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  67. 3:46 a.m.

I pull up the report sent by AST and reread it. For the first time, I notice that although it says my mother was killed twenty-four to forty-eight hours before she was found, the coroner lists a more specific time of death — 3:30 a.m., Saturday, October 2nd.

I find it ironic that, of all the hours in the day, my mother was killed during the one I’m awake. I think back to what I was doing while a bullet was ripping through the back of my mother’s skull. Saturday wasn’t much different from any other day. Wake, eat, GOT, stocks, read, run. Nothing exciting.

Except.

When I left to go on my run, I opened the door and there was a package.

This in itself wasn’t odd. I ordered a bunch of stuff from Amazon. But I rarely saw the packages. Isabel would open the packages for me and have whatever it was—clothes, dumbbells, yo-yo, cat sweater, or fish tank — assembled and ready for use.

But Isabel didn’t come on Fridays or Saturdays. Those were her two days off. So if anything was delivered on either of those two days, I would have to put it together myself. Which is why I ordered stuff on Sundays, and with two-day shipping it always arrived before Friday.

Odder yet, I didn’t remember ordering the DVD that was delivered.

I just assumed my dad ordered it for me, which he’d done in the past. I repeatedly told him I could stream the movies online, but my dad was old school and he liked buying DVDs. When I asked him about the movie that came on Saturday, he said he didn’t buy it for me. His exact words were: That stupid alien movie? I would never buy you that crap.

I figured he was joking.

He pulled the same thing with Bridesmaids.

It’s just a stupid chick flick. I would never send that to you.

Liar.

I was a bit backlogged on my viewing. I still had two and a half more seasons of Game of Thrones to watch before I could even think about watching anything else, and I still hadn’t watched the last two movies my father sent: The Shawshank Redemption and Midnight Express.

Five days earlier, I’d added the “stupid alien movie” to the pile and forgotten about it.

But what if he didn’t send it?

What if someone else did?

What if it came from my mother?

::::

I thought of one more scenario in which my mother would have been flagged as a Red Four.

Intel.

She knew something. Or stole something.

Had my mother stolen national security secrets and that’s why Homeland was involved?

What did Ingrid call the DHS guy who had shown up at the scene?

A suit.

A man in black.