He thought about using the knife he carried to drive the window upward, but that would leave a mark, which might alter the narrative. He tried again with his fingers, applying so much pressure that spikes of pain shot down through his knuckles and into his palms. He was about to let up when the window gave way and slid an inch, issuing a squeak like the chirp of a bird.

He paused, waiting for movement or a light turning on inside the house. Nothing happened.

Using his wrists as levers, and then his forearms, he pressed the window slowly upward until he was sure he could fit his six-foot-two frame through. He reached inside to see if anything lay in his way and felt a potted plant. He moved it to the side.

He shrugged off his rucksack of supplies, leaned it against the outside wall of the house, and stepped one leg inside. He had to duck his head and twist his torso to fit himself through the opening. Once inside, he paused again to listen. He was in her world now, and it smelled of scented candles. The carpeting beneath his feet was hers, Berber, a light color that, once his eyes adjusted, helped him distinguish between furniture and the path to her bedroom. Somewhere in the darkness a clock ticked.

His heart beat hard against the walls of his chest as he lifted his rucksack through the window and carefully unzipped it, muffling the sound by pinching the slider between his thumb and index finger. He removed the knife from the sack, his palms sweating beneath his gloves. He unsheathed it and turned it so that the blade caught the moonlight.

He had accomplished step one. Now on to step two.

CHAPTER 3

Her door stood partially open, and he watched her for a minute, pretty in her slumber, a far cry from the demon that had been described. But then again, if someone had snuck into his own mother’s bedroom when he was a child, would they have seen malevolence in the soft contours of her face? Her cruelty often came with a smile, so the man knew well how a demon could hide behind a disguise.

A memory of his mother came to him as he stood outside of the woman’s door. It had been the year after his father’s death, so he would have been eleven. A teacher caught him cheating on a math test, copying answers from the girl who sat beside him. He had been sent home with a note for his mother to sign, and when she read the note, she had lost her mind. She’d called him a thief and a thug, as though he had beat the girl up to get her answers. But what stung the most was when she told him that he was a no-good miscreant.

He’d had to look up the word miscreant to understand. He was only eleven and she had already made up her mind about him. How could any woman do that? Children should be protected by their mothers—and when that didn’t happen, then children needed to be protected from their mothers. He shook the memory away. The last thing he needed was another distraction. He raised the knife and quietly slid the door open.