The man behind him carried a healthy gut and a SIG Sauer. His gun was also raised, but he could afford to be less on point given that his buddy had Evan pinned down. Evan couldn’t get a clear look around the front man’s barrel chest. The man seemed to block everything out. It wasn’t just his girth but the way he canted in aerodynamically at Evan. Thrusting chin, ledged brow, chest and biceps tugging him forward on his frame so it seemed that only the balls of his feet were holding him back—a bullet train made incarnate.

“Who’s been sleeping in our beds?” he said.

Evan lowered his hands slightly. The S&W followed the motion, stopped level with his heart.

“Goldilocks?” Evan said. “Really?”

“I gotta agree, Claude,” the man by the door said. “Not your finest work.”

Claude’s features rearranged themselves. His cheeks looked shiny, as if he’d recently shaved, but stubble was already pushing its way through again. His face, the target demographic for five-blade razors.

“I just thought, you know, the whole breaking-and-entering thing,” Claude said. “Us coming home, catching you. Plus the Goldilocks reference, it’s demeaning.”

“Because she’s a girl,” Evan said.

Claude nodded.

Evan held his hands in place. “You know what they say. If you have to explain the joke…”

The man in the back flicked his SIG at Evan. “Gun on the ground.”

Evan complied.

As he squatted, he gauged the distance to the tips of Claude’s shoes. Maybe five feet. Evan could close the space in a single lunge. Easy enough, if he didn’t have two guns aimed at his critical mass.

Rising, he eyed the barrel of the Chief’s Special. Since Claude was muscle-bound and right-handed, Evan’s first move would be to juke left, make him swing the gun inward across that barrel chest. The compression of delt and pec might slow his arm, buy Evan a half second.

That would be all he’d need.

His stare dropped to Claude’s second gun, the one slung in the loose-fitting underarm holster. A Browning Hi-Power. It was cocked and locked—hammer back, safety engaged. The safety lever peeked out beneath the retention strap of the nylon holster. Good presentation.

The odor wafted from the bathroom over Evan’s shoulder, precipitating on the taste buds at the back of his tongue. Just past the threshold in the hall, he saw the bright red of a few plastic gasoline jugs; the men had set them down quietly. “You guys cleaning up the operation?”

“Contrell was the CEO,” Claude said. “We’re just workaday guys. Glorified babysitters, really. Sit around, eat pizza, watch the tube. Beats digging ditches.”

Evan flipped the tiny hook pick around his thumb, pinched it again. “Those were the only options, huh? Sell girls or dig ditches?”