The survival instinct, paired with his training, took over, giving him various options for how to counter the attack. The most obvious was to wait another millisecond. With the punch at full extension, the teenager would be completely exposed. Myron’s knees were bent. He could pop a shot to the throat, the nose, the groin.

But he wouldn’t do that.

Instead, he stayed in a standing tuck and waited to see how the boy would respond. Using the momentum from his missed punch, Patrick broke into a full run. Myron stood, about to give chase, when Nancy started pounding on his back with her fists.

“Leave my son alone! What the hell is wrong with you? Are you crazy?”

Myron weathered the blows for a moment. He stood upright as Patrick disappeared up the driveway and down the street. Nancy ran to her car and opened the door.

“Please,” she pleaded, sliding in the car and putting it in reverse. “Please leave my boy alone.”

* * *

Myron was about to head back into the house when his cell phone rang. It was his nephew, Mickey.

“We got something on Tamryn Rogers,” Mickey said. “You’re going to want to see this.”

“Where are you?”

“Ema’s house.”

“I’m on my way.”

Win stayed with Brooke. He had been filling her in on all the recent developments, the most puzzling for her being the return of her former au pair, Vada Linna, now known as Sofia Lampo.

“Why would Vada be back?” Brooke had asked. “I don’t get it.”

Neither did they.

Two stone lions guarded the driveway to the mansion where Ema resided with her mother and grandparents. The gate was closed. Myron leaned out. The security guard recognized him and hit the button. The gate creaked open.

When Myron was a kid, the estate had been owned by a famed Mafia don, or boss or capo or whatever you called the head mobster. Rumor had it that there was a furnace on the property where the don cremated the bodies of his victims. When the house was later sold, a furnace was indeed found back behind the pool area. To this day, no one knew whether it had been used for his weekend barbecues or whether those rumors were true.

The mansion was enormous and baronial and dark. It looked like someone had combined a medieval fortress with a Disney castle. The estate was sprawling and probably—and this had been the appeal for the current occupants—the most private in the area. There was a helicopter pad so they could come and go without being seen. The home was in a corporation’s name, so as to protect the identity of the real owner. Up until a few months ago, even Ema’s closest friends had no idea she lived here or why she kept it secret.

There was a lion-head knocker on the door, but before Myron could reach for it, Angelica Wyatt opened the door. She gave him a warm smile and said, “Hey, Myron.”