“Tell me,” she choked out, hating her father as she remembered walking in and seeing Daniel that last time. He’d had a needle sticking out of a vein in the back of his arm and his head had been back, his mouth slack, his skin the color of winter snow clouds.

“If you don’t answer me . . .” She couldn’t finish. The idea that she might lose all of her family right here, right now closed her throat up tight.

That handkerchief was unbound once more with shaky hands. “The men approached me in the firm’s parking garage downtown. I’d been working late and they . . . they put me in a car and I figured this was it. They were going to kill me. Instead, they drove me south to Quincy. To Daniel’s place. He was already high when we all walked in—I think . . . I think he believed it was a practical joke. When he saw the syringe they’d brought, he offered them his arm—even though I was screaming for him not to let them—” Her father’s voice broke. “He didn’t care. . . . he didn’t know. . . . I knew what they were doing—but he didn’t. I should have . . . They should have killed me, not him. They should have . . .”

Rage made Grier’s vision white out briefly. When it came back, the center of her chest was ice cold and she didn’t care that he had suffered. Or had regrets or . . .

“Get out of this house. Now.”

“Grier—”

“I don’t want to ever see you again. Don’t contact me. Don’t come near me—”

“Please—”

“Get out!” She shifted to Isaac. “Take him out of here—just get him away from me.”

She’d do it herself, but she barely had enough strength to stand up.

Isaac didn’t hesitate. He walked over to her father, hitched a hand under the guy’s arm, and lifted him out of the armchair.

Her father was talking again, but she was deaf as he was escorted from the kitchen: The image of her brother’s body on that ratty couch consumed her.

The small details were the killer: His eyes had been partially open, his pupils staring off sightlessly into the middle distance, and his faded blue T-shirt had been stained with dark patches under the armpits and vomit on the front. Three rusty spoons and a grubby yellow Bic lighter had littered the coffee table, and there had been a half-eaten pizza that looked a week old on the floor by his feet. The stuffy air had smelled of stale urine and cigarette smoke as well as something chemically sweet.