Safe enough to sleep.

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 10:05 P.M.

In hindsight, Ephraim should have waited until morning to kill Regina, so that he could have gotten a decent night’s sleep. His head still pounded and he was exhausted, but hotels were not an option. He didn’t want to risk even a shitty motel because Regina had been right about the BOLOs. Cops and Feds all over the state were looking for him. The airports would be alerted, as would the borders if he tried to hang out in Mexico.

But he didn’t want to be in Mexico. He wanted to be wherever Mercy Callahan was, so he’d headed back to Sacramento. He hadn’t been able to find Raphael Sokolov’s address online, no matter what search engine he’d used, so he’d have to track Mercy another way. He didn’t know what that way would be, but he’d figure it out in the morning.

Now, he just needed to find a place to sleep.

He stopped in a northern suburb of Sacramento, a community in which every house was dark. Slowly he drove through the streets, checking for any place that looked unoccupied, but the houses were close together and he didn’t want to risk surprising someone inside who might yell loudly enough to be heard. He followed the main street out of town, finding himself on a farm road, not unlike the one where he’d dumped the woman’s body earlier this evening.

What was her name again? Right, June Lindstrom. He needed to remember the details, needed to listen to the news for word of her discovery. Her death couldn’t directly be traced to him, but eventually the cops would figure out that she’d left the airport at the same time that he’d fled.

He turned off his headlights as he approached the old farmhouse at the end of the lane. It had definitely seen better days. Even in the darkness, he could see that the paint was peeling and the weeds grew high all around the property. Quietly, he got out of the car that he’d stolen after ditching Regina’s sleek Lexus. This car was an older model, a real clunker. It still had a cassette tape deck, for God’s sake, so it was unlikely to have GPS. Which was exactly what he needed right now to stay off the grid.

He walked toward the farmhouse, keeping to the shadows. Checking all the windows, he found only one occupant—an old woman sitting in her recliner, watching TV.

Drawing Regina’s gun from his pocket, he made sure the suppressor was on tight and crept to the back door, ready to break one of the small window panels so that he could reach in and unlock it. But to his surprise, it was already unlocked.

He opened the door and slipped in, checking for any kind of home alarm system, but he saw nothing. He crossed an old kitchen into a drab hallway, stopping cold when a floorboard squeaked.