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Jack hit him then, threw a punch with his right hand that just exploded into Danny’s face, catching him under his left eye and knocking him hard into the front door.

Then he was on him, hitting him again, harder this time, squarely on the nose, and putting Danny down.

When Danny put a hand to his face, he saw it was covered in blood. Jack just stared down at him, eyes still full of rage.

In that moment, Danny felt as if he were looking up at his father.

Or their father’s killer.

Ninety-One

“YOU CAN’T RUN THESEpictures on the front page of the paper,” I said to Megan Callahan in her office at theTribune.“Or on our home page.”

We had been going at each other, her door closed, since she’d called and asked me to come over, telling me there was a situation we needed to address immediately. I said that didn’t sound good. She said it wasn’t even close to being good and that she’d explain when I got there.

The situation involved a series of photographs of Ben Cantor and me at Harris’ steak house. One had me leaning down to kiss him on the lips. Another had the two of us leaning across the table, my hand covering his. There were similar pictures from the night we’d eaten at Fogata, where Cantor had said the paparazzi wouldn’t find us.

So somebody has been following me all along.

“If we don’t run them,” Megan said, “you can explain to the next managing editor of theTribunewhy we didn’t run pictures that everybody exceptStars and Stripesis going to have within the next hour or so.”

I heard a ping from her phone. She was on the other side of her desk. She hit some keys on her huge laptop screen, then swiveled it so I could see the home page of Wolf.com.

“Annnnnnnd,” she said, “we’re off.”

They’d gone with the one of me kissing Cantor when I’d arrived that night, headlined:

UNDERCOVER(S) COP

Plus the secondary headline:

Suspect Behavior from Wolves Owner

with Cop “Investigating” Her

I slumped back into my chair.

“It’s not what it looks like.”

“Are you sleeping with him?” Megan said.

“None of your goddamn business. But no.”

“Jenny,” Megan said, “there’s no way for you to spin this. Or for us to ignore this. What the whole world is about to see is you and the detective investigating two murders in your family gazing longingly into each other’s eyes.”

“Would it matter to you if I told you how badly that particular dinner date ended?”

“Not even a little bit.”

Her phone pinged again. She nodded.

“Okay.TMZis running with it.”

“You make it sound as if that’s the paper of record.”

“With stuff like this, it pretty much is.”

“Wearen’t obligated to run with the crowd on this,” I said.