MAFIA BOSS CUT OPEN A LITTLE GIRL'S STUFFED WHALE—BUT WHAT HE FOUND INSIDE MADE HIM REALIZE SOMEONE IN HIS OWN HOUSE WAS LISTENING.

The lockdown began with a metallic click inside the walls. Steel shutters descended over the lower-floor windows, and lights swept across the rain-soaked lawn. Niko's men moved quickly, but nobody shouted. That frightened Tessa more than shouting would have. They had practiced this.

Gabriel disappeared into the surveillance room. Mara brought Junie a glass of milk and asked whether she would like to see the library. Junie shook her head and clung to Harbor. Tessa was ready to follow her into any room that didn't contain Nicolas Baron and his suddenly revived brother.

“Do you believe that voice?” Tessa asked.

Niko stood near the cold fireplace. “Which part?”

“The part about not trusting me.”

“I believe someone wants us suspicious of each other.”

“That's not an answer.”

“No,” he said. “It's the best answer I have.”

He directed Mara to take Junie to the sitting room directly across the hall and leave the door open. Tessa watched her daughter settle into a chair with a coloring book. She could see her every time she looked up. Only then did Niko speak again.

“The caller had access to a private family recording. Luca and I lost our mother when he was seventeen. Very few people knew how she said our names.”

“Could the voice really be his?”

“No.” His answer came quickly this time. “I saw the gunshot wound. I buried him. I know grief can make intelligent people believe nonsense, and I'm not going to let mine do it.”

Tessa appreciated the effort. She also saw that his right hand had not stopped trembling.

Gabriel returned carrying a security log. “No one crossed the grounds. The call came through an old switching service that makes the origin look like a disconnected number. We found a replay of Luca's voice in your father's home movies.”

“Those videos are in a locked cabinet,” Niko said.

“Three were copied years ago by a production company for the memorial service. Someone could have kept them.”

Niko looked toward the ceiling as though trying to remember every face at that funeral. “Get me the guest list.”

Tessa almost laughed at the absurdity of investigating a six-year-old memorial service while her five-year-old played with crayons twenty feet away. Then she remembered that every attack on them had begun with an insignificant detail someone else knew.

“Show me the caller's words,” she said.

Gabriel wrote them on a notepad. If you want the child to live, stop trusting the woman who brought her through your gate.

“Brought her through the gate,” Tessa repeated. “I didn't bring Junie here. Whitaker did. He picked the route. He insisted on this address. Could the caller have meant a different woman?”

Mara, in the doorway, looked up from a tray of cookies. Tessa noticed the coincidence of her name and thought of Junie's strange reaction when they arrived.

“Junie,” she called gently. “When Mara first said hello, you got scared. Why?”

Junie paused with a purple crayon in her hand. “I thought she was the other Miss Mara.”

The housekeeper set down the tray.

“What other Miss Mara?” Tessa asked.

“The lady at the motel who asked me to draw Harbor. She had red glasses. She said she was here to make us feel safe.”

Tessa felt the pieces shift. A federal child-support specialist had visited after Quincy. The woman had introduced herself as Dr. Mara Bell, a trauma counselor assigned by Whitaker. She had questioned Junie about the night of the attack, though Tessa had never received a written report.

“She showed you a picture of a whale?” Tessa asked.

“She wanted me to draw the whale's tummy.”

Niko's gaze sharpened. “Why his tummy?”

“She said toys have secrets. I told her Harbor doesn't tell on his friends.”

Tessa knelt by her daughter. “You did nothing wrong. Can you remember anything else?”

“Miss Mara asked if Daddy made Harbor. I said yes.”

Tessa touched the little girl's shoulder. “That's true.”

Junie's father, Eli Lind, had made the whale in the winter before Junie was born. He worked with wood and canvas, repairing small fishing boats at a yard outside Gloucester. He was terrible at sewing and stubborn about learning. His first attempt had looked like a lumpy blue potato. He had remade it three times until it resembled an animal. Eli died in what police described as a one-car accident when Junie was three. The police had found his truck at the bottom of a coastal embankment after a storm. Tessa had learned to live with questions because grief did not accept answers on a schedule.

Now Niko was looking at Harbor as though he might hold more than old stuffing and the remains of a federal microphone.

“May I see a photograph of your husband?” Niko asked.

Tessa stiffened. “Why?”

