sight anytime in the last century, with only the makes of the cars varying.

"I guess it has a certain charm," she admitted. "When I was a kid, me and my brothers used to go out on our fire escape all the time because our apartment wasn't air-conditioned." She pressed her milkshake against her forehead at the memory of those days of oppressive, humid heat that soaked their clothes and left every surface with a sheen of sticky moisture. It had been so easy to push that out of her conscious memory after she'd moved out. That wasn't the only difference between her neighborhood and this one. "It's quiet here, too."

Henry looked distressed at having to sit anywhere without a proper chair, but even he managed a smile. "Only a native-born New Yorker would think this is quiet," he teased. From somewhere down the block came the staccato bursts of an over-excited dog; in the distance sirens blared; underpinning it all was the constant hum of traffic. But there were no gunshots in this part of town and the sirens never came close. "It used to be much easier to find a moment or two away from humanity for quiet contemplation."

And far less easy to find ice, Jo wanted to say. A quick look at Tommy struck the comment because she didn't want to explain what she meant. "Yeah, well not all of us can grow up on private estates." She didn't know if that was true, actually. She'd never thought to ask. "Some of us like being surrounded by people instead of livestock." Now she was just making assumptions spurned by the impressions she'd formed of 19th century life as depicted in PBS specials.

Henry licked a bite of his Rocky Road off his spoon with an almost challenging expression, like he wanted to see how many wrong speculations she could throw out before she got one right.

Tommy had pressed his forehead against a railing and was peering down toward the street. "Livestock. That means chickens, right? I used to have chickens. The rooster woke us up every morning."

"Used…to…Tommy, did you remember something from your childhood?" Henry inquired, all his playfulness vanishing as he leaned toward the child.

Tommy shrugged and shoved a biteful of chocolate into his mouth so large that Jo expected him to spit it back out as the inevitable ice-cream headache took hold. He did wince a little, but it passed so quickly that Jo wouldn't have seen it if she hadn't been watching. "Dr. S said I'll start to remember things when I'm ready for them." He swung his feet and added wistfully, "I hope I don't forget this."

So he wasn't the only one melting. Jo had been holding her vanilla milkshake until it thinned enough to suck through the straw. She took a draw while she composed herself. She didn't want to scare Tommy by appearing too excited. Carefully, she asked, "Do you remember anything else?"

He shrugged again. "Not really." Unhelpfully, he added, "I think we had a cow, too." His gaze slid toward her like he he was stealthily trying to check her reaction. That hint of calculated information sharing was back.

Jo took another sip of her milkshake, this time to hide her suspicion. Learning that the kid had grown up on a farm might help Rhonda narrow down where he came from, but it didn't tell Jo anything useful—except that Tommy was smarter than anyone was giving him credit for. He's manipulating us, she acknowledged. For what reason, she couldn't yet guess. Though, it could be as simple as having a warm, dry place to sleep, given his earlier litany. "That's OK. Dr. S is right; you'll remember when you're ready."

She hung on to that, and to the tantalizing hint that Tommy might remember more than he was currently willing to share, over the next hour.

He changed into his pajamas and brushed his teeth without any complaint, then balked at going to bed. With the most doleful expression, he begged Henry for one of the recommended books from earlier. He asked for a glass of water and promised, without any inquiry into the topic, that he wasn't a bed-wetter, and that Henry didn't need to worry about his expensive furniture.

"This is going to be harder than I thought," Jo muttered to herself. She was starting to understand why the Hanson boys had chosen not to sleep in the same room with this kid.

He refused to shut off the light in his room, then crossed his arms and glared daggers at Jo when she suggested a night light. Eventually, she threw her hands up in defeat and told him to do whatever made him happy.

Jo crawled into bed with Henry, too wiped to give any thought to the unfamiliar bounce of the mattress, the too soft texture of the sheets, or the too warm presence of the man next to her. "Do you think we should set an alarm?" She eyed the relevant screen on her phone and allowed a grim thought of despair at the possibility that she'd never be able to sleep in again. She'd better be getting paid for this.

"There's no need." Henry barely glanced over from the book he was reading to answer. He'd propped himself against a pile of pillows, the top sheet folded up neatly over his lap, cutting white across his old fashioned striped pajamas.

This was not how Jo had imagined their first night together. Not even close. She struggled to keep her eyes open, certain there was still something else she needed to do before drifting off. "What if he wakes up before we do? Shouldn't one of us be up first so he doesn't get into anything he shouldn't?" Her voice was turning to a mumble and she didn't know if Henry had heard the whole question.

Henry murmured an answer she didn't quite catch and turned a page. Perfect. They'd just moved in together and they were already acting like they'd been married fifty years.

Sometime in the night, Jo woke. Henry was sitting up only a few beats faster than her and had the bedside light switched on before Jo could tell him not to. The light blinded her; she blinked, trying to acclimate quickly before grabbing her gun and her phone, in that order. Strange noises in the night could be a break-in, and the last thing someone should do if their home was getting robbed was to draw attention to themselves. The safest action was to lock the door and call for help from someone on duty.

"I'll handle this," Henry told her. She heard the whisper of him pulling on his bathrobe and the slap of slippered feet on the hardwood floor. On his way past her side of the bed, he leaned in to place a gentle kiss on her forehead. "It's best if you wait here. We don't want to overwhelm him."

Jo's brow furrowed. She was already familiar with Henry's urge to rush off to investigate any kind of danger without heed for caution or discretion, but his desire to be considerate of the robber's emotional state was new. With her vision finally starting to clear, she reached into the bedside drawer for her gun. Henry never followed directions to stay put when she gave them; she wasn't about to let him go out with backup. Then she heard a strangled noise, like a muffled sob. No, it was a muffled sob.

"Henry?"

Henry stuck his head back in the doorway long enough to say, "A strange bed in a strange room surrounded by strangers is enough to frighten anyone. He only needs some reassurance…and perhaps a cup of hot cocoa. Go back to sleep."

She didn't think she would, didn't think she could. Tommy wasn't the only one in an unfamiliar room and now that she was awake, she became acutely aware of the way passing headlights outside threw shadows on the ceiling in shapes she'd never seen before.

Once she'd identified the noise that awakened her as sobs, they only seemed to grow louder. In the span of a few hours, she'd seen Tommy's moods range all over the map, but he'd given no indication of being afraid. Now he was weeping from what? A nightmare? Homesickness? Panic attack? It could be any of them, or all of them, and she didn't know what to do. Henry did, though, and he'd slipped into the role of father so easily. She pulled the sheets tighter around her body and curled into a ball on her side of the bed. The air-conditioning made no noise, though the waft of cold across her face from the floor vent kept her listening for one. It was something to focus on besides the murmuring that drifted through the wall that divided the two bedrooms. Jo felt like she should be doing something to help, only she couldn't imagine what.

As she finally drifted back to sleep, it occurred to her that seeing Henry-as-a-father was not what he meant by getting to know each other better, though it only happened because of it. What she was losing in physical intimacy, she was gaining in personal insight.