“It is.” Sandra looked at the cable in her hand, then at Katie. “You have to let me plug this in. Please. My daughter . . .”

Kyle waved the gun. “If you do it, I’ll just shoot her, anyway. Or maybe you.”

“Please, just—”

“Were you there? Did you hear this?”

“What?”

“Ruskin’s confession. You heard him say this?”

Sandra paused. “Not personally. But I was told.”

Kyle shook his head, still not understanding. “Who told you? Who heard him?”

“The chief of police,” she said. “Joe—”

Kyle raised his free palm, stopping her. And he laughed. “Oh well, now it starts to make some sense. Bridgeman told you this.”

“How do you know his—”

“He told you this, and he says Ruskin confessed to him before he died?”

Sandra, almost a whisper: “Yes.”

“Convenient,” Kyle said.

“But . . . Ruskin gave him the password, for Lisa’s computer. He . . . he knew things.”

Kyle nodded smugly. “The password, was it Zenia, but backward? With a numeric date attached?”

Sandra started to reply, but nothing came out. She was trying to figure out what was going on. None of what Kyle was saying made sense to her. And yet . . .

“Plug me in.”

Katie whimpered, “Mom . . .”

She raised the cable in her hand. “Please. I have to do this.”

“I can tell you where Joe got that password,” Kyle said obligingly. “He got it from me. I had to go through hoops to get it. Ruskin wouldn’t have known it. Lisa would never have trusted him with it.” He thought a moment. “So Ruskin’s confession comes to you secondhand, from the chief?”

She nodded.

“Gotta hand it to him. That was smart. Saying Ruskin confessed before he died.” He was pondering something. “Just how did he die, if it wasn’t one of the cars?”

“He . . . he hit his head.”

“Were you with him when he died?”

Sandra shook her head.

“But let me guess. Good ol’ Joe was.”

“Plug me in.”

Sandra looked back to the car, and Katie. She said to Kyle, her back to him. “You do what you have to do, but I’m plugging in this cable.”

He shook his head angrily. “I don’t think so. You—”

But then he and Sandra and Katie were distracted by a noise. It was the sound of an engine, a powerful one, coming down the street.

A car.

They all turned and looked, even Katie, who scraped her nose on the board and batten siding as she moved her head.

Joe, Sandra thought. Somehow, he got a car. Let him save us. Let him be the hero, for now. The questions could come later.

But it was not a police car.

It was a big, black, badly damaged Cadillac.

Forty-Eight