If it wasn't for Shelley Atta and her insistence that Bible see the BD, they might already have what they needed. But no, the idiot thought Cynthia Powski would rattle the man into compliance. As if anyone with two marbles to rub together would be anything other than outraged by Neil Cassidy's little 'sitcum', as her sometime-partner Danny Gerard had wickedly dubbed it. When Atta had mentioned her plan, the first thing Samantha had wondered was how she herself would react. But that was the problem with pricks like Shelley Atta: they just couldn't step outside their own skin. Or didn't care to.

Samantha Logan had understood why Thomas Bible had kicked them out of his office. She had even secretly applauded him for doing it. But why had he raced home afterward? And why had he raced here immediately after that?

Just where was here, anyway?

Thomas paused in the shade of the porch. He'd been to Nora's 'new place' more times than he could count, picking up the kids, delivering the kids, and once to help her carry in a new refrigerator—something he still alternately congratulated and cursed himself for doing (they had ended up screwing on her tacky living room couch). And yet despite the frequency of his visits, nothing about the place felt familiar. He was an interloper here, an unwelcome passer-through. The long low porch with its impenetrable windows, its bustling planters and sun-hanging geraniums, its whitewashed railing and black aluminum door, had always seemed to personify Nora somehow.

And Nora no longer loved him.

But there was more to his hesitation; there was Neil and the FBI as well. Why had Neil mentioned her? And what was it he had said? Something. Something… Thomas rubbed his face in frustration.

This isn't happening.

He simply stood and breathed, stared like an idiot at the closed door. The house seemed preternaturally quiet. When he blinked, he no longer saw Cynthia Powski, he saw inside.

Signs of struggle. Lines of blood roped across hardwood floors…

No way. No fucking way.

A fly buzzed in the corner of the window's concrete sill, caught in a dead spider's woolly webbing. Another bounced across the opaque glass, summer quick. Sunlight streamed through the railing, casting oblong bars of brilliance across the floor. One of them warmed his left shoe.

Nora. Even after so much bitterness, so much dismay and disbelief, he continually worried about her living all alone. Patronizing concerns, he knew, but…

After so long. After trying so hard.

This is crazy!

He rapped the door, his knuckles lighter than air.

He waited in silence.

A dog barked from some neighbor's backyard. Kids squealed through a series of swimming pool explosions. Poosh… Poosh-poosh.

No one answered the door.