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!

Nico moved before the stranger could draw his hand free.

He stepped between the man and the table of children, catching the stranger's wrist through his overcoat. Something hard struck the tile floor. A small black camera skittered beneath a planter, its lens still pointed toward the girls.

“Who sent you?” Nico asked.

The man tried to pull away. Two restaurant security guards hurried forward, followed by a hostess who stopped dead at the sight of Nico's face.

“I didn't do anything,” the stranger said.

“You followed three children from their school.”

“That isn't illegal.”

“Maybe not.” Nico glanced down at the camera. “The police can decide what you were doing tonight.”

He could have asked the question in a private room. Ten years earlier, he would have. Instead he handed the man to the guards and instructed them to keep the camera untouched for the officers arriving at the conservatory.

The decision cost him a familiar kind of power. He felt the loss almost physically.

Willa was watching from the service doorway. Mrs. Haddad had an arm around June. Piper looked furious.

“That man made us miss our soup,” Piper announced.

“Your soup is coming with you,” Nico said.

The host, whose professional composure was performing heroic service, assured her that this was true.

Nico went out into the corridor after they were safe and called Tomas.

“Police are entering Bennett Blooms now,” Tomas said. “Front window broken. Back door forced. The shop's empty.”

“Check the upstairs apartment.”

“Empty. A neighbor says Mara's van left about fifteen minutes ago. There's broken glass and blood on the floor, but I haven't found her.”

The word blood chilled him more than the weather outside.

“Vehicle description?”

“Green Transit van. Plate ends in four-six-two.”

Nico knew the van. It appeared in the photographs Elise had sent while advocating for this date. A smiling woman holding a huge armful of peonies. Three girls peeking from behind the driver's door. A bright green vehicle with painted white flowers along the sides.

He had dismissed the photograph after ten seconds, telling himself he had no time for this sort of life.

Now he wished he'd studied every inch of it.

“Give the plate to the police,” he said. “Any traffic-camera information goes to them first.”

There was silence on the line.

“Nico,” Tomas said cautiously, “Rafe has people who can locate that van before the police process a report.”

“Not tonight.”

“Understood.”

Nico ended the call. The second message from the unknown number arrived immediately.

Your date is at Pier 27. Come alone if you want her breathing.

He stared at the screen, then forwarded the message to the responding detective whose contact information Tomas had just sent him. It was an act that would have astonished several men who worked for him.

He was not feeling especially impressed with himself. He was feeling afraid.

When Elise arrived, she brought a wool coat for Mrs. Haddad, another mitten for June, and the sharp, practiced calm of a woman accustomed to seeing other people's disasters through to the following morning. She had represented families in civil cases for twelve years. Nico had known her since they were children, back when their parents owned neighboring corner stores and every adult on the block considered every child public property.

“You look terrible,” she told him.

“Nice to see you too.”

“Are they okay?”

“They're frightened. They're pretending not to be.”

“Then stop pretending you're not.”

He showed her the latest message. Elise read it and swore softly.

“You can't go there alone.”

“I'm not going alone. I'm going with officers, if they'll take the threat seriously.”

“They will. Kidnapping threats tend to get their attention.” She watched his face. “Whoever sent this knows your name and Mara's. That is not a coincidence.”

“I know.”

“What haven't you told me?”

Nico almost gave his usual answer: Nothing that concerns you. Instead he told her about the Bellini warning, the shipping berth, and the delivery number written on the girls' cookie bag.

Elise's expression tightened at the number.

“Two-seven-four-one,” she repeated. “Mara asked me about it yesterday.”

“Why?”

“She was auditing some accounts for a benefit gala. Her studio supplies arrangements for the Harbor Families Fund. She discovered that deliveries listed under her business number were being charged to the fund, but the flowers never left her shop.”

“Who runs the fund?”

“A coalition of businesses. Your foundation is a major donor.”

Nico stopped walking.

Elise held his gaze. “You didn't know?”

“No.”

“That,” she said, “is becoming a pattern.”

At the conservatory, officers interviewed the stranger and collected his camera. He gave a name that did not appear on his identification, then requested a lawyer. A patrol car escorted Mrs. Haddad, Elise, and the girls to Elise's townhouse. Willa insisted on taking their unfinished questionnaire. Piper took the cookies. June refused to leave until Nico leaned down and promised to send word about her mother.

