Had she taken a lover by then? Is that what this came down to? She’d found a lover, and then, once she’d stumbled upon the computer files, made her decision to leave Jason. Except then she’d discovered she was pregnant. His? The other man’s? Maybe she’d tried to break it off with her lover. Maybe that had made the other man angry, and he’d taken steps.

Or maybe, on Wednesday night, armed with her newfound training from Ethan Hastings, Sandy had discovered Jason’s computer files. At that moment, she’d realized she was carrying a monster’s child. So she’d … what? Fled into the night without even her wallet or a change of clothes? Decided to save one child by abandoning the other?

It didn’t make any sense.

Which brought him back to the only other new man he knew of in Sandy’s life—Ethan Hastings. Perhaps the boy had assumed a more intimate relationship with Sandy. Perhaps she’d tried to tell him he was mistaken. Given all the hours he’d spent with her, trying to help her outwit her own husband, Ethan had taken this personally. So he’d come to the house in the middle of the night and …

The youngest killer in America had been sentenced for a double homicide at the tender age of twelve, so as far as Jason was concerned, Ethan Hastings met the age requirement for possible homicidal maniac. The logistics of murder, however, seemed complicated. How would a thirteen-year-old boy get to Jason’s house? Ride his bike? Walk? And how would a kid as scrawny as Ethan Hastings dispose of a grown woman’s body? Drag her out by her hair? Fling her over his handlebars?

Jason sat down at the kitchen counter, his head spinning. He was tired. Bone-deep weary. These were the moments he had to be careful. Because his thoughts might wander, and he’d suddenly find himself in a room that always smelled like fresh-turned earth and decaying fall leaves. He would feel the whisper of hundreds of spider-webs brushing across his cheeks and hair. Then he would see the quick scrabble of one fat hairy body, or two or three, dashing across his tennis shoe, or down his pant leg, or across his shoulder, frantically looking for escape.

Because you had to escape. There were things in the dark much worse than shy, panic-stricken spiders.

He wanted to think of Janie. The way she and she alone had welcomed him home with a huge hug. He wanted to remember how it had been sitting on the floor beside her, dutifully drawing unicorns while she prattled away on the importance of the color purple, or why she wanted to live in a castle when she grew up.