Leah stared at the scene for a moment as she made some decisions. While she walked toward Weiss, she removed the silencer and put it and the gun in her jacket. She lifted the girl off Weiss’s body and carried her to her own rental car. She laid the girl across the back seat and then rolled the towel and put it under her head like a pillow.

She moved to Weiss’s body and patted it down to find his keys, then got into his car and drove it close to Weiss’s body. She opened the trunk, strained to hoist the upper part of Weiss’s body into it, then pushed the legs in, closed the trunk, and parked the car back in its spot.

As she walked past the girl’s car, she picked her purse off the seat, took it to her rental car, then opened the wallet to find the license. She used the map on her phone to get directions to the address on the license, then drove the girl to her house.

The house was a sprawling single-story building at the end of a curved drive. She opened the back door of her car, lifted the girl, and walked with her to the front lawn. She placed the girl on the grass a few feet from the front steps with her head still propped up, rang the doorbell until she saw a light come on, got into her rental car, and drove back to her apartment.

She parked in the carport, walked along the alleys back to the lot where she had left the Chrysler 300 with Weiss’s body in the trunk, and cautiously studied the area from the street. She saw no signs of cops. She could see that two buildings in the alley had surveillance cameras, but their servo controls had aimed them up at the sky. That had to be Weiss’s work. She got into the Chrysler 300, drove it to Alma Weiss’s house, put it into the garage beside the old Toyota, and closed the door. She walked around the outside of the house to the back.

She entered through the slit in the pool screen and the sliding door into the living room and began to search. The prison break at Weldonville had been one of the most carefully rehearsed crimes she had ever seen. Was it possible that they had all simply turned their backs on the others that night and driven in twelve different directions, never been in contact with each other again, and all successfully avoided a national manhunt?