THE MAFIA BOSS WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE AFTER WAITING 23 MINUTES FOR HIS BLIND DATE—BUT THREE LITTLE GIRLS KNOCKED ON HIS CAR WINDOW AND DELIVERED A MESSAGE FROM THEIR MOTHER!

“Are you Nico?”

The little girl with the braids asked the question as though there were a correct answer and she had already prepared herself for the possibility of a lie.

Nico Valente stared at her through the narrow opening in his car window. Behind her, a wet Philadelphia street reflected the white headlights of passing traffic. Snow sat in exhausted heaps along the curb. He could see three children, a paper bag, and absolutely no adult who belonged to them.

“That depends,” he said. “Who's asking?”

“Willa Bennett.” She planted her boots. “This is Piper. That is June. We're Mara Bennett's daughters.”

The girl in the red hat gave a small wave. The smallest one did not. She was inspecting him with grave brown eyes.

Nico opened the window another inch. “Where's your mother?”

“That's what we came to discuss,” Willa said.

From the front seat, his driver, Tomas, tilted his head toward the side mirror. Nico knew that movement. Tomas had spotted a man in a dark coat standing under the bus shelter across the road, studying the sedan instead of checking the transit schedule.

“We aren't supposed to talk to strangers,” Piper volunteered. “But we're making an exception because Elise knows you, and our mom has talked about you, and there's a list.”

She pulled a folded sheet from her coat. Willa immediately took it away from her.

“First,” Willa said, “we need to establish whether you're actually the person.”

“I'm Nico Valente.”

“Can you prove it?”

He glanced at Tomas. His driver looked away to hide a smile.

Nico offered his identification through the opening. Willa examined it without touching it, then compared the photograph with his face.

“Your picture makes you look angry.”

“I was at the motor vehicle office.”

“That's understandable,” Piper said.

She held up the paper bag. “We brought cookies. They're chocolate chip, except June put pretzels in three of them because she says grown-ups need surprises.”

Nico could feel his phone buzzing against his thigh. Rafe Mercer would not stop calling until he answered. Bellini's men near Pier Twenty-Seven meant old business was moving at the worst possible hour. He should have sent the children toward the restaurant and driven away.

Instead, he asked, “Who brought you here?”

Willa hesitated. That told him more than a quick answer would have.

“Mrs. Haddad,” June said quietly. “She's over there.”

A round-faced woman appeared from beneath the conservatory awning, waving with one hand and holding a phone to her ear with the other. She looked frightened rather than negligent. When Nico met her gaze, she crossed toward the car.

“Mr. Valente?” she called. “I'm Samira Haddad. I live above Mara's studio. I am so sorry. I received a message from Mara saying she needed the girls here. Then I called her, and now her phone goes straight to voicemail.”

Nico's irritation vanished as neatly as a light switching off.

“Show me the message.”

Samira passed her phone to Tomas. It was brief, written in Mara's ordinary warm style: Please bring the girls to Riverside. Something happened at the shop. Nico will help. Don't frighten them.

Nico had never spoken to Mara outside an introductory telephone call and a few careful texts. He had certainly never agreed to supervise her children. Someone else had decided he would.

Willa watched his expression change.

“That's not good, is it?”

“It's not something I understand yet,” he said.

June stepped closer. Her bare hand was beginning to redden in the cold. “Before you do grown-up things, we have the most important question.”

Nico looked at her. “Go ahead.”

“If somebody gets hurt because of something you did, will you tell the truth about it?”

The street seemed to go strangely still.

It was a child's voice, but the question belonged in a room full of federal prosecutors. It reached backward through twenty years of Nico's life and found doors he had kept locked.

He knew what a reassuring man would say. Of course. Always. You can trust me.

He also knew how often those words had been used as covers for terrible things.

“Yes,” he said at last. “Even if the truth makes me look bad. And if I don't know the whole truth, I won't pretend I do.”

June nodded once. “Okay. That's the answer Mom likes.”

Piper leaned toward the window. “Mine is whether you're nice to dogs.”

“I've never owned one.”

“You can still be nice to them.”

“I intend to be.”

“Good.” Piper opened the paper bag. “Then you can have a regular cookie.”

Nico took it because refusing seemed rude in a way that would matter more than the dozens of men he'd insulted without hesitation. The cookie was lopsided, still faintly soft, with a corner crushed by Piper's glove.

His phone vibrated again.

Rafe: Where are you? Answer now.

Then a new message appeared from an unfamiliar number.

Do you like the company, Valente? Ask their mother what happened at Pier Twenty-Seven.

Nico looked up at the bus shelter. The man in the dark coat had disappeared.

