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Gamache took a step toward him, then stopped, frozen in place by a familiar sound. The soft, metallic click of a safety coming off.

He turned to his son.

Daniel’s eyes were wide with terror as the gun pressed against his temple.

“You’re right,” said Girard, his voice conversational, almost chatty. “We did know. But you better than most know the advantage of having a cooperative witness. Sometimes people just have to see the full advantage of being helpful. And the disadvantage of not.”

Gamache glared at him. “I’ll kill you.”

“Ah, you just slipped from your favorite spot on the higher ground, Chief Inspector,” said Girard. “What does it feel like to be in the dung with the rest of us?”

“You’d better frisk him,” said Dussault. “Make sure he’s unarmed.”

Gamache glared at Loiselle as he frisked him.

“Nothing.” Then he gave Gamache a quick jab in the solar plexus with the butt of his machine gun, dropping him to his knees.

“Dad?”

Armand raised a hand, to indicate he was all right, then struggled to his feet. As he did, he looked at Claude Dussault.

The Prefect’s brows had risen, very slightly. In surprise. In annoyance. At Loiselle’s blow? No.

Claude Dussault had expected Loiselle to find a gun.

Armand knew then that Dussault had planted the weapon in his apartment. In the box of Stephen’s things. Where he was bound to find it. And do what?

Use it? Or try to? But if so, why insist he be frisked? Why give it to him, only to have it taken away?

Had Dussault expected Armand to pull it on him in the Place de la Concorde? In a rage when told about Daniel?

If he had, he’d have been immediately gunned down by the heavily armed police who patrolled the place.

Another execution.

Was that what Dussault wanted?

But no, that didn’t make complete sense. They didn’t want him dead. They needed him alive, to find Stephen’s evidence.

So why had Claude Dussault left a gun in his apartment? And did he really expect that the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec wouldn’t notice what it was loaded with?

“Dad, Stephen—” Daniel began, and once again Loiselle raised his rifle and Daniel cringed.

“Let him tell his father what he found at the bank,” said Dussault. “Monsieur Gamache here needs to know if he’s going to help us.”

Armand’s eyes held Daniel’s, and he said, softly, gently, “Tell me.”

It was the same voice he’d used tucking Daniel into bed: “Tell me about your day.”

And the little boy would. It would all come spilling out from a child who found wonder everywhere.

He’d hear about the odd-shaped clouds, the piles of autumn leaves, the snow forts Daniel and his friends had built and defended. The carefree battles waged and won. The first daffodils in the park, and the splashing in the fountain on a sizzling summer’s day.

“Tell me,” Armand said now.

And Daniel did.

“Stephen put in a buy order late Friday, just as the New York market closed. He was going all in on two of GHS’s holdings.”