“It’s really coming down out there.”

That night, I comb through Jay’s social media accounts, staring at photos of him and his brothers so long I can’t determine one face from the next. Cade said he saw them—Jay and Katie—twice, but always from a distance. Once during a house party. The other time in the parking lot. But, he said, from the way they were behaving, there was no doubt they were together. Unfortunately, the phone records indicate otherwise. And regardless of what happened earlier in the year, there’s no evidence they had any contact since the middle of October. Nothing on Facebook or Instagram either. Maybe they were together, and they broke up. Or maybe Jay took it too far—asked Katie to sleep with someone else. Maybe every other weekend there’s a massive orgy at the Kap-O house. Who knows? The question is: Does it matter? Does it have anything to do with the case? Or am I wasting my time trying to unravel the twisted love life of twenty-year-olds?

I sigh. The lover’s quarrel feels like a stretch. Katie looked sad, not angry. Sam appeared more hurt than homicidal. And really, Cade doesn’t seem capable of murder. All the involuntary blushes at the mention of sex. There’s no way he’d be able to keep it together if he had killed someone.

I go for a walk to clear my head.

It’s a still night. A slash of moonlight turns the roofs of houses indigo, and it’s clear and bright enough that I don’t bother with a flashlight. A car turns down the lane, and I step into the grass as the driver speeds past, oblivious to my presence a few feet away. The sound of the engine fades, and I realize the tree crickets have gone, too. It takes just one frost to end their chorus. They won’t sing again until next summer. A cycle that repeats again and again. But for now there’s only silence. I stop walking, feeling a prickle of cold sweat and listening for movement in the dark. I shake my head and cut over at the next street. Suddenly, I’m certain the girls have nothing to do with this. That whatever this is, it has played out before. Only the stakes have changed. And whatever’s going on, it’s between brothers.

When I get back, I pour myself a glass of wine and take it to the bedroom. I stare at the ceiling a long time before I fall asleep, and when I do, I dream of a brick mansion, and boys in Guy Fawkes masks stockpiling gunpowder under its foundation. Boys lighting matches and flames licking windows. I open my mouth to warn them, but the scream stays in my chest.

Something wakes me.

At first it’s nothing but a whisper. Then a snap. And a flicker of light.