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built the basis of what could now become a lucrative career. But if he didn’t take this final job with Croft, the judge would blackball him in DC. He’d be out of Croft’s crosshairs, but also out of work.
    “You in?” Croft asked.
    Michael snatched the envelope from his hand.
    “That’s more like it.”
    Michael clenched his teeth.
    Croft ambled to the door, opened it, and faced him. “Pull yourself together. This one could get complicated.”
    More than the last one? Sam is dead.
    “By the way,” Croft said, “it’s a shame about your father. How’s your mother holding up?”
    Michael’s anger mixed with grief and burned his blood. As if Croft gave a damn about his father’s death or his mom. “He was ill for so long that she thought she was prepared.” Her stricken face flashed in Michael’s mind, wrenching his heart. “But she’s devastated.”
    We both are.
    “Give her my best,” Croft said, then closed the door behind him.
    After a long moment, Michael exhaled.
    He tossed the envelope on the table, walked over to the window, and gazed out at Sam’s townhouse. Croft had outed himself with the twitch of an eye. No one had been monitoring Sam the night she died.

Chapter Four
    Jessie peered out the front window of the Embassy Circle Guest House, an elegant mansion inn near Dupont Circle. Bleary-eyed, she waited for her cab, watching the Wednesday morning commuters pass outside on R Street. She’d spent the night upstairs in a room called Copper Bijar, named for the antique Persian rug that covered the hardwood floor. The room was airy and tranquil, with exposed brick, velvety chairs, and a cherry sleigh bed where even an insomniac could’ve gotten a good night’s sleep.
    Not Jessie.
    She’d lain awake for hours, trying to make sense of Sam’s death. Mulling over the unanswered questions Sam’s tox report had raised made Jessie dread today even more. She wasn’t prepared for a reunion with her father or a funeral for her sister—much less both, each darkened by the shadow of suspicion.
    At least the weather was appropriate, all shivery and gray, perfectly mirroring her mood.
    A hideous chartreuse cab pulled to the curb out front. Jessie made her way to the car, settled in the back seat, and nodded politely at the driver.
    “Congressional Cemetery, please.”
    Heat rushed from the vents in the dashboard, intensifying the smell of fried food and stale cologne, and Jessie’s empty stomach went queasy. Her sister was dead. She hadn’t seen her father in five years, yet was now minutes away from facing him. What would she say? She had so many questions, especially about the whitewashed results of Sam’s autopsy. But she’d made a promise to Nina. She couldn’t ask him about confidential information she was never meant to know.
    Jessie considered her limited options as the cab passed through DC, past federal buildings, museums, and monuments. Downtown gave way to Nina’s pseudo-gentrified Capitol Hill neighborhood, then to the apartment houses and dilapidation farther southeast.
    The driver slowed and then stopped at a red light. Outside were boarded-up storefronts and broken-down fences. Aimless loiterers and artless graffiti. Jessie shifted her gaze to the lock on her door.
    After several more traffic lights and turns, the driver stopped at the entrance to Congressional Cemetery. Two towering, tan-brick columns supported a decorative wrought-iron archway that had rusted and peeled over time.
    “You want out here?” the driver said in broken English.
    Jessie scanned the deserted site and wondered if there’d been a mistake. “Is there a church?”
    “Inside.” He pointed a spindly finger at the gates. “You said cemetery, not church.”
    Jessie bristled. “Okay, church.”
    The cab passed over the gravel-strewn threshold and down the forlorn lane.
    On either side of the road, walkways of crumbling brick wound through hilly acres of brown grass. Timeworn tombs, tablets, and statuary