“Probably,” Kathryn said bitterly. Behind her, Norman’s car peeled from the building. “He’s always been a disappointment to me.”

Thad moved ever so slightly to the left, working to put his body between Kathryn and Olivia, but no way would Olivia let him take a bullet for her. Willing her legs to support her, she came to her feet. With her sandals gone, it was like standing on blocks of ice, and her skin prickled with gooseflesh under her drenched white gown.

She’d drawn Kathryn’s attention, just as she’d intended. “Men make messes,” Kathryn said to her, “and I have to clean them up. First Eugene and his carelessness. And now Norman.”

“What kind of messes, Mrs. Swift?” Thad deliberately drew her focus back to himself.

“This bracelet!” She gripped it tightly in one hand and turned the gun on Olivia. “He was so ridiculously infatuated with you.”

“What’s so special about the bracelet?” Thad said quickly.

“Enough questions!” She made a sharp gesture toward Olivia with her gun. “Into the river with you both.”

“Stay right where you are, Liv,” Thad ordered. “Mrs. Swift, neither of us is going into the river. Now drop that gun.”

She gave a harsh bark of laughter. “You think because I’m old, I don’t know how to use this? My daddy took me hunting before I was six years old.”

“A tender memory, I’m sure, but let me point out that putting bullet holes in the bodies of two of the city’s more famous people—because that’s the only way we’re going in—is a very bad idea. The police will be relentless.”

“Chicago can be a dangerous city.”

“The police aren’t stupid.”

“No one would ever suspect me. Now move!”

Olivia could read Thad’s mind. As surely as she knew anything, she knew he intended to go after Kathryn and take the bullet himself.

The riverbank was deserted. No one inside the Muni would hear if she screamed, and her strength was sapped. She could sense Thad getting ready to spring, and Kathryn could, too, because she pointed the gun directly at his chest, right at his beautiful heart. If Olivia could make Kathryn drop her guard for a few seconds, he might have a chance of disarming her. But Olivia had nothing to distract her with. No pebbles of glass from a broken limousine partition. No shoe to throw. All she had was her voice.

The idea was ludicrous.

But it was the only idea she had.

Thad tensed his muscles, waiting for his moment. Garnering her strength, Olivia pulled in every molecule of air she could collect—opened her chest, her throat, her soul—and sent Brünnhilde’s Valkyrie battle cry out into the wild night.

“Ho-jo-to-ho!”

A punch of furious, ear-shattering sound. The roar of the earth cracking open. The scream of the universe exploding.

“Ho-jo-to-ho!”

The high was strident, the middle broke. She was a mezzo. She didn’t have the voice for Brünnhilde, but the Valkyrie’s battle cry did its job, startling Kathryn Swift into jerking her head around and lowering her pistol just for a moment.

Just long enough for Olivia to rush at her with every bit of strength she had left.

Thad, of course, got to her first. He grabbed the old lady’s arm, forcing her to drop the pistol.

“Everybody freeze!”

Brittany stood thirty feet away, her service revolver at the ready.

Is everybody in this city armed?

Kathryn let out a pitiful shriek, puny compared to Olivia’s battle cry, and collapsed to the ground.

* * *

The Muni’s docking area filled with flashing red lights and emergency vehicles. The EMTs wrapped Olivia and Thad in Mylar blankets and checked their vital signs while Brittany phoned in the information about Norman Gillis. The Egyptian bracelet was already tucked away in an evidence bag.

Some of the crowd exiting from the gala grew aware of the commotion. With umbrellas over their heads, they huddled in the parking area and watched Kathryn Swift being hauled away in a squad car.

Thad gazed at Olivia from his Mylar cocoon as if he expected her to disappear at any moment, but he said nothing, and she had a shocking glimpse of how he would look as an old man. Still handsome, but tired, the cares of a lifetime etched in his face.

She wanted to rest her head against his shoulder, but he’d erected an invisible barricade she had no right to cross.

* * *

The EMTs urged them to go to the hospital, but they both refused. Thad watched Olivia being helped into a squad car that would deliver her home. He couldn’t go with her. He couldn’t be with her now.

He drove himself home and took the longest, hottest shower of his life. As the remnants of the Chicago River eddied down the drain, he wished he could send the images swirling in his brain along for the trip. That moment when he believed he’d lost her would be seared in his memory forever . . . Believing that this brave, smart, funny, ambitious heartache of a woman was lost to him forever had been the worst moment of his life, worse than sitting on the bench, worse than playing backup, far worse than knowing he’d never be number one.

* * *

Piper sat with Olivia at the police station the next morning as she gave her statement to Brittany. Olivia appreciated having Piper with her today, but it should have been Thad by her side, both of them giving their statements together.

And whose fault was that?

She’d barely slept last night. Even after she was warm, clean, and awash in Throat Coat tea, she couldn’t fall asleep. It was ironic. Like every opera singer on the planet, she was paranoid about catching a cold. She guarded against drafts, stayed away from cigarette smoke, slept with at least one vaporizer running, and didn’t drink water that was too chilled—only to end up underwater in the Chicago River in early May. She was lucky to be alive, but that wasn’t what kept jerking her awake. It was the image of Thad’s face when she’d come up for breath.

Olivia and Piper had barely settled into the chairs across from her desk before Brittany told them they’d caught Gillis. “He was apprehended on Sheridan Road a little before midnight.”

Brittany looked as if she’d spent the rest of the night interrogating him instead of sleeping. She’d abandoned her ice-blue gown and high, strappy sandals for dark pants, a wrinkled white blouse, and sensible loafers. Leaning against the side of her desk was the same big purse she’d been carrying last night. Olivia had wondered why she hadn’t brought a more fashionable evening bag to the gala, and now she knew. A pretty evening bag wouldn’t have held her service revolver, and like most cops, she liked having it with her.