She looked at Lisa trembling, then toward the doorway, knowing the carnage that was a few feet away and that for years, the outside of this pretty suburban home had never betrayed the lies and the evil that dwelled inside.

Morrow lowered herself and took Lisa’s face in her hands.

“It’s over now.”

Epilogue

“This will sting.”

A quarter-sized piece of skin was missing from Jeff’s left shoulder, exposing flesh where Roland Dillard’s bullet had grazed him.

Using tweezers, the doctor picked out threads of charred fabric that had been embedded into his wound. After cleaning it, she applied antibiotic cream, then put on a bandage.

“It’s not deep. There’s no serious damage, but we’ll need to guard against infection.” Turning to Lisa, who’d entered the hospital treatment room, the doctor said, “I’ll leave you both alone.”

Lisa had been examined by medical staff in the adjoining room. The scrapes on her wrists from the handcuffs had been bandaged.

The trauma had not harmed the baby. They took some comfort in that.

She sat next to Jeff. Still in shock, she took Jeff’s hand and cried softly as they grappled with the facts. They’d already given statements to the investigators. Lisa’s shouted warning had impelled Jeff to dive to the floor, saving his life. Jeff’s search for Lisa in the house had led to saving hers.

They were alive. But there were truths that ran to their marrow.

Lisa followed Jeff’s alarmed glance to her stomach.

Dillard had left his mark on both of them.

Adrenaline rippling through them, they waited in silence for the crisis counselors.

On another floor of the hospital, in a cramped but private staff room with a corkboard feathered with memos, vacation schedules and notices selling used textbooks, investigators continued their work.

The preliminary investigation indicated that Roland Dillard was firing his handgun at Jeff Taylor when Nell Dillard emerged, opened fire with a handgun on her husband, the two exchanging fire and suffering gunshot wounds.

Roland Dillard had been pronounced dead at the scene.

Nell Dillard had survived her wounds, was still conscious and was making statements, recorded first by an SRT member while at the scene and then recorded by FBI agent Terri Morrow in the ambulance and hospital, up until she was taken to surgery nearly two hours ago.

From talking with Nell, Lisa and doctors, Morrow had pieced together a timeline of events. It appeared that Dillard had altered Nell’s medication with the aim of killing her. After she’d consumed it, she’d remained conscious, then discovered him in his room. She’d reached for her phone to call police before Dillard struck her and she collapsed. According to the doctors, Dillard’s blow to Nell’s head and the altered medication had slowed her vital signs. But the medication failed to take full effect, allowing her to regain consciousness and intervene with a gun.