He leaned down, reached for one of the sheets, then stopped. His gaze went to a different page, close by. He tugged it out from under a pile that half covered it, and held it in front of himself, in the light.

“How the hell…?”

His tone sounded different than a moment before. He sounded unnerved.

His eyes went back and forth over the sheet, rapidly. Then he stopped and tilted his head, listening. The incoming sirens were louder now. He seemed to be gauging their distance.

“What is it?” Danica asked.

He didn’t answer. He slid off his seat on the stair tread and knelt down over the scattered papers. He looked from one to the next, as if trying to study them as much as possible in bare seconds.

He spoke without looking up. “Where did these come from?”

“My stepdad—Carl. He had them.”

The man named Sam looked up at her. “He had them here in this house?”

Danica nodded.

“Where did he get them?” the man asked.

For a second the question threw her. Then she remembered. “My mom. He said she was—” She cut herself off. “I don’t know. I really didn’t understand.”

“Anything you can tell me—”

“I don’t know anything. I just got here. I don’t know.”

He turned his attention back to the papers. He looked as stressed as anyone Danica had ever seen. He glanced up the stairs, into the daylight shining down from the open door at the top. He seemed to be focusing on the sirens again. Coming to some decision. He sat that way for two or three seconds, and then his expression hardened. The stress seemed to vanish, leaving resolve in its place. Whatever choice he’d been weighing, he’d made it.

He shoved all the papers together into a rough stack, got a hold of them, and stood. He turned to her.

“How much can you trust me for now?” he asked.

“What?”

He pointed at the bald man, lying in a spreading pool of blood. “I’m obviously not with him, and if I wanted to hurt you, I could have done it by now. Can you accept that much, for a start? That I’m not going to hurt you?”

She thought about it. Nodded.

“Then I need you to trust me on something. That we have to leave here, right now. That we can’t stay and wait for the cops.”

“What are you talking about?”