It does not run on contact, or maintenance, or the ordinary upkeep of friendship.

It runs on something older and harder, forged in the specific crucible of having trusted each other with your lives, over and over, in places where that trust was the only thing standing between all of you and the end.

Once that bond is made, it does not decay.

It waits.

For nineteen years it had waited, silent, in a coin at the back of my wallet and a number none of us dialed, and the moment it was needed it was there, undiminished, as strong as the day we scattered.

The three families I was up against had bought a great many people over the years — the detective, the officials, the averted eyes.