I didn’t ask the next question. Dane didn’t make me.
“Stay on the line,” he said.
Collins glanced at me in the rearview mirror. He’d heard enough to know, and he didn’t change his pace or his route. He drove the way he’d driven from the café—ten over the limit, no signal at the lane changes, and no expression at the wheel.
The rain turned steady. Somewhere on the eighth floor of the Park Plaza, a man I had watched an hour ago might be dead.
“Dane.”
“Here.”
“How long until they know?”
“Minutes.”
I watched a gull land on the railing of the bridge ahead and lift off again before we passed under it.
I listened to Dane’s breathing. In the background was Eamon’s voice, too low to make out.
“Farrow,” Dane said.”Park Plaza confirmed. Single victim. In the hallway outside room eight-seventeen.”
“Confirmed dead?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes for half a second.
“How?” I asked.
“Twice. Close range. Three doors down.”
“They were waiting,” I said.
“Likely.”
It all took less than half an hour. Henry had been alive when Collins pulled away from the curb in the South End. He had been dead before we crossed the river.
I thought about his face in the chrome. Thinner than the image I’d had of him. The bags under his eyes. The way he’d thanked the barista by name.
“Where’s Cabot?” I asked.
“Reed is bringing him in. He doesn’t know yet.”
“Don’t tell him on the comm.”
“We won’t.”
I looked out the window. The trees on the parkway had gone bare in the last week. The rain on the glass made the sodium light on the road ahead break into long yellow streaks.
“Dane. He came to us.”
“Yes, he came to us, and we had him for an hour and a half.”
“Don’t tell me it’s not on us.”
A beat.
“It’s on us,” Dane said.