Marino looks at me as he listens. The conversation didn’t start well and it only gets worse. I can see his internal struggle. I can see it in his eyes, in the set of his heavy jaw, and I’m convinced that Carrie is playing us for Keystone Cops, for fools, and I imagine her amusement, her smug smile and laughter. We’re in the midst of a nightmare of her making because that’s what she does while decent people try to live their lives and do their jobs. We’re here according to plan. Not our plan. Her plan.

“And you got no clue,” Marino is saying to Lapin over the phone. “You haven’t talked to him, and when you saw him last he didn’t give you any reason to think he had something to do, someplace to go? Any reason you can think of he’d quit answering his radio and phone? Yeah like you did. And you’re home? Well it’s a damn good thing because any minute we’re going to see the exact GPS coordinates of where your phone is as we speak. Yeah you heard me right. Sorry, buddy. But that’s what happens when you disappear off the radar.”

It isn’t really. Marino is exaggerating. Using cell towers to determine someone’s exact location isn’t foolproof. It can be off by twenty miles or more depending on the software, topography, the weather and how much signal traffic is handled by regional switching centers at any given moment. But that doesn’t stop Marino from trying. If nothing else cell phone pinging is the stuff of bluffs if he wants to scare a suspect into a confession.

“Here’s what we know.” Marino is talking to me now as he bends down to remove his sopping wet sneakers. “Lapin claims he and Hyde pulled out of here in their respective vehicles while we were still inside the house. This would have been at about ten-fifteen.” His ankles are white and imprinted with the pattern of his socks as he peels them off.

“I saw them leave.” I’m so cold I’m beginning to shiver as we stand near the front door dripping. “The two of them and also Trooper Vogel. About fifteen minutes before you and I headed out.”

I listen to him and I also listen for the tactical team. How can big men with all that gear be so damn quiet? The warnings are fast and strong. We shouldn’t be inside this house. But we’ve walked in and here we are. We’re safe. I keep telling myself we couldn’t be safer. There are special ops cops in here, and I continue to wonder how it’s possible they don’t make a sound. They’re silent like cats. I can’t hear anything, not their feet or their voices, and my heart is beating harder.