“Like you didn’t get yourself into enough trouble growing up.”

He opened the door a crack.

No voices, just an eerie creaking sound.

He opened the door wider, and an earthy smell filled the air. Something metallic was behind it. Blood, I realized.

No one shot at us. It felt like a good sign.

There was an odd rasp, then a soft moan.

“Someone’s alive,” he said.

We crept down the dimly lit stairs. A man was hanging from the ceiling, swaying slightly on a chain.

“Theo?” I said, and he groaned.

My father found the light switch and turned it on. Theo was soaked in blood from his face down to his bare feet. If he was alive, it was only barely.

“We have to get him down,” I said, but my father was frozen in place. He pointed at the floor, and I realized Ben was lying there, eyes wide, mouth open, and missing most of his throat.

CHAPTER 50 DEIRDRE

CHAPTER 50

DEIRDRE

The first state trooper who walked into that basement scuttled out like a cartoon character, legs pinwheeling on the stairs.

“What d’you want to bet he puts in for early retirement?” my father commented.

We’d managed to get Theo down from the ceiling, but his arms were still looped in chains. Even on the ground, they were stuck in position, as if he were a doll broken by an angry child. By the time paramedics made it there, he was murmuring like a fever victim. I tried to pick out words and failed.

Finally, some cops arrived on the scene and ordered us out as they set up floodlights around the perimeter of the house. We stood as near the action as we could, watching the parade of uniforms march in and out with the grim tenacity of ants.

“Pity,” my father murmured.

“Because we don’t get to settle our score with Ben?”

He nodded.

“I know what you mean,” I admitted. “But I’m grateful Teddy’s safe, and hopeful Theo will survive.”

My father stared at me for a moment before nodding. “I am too.”

Our impulses were dark and raw. That didn’t mean we had to follow them.

The cops stationed out front wouldn’t let us back in, even though we’d already been inside the house and had contaminated the crime scene. “Believe me—you don’t want to see it anyways,” a grizzled cop with a florid face told us. “It’s like Ivan the Terrible’s torture chamber down there.”