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off, if not outright rich, at least as far as he knew. All except Elise. So what was she doing there? “How did Elise get in here to play?”

“Jacob recommended her.” Her lips twisted with disgust and she corrected herself. “Rick recommended her.”

“How did he get in?”

“Emmanuel. He’d been my dealer since day one, and I’d known him for years before that. He was going to be out of town for a while, he said. Family emergency. Told me he knew someone who could fill in. I was in a pinch. I could either suspend the games until he came back or I could trust his referral. And why wouldn’t I trust him?”

Although Ava did not look as disgusted by this second realization, Liam was certain it must have hit her harder than the first. To be betrayed by a friend was always worse than being betrayed by a stranger.

“I need to find Rick,” Liam said. He knew something about Elise. Maybe a lot. And now there was this whole bizarre ID thing Liam needed to understand. And Ava’s. What were they doing there? He could feel there was some sort of connective tissue that bound these things together. But maybe that was wishful thinking. Either way, this was where his investigation had led, and Rick was the person he needed to talk to next.

Ava got up and walked around her desk. She removed a lone key from her purse and unlocked the bottom-right desk drawer. She took out a collection of hanging file folders, then pried off a panel on the bottom of the drawer. Underneath was a thin stack of papers. “There are certain things you don’t keep on the computer,” she said.

She flipped through the papers until she found the one she wanted. “After I hired Jacob—Rick—I did my due diligence. I tried to, anyway. Couldn’t find much. I got a copy of his credit and that looked okay.” Ava took a pen and a piece of paper out of another drawer and started copying something onto it.

“It’s probably a real name, just not his,” Liam said.

“Yeah, well, anyway, I needed more than that. I trusted Emmanuel, but I needed to know where to find this Rick if it ever came to it, so I had someone follow him home his first night.” Ava handed Liam the piece of paper. On it was an address.

Christopher Bell

Rick had used his real name when renting his apartment and opening his CTA account. He liked to keep his legal activities as far away from his illegal ones as possible. Until Chris Bell had showed up at his door, that had seemed like a good idea.

Chris, of course, didn’t know this. What he knew was that somebody named Richard Hawthorne had stolen his wallet, broken into his safety deposit box, and, for some strange reason, shown up at his office.

It was so unfathomable that the more he thought about it the less sure he was the receptionist had said “Richard Hawthorne.” He could go downstairs and ask the security guard for the name himself, just to make sure he wasn’t crazy. But he suspected there might be another option, one that would drive out the uncertainty in a way hearing the name again couldn’t.

Chris brought up a browser and performed a search very similar to the one Liam had earlier. He hadn’t looked Rick up when Arkin got his address from the CTA system. The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. Why would it? As far as he was concerned, a name and address was all he needed. And after things went awry at the apartment, what was the point in looking him up then? It wasn’t as if Rick was likely to walk into his office one afternoon and announce himself.

But one profile after another—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—all told him that was exactly what Rick had done.

So strange.

He’d come asking about a girl who’d run a con on Chris years earlier. Why? What was their connection? He didn’t look like the man who had been with her that night, but that was years ago, so maybe he was. Either way, it didn’t make sense. So, again, why?

Chris wished he hadn’t brushed Rick off just to get away from him. He should have heard the man out, found out what he wanted, then dragged him to the parking lot and . . . what? Pinned him down and started breaking fingers until Rick told him where the ring was? That was ridiculous. He didn’t know what he would have done after he listened to what Rick had to say. But he should have started there and perhaps instinct would have told him what to do next.

He fumed, pounded his desk. A coworker walking by asked if everything was all right. “Leave me alone,” he snapped, and slammed his door shut.

Rick had walked right into Chris’s office and he’d let him go. He’d missed his best opportunity to get the ring back. Maybe his last.

Maybe, maybe not.

Chris still had the alert set up to notify him if Rick used his credit card. Hoping for a miracle, he logged into the email account to see if he had received any notifications. It was empty.

Richard Hawthorne

Rick felt like he was on a stakeout. He’d heard this was the kind of thing cops sometimes did—sitting in a car, watching a house, waiting for something to happen. It was incredibly boring. He couldn’t understand why anybody would choose to do this more than once. Of course, a cop would be prepared to handle more than his most basic needs. He’d have a sandwich and snacks, a thermos of coffee, and maybe someone to talk to. While Rick had none of that, at least he had enough gas to keep the heater running and an empty water bottle to pee into.

The sun went down. The shadows of trees that lined the street grew long, melding into those of the houses until they became a single sheet of darkness punctuated