He carried all of it, so that I wouldn’t have to, until he could hand it to me safely.

That night an email arrived from no address at all: For the sake of your child’s safety, stop looking into things that don’t concern you.

Chapter 12 — Harlan Foss

The threat confirmed the thing I’d felt in the bank and on the street — that I was being watched, that someone knew what I was doing almost as I did it.

Dustin told me, gently and honestly, that he had to step back; the risk had climbed past what he could take on.

But before he did, he gave me a name — a retired police commander named Harlan Foss, who had, years ago, been a close friend of my late father.