The grainy black-and-white image filled the screen.

And I stuffed my fist into my mouth so my sleeping daughter wouldn’t hear me scream.

The distance from South Boston Middle School to Jason and Sandra’s home was approximately four and a half miles long, or an eight-minute drive. The short commute was perfect for the daily scramble, when Ree needed to be dropped off or picked up from location A while Sandra or Jason were scrambling to reach location B.

Now Jason ticked off each block in his mind, while clutching the steering wheel with both hands and thinking that eight minutes was too short. He could not get composed in eight minutes. He could not understand the impact of Ethan Hastings in eight minutes. He could not recover from Sergeant D.D. Warren’s grim warning about his child in eight minutes. He couldn’t prepare himself for what was about to happen next, in only eight minutes.

Ree was the last person to see her mother alive on Wednesday night. The cops knew it. He knew it. And by definition, one other person probably knew it.

The person who had harmed his wife. The person who might return to harm Ree.

“I’m tired, Daddy,” Ree was whining in the back, rubbing her eyes. “I want to go home.”

Even Mr. Smith had abandoned his lounging to sit and stare at Jason expectantly. The cat wanted dinner, no doubt, not to mention fresh water and a litter box.

“Are we going home, Daddy? I want to go home, Daddy.”

“I know, I know.”

He didn’t want to. He thought of taking them to a restaurant for dinner, a cheap motel for nighttime. Or hell, filling up with gas and heading to Canada. But in this day and age of Amber Alerts, running wasn’t an impromptu act, especially with a four-year-old girl and an orange cat. Canada? he thought darkly. He’d be lucky if they made it to the Massachusetts border.

Ree wanted home, and home was probably still the safest bet. He had steel doors, reinforced windows. Forewarned was forearmed. Maybe he hadn’t known everything going on in his wife’s world, hadn’t sensed the threat. Well, he was paying attention now. No way in hell anyone was touching his daughter.

Or so he told himself.

Of course, going home also meant facing an empty house without Sandy’s cheerful welcome. Or worse yet, confronting the media that were no doubt camped out in his front yard.

“How’d you kill your wife, Jason? Knife, gun, garrote? Bet it was easy for you, given all your experience….”