Nora bounded into the kitchen. Keegan followed her, trying to clear his head of the last vestiges of the dream he’d been having. He switched on the kitchen light and found Nora barking at the screen door. He’d left the back and front doors wide open. Nora clawed at the aluminum frame of the screen and then backed away. She tipped her head up and sniffed at the night air coming in and then set to barking again.

Keegan picked the dog up, to quiet her, but she fought him and kept twisting her head to look at the screen door. “Shhhh,” he told her. “It’s okay.” He backed up a few steps and switched off the light, so no one could see him from outside. He crept back to the screen door and listened for anything moving outside in the garden. He could see nothing beyond the back steps, which were lit dimly by the outside lamp.

He carried Nora back to the bedroom, which was hot and stuffy, closed up for more than a week. He set her down and blocked the doorway with his leg until he could get the door shut without her slipping past him.

In the kitchen, he turned off the outdoor lamp and waited, listening, before he opened the screen door. The garden was empty. He slipped out to the edge of the lawn and looked down at Ormsby’s place. The grass was cool and brittle under his bare feet. A light came on in a downstairs window, and then switched off again.

Keegan crouched low and crept past the rose bushes, until he could see Ormsby’s back gate. There was no sedan in the gravel drive tonight, and the back gate was still closed.

He slipped back towards the kitchen door so he’d have a better view of Ormsby’s house. Light glinted as a French door along the side of the house opened and closed. A shadow slipped between the house and the dark garden hedges. The shape finally emerged from the shadows and rushed across the lawn towards the back gate. It was Eve. He was certain. But she moved with a strange excess of energy, like she was flushed with panic.

Keegan rushed along the side of the cottage to the front gate and trotted down the hill towards Ormsby’s back drive. The blacktop was still warm underfoot and grit bit at his bare soles as he ran. He heard the chain-link gate thrown back and a flurry of light footsteps across the gravel, and then she was on the road, rushing up the hill towards him. She wore a light-colored robe and fleece slippers. Her face, lit by moonlight, was damp and terrified. Keegan stopped running, and she rushed up towards him.

“I shot him,” she managed to say when she was a few steps away. “I think he’s dead.”