“Because Whitaker brought a consultant to ask a child about a handmade object. That's not standard witness protection. Someone believes Eli left something behind.”

“He didn't work for Doyle.”

“I didn't say he did.”

Tessa opened her phone and found a picture of Eli standing by his workbench with Junie on his shoulders. He had a crooked smile, sandy hair, and a faded red jacket. Behind him hung a sign bearing three painted waves beneath a lighthouse.

Niko stared at the sign. “There's that symbol.”

“Eli called his workshop Three Waves Marine,” Tessa said. “It was his father's old logo.”

Gabriel leaned over her shoulder. “That symbol was on the maintenance man's sticker.”

“But Eli's shop closed after he died.”

“Who took over the property?” Gabriel asked.

Tessa opened her mouth and stopped. She had signed paperwork months after the funeral, exhausted and half numb. An investment group had purchased the remaining lease and inventory. Her sister Celia had handled most of the calls.

“Celia,” she said. “My sister arranged it.”

The room went quiet.

Niko asked, “Where is your sister?”

“In Vermont, as far as I know. Whitaker told me to stop contacting her when I entered protection.”

“Would she have known where you stayed?”

“No. I followed the rules. I didn't even tell her Junie's new name.”

Niko rubbed his forehead. “Find the transaction for the workshop. I want the buyer and every company that stood behind it.”

Gabriel was already typing.

By dawn, rain had thinned to mist. Junie finally fell asleep on the study sofa, Harbor beneath her cheek. Tessa remained awake with coffee she couldn't drink. Gabriel emerged carrying a printout that seemed too small to hold anything important.

“Three Waves Marine's lease was acquired by Tideglass Properties,” he said. “Tideglass lists a manager named Eleanor Pike. That name appears on donations to Mariner Relief.”

“Another shell,” Tessa said.

“Maybe. But I found a photograph of Pike at a fundraiser.” Gabriel turned his laptop toward them. A group of donors stood beneath blue and silver balloons. A smiling woman in dark glasses held a plaque. Beside her was Dean Whitaker, looking ten years younger.

Tessa leaned close. “That's not Eleanor Pike.”

“Who is it?” Niko asked.

“Celia.”

Her younger sister stood in the photograph wearing a necklace Tessa had given her for her thirtieth birthday. Celia had sworn she hated cameras. At Eli's funeral she had held Tessa upright when her knees gave way. She had picked Junie up from daycare for months afterward, brought groceries, sorted bills, and handled the sale of the workshop. Tessa had trusted her with the wreckage of their lives.

“This picture is from four years ago,” Gabriel said.

“That was before Eli died.”

Niko studied the event banner. “And before you discovered the laundering.”

Tessa's voice sounded very far away. “She told me she'd never met Whitaker until the night he came to my office.”

Gabriel opened another image. It had been taken at Luca Baron's memorial reception six years earlier. A young Celia stood at the edge of the crowd, half hidden behind a pillar, looking directly at the camera. Dean Whitaker stood beside her.

“Why was she there?” Tessa whispered.

Niko stared at the picture, his face suddenly hard. “That's what we're going to find out.”

Tessa backed away from the table. A hundred memories rearranged themselves at once: Celia insisting the truck crash was an accident, Celia telling her to stop looking at Eli's receipts, Celia being the first person to suggest taking her concerns to a particular FBI agent. Every act of kindness seemed newly sharp, though Tessa hated herself for thinking it.

“Maybe she was helping him,” Tessa said. “Maybe there's an explanation.”

“There may be,” Niko answered.

“Don't talk to me like she's guilty until you know.”

“I won't. But I won't leave a door unlocked because you love the person standing outside it.”

From the sofa came Junie's sleepy voice. “Aunt Celia knows a song.”

Tessa turned. Her daughter was half awake, the whale in her lap.

“What song, baby?”

“The lighthouse one. Daddy's song. Aunt Celia said if anybody asked, I should tell them I forgot it.”

Tessa sat down very slowly. “When did she say that?”

“Before we went with Mr. Dean.”

Niko stepped closer. “Do you still remember the song?”

Junie hugged Harbor and looked at the adults gathered around her. For a moment she seemed not five but a hundred years old, the way frightened children sometimes do.

“Daddy said it's not a song for strangers,” she whispered.

Tessa took her hand. “Then you don't have to sing it for anybody.”

Outside, the first light of morning reached the sea. Inside, Gabriel's phone vibrated with a new message. He read it and went pale.