But the grainy, greenish glow of Dillard’s night-vision binoculars gave them visibility in the darkness. “Your turn to watch.” His voice was soft as he passed them to Jeff.

They were three hours into Jeff’s first late-night patrol, and as he took the binoculars from Dillard he thought of Lisa, home alone for the first evening since the attack. He could still hear the unease in her voice, feel her kiss on his cheek.

“I’ll be all right. I’m glad you’re doing this,” she’d told him.

“It’s only for a few hours,” he’d said.

In the time Jeff and Dillard had been patrolling, they’d driven and walked throughout their zone of Palm Mirage Creek, listening to the scanner and maintaining radio check-ins with the other neighborhood patrols, before taking their shift surveilling—Dillard’s word for it—the bait house.

It was a ranch-style bungalow, and subtle indications that the owner, who had antique jewelry, was convalescing in hospital, while her flight-attendant daughter stayed at the house off and on, had been posted online. All of it fiction. In reality the house was a rental, and the owners had agreed to help police.

Jeff and Dillard watched from the gazebo in the backyard of the house across the street, where they had cover and a direct line of sight on the house.

“Look at it,” Dillard whispered. “Sitting there like a fresh slab of cheese for the vermin.”

“Think it’s going to work?” Jeff said from behind the binoculars.

“It’s a proven method.” A tiny crackle of static leaked from Dillard’s earpiece, then he whispered “Copy that” into his radio to the volunteers patrolling a few blocks away. Then to Jeff he said, “So. You don’t like guns because your dad was killed in a hunting accident?”

“Yes.”

“What happened, exactly?”

Jeff hesitated. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“It was a long time ago?”

“I was eleven at the time.”

“I see. Were other people there, too, or just you and your dad?”

“Me, my dad, and his friend Charlie. Charlie accidentally shot my dad. Look, I don’t like talking about it.”

Dillard absorbed the response, and Jeff thought the discussion had ended.

“What happened, really?”

Jeff cursed under his breath, pressed the binoculars tighter to his head.

During the night they’d talked about sports, movies, politics, the cities they’d traveled to, but now, sitting here in the dark, Dillard had shifted the conversation, making it probing and personal.

Too personal.

“Give me a break, okay?” Jeff said.

“Just my detective’s curiosity. How’s the new job going?”

“It’s going great.”

“A lot of pressure, I imagine?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Lisa told us your move from Cleveland happened pretty fast.”

“The company wanted me moved quickly.”