The Monterey pines shuddered in the wind, and the flailing branches flicked browning needles onto the windshield. He passed under the trees and came to the house and parked as near to the front stoop as the driveway allowed.

Lights glowed throughout both floors of the residence, as if a party must be underway, but draperies and sheers prevented him from seeing who might be inside.

He picked up the pistol from the passenger seat. Six rounds remained in the magazine.

A slack length of dental floss, connected to the travel clock, came out of a hole in the left side of the tote. It was taped to one of the two handles. He picked up the bag, closing his hand over the tape, and got out of the Explorer.

He tucked the gun under his belt, in the small of his back. The sport coat concealed it.

The bomb didn’t in the least wear on his nerves. He had nothing to lose. If Emily was dead, if his hopes had been raised only to be dashed, and if he could not learn the truth of Maddison, then he had no life to which he could return. No life worth living. His mania had progressed beyond obsession, to a desperate and mad compulsion.

A bleak future was guaranteed not just by loneliness but by the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to write anymore and would have no purpose. The quality of his work had declined after the loss of Emily, and he had no doubt that it would plummet if he lost her—or Maddison—again, if he didn’t learn the truth of what lay behind the events of the past week. He was living a story, and stories had to have satisfying endings. If they didn’t have satisfying endings, what was the purpose of stories? Since childhood, reading stories had taught him how to reason, how to live, how to hope, how to be. Doing research for the stories that he’d written had taught him far more than he had learned in college—not least of all including how to construct a bomb, how to defend himself with a knife. He had killed a man. Yes, all right, he’d acted in self-defense, and Stuart Ulrich had been evil, but he had killed a man. That was a radical plot twist, considering that he was a character with zero experience of killing, and if he lost his girl again, if he failed her again, that killing would have availed him nothing; his story, the story of David Thorne, would be finished, and it would have meant nothing.

He hurried through the rain to the stoop and sheltered under its roof and thumbed the doorbell. Through the oak-and-bronze door, he heard chimes announcing a visitor.

No one responded.

He pressed his thumb to the bell again, again, again.