Not real, it can’t be real.

Odessa flipped the sheet back from one end, just enough to view a small bare foot, ankle, and thin calf. She didn’t need to see the wounded body. She didn’t want to see the face.

Back out into the hallway. Hyperventilating, ears screaming, her vision rising and falling like a ship in a storm. “LEPPO!”

A second bedroom waited ahead. Inside the open door, a New York Rangers hockey poster hung on the wall, splattered with thick arterial spray. The faint scent of iron hung in the air…

The bed was empty, no body on the floor. Odessa’s eyes darted frantically about the small, dark room.

The closet. A sliding door, half open. Odessa shoved it fully open, fast—

A young boy’s body was inside, slumped like a rag doll against the rear wall, dead-eyed, staring.

Not real, it’s not real—

Odessa spun around, gun up. The room was empty behind her. It was all happening too fast.

A hard thumping against the wall from the adjoining room to her left caused a picture frame to fall off and shatter. Yelling, a struggle—another bump against the wall.

A fight?

“LEPPO!”

Odessa tore out into the flashing blue hallway. As soon as she turned toward the next door, two adult men came crashing out of the adjoining room.

Odessa went into a three-point stance. She made Leppo immediately in the crazed blue light. He was struggling with a male assailant. The assailant turned his head enough so that Odessa recognized Cary Peters’s face. He was wearing track pants and there were bloodstains on the knees and the tops of his bare feet.

A knife. The blade glinted, glowing blue. It was a kitchen carving knife with a thick handle. Odessa saw it in Leppo’s hand. This didn’t make any sense in her split-second read.

A knife, not a gun? Where is Leppo’s Glock?

“DOWN ON THE FLOOR—NOW!—OR I’LL SHOOT!” she yelled.

Leppo was behind Peters, gripping him with both arms, one fist gripping the knife. They grappled. Peters was shoving the heel of his left hand up into Leppo’s chin and mouth, trying to push him off. His right hand gripped Leppo’s wrist, holding back the knife. With great effort in the middle of this life-and-death struggle, the disgraced ex–deputy chief of staff twisted his torso around in order to look at Odessa with an expression she would never, ever forget.

Not the rage-eyed, lunatic aggression that she expected. He looked to her for help. A pleading expression. He appeared bewildered and desperate, even with his wife’s and children’s blood smeared on his face, on his hands.

He looked at her with the confused, disoriented eyes of a man waking up from a vivid and terrifying nightmare.