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out of jail on drug-possession charges—could hug him. Contact was no longer allowed, which was one of the many tidbits of information that Theo had picked up while listening to Faith Corso and her panel of experts on BNN fill hour after hour in the final chapter of Shot Mom coverage. The thought of Sydney Bennett’s return to the comfort and pleasure of human contact after killing her daughter had so many loyal viewers upset. Many were downright furious. Some—“an army of thousands,” according to Corso—were fed up with the system and ready to take justice into their own hands. The exact temperature of the crowd was hard to determine, but it was undeniable that few, if any, corrections facilities had scheduled a more anticipated release than Sydney’s.
    Most of the detention center’s windows had been dark since nightfall, but lights were still shining in the ground-floor lobby, the release point for inmates in the system. A pair of corrections officers stood guard, and all appeared quiet on the other side of the glass doors. It was completely unlike the spectacle on Seventh Avenue and the park directly across the street.
    “Ho-lee shit,” Theo muttered.
    The night air was thick with humidity, the mercury still in the high eighties, and all those bare arms and legs were a veritable feast for hungry mosquitoes. People were milling about, walking with no particular destination in mind, just wanting to be there for “the moment.” It was as if the beaches had closed, happy hour was over, and an armada of sunburned tourists had wandered over to the jail for free entertainment. Parents with their young children. High-school kids on their bicycles. College students with rum-filled go-cups in hand. Vendors selling boiled peanuts and bottled water. Drivers on the elevated stretch of expressway above it all honked their horns as they passed the detention center, as if it were New Year’s Eve or the Super Bowl. One young man stood outside the center with a homemade sign that was sure to get him on television: MARRY ME, SYDNEY.
    “Snuggies,” a vendor called out, “get your hand-stitched snuggies.”
    Theo did a double take. ROT IN HELL, SYDNEY was the stitched message. Theo had been joking on the Faith Corso Show , but this entrepreneur had stolen his idea and run with it.
    The bright lights of a camera crew caught his attention. A BNN reporter had staked out a position on the sidewalk just a few feet behind him. She was interviewing the young man with the handheld marriage proposal, earnestly trying to find out what would make him want to spend the rest of his life with Sydney Bennett.
    “Well, uhm, she’s really hot,” he said, reaching up inside the John Deere cap to scratch his head. “Obviously she, uh, likes to party. And did I say she’s hot?”
    Theo’s phone vibrated. He stepped away from the small gathering around the television crew and checked the text message. It was from Jack.
    “Hang , ” it read.
    They had worked out a system back at the hotel. The release could happen any time between midnight and two A.M. Such a broad window of time made it impractical for Theo to sit in the SUV with the motor running. The agreement was that Jack would update Theo by text every fifteen minutes. “Hang” meant nothing was happening. When it was time to bring the SUV around, the message would read “Greenlight.”
    Theo slid his phone into his pocket. He had at least another fifteen minutes to kill, probably more. He continued down the sidewalk, beyond the detention center’s main entrance, toward the more secure wing that butted up against the elevated expressway. Razor ribbon topped a high chain-link fence that extended beneath the overpass, and the streetlamps cast the yellowish glow of high-security vapor lights. Theo was sweating, but he suddenly felt goose bumps. The dark prison walls, the guard towers and ribbon wire, the vigil keepers outside the chain-link fence—it was eerily reminiscent of the