“You’re scaring me,” he says.

“But why are you doing this?” It’s Dorothy talking again, and I try to find her with the cameras. “I thought we were friends.”

It would be like her to think she could persuade Carrie Grethen to cease and desist, to give up and go away or even more preposterous to believe that Carrie would like her and want to be friends. Of course my narcissistic sister would assume she’s a match for someone who has caused misery and destruction for decades.

I lock in a camera on Dorothy and Janet sitting tensely in chairs some twenty feet from the magnolia tree. A small table with their coffees and bottles of water is between them. Both of them are in scrubs that they probably got from me, and neither of them moves. Their hands are in their laps, but I don’t see any sign of restraints. Dorothy’s eyes are wide, and the morning light isn’t kind on her overfilled Botoxed face while Janet is quiet and steady.

I already know Janet doesn’t have a gun. If she did she would have handled Carrie by now, and all of us have had to develop new habits with firearms now that a child is in the mix. I manipulate the cameras some more and I see the drone, what looks like a big black whirling spider with eight rotor blades hovering at the top of the magnolia tree. That’s the high-pitched whining I was hearing. It’s not construction at the neighbor’s house.

I send Marino a text:

MAYDAY. She’s at my house in backyard. Hostage sit & drone.

I don’t call 911. I can’t have regular patrol cars roar up. That’s not how one deals with something like this, and it’s sneaking up on me what Carrie is doing. She wants Desi to be inducted into her infernal family. She wants him to hurt someone, to kill someone with her weaponized drone.

Remember Sister Twister? Bet you won’t miss her.

Carrie is going to kill Dorothy, and then she’ll get rid of Janet. That leaves only Desi, and it’s clear to me what she’s planned to do as I think of her spying on Natalie. I wonder if Carrie was really spying on the boy.

“But why?” My sister never does know when to shut up, and Desi is a small statue holding the flight controller. “I don’t understand. We had such a nice conversation on the plane,” she foolishly says, and now I know.