“With a baby in the house, I sort of figured it’d be your first reaction. Kids always getting into things and all,” he said. “If you don’t mind, though, I’d like to give it a quick check for myself. Otherwise it becomes an issue with the phone company techs in case we nicked a cable and have to contact them.”

Cynthia adjusted Laurie against her shoulder. “Do what you have to,” she said, and moved aside to let him in. “It’ll get you out of the rain for a few minutes, anyway.”

Anton stepped through the doorway, wiped his boots on the mat, let her guide him to the kitchen, and held the receiver to his ear as she stepped back to give him some room.

“Nothing,” he said, and made a small show of examining the jacks. “It’s out for sure.”

She shrugged.

“I was just about to feed the baby, walk up to the center, and ask my husband’s assistant—”

“Julia . . .”

“Right, I almost forgot, you met her the other day,” Cynthia said. “Anyway, she has a cell phone, and I’m going to need to make an important call.”

Anton abruptly hung up the phone and turned to her.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” he said.

His tone flatly declarative.

No expression on his face now.

Cynthia stood there in baffled silence, looking as if she was certain she had misheard him.

“Excuse m—?”

“I said you can’t do that,” Anton broke in, and then flicked his right hand into the utility pouch on his belt and produced the weapon he had chosen for the job. A Sig P232 .380 ACP. White stainless-steel frame, blued barrel. Powerful, accurate, and easily concealed.

Her eyes wide, her lips a wide circle of confusion and fear, Cynthia stared as he raised the pistol, stared uncomprehendingly at the terrible black hole in the center of the gun barrel. She instinctively pulled Laurie close, arms wrapped around her, backing away until she came up short against something hard. The table, a chair, a counter, Cynthia wasn’t sure what in her fear and incomprehension.

That gun. That great black hole pointing at her. Aimed at her from across the kitchen.

“No,” she said. Clasping the baby tightly against her chest. Laurie crying now, sensing her terror. “Whoever you are . . . no.”

Anton cocked the hammer of his pistol, a sound that sent a physical jolt through Cynthia.

She held her daughter close.

“No,” she repeated in a breathless moan, waves of desperate panic sucking the air from her lungs. “Please . . . take anything you want from me . . . please, please . . . just don’t hurt the baby . . . I’m begging you don’t hurt my baby—”

Anton leveled his gun at the spot where the screeching infant was clenched in her mother’s protective embrace, the small body against her chest, their hearts pressed together, beating together.