“I’m not really a hacker,” Shane mumbles, staring at the screen like a sorcerer peering into his cauldron. “And I’m not gonna be able to hack the computer—if I were better than this I could maybe put out a packet sniffer and see what comes and goes, but we don’t have time for that anyway. I just need access to the printer. And . . .” Tap, tap, click, click. “I do. Via the IP address. Adding it now.”

“You said you needed a message from me. You got it ready?”

He nods. “All ready. Is it go time?”

“It’s go time.”

He stabs a key.

“Your message is printing, milady.”

The wait is the worst part.

Will someone come? Tonight? Tomorrow? No way to know. Nobody was at the gun club, and so the message on the printer should go undiscovered until morning.

Just the same, they’ve no way to know when the axe will fall.

Or if it will. She starts to worry—maybe he won’t take the bait. Maybe he’s too smart a monster to go for the low-hanging fruit.

So they wait. Or, she and Shane do, at least. Guy leaves her with some Adderall and heads back home. He wants to stay, he says, he really does, but he’s already had enough trouble, and these are cops and . . .

Atlanta tells him it’s okay. She needs his car gone from the driveway anyhow.

When he’s gone, she takes the Adderall.

Doesn’t kick in right away, but when it does everything seems crystal and bright—she finds a sense of hyper-alertness, easy and electric. All the world under a magnifying glass. Her mind wiped free of fatigue. She tells Shane to sleep, and he lies down on the couch. One leg draped over. The house is humid. He’s got a sheen of sweat on his brow.

“Do you think he’ll come?”

She nods. “I figure. We all set up?”

“Yeah. Won’t take much to get it all going. You sure this’ll work?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Just remember, whatever happens—stay out of the way. Hide in the coat closet and don’t come out. I don’t need you in the cross fire in all of this. Just say in there and stick to the plan.”

He pauses. Draws a deep breath. “What do you think he’ll do?”

“I’ve been nesting on that. At first I figured he’d come after one of you. But then I got to thinking, he knows I’m vulnerable. Mama’s gone. Dog is at the vet—far as he knows, maybe dead. Day after I shut down a major dogfighting ring I might have some folks who want to come at me, make me pay, so he could pretty easily make it look like something it’s not. Plus, we dangled the bait. So, he’ll come. He’ll come. He’ll try to kill me.”