She was Emily, daughter of Calista, not just book smart but also street smart. Even in her bewilderment, she didn’t hesitate, opened the front door, and went out into the night.

The diminished wind had lost the power to pull the door shut. David stood listening to rain slashing through the trees, pounding the earth, drumming the roof over the front stoop.

At the farther end of the hall, behind the Nanette avatar, something appeared in the kitchen doorway, roughly human though misshapen, a configuration of malformed bones, sloughed facial features, eyes receding under a shelf of brow. She was as fearsome as she was wretched, and as she joined Nanette at the midpoint of the hall, David knew she could be no one but Anna.

The deceitful could know suffering and grief, could be humbled and broken by it, as David well knew. Although he could fear Anna, he couldn’t hate her, only pity her.

However, he must not allow pity to cloud his judgment. Anna and the others had their mission, and if it might be misguided, if they were unwittingly serving the very oppression they hated, they were nevertheless committed. Now that the real Patrick Corley had died, now that he was no longer a moderating influence on them, now that his house belonged to a foundation and was theirs forever, they would not continue to grant Emily the mercy with which Corley had forced them to treat her. And they would be merciless with David. They were killers who murdered in the name of humanity; they would be bloodthirsty.

When he heard the Explorer’s engine start, he pulled the string just hard enough to engage the timer switch. Now he had one minute.

He didn’t want to give Nanette and Anna enough time to get to the tote and zipper it open and jerk the bare wires out of the brick of plastic explosive. The moment he felt the switch click, he began to count the seconds in his head—one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three—praying that he might be at least ninety percent as accurate as a Rolex.

If clocks in this house could not display time properly, that didn’t mean the seconds weren’t passing. This was apparently some kind of eddy in the river of time; the river rushed forward; but here, the currents circled in a side pool. This wasn’t a pocket of stasis; events still proceeded here in a familiar linear fashion. Therefore, the timer in the bag should count down to detonation. The fact that Nanette and Anna seemed to respect the threat indicated that the device would work. Nevertheless, he broke into a sweat as he considered that he might leave the bomb behind to no effect.

Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Forty-five.