Philip was home. Rick could make out his hulking silhouette shuffling around in a back room. A Black woman sat at the dining table in the foreground, her eyes glued to a computer screen. She was attractive—the kind of girl that guys like Philip got when they had recognizable names and houses like the one he was looking into.

Behind him, Rick heard a door open. “Can’t have the wife calling the cops,” Frank said.

For once, the menace in his partner’s tone didn’t bother Rick. “Open the trunk,” he said.

“What’s in the trunk?” Frank asked.

“Open it.”

Maybe it was the fact that Rick’s tone finally matched his partner’s, but Frank didn’t object. Rick heard the pop of the trunk unlocking, followed by the mechanical creak of it rising. He stormed over to the open compartment and dipped his head inside.

“What are you looking for?”

Rick didn’t answer, partly because he wasn’t sure. Something physically substantial. Heavy. He’d know it when he saw it.

A tire iron glinted atop the trunk’s gray fabric interior. Rick grabbed it and headed toward the house. He kept his head lowered, eyes to the ground, as if he weren’t too angry to feel the presumably cold air swatting his exposed skin.

The street was dark, a consequence of the hour, the season, and the lack of tall buildings in the area with omnipresent lit windows. The bottom half of his face was already covered by a black face mask. They wouldn’t see him, he thought. More importantly, he no longer cared.

Blood rushed to his head, drowning out the street sounds. Still, on some level, he heard the car door slam and the rumble of the Porsche’s engine. For all his bravado, Frank apparently wasn’t sticking around to see what happened next.

Rick gripped the tire iron like a baseball bat. He extended his arms behind him, martialing all the rage and adrenaline coursing through his veins. Let’s see how you like your home disrupted, he thought. Let’s see how you deal with destruction.

The tire iron flew through the air and smashed into the picture window with a tremendous crash, a thousand times more satisfying than the noise made by the weak little alley light shattering into a million pieces. A long crack immediately formed on the pane, an artery branching off into thousands of spidery veins, ruining the reflection.

Inside the house, the woman bolted upright and screamed. Her audible terror snapped Rick out of his rage-induced trance. He began running, his black peacoat whipping behind him. He needed to flee the neighborhood. He needed a damn taxi. Fucking Frank.

As he cleared the corner, he heard the roar of a sports car engine. Over his shoulder, he glimpsed the Porsche’s matte-black exterior. It screeched to a stop beside him. “Get in, you fucking nutcase,” Frank shouted.