Chapter 6: The Night They Came
I drove Emma to Pete's house with a patrol car behind me the entire way.
Pete met me at the door in a T-shirt and bare feet, took one look at my face, and stepped back without asking questions.
His wife, Donna, was already pulling a blanket from the closet.
Emma went to the guest room without protest, Bunny under one arm, asleep again before Donna had finished tucking her in.
Pete closed the bedroom door and looked at me in the hallway.
"How bad?" he said.
"Bad."
"Is Emma safe here?"
"There's a unit parked outside.
Yes."
He nodded.
"Then go do what you need to do."
I drove back.
Ramirez had set up a quiet perimeter.
Two unmarked cars on the street.
Officers inside the house with the lights left on to look normal.
The gray cat still on Emma's desk, exactly where it had been.
I sat in Ramirez's car and waited.
At 2:14 in the morning, a silver sedan rolled slowly past the house without stopping.
At 2:31, it came back.
At 2:47, a figure in a dark jacket crossed the neighbor's yard and moved toward my back fence.
Ramirez picked up her radio.
"Hold."
The figure stopped at the fence.
Looked at the house.
Looked at the upstairs window.
Then a second figure appeared from the other direction.
"Now," Ramirez said.
The lights hit them both at the same time.
One of them ran.
An officer cut him off at the side gate.
The other one froze, hands coming up immediately — and I recognized the jacket before I recognized the face.
It was the man who had introduced me to Vanessa.
Marcus Webb.
A colleague from my office.
A man I had known for two years.
He had been at my wedding.
He had given a toast.
I got out of the car before Ramirez could stop me.
"Daniel—"
I walked straight to him.
His hands were still up.
His face was pale under the floodlights.
"You introduced us," I said.
He didn't answer.
"You told me she was your cousin.
You vouched for her." My voice was very quiet.
"You were in my house, Marcus.
You held my daughter."
"It wasn't supposed to go this far," he said.
"What was it supposed to go?"
He looked at the ground.
"They just needed the drive.
That's all.
Get in, find it, get out.
No one was supposed to get h*rt."
"My wife d*ed."
His head came up.
"Claire," I said.
"My first wife.
She d*ed.
And you stood at my wedding eighteen months later and told me I deserved to be happy again." I took one step closer.
"Did you know?"
The pause was exactly one second too long.
Ramirez's hand closed around my arm from behind.
"That's enough."
They put Marcus in the back of a patrol car.
He didn't say another word.
I stood in my driveway at three in the morning and looked at my house — the lights on, the curtains closed, the gray cat still sitting on a desk upstairs — and felt something I hadn't felt in a long time.
Not relief.
Not yet.
Something colder.
May you like
Because Marcus had said *they*.
And Victor Hale was still in Philadelphia.
