“We also don’t need a nosy neighbor glancing outside and seeing any of this. I’ll be okay, and I promise I’ll tell Emma this wasn’t your fault.” She took her coat off and grimaced at the amount of blood already soaking her sleeve but tried to put the pain to the back of her mind. She opened the door to the basement and called down. “It’s Cain. You can come up.”

Tim came up first, and his eyes widened when he looked at the blood on her shirt, and Linda’s expression was the same. “What happened? Are you okay?” Linda asked, coming closer.

“One of your visitors was upset I got here first.” She sat down and took deep breaths. Pain was relative, she always thought, and she did her best to put it out of her mind. “Do you have a first aid kit, by chance?”

“I’ll be right back,” Joshua said, taking off down the hallway.

“I don’t want to upset you, but we need to bring the bodies in here. The people with me bought us some time, so use it to get anything you want out of this place. It’ll never be safe enough to come back to, and unfortunately it’s going to have to become a pile of ash after we’re gone.” She watched as Linda wrapped a bandage around her arm.

“Do you think Nicola will think the bodies are ours?” Linda asked softly.

“She will until her people don’t call back, but like I said, this will buy you some time, and she doesn’t know you’re going to end up with me.” The front door opened, and she turned to see Jerry, looking seriously stressed.

“Goddamn,” Jerry said, dropping the dead guy he and Simon were hauling like a sack of grain. “What the hell happened? Maddie’s going to kick my ass if I let something happen to you.”

“The four in the car were actually five, and I was lucky enough to find the last one. Are you doing all right?”

“These assholes were here to kill everyone, so they got off easy with a bullet to the head. That Remi’s a good shot.” He went back to help Simon roll the guy over and take everything out of his pockets as Remi and Lou came in with the next guy. “Katlin and Merrick are watching the one at the back, so I’ll be right back.”

“For a dairy farmer he’s taking this well,” Remi said as she looked through the wallet of the guy they’d carried in. “All these Russian names gives a clue who these guys work for.”

Linda and her brothers sat as if they were waiting for coffee, but that changed when Jerry dropped a woman on the floor in the middle of the room. She let out a moan when her back hit the hardwood.