Chris Mooney - The Soul Collectors

The girls didn't like the way he shifted his attention away from them.

'Well, hello there,' he said, offering his hand. 'I'm Timmy's roommate, Gregg.'

'Darby. Nice to meet you.'

'I've seen you before.'

'I live upstairs.'

'Oh. I was pretty sure you were a model.' His smile was as perfect and charming as his face. 'You're definitely pretty enough to model swimsuits and stuff.'

'You've got me confused with someone else,' she said, and, looking back at Tim, nodded with her chin to get moving.

Tim's small bedroom was surprisingly neat for a college student, the walls stuffed with posters and photographs, some framed, of Boston Red Sox players and different ball parks from across the country.

'Ted Williams,' she said, pointing to a signed picture. 'You've got good taste.'

'Best there ever was and ever will be.'

Darby moved to the corner window. The SUV was still there.

'Can I get you a beer?' Tim asked.

'I'm all set, thanks. I won't be here that long.'

Tim lingered close by, looking anxious.

'You don't have to stay here,' she said. 'Go back to the party.'

'Nah, that's okay. Those girls are interested in Gregg, anyway.'

'He strikes me as sort of a douche.'

Tim chuckled. 'He sort of is. And the girls love it for some reason. The more he shits on them, the harder they fight.'

'That will change after college, trust me.' She couldn't see anything behind those tinted windows. How many people were in there?

'He's going to move to Hollywood,' Tim said. 'Going to be a famous actor.'

'He'll wind up doing soft-core porn. If he's lucky, he'll find some rich cougar looking for arm candy and shack up with her.'

'What's going on with that guy you hang out with, what's his name, the one who looks like Tom Brady?'

'Coop.'

'Right, Coop. Good guy. Where's he been? I haven't seen him around.'

'He moved to London three months ago.'

'You guys still, you know, dating or whatever?'

'We never dated,' she said, and the night he left flashed through her mind: Coop running back through the rain and kissing her. He called her later, from the airport, and he told her how he really felt about her. Now, each time they spoke on the phone, he didn't bring up what had happened between them.

You haven't either, a voice added.

A Boston squad car, lights on but sirens off, came to an abrupt stop in front of the SUV. Two patrolmen jumped out, leaving their doors hanging open as they drew their weapons. Another squad car pulled up alongside the SUV, blocking the driver's-side door.

Showtime. Darby moved away from the window.

'Thanks, Tim.'

'You taking off?'

She nodded. 'Got some work I need to do.'

'Before you go, I was wondering… ' He swallowed, then swiped a hand across his mouth. 'I was thinking maybe we could grab a beer together, or something.'

Darby smiled. 'Tim, I'm flattered. If I was your age, I'd take you up on that offer in a heartbeat.'

The hope crumbled in his eyes, and his pale face reddened with embarrassment. 'I wasn't asking you, like, out on a date or anything. I thought we could, you know, hang out or something.'

'Hang out,' Darby said. 'Sure. Absolutely.'

Tim, ever the gentleman, walked her to the front door. Even held it open for her.

Darby said just loud enough for Gregg to hear: I'll call you next week, Tim, and we'll set something up.'

She gave him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek before leaving.

Darby stood on the stoop of her building. The steady pulse of blue and whites flashing from the rooftops of the two Boston squad cars lit up the corner of her street. She could see the SUV. It was a Chevy Tahoe. The passenger's-side door was hanging open. The interior light was on but nobody was inside.

Two men dressed in suits, their jackets buttoned, stood outside. Feds, she thought. The first guy was white and middle aged, and had sandy-blond hair and a crooked nose. He stood on the kerb with his hands on top of his head, arguing with a patrolman pointing a nine at him. There was lots of shouting but she couldn't hear what was being said, their words lost behind the wind and busy traffic on Cambridge Street.

The second guy was Italian or Greek, a Tony Soprano type with thinning black hair that had been combed back over his bald spot. He was taller than his partner, maybe six feet, and fatter. He leaned forward with his hands splayed across the front hood, the buttons of his suit jacket straining against the swell of his gut. He was being frisked. He wasn't speaking and he ignored the scene happening around him, his gaze locked on her building. On her.

Darby didn't recognize him or the blond man. Was confident she had never seen either man before. She did recognize the patrolman shining his flashlight on the SUV's interior seats: Jimmy Murphy, an old flatfoot leftover from an era when the Irish made up the majority of the Boston police force. He was thick and jowly and had a fine network of spider veins covering his nose and cheeks from a lifetime of hard drinking. Darby headed down her front steps, making a mental note to give Jimmy a call sometime later that night or the next day, see if she could get the names of the two feds so she could pay them a visit.

Fat Tony kept eyeing her. She held his gaze for a moment, giving away nothing, and as she crossed the street, heading for the alley between the college and the oldest brick townhouse on the block, she saw Fat Soprano make a move for the car door. The patrolman frisking him pushed him hard against the hood. Lots of shouting and another patrolman pressed his nine closer to Tony Soprano's head. She caught the worried expression on Fat Tony's face just before she ducked into the alley.

Darby emerged on Hanover Street and then went through another alley and walked on to Joy. The one-way streets, jam-packed with parked cars, were dark and quiet. A few people were out, walking home or to one of the bars or restaurants that lined Cambridge. As she walked to the best place to pick up a cab — the corner of Cambridge and Charles Street, on the other side of Beacon Hill — she thought about Fat Tony's worried look.

The man's cover was blown. He was going to get his ass chewed out by his superiors. There'd be demerits, maybe even a possible relocation to some federal outpost. A natural reaction. She would have bought off on it if he hadn't first tried to go for the door. Like he needed to call someone and let this person know where she was heading.

Why? They had installed a tracking device in her jacket. It was now sitting in her jeans pocket and it was broadcasting a signal. Fat Tony shouldn't be worried. But he had made a move for the door, like he was afraid of losing sight of her. Like he had to radio for help or back-up.

Darby emerged on the end of Charles Street, looking for a cab. As she waited, she thought about the tracking device. The design was something the feds probably used — very high-tech, sent a wireless signal to a nearby computer — but the installation had been sloppy. The feds, generally speaking, weren't sloppy. They planned and prepared and executed their surveillance ops with an admirable efficiency. If the feds were behind this, they would have come inside her condo, taken pictures, made sure everything was put back together properly. They wouldn't have left the broken stitching in her jacket.

Maybe the feds weren't responsible for this sloppy work. Maybe someone else was, like one of the men she had encountered inside the Rizzo home. Men who knew she was alive and wanted to see where she would go, what she would do.

At a quarter past eight, Darby stepped through the Boston Police Department's revolving front doors for the first time since her suspension, and brushed the hair out of her eyes. It had been windy as hell out there and she had forgotten to tie her hair behind her head before leaving the condo.