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“Alexandre Dagenais, you’re under arrest for sexual assaults on at least one minor. For—”

“You might want to look behind you, Monsieur Gamache.” Dagenais’s voice was filled with amusement.

Beauvoir’s heart sank. He knew what he’d see. Still, he’d dared hope …

He turned. Chernin turned. But Gamache did not. He continued to stare at Dagenais. Slowly, the smile was wiped off the captain’s face.

“You’re under arrest,” Gamache repeated and brought out his handcuffs. “Turn around.”

When Dagenais did not, Gamache grabbed him and in one practiced move spun him around, shoving his face into the wall and yanking Dagenais’s hands behind him. As he did, Gamache snarled something into his ear.

Once Dagenais was cuffed, Gamache pushed him back into the chair. Only then, after running his steady hand through his disheveled hair, did Chief Inspector Gamache turn and look through the large window into the outer office.

He saw exactly what he expected to see. Six Sûreté agents with guns drawn. In the attack posture.

“What the fuck?” whispered Chernin.

She turned her gun on Beauvoir, expecting, since he was also a member of this detachment, to see his weapon aimed at her. And Agent Beauvoir understood then why he hadn’t been warned about any of this. Gamache did not know whose side he was on.

He did have his gun out, but it was pointed at the window and his colleagues. His now former colleagues. His loyalties, perhaps at terrible cost to himself, were clear and declared.

Beauvoir, trying not to tremble, darted his eyes to the Chief.

What do we do? What do we do???

He expected to see him now armed with Dagenais’s Glock, pointing it at the agents in the outer office. But he was not.

The Chief Inspector was standing still and just staring.

We’re fucked, thought Beauvoir. We’re dead. The man’s paralyzed. Oh shit, oh shit, oh—

Gamache stepped forward. Far from being paralyzed, his mind was working quickly. Assessing, looking at options.

Coming to a conclusion.

“Do not lower your weapons, no matter what happens,” he said quietly to Chernin and Beauvoir, so Dagenais didn’t hear.

“Patron?” she said, not taking her eyes off the agents in the outer office.

“Trust me.”

“Oui.” She adjusted her stance, bracing for what seemed inevitable, at least to her, if not to the Chief.

Gamache turned to Agent Beauvoir and smiled. “Your first day on the job, and this happens.”

For a moment Beauvoir was confused. He’d been working as a Sûreté officer in this detachment for months. But then he understood.

This detachment was not the Sûreté. His time with the Sûreté had started the moment he followed Chief Inspector Gamache out of the basement.

That was the start, and this was the finish. All in one day. Young Jean-Guy Beauvoir had little doubt what was about to happen.

“If there was ever a time to follow orders, this is it, Agent Beauvoir. Do you understand?”

Beauvoir nodded.

“Do you understand?” Gamache repeated, his voice firm, the authority complete.

“Yessir.”