‘Well, you’re back and looking good.’ He sized up the older man – 190 pounds, slightly damaged cardiac system, but healthy otherwise. Yep, it seemed he’d live forever … or until Billy put a bullet in his uncle’s head and then propped the gun in the hand of some hapless day laborer, whom Billy and a half-dozen others had already clubbed to death in ‘self-defense’.

‘He’s doing just fine,’ Harriet said, her voice light as mist as she stowed freshly washed and folded laundry. ‘Back to normal.’

‘Hey, bro.’ Joshua Stanton joined them from the bedroom in the small suite. When Joshua heard voices from nearby he tended to appear quickly, as if he couldn’t stand the thought that a conversation was occurring without his presence. He may also have worried that people were saying things about him, though really there was very little to say about Joshua, except that the twenty-two-year-old was a competent plumber’s assistant whose main talent was killing birds and deer and abortion doctors.

Still the solidly built man, strawberry blond, was dependable to the point of irritation, doggedly doing what he’d been told and reporting regularly in great depth about his progress. Billy wasn’t quite sure how he’d found a wife and managed to father four children.

Well, dogs and salamanders were capable of the same. Though then he had trouble dislodging the image of Josh as a lizard.

Joshua hugged his cousin, which Billy would have preferred he not do. Not germs; that transfer of evidence matter.

I try, M. Locard.

No, Joshua wasn’t the brightest bulb. But he’d been key in the Modification. After Billy had killed the victims, and the bodies had been discovered, Joshua, dressed in medical coveralls and face mask, had quickly appeared, carting into the tunnels the lights and batteries containing the bombs, set them up and vanished. Nobody thought twice about him. An emergency worker.

The young man now prattled on about his success in the masquerade, smuggling the devices into the crime scenes. He kept looking Billy’s way for approval, which his younger cousin gave in the form of a nod.

Harriet glanced at her son with a dip of eyelid, which Billy knew meant Quiet. But Joshua missed it. And kept talking.

‘It was pretty close at the Belvedere. I mean really. There were cops everywhere! I had to go through a different manhole than was in the plan. It added another six minutes but I don’t think it was a problem.’

The look from Aunt Harriet again.

Matthew didn’t need the patience that women in the AFFC were required to display. He snapped, ‘Shut up, son.’

‘Yessir.’