A pounding shakes the level beneath us, a boom of a boot against wood, and I know instinctively it’s not Cam. Cam has a key. He wouldn’t need to bust through his own front door.

The police.

Their sirens swirl loud and steady in the falling dusk just outside, and my gaze goes to the front of the house, to the stretch of solid wall bordering the hallway, through the wood and plaster and stone, down the hill to the painted brick two-story home across the street.

Baxter.

His name whispers through my brain, a siren’s song tugging me to him, a gravitational pull between me and my son. I don’t care about Sebastian, bleeding onto my wall. I don’t care about tying him down or shooting him in the face or taking out both his kneecaps. I don’t even care if he gets away. I can only think of one thing.

I drop the tape to the floor and grab my daughter’s hand.

J A D E

7:09 p.m.

Beatrix and I race down the stairs to the main floor, cloaked in shadow because nobody thought to turn on the lights.

It’s a way I know by heart, and I’m navigating the dim space when I run smack into a body, a head-on collision with the human wall at the bottom of the stairs.

Two massive men, big and solid like bouncers, their bodies blocking the way like giant boulders. I ricochet off their thick chests, and then I clutch Beatrix to me and scream.

“Don’t shoot,” one of them says, holding up his hands. “We’re the good guys.”

“Friends of Cam,” the other adds.

Cam. At the name, my heart and lungs unclench, but not my finger on the trigger. I don’t know all of Cam’s friends, but I definitely don’t know these men. I might still need the gun.

“Where is he? Where’s Cam?”

“He’s meeting us at the car.”

There’s a breath or two where I almost believe them, these two strange men who are motioning for me to follow them into the night just because they claim to be friends of Cam. Behind them, at the back of the house, the floor looks like a sky of stars, glass shards glittering in the glow of the outside lights.

It’s not the front doors they just busted through. It’s the back.

And why the back? The police are almost here, and they’ll be coming through the front. Why not throw open the doors and meet them outside?

I’m also wondering what happened to the alarm, why it’s not wailing. Or maybe it is, and I’m just not hearing it over all the other noise—the crunch of glass, the approaching police, the blood pounding like Niagara Falls in my ears.