‘Someone wants Macy to take the fall. That was the plan all along.’ Cab pointed at the empty pistol case. ‘Macy’s prints are going to be on the gun and the clip,’ he said.

He stared at the article pinned to the bulletin board and the message scrawled across it. All fake. This was never about revenge. It was all about misdirection. They’d been led down the garden path, led toward Frank Macy from day one. Someone wanted them to believe that history was about to repeat itself.

And it was. It was.

‘Macy would have taken the blame for the Labor Day murders, too,’ Lala said. ‘No one would ever have found his body. Biggest manhunt since Booth, and all the while he would have been sitting inside some alligator’s stomach.’

‘He’s in the house right now,’ Cab said. ‘He’s going to kill Diane. That’s the final play.’

He thought: My mother’s in there, too.

The rain washed inside the open garage door like a wavy curtain. The wind was a loud, incessant whistle. He turned toward the door, but whatever was going to happen had already begun. Not even a block away, he heard the first bang, and then in rapid succession, he heard four more bangs, muffled but sharp. Gunshots.

Cab sprinted. The storm hit him in the face, as if he’d struck a wall. It nearly knocked him backwards off his feet. Lala ran, too, but he didn’t wait for her. His feet punched through the standing water, down the driveway, onto the street. It was like running through molasses, the water grabbing his ankles, the slick mud making him slip. He was in slow motion, battling the wind.

He could barely see, not in the daytime darkness, not with his eyes slitted against the downpour. He couldn’t hear anything except the storm roaring in his ears, as fierce and loud as a lion. He ran by feel, his fist clenched around his gun.

Fifty yards from Diane’s estate, he spotted a lump in the water, like a whale breaching. When he knelt down, he saw a body facedown near the sidewalk. Cab felt the man’s neck, but there was no pulse. He grabbed his shoulder and turned him over, and he recognized the face of the estate’s security guard, with a bullet hole like a third eye squarely in his forehead.

Whoever had pulled the trigger was already on his way, heading for Diane. And Tarla.

Lala caught up to him. She tugged on his sleeve, pulling him to his feet. ‘Come on,’ she shouted. ‘Cab, come on!’

They left the dead guard where he was. They kept running.