‘Carol, they were probably just kids,’ Howard told her. ‘They took your laptop.’

‘That’s what you’re concerned about? A laptop? I could have been raped! Killed! They could have taken Annie!’

‘I know. The police will be here soon. I’m going to check if anything else is missing.’

Howard left Annie’s bedroom. He returned to the icy living room and realized he would need to board up the broken windows tonight. The temperature was around zero. He went to the front door, which was still open. Looking out through the storm door, he saw footprints running across their yard in the snow. Kids, he told himself.

He closed the door.

Howard returned to his empty bedroom and slipped on sweatpants and a white T-shirt. He checked the other rooms and made sure nothing else had been taken. Just the computer and the cash. His shouts had interrupted them before they made their way deeper into the house.

Just kids.

I could have been killed.

Howard heard his wife’s voice in his head as he stood in front of the broken windows and waited for the police lights to appear on the street. He thought to himself: And what if she had been killed? What if he’d gone into the bedroom and found his wife’s body there?

Shot. Or strangled. Or stabbed.

Howard thought about Janine Snow.

That was her story, too. She took a shower, and when she came out of the bathroom, she found her husband dead on the living room floor. An intruder had come and gone. Murdered Jay Ferris. Taken jewelry from their bedroom. So she said.

It was such a long way from Howard’s little house to that mansion on the hill. He had nothing in common with a woman like Janine Snow. Except now he did. A burglary could happen to anyone. He thought about her photograph, her blond hair, her put-together look, her arrogant beauty that was so intoxicating. And then he imagined her standing over her husband’s murdered body.

No one believed her.

Howard thought: Would anyone believe him?

What if those kids had killed his wife? You’re living your life, and suddenly a random act of violence changes everything. People start tearing apart your whole world. The police. The media. Pretty soon, they find out your secrets. Things that make you look guilty, even when you’re not. Everybody had things like that. You could take anybody’s ordinary life and turn it into something dark and criminal.

Look at Howard Marlowe. He murdered his wife.

Look at Janine Snow. She murdered her husband.

He heard movement behind him. Carol stood there, arms folded across her chest. She looked like someone who’d opened a closet door and seen the devil hiding inside.

‘I want to get a gun,’ she said.