Gibson stopped, exhaustion spreading through him. “Thank you,” he said. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he felt such gratitude, such peace, now that the man believed him. He just wanted to sleep.

The man nodded and folded his knife. He gathered his things to go, looking around to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. When he was done, he returned to look at Gibson.

“Where is Suzanne?” Gibson asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Why did you kill my father?”

The man looked at him with curiosity. “Does it matter?”

“Suzanne was pregnant. The baby. Was it my father’s?”

“Is that what you really want to know? Will it give you peace?”

Gibson didn’t know. “Please.”

The man considered for a moment. He reached into a pocket and withdrew a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it, careful so as not to accidentally see what it said.

“Whatever it says, whatever you learn, do not tell me, do not show it in your face. Remember the people upstairs.”

Gibson nodded and the man held it up for him to see. It took a great effort to focus his eyes and understand what he was reading. The paper was a paternity test. Three columns: “Suzanne Lombard,” “Child,” “Father (Alleged).” Beneath were rows of paired numbers that Gibson didn’t understand. And at the bottom:

The alleged father is not excluded as the biological father of the tested child. Based on testing obtained from analyses of the DNA loci listed, the probability of paternity is 99.9998%.

But it was the sentence that followed, and its implications, that roared in his ears—the concussive report of dominoes, stretching back through his entire life, finally falling. Oh, Bear. Oh, God, Bear.

Benjamin Lombard is not excluded as the biological father and is considered to be the father of Jane Doe.

The sounds of splintering wood and heavy footfalls came from upstairs. The man snatched the paper away. Gibson met his eyes. Whatever mask he wore to blend in among people ripped loose momentarily; beneath lay something abhorrent. Something ancient and infinitely cruel that people comforted themselves by believing had long ago become extinct, but which this man had coaxed back into life.

“Gibson!” a woman’s voice called out.

Jenn?

He tried to call out to her, but the stool went flying across the wood floor and suddenly he was dying all over again, hanging until consciousness slipped away.

When he came to, he lay on his back in the basement, Jenn Charles kneeling beside him.

“Did you get him?” he asked.

“Get who?” she asked. “There’s no one here but us.”

“Upstairs?” he asked, remembering the awful threats to the homeowners.

“They’re fine. Hendricks is with them. Are you okay?”

He was laughing and crying, jagged crests of relief and despair.

“What happened here?” Jenn asked, but mercifully his mind had found the power switch, and he was not available to answer.

PART THREE

PART THREE