They'd walked far enough to get out of the neighborhood and were sitting now in a booth in the back of a Cuban coffee shop. The Latina waitress had taken their breakfast orders, poured them each a cup of strong coffee and left.

Strasser sipped and looked over the rim of his cup. "You first."

Kumi sipped and looked back at him, her dark Asian eyes all business. "All I can tell you for the moment is that your friend Boxboy had the attention of our anti-terrorism people."

Strasser double-checked to make sure there wasn't anyone near enough to overhear them, just an old guy reading the paper over there who couldn't help glancing at Kumi's legs that her mini-skirt barely covered.

"You're saying he was a terrorist?" Strasser asked.

"He was selling them guns, the illegals he helped get in here."

"Jesus Christ."

"Exactly. You stepped in a big one."

And here he'd been just trying to make amends for what he'd gotten Jevy into, and give Zanya a taste of dispensing justice. Street justice. Or so he told himself. What it really came down to, if he took a second to be honest, was another shoot-from-the-hip episode he was prone to – the kind that had driven his old bosses to engineer his ass out of their precinct before he tanked their careers.

"You made a pretty good mess of him," Kumi said.

"What are you talking about?"

"Or your friend did. And please don't play me for stupid."

He knew he was sounding lame, had to come up with something fast before he lost whatever leverage he might have. He bought himself a few seconds by wiping his mouth and folding his napkin back on his lap – and noticed a spot on his jeans. Blood. It had dried and looked pretty much like any other stain – unless you knew or suspected where those jeans had been. He put his napkin over it and moved his leg further under the table.

Kumi couldn't see it, at least for now. She took another sip and put her cup down, folded her hands and watched him. Waiting him out.

Strasser finally said, "You really think I put him down like that? That mess?"

"I think you and your friend could be into something people have nightmares about. You ever tried to take her picture?"

"What do you mean?"

"How long have you known her?"

"We just met."

"Let me show you something."

Kumi dug in her jacket and took out her phone and pressed the Photos app. Earlier, back at the alley, while she'd been behind the crime scene tape watching Strasser and the other cops milling around Boxboy's body, she'd phoned Layla and had her email that picture she'd taken of Strasser and Zanya – of Zanya's ghost.

She showed him the picture.

He didn't have to look hard to see what had obviously spooked her.

There he was walking away from last night's accident scene with what should have been Zanya. But it wasn't her, or at least not her in the flesh. There was just some kind of cloud there in the shape of a person.

"Night pictures can be tricky," he said

"Yeah, right."

She waited while he tried to come up with some kind of answer.

He got a breather when the waitress came by with the orange juice he'd ordered. He picked it up and took a swig.

Kumi watched him swallow and put his glass down. "How did you get into this?" she asked.

"Long story."

"Uh-huh. So try me."

Truth was, even if he wanted to be honest, he didn't know where to start.

"I don't always do things by the book," he said. "I tend to cut corners."

"That might be an understatement. You come from a law enforcement family?"

"I come from a family of kooks."

She wasn't expecting that. "How so?"

"My parents were, how you say, off the wall. My sister, who I loved dearly, got into drugs and a cult thing and wound up killing herself."

"I'm sorry." She was getting drawn in, this guy, had to watch it. But he had a way she was finding appealing, and she'd cut a few corners herself. "Why'd she do it?"

"The guy who ran the cult had hold of her mind. He said jump and she did. Literally. And she wasn't the only one."

"Who was he, the guy?"

"His name was Spink. Eamon Spink. Here..."

Strasser took out his phone and brought up a picture of a smiling girl in her late teens. Held it across the table for Kumi to see. "Her name was Claudia. This was before she went off the deep end."

"She's pretty."

"She was."

He clicked up another picture, a thirtysomething man with long hair and deep-set, penetrating eyes. "And this is him."

"Spink."

"Himself."

" He sounds like a Charles Manson wannabe."

"I've been trying for years to find him but he disappeared, and his cult people scattered. I've checked every data base, keep checking, but never get a hit."

"And if you find him?"

Strasser shrugged. "We'll see."

"Huevos Revueltos?"

He looked up. The waitress had arrived with their breakfasts. "Here," he said, patting the table in front of him. She put their plates down – scrambled eggs for senor, fried egg on tostada for senorita – asked if there'd be anything else, got a pair of no-thank-you's and turned for the front.

She stopped two booths down and asked the dark-haired woman sitting alone there if she was ready to order.

"Café con leche, por favor," the woman said, and turned her green eyes back to the menu. "Maybe something else when you come back."

The waitress nodded and smiled, pocketed her notepad and left.

Zanya had used her ways of deception and a cap pulled low to make herself unrecognizable, had slipped into the coffee shop unnoticed by the preoccupied pair two booths back. She had her back to them, could turn slightly and glimpse them in the long mirror behind the counter. Her supersharp hearing had no problem picking up what they were saying.

Kumi broke off a piece of tostada and dipped it in her egg yolk. "You want me to run him through our VI-CAP, this Spink?"

Strasser knowing that was the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. "I'd appreciate that except then you'd be in the toilet if something should happen to him."

Both of them knowing who the cause of that something would be.

"It's a good thing this conversation isn't being recorded," she said.

Strasser nodded and lifted some egg on his fork.

They chewed and didn't say much until Strasser remembered that bloodstain on his jeans. Looked down at his lap. "Damn."

"What?"

"I must've spilled coffee."

He dipped his napkin in his water glass and wiped around the stain. Did it two or three times until there was nothing there but a large wet spot.

Kumi said, "I should get home and change out of these clothes. And start organizing Jevy's things. Not that she had that much."

"Where does that leave our situation? You know..."

"Good question. I'm going to have to come up with some answers about Boxboy. And about your friend."

"If you want, I can help. I mean with Jevy's things."

An eyebrow went up. "And then what?"

"I don't know. But at least that way we can keep talking. And since I'm apparently a person of interest, you can keep your options open."

Two booths away, Zanya's green eyes narrowed. What, he was hitting on her? The friggin' games people play, those bullshit words he came up with on the mattress last night. And now it sounds like he wouldn't mind turning her demon ass over to this Fed bitch. She hunched in the booth while the two of them finished eating and he paid the check, Turned her face away when they got up and walked by and went to the door.

She watched him touch the bitch's elbow when he held the door for her, eyes getting all the greener for the jealousy behind them.