“What’s going on?” Dino asked from the stairs.

“We’ve had a visitation,” Stone replied.

“Not a visitation, a visit!” Carly said. “There was nothing ghostly about it.”

Dino walked over to the window and inspected it closely. “Looks like a couple of pellets got through. Did you fire more than once?”

“No.”

“It’s the ammo,” Stone said. “It’s a powerful load.”

“Well, you might have put a couple of little holes in one of the boys,” Dino said, admiringly. “Had you ever fired a shotgun before?”

“No. Stone showed me how.”

“Well, you were right. You’re a quick learner. I’m even more impressed with your intent than I am with your technique. Tell me, if you can remember, where he was standing. Where would you say the pellets struck him?”

Carly backed away from the window, examined it, and closed her eyes. “Upper chest, I’d say. Near the collarbone on his left.”

Dino drew his weapon, switched on the porch light, let himself out the back door, and had a look around the porch. Then he came back inside, locking the door behind him. “No blood. I was hoping for a DNA match. That could have nailed them.”

“Hey, you just reminded me,” Carly said. “I asked the New Haven EMTs to do a rape kit on me.”

“Did they?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what became of it.”

“I’ll call over there in the morning and find out,” Dino said.

“Everybody’s heart rate back to normal?” Stone asked.

Everybody nodded. “Then let’s get back to sleep. Nothing more we can do tonight.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Carly said, “I want to look at your system and find out why the warning didn’t go off.”

“Whatever you like,” Stone said. Stone had, one way or another, used up all of the adrenaline in his body, and he climbed the stairs slowly.

Primmy was clurled up in a ball, sleeping soundly. That was okay with him. He shucked off the robe and got into bed as quietly as possible. In five minutes he was asleep.

—

The following morning Stone came down to breakfast to find Carly relating her story of the night before to Lance.

“Don’t touch the electronics,” he said to her. “I’ll have my people do it from their end. They can run a diagnostic program.”

“I can do that,” Carly said.

“Not this program. It’s proprietary.”

“Oh.”

Everybody sat down, and Carly gave them the short version of her story. After breakfast, Lance made a phone call. When he came back into the living room he said to everyone, “I want you to switch off all your electronic devices—phones, computers, vibrators—and I mean off, not just idling along. In fact, remove the batteries. My IT people are going to run some tests, and they don’t want any interference.”

Everyone complied. “Can we turn on the TV?” Dino asked.