As he stood at that apartment door, he was aware that if things went south, he’d only have relative strangers tending to him.

In the pre-op discussion prior to the hit, they had all settled on two things beyond a standard entry scenario: They would begin with a simple knock on the door, there being no indicators to suggest physical violence in the offing, and Joe would take the lead.

In contrast to Keene’s relatively open flatlands, the countryside around Gilsum, only eight miles north, consisted of trees, craggy granite ledges, and the Ashuelot River, tumbling on its way through the largely wild tangle.

That sense of enclosure was dramatically offset by the house Lester Spinney and Sammie Martens paused to admire from the foot of a long and winding driveway. Constructed of logs, it could not have been associated with the word cabin. It was also situated in the middle of a large, carefully and expensively clear-cut field, now decorously covered with a slowly yielding mantle of snow. The driveway—hardtop, unsurprisingly—was immaculately plowed and probably heated from beneath.

This was the expansive home of Lemuel Shaw, owner of the Mercedes for which Willy had such low regard.

“We don’t often get to visit places like this,” Lester commented, accelerating up the incline.

Sam was less impressed. On the drive over, she’d been distracted and impatient. Sleep deprivation was one factor. She knew that. But being headstrong and proud, she’d put that on the bottom of the list. This was hardly her first all-nighter, after all. More problematic was Emma, her daughter, whom she’d barely seen in the last twenty-four hours. She’d just been able to race home before setting off on this excursion, kiss her, wish her a good day, and leave her in what was becoming the perpetual care of their almost live-in babysitter, Louise, an ex-cop herself.

Louise was great. Motherly, patient, always available, cheap, and a dyed-in-the-wool friend.

But she wasn’t Sam—or Willy, for that matter, who Sam knew was also frustrated by the disparate demands of work and parenthood.

They had a routine approaching normalcy, not unlike Lester and Sue’s when their kids were younger. Les worked days, Sue pulled nights, and the kids usually had at least one parent to push them around and make them miserable. Sam and Willy weren’t quite in the same boat, both working days. But their schedules under Joe were also not overly regimented, and they worked hard to make sure one of them was at home when it counted. Plus they had only the one kid and Louise, to boot. So why the hell did Sam keep feeling she was letting Emma down? Her daughter wasn’t complaining, her teachers weren’t reporting problems. There was nothing on the radar.

And yet, it lingered.

Sleeplessness and missing Emma weren’t the only things grinding at her. There was Joe, alone in Keene with a bunch of hotshots for company who didn’t know his style or habits under fire. He was just the older wannabe who’d parachuted out of the blue to get them to kick open a door. What kind of backup were they going to be if something went haywire?