“Matt, he could have taken them as hostages.”

“No. Andy would never have fired at Hamilton if he had a kid as a shield. They’re in that house, or they ran when Hamilton arrived.” He pointed to the SPD officer who drove him and Michael here. “Grab a partner and search the garage. The father could have sent the kids there if he thought there might be trouble.”

That didn’t feel right, but anything could have happened.

What would he have done?

The question is, what would your father have done?

His dad had been raised during the most brutal era of Castro, and there had been times when soldiers had walked the streets, entered houses, searched for contraband. His father would share the stories on rare occasions, usually solemnly before he praised America. He had fought hard to make it to Florida, had lost half his family in the process.

If his father was a little boy and danger came to the door, he would have hidden. He would have been as quiet as possible so the soldiers or the gangs wouldn’t hear him.

“We clear the downstairs first,” Matt told Michael.

The living room was a mess. The television had been knocked to the floor. To the right of the doorway, a table had been shoved, all the breakables had fallen to the floor and littered the carpet with glass. Blood dotted the walls in the hall. He smelled it, saw it, tasted it in the air.

On the hardwood floor, a man wearing jeans and a button-down shirt lay half in, half out of a doorway. Blood covered his back. Spread over the wood. Matt didn’t need to check for a pulse; the paramedics had been in here and declared him dead. As he looked at the body from a different angle, he realized that Peter Richmond had nearly been decapitated.

“We have to find those kids,” Matt said. “If they saw this—they could have run out before the first responders arrived. You look everywhere down here—and see if there’s a basement. Cabinets. Under the sink. Anywhere a little kid could hide. I’m going upstairs.”

“Roger that.”

Matt walked up the stairs and one thing became quickly clear: there was no blood up here. Hamilton had to have been covered in blood based on the amount around the victim. But there was none here. No footprints. No handprints. No drops falling from the knife.

Hamilton hadn’t come upstairs. Did that mean the children weren’t here? Or that maybe he didn’t know there were children in the house?

Matt stood in the center of the playroom that was at the top of the stairs. The downstairs couldn’t be seen from here, and there was a child safety gate across the opening, which he stepped over. Two doors, both closed, went off the playroom.

“PJ,” Matt called out as he opened one of the doors. It was the boy’s room, which he clearly shared with his baby sister. His half was all blue and gray and airplanes. The baby’s half was gray and green. He looked in the small closet. No place for two kids to hide. “PJ, I’m Matt Costa. I’m an FBI agent. Your mom is looking for you.”