“Get out of the way.” Doyle had returned from the utility room wielding a sledgehammer heavy with cobwebs. He gripped the handle at the end with one hand, the other behind the head, and slammed it down against the lock plate. There was another scream from inside the apartment. Doyle heaved the sledgehammer again, this time breaking the lock. He dropped the hammer to one side, drew his Glock 17, then threw his shoulder against the door, snapping the chain lock free.

Larkin took lead, SIG raised as he entered the apartment. The tile floor of the expansive living room was dull and in desperate need of waxing, and the furniture sparse, even for a bachelor pad of a middle-aged man: a single recliner in the middle of the room; an entertainment stand against the far left wall housing a relatively small flat-screen television, home printer, and a closed laptop—all the cables were in complete disarray. The home had no bookshelves or even displaced books piled on the floor, despite Reynold’s entire adult life having been committed to the pursuit and study of the English language. A brief glimpse through an open doorway at the far end of the room showed a mattress on the floor, the bed made up of mismatching sheets. But it was the walls of the apartment that, for one critical second, distracted Larkin.

They were covered in cutouts and printouts of teen girl models. Years and years of Back-to-School Fashion Tips & Tricks, OMG Hair, Are You a Flirt?, and Get Gorgeous Skin, all advertised with fresh faces and pert bodies no older than sixteen, with an apparent emphasis on redheaded girls. Mingled among the clothing and hair photoshoots and advertisements for the hottest eye cream of 2003 were paparazzi-esque photos of celebrity teenage couples. The boy in each relationship had been scribbled out with a black marker.

Larkin shook his head, blinked, saw a negative of a sea of smiling faces in his mind’s eye, then spun on his heel toward a sound directly behind him. Gary Reynold, tall and rail-thin, with black hair, a receding hairline, and a bushy mustache, shuffled sideways out of a kitchen, his forearm wrapped around the neck of a teen girl with poorly dyed red hair, wearing scuffed and beaten-up pink boots, black jeans torn at the knees with ripped mesh tights showing, along with a white long-sleeve shirt, the wrists frayed, and imprinted with a logo, probably for some obscure band, that looked to have been drawn by hand with a black Sharpie. She was crying, and cheap eye makeup was running down her cheeks.

“Gary—” was all Larkin got out before Reynold let out a panicked yelp, pointed the bright yellow taser he’d been holding to the girl’s head, and fired at Larkin.