And then it hit Lett. Her looks were so nondescript that he hadn’t realized who this Jade might be. He would’ve expected a lissome younger woman in a slinky red dress with Chinese dragons, a cigarette holder, a knowing smile. He’d seen too many movies. They all had.

A shiver shot through him.

“Miss Mae?” he said. “You’re Miss Mae?”

Her eyes widened, shined again. “Why, yes. It is I. Who—”

Footsteps. The whoosh of a car, pulling away. Miss Mae listened, then hissed something in Chinese and “shhhh” to Lett.

They stepped over to the front window together, Lett touching the barrel of the Colt to Mae’s ribs. The sun was only an ember left on the horizon, casting all in silhouette.

Figures were coming up the stairs, a man, two smaller figures—children.

Mae swallowed a gasp. “They are not supposed to come back,” she muttered to Lett, “they stay with a friend—”

“Who wasn’t?

“My husband. Children.”

“Jesus. Okay. Open it.”

Lett slid the pistol back inside his shirt as Mae opened the door smiling. She and the man she called her husband exchanged words in Chinese, which made the man search the louvered sundown light for Lett, who was standing back. Lett held up his left hand, smiled. The children rushed into the room, a boy and girl of no more than ten wearing matching outfits with aloha print, but the boy had short pants, the girl a skirt. They only glanced at Lett before rushing by, and Lett figured they were used to visitors. The husband was small and wore a threadbare suit of gray that made him look older than Jade. He was already trembling, sweating.

Mae kept talking to her husband and rapidly, the husband eyeing Lett with widening whites of his eyes, nodding along.

Lett felt like someone had poured sand down his throat. He felt at his shirt for his pistol.

The children chased each other around the sofa, the boy reached for a light switch. The husband barked at him in Chinese. The boy stopped, dead still, and the girl did the same, like recruits on maneuvers.

Lett kept close to the front door. Inside him, the old gears kicked into position. He would have to do them all in, the gears confirmed. These people had seen his face. He had killed a girl before. Of course he would do it. It was logical in the moment. What came later didn’t factor into it. He had the machinery already working inside him to do it. The whole apparatus was pumping away now, numbing his nerves and calming his blood. It sent signals of that pure cold reason to his brain. And all nagging emotion drained away, pushed out through valves that opened only for situations like this.