He moved to the top of the stairs to listen, the distance between them making him nervous. He wished that he had brought a gun, but his partner had said no. A gun would make noise and screw up the plan. The man moved closer to a glass sliding door that led to a deck and steps to the backyard. If she tried to escape out the basement door, he would be on her quickly, but thankfully she made no attempt.

When she came back up, she went to the kitchen to gather the supplies for Pip’s breakfast: a box of cereal, a bowl, a spoon, and a jug of milk. Again the man listened at the top of the stairs as she delivered the meal.

When she came back up, the man turned one of the dining room chairs away from the table so that it faced the wall. “Here’s what we’re gonna do,” he said, pointing for her to sit. “I’m getting hot in this mask, so I’m gonna take it off. I want you to face that wall and not look at me. Am I clear?”

She nodded.

“I can’t stress this enough. Your life depends on my belief that you won’t be able to identify me. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Sandy sat perfectly still on the chair, obediently facing the wall. He walked to the living room and retrieved his rucksack, which lay inside the open window. Returning, he took a seat at the opposite end of the table and laid the sack in front of him. “Until the bank opens, we’re gonna sit here and wait.”

The man lifted the ski mask from his face and let the cool air wrap around him. He kept his gloves on, though. No fingerprints. No epithelial DNA. When the time came for him to leave that house, there would be no evidence that a crime had even occurred.

As he waited for the bank to open, the man set up a small command center on the dining room table. He’d brought his own hot spot so that he could connect to the internet without having to go through the woman’s router. The cell phones he would use were burners, to be tossed into the river once he finished with them. If anyone searched cell tower data, they would see unidentified phones had pinged off the nearby towers, but numbers for those phones would be dead ends. It was the one part of the plan that would raise a flag, but there was no way around it. Besides, if he did his job well there would be no suspicion of a crime—no reason for the police to request cell tower data.

Other than the faint murmur of cartoon voices coming up from the basement, their time waiting for the bank to open passed in silence.

Just before eight o’clock, the man put his ski mask back on, picked up his knife, the two phones and his open laptop, and said, “Grab your purse. It’s time to go.”