“I can't promise good news,” he told her.

“I know,” she said. “Promise you won't disappear.”

“I'll make sure you hear from me.”

She examined him, then nodded. Children had an alarming way of making a modest promise feel enormous.

Detective Sonia Park met Nico at the conservatory entrance. She was in her late thirties, with dark hair tucked beneath a winter hat and an expression suggesting she had already heard several versions of the evening and believed none of them completely.

“Mr. Valente,” she said. “You have enemies.”

“I've been told.”

“Usually that means complicated business disputes. Tonight it means a woman may have been kidnapped.”

“I gave you the message and the location.”

“And I appreciate that. But I need you to understand something. You are not running this operation.”

The old reflex rose in him. No one told Nico Valente what he was not running.

Then he remembered June's bare hand on his sleeve.

“Understood,” he said.

Park studied him for a moment. “That was easier than I expected.”

“Don't spread it around.”

The officers moved quickly. They found the floral van near a fenced service road leading toward Pier Twenty-Seven. Its doors stood open. Inside lay a smashed phone, a spool of green ribbon, and a woman's coat caught on a metal latch. There was no Mara.

Twenty minutes later, a harbor maintenance worker noticed a light shining beneath the door of an old refrigerated storage unit beside the marine supply warehouse. The unit had been disconnected from commercial service, but its emergency lock could still be operated from outside.

Mara Bennett was inside.

She sat on the concrete floor with her injured ankle stretched in front of her, pressing a rag against a cut on her forehead. When Park entered, Mara tried to rise and nearly fainted.

“Where are my girls?” she demanded.

“Safe with Elise Carter,” Park told her. “They are all together. An ambulance is coming.”

Mara stared at the detective, struggling to believe the words.

“Did the men get to them?”

“No.”

“They said if I didn't come here, they'd go to the school. They said they had pictures.”

Park crouched beside her. “Who are they?”

“One called the other Bennett's florist, like a joke. I never saw their faces.” Her voice broke. “They wanted my account files. I told them I didn't know what they were talking about.”

Nico stood in the open doorway behind the officers. He had followed the police convoy to the permitted perimeter, then waited until Park waved him over. Mara saw him and went very still.

He recognized her from Elise's photographs. Her hair was tangled, her cheek bruised, and her floral-print blouse had been torn at one cuff. But her eyes were the same steady gray-green that had made him linger over the pictures longer than he'd admitted.

“Nico?”

“Yes.”

“My children?”

“Hot chocolate. Elise's house. Piper is conducting an investigation into why restaurants serve small pasta.”

A sound escaped her that was half laugh, half sob. She covered her face with both hands.

He wanted to cross the room and lift her out of the cold. He stayed where he was. It mattered that she have one person tonight who did not decide things for her.

“I'm sorry you were alone,” he said.

Mara lowered her hands. “I wasn't. They knew I had children, Nico. They told me exactly where Willa sits in class.”

Park exchanged a glance with a uniformed officer.

“Did they say why they wanted the files?” she asked.

Mara nodded. “One of them said, 'You should have let the dead stay dead.'”

Nico felt something shift inside him.

“Who died?” he asked.

Mara looked at him as though the answer should have been obvious.

“My husband,” she said. “Daniel Bennett. Four years ago, at your pier.”

Nico knew the name, although he had not heard it spoken in years. Daniel Bennett had been a municipal safety analyst contracted to inspect equipment at the river terminals. Officially, his death had been an accident involving a fall from a loading platform. Nico remembered a report, an insurance payment, and his chief of operations insisting the matter was closed.

His chief of operations had been Rafe Mercer.

Mara watched recognition arrive on Nico's face.

“You do know,” she said.

“I know there was an accident.”

“That's what everyone said. The police, the port authority, your company. They said Daniel fell and nobody saw it.”

“I'm sorry.”

She shook her head. “Please don't apologize like that. Not until you know what you're apologizing for.”

He accepted the correction. It was the kind of honesty he had asked from people all his life but rarely permitted himself to hear.

Paramedics brought a stretcher into the room. As Mara allowed them to check her ankle, she caught Nico's sleeve.

“I need you to ask your people about a number,” she whispered.

“Two-seven-four-one?”

Her fingers tightened.