Amanda had been so stupid. The vintage car in the driveway—that was another giveaway she’d completely overlooked. Clearly not in use, the car belonged in the garage. The gun, too. Cheap and cheerful, easily obtainable 9mm Browning pistols. As Ted had rightly said, they were not the kind of guns career robbers tended to buy. They were a gun for a single job. A gun that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

But all was not lost. It brightened Amanda’s spirit to know that these two men were also, apparently, not very clever. Cunning and creative, yes. But while they discussed her possible demise, she had been left in the space before the front door, the living room off to the right of her, the garage and bedrooms to the left. Though her hands were taped, they’d not gagged her. She could, at any minute, start screaming her head off. But she wouldn’t. Not yet. There would likely be no one at the bar across the creek this early to hear her, and her best plan of action now was to earn the men’s trust.

The second thing counting against the men in Amanda’s assessment of their intelligence was the state of the house. They were not renovating, of course, but that story had been a good cover for the noise. She could see through the distant doorway to the garage, where the concrete floor had been ripped to shreds over the days since the murders, the smooth finish now an uneven sprawl of rocks and jagged holes cut by the jackhammer. The men had hedged their bets that what they were looking for may not in fact have been hidden in the concrete floor by knocking holes in all the drywall. Before Amanda in the entrance hall, a series of holes had been smashed through the apricot pink surface, the drywall pulled forward, powdered and papery and hanging, exposing hollow interiors. With still no luck in their search the men had torn up the carpet in one of the bedrooms and flung it onto the floor of the living room, where it now lay in a slashed heap, staples poking out from ragged edges.

Curious, Amanda shimmied along the short hall on her backside, not confident in standing with her arms pinned and her head still ringing from Jay’s punch. She reached the living room and peered in, wrinkling her nose at the smell of decomposition, human waste. Mrs. Songly was still in the chair by the glass doors, most of her hidden from view by the curtain, her limp legs stretched out on the couch’s footrest. The top half of her body had been wrapped clumsily in a white sheet now stained with various bodily fluids. A sad mummy sagging forward slightly, her thin arms in her lap deadly shades of oyster blue and gray. Beyond the view of the glass doors, the men had trashed cupboards and shelves, tossed books and ornaments on the floor. There were glass shards twinkling on the kitchen tiles, the backing of cupboards ripped out and strewn across the counters. A pile of mail had slipped from the countertop and fallen near where she sat.