“Yes.” Benton sits back down next to Janet who is watching Lucy horse around with Desi, Jet Ranger and our rescued greyhound Sock.

Lucy grabs a green rubber ball off the lawn and tosses it, and when she darts and dodges playfully I catch a glimpse of the .40 caliber pistol in her ankle holster. Jet Ranger runs several steps and that’s enough exertion for him. He sits as Sock wanders off to his favorite rest stop of rosebushes and Desi races to the ball laughing hilariously. He hurls it back to Lucy as the screen door bangs shut and Marino emerges drinking a bottle of Red Stripe beer. He wears a pistol on the waistband of his jeans. Janet and Benton also are armed, and I’m reminded that no one close to me is very far from a gun at any given time. We don’t know where Carrie is. We have no clue.

“We can’t trust that cases haven’t been tampered with and turned into data fiction.” Donoghue is presenting the case as she sees it.

“That’s the point,” Janet says. “Every single record or report she might have accessed will be questioned. Defense attorneys will have a field day.”

“I know I would.”

“Not would but will,” Benton says to her.

“People will get out of prison.”

“Right and left” is his answer.

“Dirtbags who will want to send Benton and Kay a thank-you note.” Janet is sipping the sparkling wine, her eyes on Lucy and Desi.

“I would think that’s a very real threat,” Donoghue says. “You can’t know who might come around, and these days it’s easy to figure out where somebody lives.”

“Classic Carrie payback,” Janet says.

“And that’s what this is about?”

“It’s about her need to overpower. It’s about her need to be a god,” Benton says, and one place we might go is California.

We could move there and be safer than we are here. That’s a given. But the prospect of uprooting is overwhelming, and I don’t believe it will do any good. We can’t escape Carrie. If she doesn’t want us to find her we won’t, even if she’s breathing down our necks. It seems impossible we could be inside the same house with her and not have any idea. But that’s what happened. For the better part of the past six months she was belowground in a tunnel that had been sealed off since the Civil War. Lucy suspects Carrie found out about it the same way other people have. It’s in old documents. You just have to look.

“And the ultimate in taking power,” Benton describes to Donoghue, “is to stalk, to steal someone’s identity and then finally take the person’s life.”

“Which is what she did to Chanel Gilbert.” Donoghue stares off thoughtfully, watching Lucy play tug-of-war with Sock.