Grace said to the officer, a black woman striking enough to be a supermodel, whose name tag read Peters, “I’m here to post bail for Edward Pancik?”

There was much whispering from the girls. One piped up and said, “You are Eddie’s wife, yes?”

“No talking!” Officer Peters said.

Grace turned to face the girls. “Yes,” she said.

At that second, the door down the hallway opened, and Nadia came walking out, attended by a square-necked man with a silver crew cut and a navy FBI windbreaker.

“Hello, Mrs. Pancik,” Nadia said.

“What’s happening, Nadia?” Grace asked. It could be a mistake, right? It must have been a mistake. Grace could not fathom that Eddie had actually taken these girls—none of them over twenty-five, she didn’t think—and turned them into hookers.

But Nadia didn’t seem capable of explaining. She turned to the other girls and said something in Russian.

“Enough!” the silver crew cut barked out. “Kat, do you have a place I can put Ms. Nadia here while I talk to the next one? She should be isolated. They all should, really.”

“We can’t do what we can’t do,” Officer Peters said. She smiled apologetically at Grace. “We just don’t have enough personnel when something like this happens.”

Grace nodded, as if understanding what this meant. Officer Peters was talking to Grace as if they were in cahoots somehow, and Grace decided to take advantage. She said, “I’d really like to see my husband. Can I see him?”

“Who’s your husband?” the silver crew cut asked.

“Edward Pancik.”

“Ha!” the silver crew cut said. “Better take a seat. It’s gonna be a while.”

“Let me see if I can find a room for Ms. Nadia,” Officer Peters said.

Nadia said something to the other girls in Russian.

Grace wished she could understand! She said, “Are you… in trouble, Nadia?”

“Ma’am, please,” the silver crew cut said. “I need her isolated! Jesus!”

Officer Peters disappeared down the hall. The silver crew cut eyeballed the five girls. He read names off a clipboard. Elise Anoshkin, Julia Vlacic, Gabrielle Bylinkin, Nadia Roskilov, Tonya Yedemesky. The girls raised their hands one by one.

The only good thing about finding out Eddie had gotten into this kind of heinous trouble was that it kept Grace from obsessing about Benton.

Grace had to triage.

And this was definitely worse.

At seven o’clock in the morning, a very weary version of Eddie’s normally impeccably dressed attorney, Ben Winford, shook Grace awake in her chair.

Ben said, “Eddie’s gotten himself into a real pickle this time.” Ben stared up at the ceiling, which made Grace stare at the ceiling. “Why don’t my clients ever call me before they break the law? I’ll tell them ten times out of ten, it’s not a good idea. What did Richard Nixon teach us? What did the Boston bombers teach us? Criminals always get caught.”

“Is he going to jail?” Grace asked. Her voice sounded like broken crackers after the Fioricet, the wine, and nearly no sleep. She thought of being in the garden shed with Benton. It had been the previous morning, less than twenty-four hours earlier, and yet it seemed like weeks ago.

“Oh, probably,” Ben said wearily. He was, Grace realized, wearing his pajama top with his jeans. “This isn’t exactly my specialty, but I know a guy in Boston who handles racketeering, prostitution, more Mob-type stuff. You know me—I’m basically a real estate–estate planning guy.”

“Mob-type stuff?” Grace said. She felt as if she were going to faint.

Ben patted her knee. “The good news is, you’ll get him out of here today.”

Eddie was released three hours later, at ten o’clock. His bail was set at fifteen thousand dollars. Grace tried to pay using their platinum American Express, but it was denied, so she ended up writing a check. When they finally got out to the car and Grace told Eddie this, he laughed like an inmate at the asylum. He said, “The check will bounce, Grace. We’re broke.”

“What does that mean?”

Eddie shrugged. “I guess as soon as they figure out the check is no good, they’ll come for me.”

“No, what does it mean that we’re broke?” Grace asked. “How can we be broke?”

She listened in silence as Eddie told her: the money was all gone. The spec houses were a financial noose around his neck. He’d sold two of the three to Glenn Daley, of all people, but that had only helped to pay Eddie’s backed-up debts. Number 13 Eagle Wing Lane was still a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand dollars away from completion, and Eddie had exhausted his options. He hadn’t sold a house in nine months; the market was a wasteland. He had managed to keep corporate groups at 10 Low Beach Road, but that had only led him into this mess.

“Yes,” Grace said. “Let’s talk about this mess. What the hell is going on, Eddie? What have you done?”

“I can’t tell you,” Eddie said. “If I tell you, they might be able to get you for conspiracy.”

“They will not get me for conspiracy,” Grace said, “because I knew nothing about it. But you are going to tell me right now.”

“I can’t,” Eddie said.

“Tell me!” Grace screamed.

Eddie held his face in his hands. Grace thought he might cry, and that would have frightened her, because Eddie never cried. He hadn’t cried when either of his parents died, and he hadn’t cried when Hope had been born blue. He hadn’t cried over finding Grace with Benton in the garden shed yesterday morning. Would he cry now, at his own ruin?