I thought of yelling or screaming, but if she was desperate enough, she might just cut me down as soon as I shouted. I had no idea how far she’d go. But at that point, she seemed determined to go as far as she could.

“I don’t have the money for you,” I said. “Even if I wanted to give it to you, it’s not here. And the bank is closed on Saturday. I could get a few hundred bucks out of an ATM, but that’s all. Come back Monday.”

I’d positioned myself when I came in the door so that the table was between us. I harbored some faint hope that if a bullet flew, I could drop down and find some shelter or protection. But as I spoke, Dawn moved around the end of the table, coming closer, that threatening object in her pocket always zeroed in right on my torso.

“Monday’s too late,” she said.

“Too late for what?”

A change passed over her face. Her chin quivered ever so slightly. And the hardness went out of her eyes and was replaced by welling tears. Her cheeks flushed.

For a moment, the gun wavered inside her hoodie as though she’d grown momentarily weaker.

“You’d never understand the loss my parents suffered,” she said.

“I know. I can’t.”

“Everything they’d dreamed of stripped away. Two children’s lives cut off.”

The cold inside me turned to nausea. “I’m sorry. I am.”

“And me . . . what have I done for them? They couldn’t count on me either.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I’d been so intently focused on Dawn—on the object in Dawn’s pocket—that I hadn’t been watching the door.

But someone slipped in. They moved stealthily, like a cat.

A familiar figure . . .

And then they were behind Dawn. Pressing something into the small of her back.

“Drop it,” Bill said. “Just take it easy and drop it.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

Bill reached around Dawn’s waist and took the object out of her hoodie pocket.

It was a gun. Black and sleek, the light from the window above the sink reflecting off the barrel. Bill adroitly racked the slide and ejected the clip.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s not loaded.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I wanted to slump down on the floor and let every tense and corded muscle in my body unclench.

Dawn appeared to feel the same way. She took a hesitant step forward and pulled out one of the kitchen chairs. She dropped into it, letting her body weight crash into the seat. Her shoulders slumped, and for the first time since I’d met her, her body looked limp and powerless. She put her head in her hands, as though Bill and I weren’t in the room.