time, the celebrated lieutenant lost control completely.

“He’s lying! He’s saving himself!”

“Then you’ll have every opportunity to explain that with counsel present,” Captain Shaw said.

Rourke struggled once, realized how many cameras were pointed toward him, and stopped.

Dominic watched him carefully.

A man who had spent years controlling rooms had just discovered what it felt like to become evidence inside one.

But the case was far from finished.

Dunn’s confession was incomplete.

Gabriel’s body had not been found.

The shell-company records had disappeared.

And the firearm beneath Dominic’s SUV would have to be traced.

Captain Shaw ordered Rourke’s body camera, vehicles, phone, and office secured.

The pistol was taken into state custody.

Dominic was not arrested.

Before leaving, Shaw approached Ivy.

“You did something important tonight.

But from now on, you don’t talk about what you saw with anyone except your mother and the investigators assigned to protect you.

Understand?”

Ivy nodded.

Dominic looked toward Elena.

“Her mother needs to know now.”

They walked two blocks to Chen Alterations.

The shop door was locked.

The lights were on.

Ivy knocked.

“Mom?”

No answer.

Dominic immediately signaled Luca to stay back while Elena called Mei.

A phone began ringing inside the shop.

Ivy’s face changed.

“She never leaves without her phone.”

The police opened the shop ten minutes later.

Mei was not inside.

Her purse remained beneath the counter.

Her coat hung by the back door.

The security recorder was gone.

Ivy stood in the middle of the shop, staring at the empty shelf where it had been.

Dominic felt something cold settle in his stomach.

Rourke had known about the cameras.

And someone had reached Mei before the state police reached him.

Captain Shaw immediately issued a missing-person alert.

Dunn, now separated from Rourke and waiting for counsel, asked to speak again.

“There’s a storage garage in Pawtucket,” he said.

“Rourke uses it when he doesn’t want property logged.”

“Address?”

Dunn gave it.

State police arrived there before midnight.

They found stacks of unregistered surveillance equipment, duplicate evidence seals, narcotics missing from previous seizures, and boxes containing property connected to several supposedly solved investigations.

They did not find Mei.

But they found her shop’s security recorder.

It had been delivered less than an hour earlier.

A camera outside the storage building captured the delivery vehicle.

The driver was Nolan Price, a civilian contractor who repaired radios and surveillance equipment for the police department.

Ivy recognized him as the second man she had seen near Dominic’s SUV.

Nolan was arrested at his apartment shortly after dawn.

He denied knowing anything about Mei.

Until investigators showed him the security video from the garage.

Then he asked for a deal.

Mei, he said, was alive.

Rourke had ordered him to frighten her into surrendering the shop footage.

Nolan intercepted her behind the store, forced her into his van, took the recorder, and drove her to an empty office suite owned by one of Rourke’s shell companies.

He insisted he had left her tied to a chair but unharmed.

Police raced to the address.

Dominic waited at Bellini House with Ivy because Captain Shaw refused to let him anywhere near the rescue operation.

Ivy sat at a corner table with untouched hot chocolate between her hands.

For hours she had been brave