“Whatever happens, Isabelle,” said Gamache, “you must trust yourself. Do you understand?”

He was looking at her with great intensity, as though trying to place those words not simply in her head, but someplace deeper. Some secret, safe place.

She nodded.

He smiled, breaking the tension. “Bon. Is that what you came to say, or is there more?”

It took her a moment to remember and it was only in noticing the Post-it note in her hand that it came back to her.

“A call came in a few minutes ago. I didn’t want to disturb you. I’m not sure if it’s personal or professional.”

He put on his glasses and read the note, then frowned.

“I’m not sure either.” Gamache leaned back in his chair. His jacket opened and Lacoste noticed the Glock in the holster on his belt. She couldn’t quite get used to seeing it there. The Chief loathed guns.

Matthew 10:36.

It was one of the first things she’d been taught when she’d joined the homicide division. She could still see Chief Inspector Gamache, sitting where he was now.

“Matthew 10:36,” he’d said. “And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. Never forget that, Agent Lacoste.”

She’d assumed he’d meant that in a murder investigation, the family was the place to start. But now she knew it meant much more than that. Chief Inspector Gamache wore a weapon. Inside Sûreté headquarters. Inside his own household.

Gamache picked the Post-it note off his desk. “Care for a drive? We can be there for lunch.”

Lacoste was surprised but didn’t need to be asked twice.

“Who’ll be left in charge?” she asked, as she grabbed her coat.

“Who’s in charge now?”

“You, of course, patron.”

“How nice of you to say that, but we both know it isn’t true. I just hope we didn’t leave any matches lying around.”

As the door closed, Gamache heard the agent he’d spoken with say to the others, “It’s about life…”

He was lampooning the Chief, in a high, childish voice. Making him sound idiotic.

The Chief walked down the long corridor to the elevator, and smiled.

In the elevator, they watched the numbers. 15, 14 …

The other person in the elevator got out, leaving them alone.

… 13, 12, 11 …

Lacoste was tempted to ask the one question that must never be overheard.

She looked at the Chief, watching the numbers. Relaxed. But she knew him enough to recognize the new lines, the deeper lines. The darker circles under his eyes.

Yes, she thought, let’s get out of here. Cross the bridge, get off the island. As far from this damned place as we can.

8 … 7 … 6 …

“Sir?”

“Oui?”

He turned to her and she saw, again, the weariness that came in unguarded moments. And she hadn’t the heart to ask what had happened to Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Gamache’s second in command before her. Her own mentor. Gamache’s protégé. And more than that.

For fifteen years Gamache and Beauvoir had been a formidable team. Twenty years younger than the Chief Inspector, Jean-Guy Beauvoir was being groomed to take over.

And then suddenly, coming back from a case at a remote abbey a few months earlier, Inspector Beauvoir had been transferred out, into Chief Superintendent Francoeur’s own department.

It had been a mess.

Lacoste had tried to ask Beauvoir what’d happened, but the Inspector wanted nothing to do with anyone from homicide, and Chief Inspector Gamache had issued an order. No one in homicide was to have anything to do with Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

He was to be shunned. Disappeared. Made invisible.

Not only persona non grata, but persona non exista.

Isabelle Lacoste could hardly believe it. And the passage of time hadn’t made it more believable.

3 … 2 …

That was what she wanted to ask.

Was it true?

She wondered if it was a ruse, a way to get Beauvoir into Francoeur’s camp. To try to figure out what the Chief Superintendent was up to.

Surely Gamache and Beauvoir were still allies in this dangerous game.

But as the months passed, Beauvoir’s behavior had grown more erratic and Gamache had grown more resolute. And the gulf between them had grown into an ocean. And now they appeared to inhabit two different worlds.

As she followed Gamache to his car, Lacoste realized she hadn’t asked the question to spare his feelings, but her own. She didn’t want the answer. She wanted to believe that Beauvoir remained loyal, and Gamache had a hope of stopping whatever plan Francoeur had in place.