Avery followed forty feet behind.

The tavern’s side window opened into an alley smelling of old beer and brine. It was chest-high for an adult, which made it eye level for a child standing on an overturned milk crate. Avery climbed up and lowered herself until only her hat showed.

Inside, Eleanor sat in a back booth across from a woman in a charcoal blazer.

The woman reached for coffee.

Her jacket shifted.

A badge clipped to her belt caught the light.

ATF.

Eleanor slid a manila envelope across the table.

“My daughter wrote everything in there,” Eleanor said. “She died because of that book. I will not let her die for nothing.”

The woman opened the envelope, glanced at the pages, and closed it.

“Mrs. Brennan, four photocopied pages won’t seat a grand jury. I need the whole notebook. Every name. Every address. Every dollar figure.”

“How high does it go?” Eleanor asked.

The agent paused.

“High enough that I won’t say names in this bar. High enough I won’t say them on a phone. Bring me the notebook. Original. Tomorrow morning. Eleven. Fenway Park, Gate C. Third turnstile from the left. Wear something red.”

Avery did not understand everything.

She understood enough.

Her grandmother had something her mother had died for.

And she was about to give it to a federal agent.

Avery stepped backward off the crate.

Her shoulder hit a body.

Hands clamped around her arms.

Dominic Russo’s cologne filled her nose.

For half a second, he did not recognize her.

Then the alley light flickered yellow across her face.

His scarred mouth changed.

Avery bit his hand as hard as she had ever bitten anything.

Dominic cursed.

She twisted like a cat and ran.

She did not run toward home by the street. She ran alleys, cutthroughs, loading docks, under a wholesaler’s grate no grown man could fit through. She did not look back. Once, she heard boots on stone behind her. Then the boots lost direction.

She reached the apartment at 6:55.

Eleanor was not home.

Avery did not turn on the light.

She climbed onto her bed in her boots and dialed the number on the white card.

Xavier answered after one ring.

“Yes.”

“It’s Avery,” she whispered.

His chair moved.

“My grandmother is going to be in danger tomorrow. Eleven. Fenway Park.”

Xavier was already standing.

He kept her on the line for forty seconds.

Three questions.

Three answers.

Then one instruction.

“Lock the deadbolt. Sit on the bathroom floor. Do not open the door for anyone except Marcus or me.”

He hung up and crossed the office before Marcus finished drawing his weapon.

What Xavier did not know was that Dominic Russo had already called Liam O’Halloran.

By 7:30 that evening, Liam had been told an old fishmonger had given pages to a federal agent at the Wharf Tavern.

Liam did not take chances with women who gave pages to federals.

He gave the order before finishing his second whiskey.

Xavier worked through the night.

Two men watched the front of Eleanor’s building.

Two more drove past every twenty minutes.

He told himself a sleeping child should not be woken by men with guns and put into an Escalade before dawn.

He told himself the watch outside was enough.

He was wrong.

At 3:42 a.m., a gray panel van without plates pulled to the curb behind the building.

Three men went up the back fire stairs.

They were inside 3B for less than four minutes.

The watchers saw nothing.

They had been told to watch the front.

Marcus reached the apartment at 4:06.

The front door was open the width of a hand.

Inside, the kitchen lamp lay broken under the table. A chair was on its side. One of Eleanor’s slippers sat by the threshold. Two black scuff marks crossed the linoleum, the kind a woman’s heels make when she is pulled backward.

There was no Eleanor.

Marcus moved to the small bedroom.

The box spring had been shoved sideways.

The brown notebook was gone.

Then he saw Avery’s closet door.

Closed.

The bottom slat dented inward in the shape of a child’s rubber boot.

Marcus knelt.

“Avery. It’s Marcus. Three knocks. You remember?”

He knocked once.

Paused.

Then twice more.

The closet opened.

Avery sat on a pile of winter coats, knees to her chest, eyes dry and red. In her left hand, pressed so hard into her palm that the corner had cut a mark into her thumb, was the brown leather notebook.

Marcus understood.

Eleanor had handed it to her granddaughter and shut her into the closet.

Then she had let the men take her.

To draw them away.

Marcus took the notebook.

He held out his other hand.

Avery put hers in it without a word.

They carried her down the back stairs and into the Escalade.

They did not go to Brooklyn.

They went to Xavier’s warehouse because rumors traveled quickly in Brooklyn, and Xavier no longer trusted every wall in his own house.

Xavier was waiting in the office.

When Avery entered, she stopped in front of the walnut desk.

Her boots were still on.

Her face had changed.

Xavier saw it.

There was a black thread now in the green of her eyes, fine and certain.

A child had learned the shape of consequence.

She spoke quietly.

“They took her because you didn’t come in time.”

In fifteen years, no bullet had reached as far inside Xavier Castellano as that sentence.

He did not defend himself.

There was no defense.

Father Patrick guided Avery to the leather couch beneath the window. Marcus found a small brown bear in a knitted vest and set it in her lap. She did not look at it.

She held it.

She watched Xavier.

Father Patrick opened the notebook.

The first page began:

Six bodies in two months, and not one obituary mentions where they worked.

He read in silence for ninety seconds, then summarized.

Sarah Brennan had traced a smuggling pipeline through South Boston’s waterfront. Overdose deaths first. Then weapons. Ships. Container numbers. Skipped inspections. Names in New York. Philadelphia. Halifax. Constanța.

He turned to the last entry.

Went still.

“Xavier.”

The last page was dated three days before Sarah Brennan died.

Chief Whitmore came to the house tonight. He didn’t say what he meant. He didn’t have to. He knows I know. If anything happens to me, give this notebook to ATF. Not Boston PD. Not anyone in Boston PD. Not one.