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him as he left Dwyer’s
apartment.
    “Maybe. You?”
    “Bupkiss. You get a next of kin?”
    “Nursing home, St. Paul. You get any calls back from
the building manager?”
    “Nope. I couldn’t find any tenants who seemed to care
for her.”
    “She has a grandson.” Noah’s brows went up. “Panty
fetish.” “Interesting. I wonder if Mr. Panty Fetish has a record.”
    “I’ll run the grandson, you find the mom. Call and
I’ll meet you at the nursing home.”
    “What about Gus Dixon’s case reports?”
    “Records said they’d have everything pulled when we
got back to the station.”
    Jack checked his watch with a sigh. “No dessert for me
tonight.” Noah gritted his teeth. “You get too much dessert, partner .”
    Jack snorted. “This from the man who hasn’t had
dessert in how long?”
    Noah shook his head. Everyone saw that Jack was a
train wreck. Everyone but Jack. “Just find Brisbane’s mother. I’ll meet you
there.”
    “I’ll call Abbott,” Jack said, “and give him a heads
up.”
    Abbott was their boss. “I already did, while you were
having your ‘quickie dessert.’ ” Jack’s eyes flashed, his lie called out. “And
no, I didn’t tell him you weren’t there.”
    Jack let out a careful breath. “I owe you one.”
    Noah met Jack’s eyes, held them. “Don’t make me sorry,
Jack. Please.”
    Jack looked away. “I’ll call you when I find
Brisbane’s mother.”
    Sunday, February 21, 8:45 p.m.
    The crowd was cheering at the largest of Sal’s
flat-screen TVs. It was college hoops and home team star Tom Hunter had the
ball. Not much more needed to be said.
    Eve watched her oldest friend fly across the screen,
dropping the ball through the hoop like it was nothing. A cheer shook the room
and Eve rocked back on her heels.
    “Yes,” she whispered, then jumped when a stream of
cold beer ran up her sleeve. She jerked the overflowing pitcher out from under
the tap and shook her sleeve with a grimace. Careless . She’d have to let
it dry, as there was no time to change.
    Tonight’s other bartender hadn’t shown. The line at
the bar had been unending, but so far, no one was complaining. As long as the
home team kept winning, that shouldn’t change. As long as the team kept passing
to Tom Hunter, winning was assured.
    “Your friend’s got a real gift,” Sal said behind her,
quiet approval in his voice.
    Eve jumped. For a man with a bad leg, Sal moved with
surprising stealth. Then again, the bar was so noisy that she couldn’t hear
herself think. Tonight, that was good.
    “I know,” she said. She’d known Tom was gifted the
first time she’d seen him play on a crumbling blacktop in a poor Chicago
neighborhood. She’d been fourteen, Tom ten, both older than their years. She’d
been a runaway, and in a different way, so had he.
    They’d become friends, raised under the sheltering
wings of three amazing Chicago women who had become Eve’s family. But her bond
with Tom went far deeper.
    Tom was one of the few who truly understood Eve’s
nightmares, because the same monster haunted his. Both of them bore scars
inflicted by Tom’s biological father, Rob Winters. But now they were both past
all that. Reinvented.
    Tom was the reason she was here, in Minneapolis. When
he’d been awarded a basketball scholarship to one of the country’s top schools,
he’d challenged her to come with him, to take her life back. To come out of the
dark and start anew.
    And she had. Now Tom was on his way to becoming a
basketball legend, like his adopted father, Max Hunter. And I’m finally out
of the darkness and into the light. “Tom makes it look easy,” she said.
“Size fourteen feet should not be able to move like that.”
    “I’m not talking about his game,” Sal said. “I’m
talking about his talk to Josie’s kids.”
    Eve glanced up at him, puzzled. Sal’s wife, Josie, was
a high school guidance counselor in one of Minneapolis’s tougher neighborhoods.
“When was