“Love you, too,” he said on his way to the door. “Talk to you soon.”

Such a kid.

Lou wondered what news Vaill had returned to share, thinking it was something too serious to discuss over the phone. He turned the knob and had pulled the door open barely an inch when it sprung inward on him, rammed from the other side. Knocked off balance, Lou staggered backward. He was confused by Vaill’s sudden aggression until he realized it was not Vaill. This man had a beard, dark brown eyes, brown hair, and carried a pistol with a silencer pointed at the center of Lou’s chest.

“Don’t make a sound, not a single noise or you die,” the intruder said. One look at his flat, lifeless eyes, and Lou had no doubt the threat was real. The man stepped farther into the room, closing the door behind him with his foot and reaching back to dead-bolt it, which Lou knew would automatically engage the Do Not Disturb notice on the outside. “Keep your hands chest-high where I can see them,” he demanded.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

Lou’s stomach cartwheeled. His heart slammed again and again against the inside of his ribs. This was not a man to be tested.

“Doesn’t matter,” the gunman replied, “you have something I need.”

Missing pieces quickly dropped into place.

“You kidnapped Humphrey, didn’t you. You’re Burke. You killed Tim Vaill’s wife.”

Outside, the wind and the downpour had intensified, but Lou, desperately sizing up his situation, was barely aware.

Alexander Burke returned an indifferent shrug. “So I am,” he said. “But to repeat—you, sir, have something I need. A notebook your friend Miller gave you.”

The killer moved closer, one cautious step … then another. His gun hand was as steady as a steel rod. Lou was on one side of the king-sized bed, Burke on the other, but the bullets in his gun shortened the distance between them immeasurably.

More lightning … more thunder … more wind … more rain.

Neither man moved to close the flapping drapes, but Burke flipped on one bedside light.

Lou searched for an advantage—any advantage. They were about the same height, and Lou had the sense that in an even-up fight he had a chance—except for the gun.

“I don’t know what notebook you’re talking about,” he said.

Burke sneered.

“We’re not really going to play that game, are we?”

“I don’t know what—”