“Tomas,” he said evenly, “open the other door. Mrs. Haddad, please come inside with them. We're going to the restaurant.”

Willa's face tightened. “You haven't passed the whole questionnaire.”

“You can finish it somewhere warm.”

“We're not supposed to get into cars with strangers.”

“Then we won't use the car. We can walk to the conservatory together. Mrs. Haddad stays with you. Tomas stays with us.”

Willa considered that. “Acceptable.”

She said it like a judge permitting a minor procedural change.

Nico stepped out into the cutting air. At six feet two, dressed in a charcoal overcoat, he caused a brief silence among the people gathered beneath the restaurant canopy. The host recognized him immediately and moved to open the glass doors.

Inside, the Riverside Conservatory was alive with warm air and the scent of damp soil. Ferns climbed its brick walls. A musician played piano softly beside a small indoor fountain. Nico's untouched table for two stood near a wall of tropical leaves.

He asked for a larger table, hot chocolate, and four bowls of soup. The host did not question the unusual number of guests.

Samira kept her phone in both hands. “Mara was at the studio around seven. She called to say the delivery driver hadn't shown up. At eight-thirty, I got that text. When I arrived here, she wasn't outside. The girls insisted we'd find you by the black car.”

“We saw a picture,” Willa explained. “Elise sent one to Mom.”

Nico made a mental note to tell Elise never again to circulate photographs of him near innocent people. Then he noticed the small rectangular sticker on the paper bag. It carried the name of Mara's studio—Bennett Blooms—and beneath it, a handwritten delivery number.

2741.

He had seen those four digits earlier that day, on an internal routing report from Pier Twenty-Seven. Four digits alone were not proof of anything. In his world, however, coincidences were usually expensive.

Piper surveyed the menu. “Is this a fancy place?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then their macaroni might be too small.”

“They'll make some your size.”

“You can't know that.”

“No,” Nico admitted. “But I can ask.”

June, who had been silent since her question at the car, held out the folded questionnaire. Nico accepted it. At the top, written in Willa's careful printing, were the words QUESTIONS FOR MOM'S DINNER PERSON.

Under that heading: Will you listen when Mom says no? Do you keep promises? Are you afraid of anything? What do you do when you're wrong?

Nico read the list twice.

He was still holding it when a call came through from Elise Carter.

“Tell me Mara's with you,” she said without greeting.

“No. The girls are here with their neighbor. Why?”

“Because Mara called me from the studio. She said someone was breaking in. I heard a crash, and then the line went dead.”

Nico rose immediately. “When?”

“Five minutes ago.”

He looked at the girls, who were negotiating whether hot chocolate counted as dessert. Their small coats were hanging over the backs of expensive chairs. They trusted the room because adults were behaving as though it was ordinary.

“Call the police,” Nico said. “Tell them everything you heard. Then meet us here.”

“Nico—”

“Do it, Elise.”

He ended the call and signaled Tomas into the far corner of the room.

“Go to Bennett Blooms with the police,” he said under his breath. “Don't touch anything. Look for Mara. Send me photographs of the delivery van and anyone watching the street. And keep Rafe out of this until I understand why a stranger wants me at the pier.”

Tomas's expression changed. “Keep Rafe out?”

“For now.”

“Understood.”

The driver left through the service corridor.

Nico returned to the table. Willa had turned the questionnaire to a fresh page.

“You've been on the phone a lot,” she observed.

“Yes.”

“Mom says sometimes people pretend work is urgent because they don't want to talk about feelings.”

“Your mother sounds observant.”

“She is. It's exhausting.”

He almost smiled. Then June looked toward the doorway and said, “The man from outside is here.”

Nico didn't turn his head. He saw the man's reflection in the dark conservatory glass: gray scarf, black coat, hands tucked deeply into his pockets. The stranger was pretending to read a plaque beneath a palm tree.

June's voice was no louder than a whisper. “He was near our school on Tuesday.”

Nico felt the last safe distance between his private life and his old one disappear.

“Willa,” he said, putting the questionnaire on the table, “do you know what a fire drill is?”

“Of course.”

“This is like one. Nobody runs. You and your sisters stay with Mrs. Haddad. You follow the host through that side door and wait in his office until Elise arrives.”

“Is Mom in trouble?”

“I don't know yet.” He forced himself to hold her eyes. “But I'm going to find out.”

June put her small bare hand on his sleeve before he could stand.

“You said you wouldn't pretend,” she reminded him.

“I remember.”

“And if it's your fault?”

He looked at the child whose mother might already be paying for a wrong he hadn't yet identified.

“Then I'll say so,” he answered.

Outside the glass, a siren began to rise through the winter night.

The stranger in the gray scarf turned away from the plaque.