Mr. Dougherty’s wife had died a year ago of bone cancer. Robin knew this too and it made her feel bad for him, even now, the way he was looking at her, head shaking, cheeks drawn, all the sympathy in the world in his eyes. She didn’t want to think about why. “I thought it was a backfire,” he said. “Then I heard the others.”

“Where are my parents?”

“I don’t know.” Mr. Dougherty’s gaze moved to a point behind her. She saw the lights flashing in his eyes, across his face. “Oh,” he said. “Oh my God,” and it was as though she were stuck in a dream. An awful dream. Ambulance lights. She whirled around, saw the first ambulance pulling away and then paramedics wheeling a gurney out, a flash of her father’s barrel chest—such a big man, though she’d never thought of him that way. A linebacker on his college football team. Big enough to earn the respect of his former patients, the criminally insane. But now . . . the white sheet across his chest . . . the blood . . .

And his face.

“Dad!” It barely escaped her lips, the faintest whisper. Her feet headed toward the ambulance of their own accord and she said it again, louder. “Dad! Dad!”

“Ms. Bloom?”

Robin didn’t even turn at first, unused as she was to her maiden name. But then she heard it said again, felt a hand on her back. She recognized the same cold clinical voice as she’d heard over the phone, only so much more fragile in the warm night air, the shifting swirling lights.

Officer Lebow caught up with her as the second ambulance sped away, siren echoing, both of them staring after it. Robin gave her a quick glance—a sturdy young girl with a sweet face, the uniform the only thing about her that was truly off-putting. “What happened?”

“We’re trying to find that out, ma’am,” she said. “There seems to have been a break-in.”

Dad flashed through her mind again—on the phone, then on the gurney. The blood-drenched sheet, the speed with which the paramedics attended to him. His face . . . Robin heard herself talking, but it was as though her voice were coming from a different body than her own. A weaker one. “They’re still alive, right? They’re going to be okay? Did you see my mother? What did she look like?”

“Ma’am, when was the last time you spoke to your parents?”

“My mother . . . They were shot?”

“Yes. They’re both on their way to the hospital. Don’t worry.”