The Green Pond that lent its name to the town was actually a lake. This night its surface was dark as the moon had yet to rise. Prek navigated the twisting, hilly eastern shore road where the few homes, sitting at the end of long driveways, were mostly hidden by dense, leafless hardwood forest. There were just a handful of homes on the cliffs on the western side, which could be reached only by boat. The village itself lay to the north. After a mile or so the road wound closer to the lake and to the dwellings along the shore. Some of the homes belonged to year-round residents and their windows glowed with warm incandescent light and the occasional flash and flicker of the ubiquitous big-screen TVs. At the southern end of the lake were a number of summer cottages and they were dark, with their docks stacked in neat piles and their boats under tarps.

Prek pulled into the driveway of Aleksander’s waterfront cottage, which was situated on a peninsula at the very southern end of the lake facing out onto a cove a couple of hundred yards in diameter. Aleksander had been drawn to the house by its private location on a spit of land. He had been delighted to find out that for seven or eight months of the year, the houses and cottages on either side of his on the eastern cove were dark and deserted with their heating systems off and pipes drained. There were only two houses on the western side of the peninsula, and they were also empty except during the summer months. Buda loved the place because of its serenity, particularly in the winter when the lake froze up solid.

Prek parked in back of the house facing the road, found his key and opened up, turning on the lights and the oil-fired heat.

“Honey, I’m home,” Prek called out, laughing.

The closer they had got to this sanctuary, the brighter the mood in the van had become. Prek was positively gleeful that everything had gone so well. The boss was sure to be very pleased.

The three men unloaded the rolled-up carpet that contained Pia and brought it quickly inside. The front door opened directly into the living area, where there were two leather couches, one black, one brown, facing each other in the center of the room in front of a fieldstone fireplace. Prek moved a low coffee table scattered with automobile magazines to the side so that Genti and Neri could set down the carpet roll containing Pia. They then unrolled her until she lay sprawled, facedown, on the room’s massive fake oriental.