He sat on the sheepskin rug with Cora. The couple looked younger without their toddler, and Morgan saw, now, that the eldest Reynolds daughter had tattoos on the insides of her arms—a harp and a tree of life whose bowing branches gave it the illusion of a screaming skull.

David and Carlisle disappeared for a while, and when they came back in through the front door, they smelled like weed. Morgan inhaled deeply, hoping for a secondhand high.

Eleanor wore a silk robe tied over matching pajamas. The fabric clung to her, showing the sinewy muscles the woman was made of. She had the body of a swimmer, Morgan thought, with muscular shoulders and a long, triangular torso. Don stood behind her, swirling a glass of cognac. Without his glasses, he looked frighteningly plain. His IQ dropped at least twenty points, and Morgan saw him for the mooch Kole and Hudson had pegged him as. He’d hitched his wagon to Eleanor thirteen years ago—allegedly, although probably longer than that—and was now in her rustic-inspired mansion, drinking expensive liquor and smoking even more expensive cigars. Not bad for a former intramural basketball coach.

Cora clapped her hands together, demanding everyone’s attention. “Let’s play a game,” she announced.

The words raised Morgan’s hackles. She stood so close to Bennett that she felt his body heat more than she felt the fire, imagined sparks dancing off the staticky fibers of his sweater onto her. She knew there was more to this game than Cora was alluding to; just like the entire glass wall, the Reynoldses did nothing small. And then she felt the gentle caress of Bennett’s finger against the inside of her palm and she knew there would be only one objective in this weekend-long game: hunt or be hunted.

36 HUDSON

The serrated, high-pitched sound of a zip tie splintered away the silence. Hudson set the duffel bag onto the floor. His shoulder burned from having hauled it the two and a half blocks from where they’d parked. It was minus twenty-seven without the wind chill. The tip of his nose was ice-cold, as well as his fingers, but the rest of him was thawed from the exertion. He looked down, his eyes having adjusted to the dark now, and hoped his cold-blooded cargo hadn’t frozen to death.

As if in answer, the bag moved.

“What the fu—”

Another whine of a zip tie.

Kole grabbed a T-shirt from off the floor and stuffed it in Muntz’s mouth. The large man writhed and kicked his bare feet against the mattress, but he didn’t scream. Not that anyone would hear him if he did. Muntz lived in the back entrance of a martinizing shop. It was midnight and the place was well past closed.

His door had been unlocked. Now, Kole leaned in, closer than he would have if Muntz’s mouth wasn’t full of cotton. “You know what they did to liars in medieval times, Ronald? Oh, sorry. I guess you can’t really talk. Just nod for yes and shake for no. Got it?”