The dog wagged its tail and began to lick Charlotte’s face. Charlotte giggled, and it loosed something in Michael’s chest. The sound of his daughter laughing. He realized he had all but begun to think he would never hear that sound again.

Michael caught his breath, tried to appear normal. “Uh, Zoe, I was wondering if I could ask you a small favor.”

“Of course,” she said. “Why don’t you come on in? Would you like some tea?”

“No,” Michael said. “No thanks. I was wondering, could you watch Charlotte for just a few minutes?”

Zoe looked him up and down, perhaps for the first time noticing the clothes he was wearing, and the dirt and mud along the cuffs of his maroon golf slacks, slacks that Michael found himself unconsciously hitching every few seconds. He hoped the gun did not fall out of his waistband.

“Are you all right?” Zoe asked.

“I’m fine,” Michael said. “Just kind of a . . . crazy day.”

In addition to being the town’s resident expert on all things organic, Zoe Meisner was the repository of neighborhood gossip. She gave Michael a skeptical glance, then looked at Charlotte, who was busy petting the dog.

“Of course,” she said.

“I won’t be long,” Michael said, half out the door already.

“No hurry,” Zoe said. “Take your time.”

Michael crossed the yard, and headed back up the hill.

THE BACKYARD WAS EMPTY when Michael again reached his house. This time he came in on the southern end of the property, in the area behind the shed and the garage, from where he could see the side door. He saw no one. He glanced at the windows. The drapes behind the large picture window in the back of the house were closed; the horizontal blinds in the window over the kitchen sink were lowered. He saw no lights, no shadows. The vertical blinds, which hung over the sliding glass door, were only half drawn. He glanced at the side of the house. In order for him to see if Abby’s car – or any car – was still in the driveway, he would have to move across the yard. He would be visible from any and all windows in the back.

Michael tried to slow his breathing, his heart. For a few mad moments he could not remember the layout inside his own house. It seemed to be blocked.

Moreover, he did not know how many people were in his house. He did not know if Aleks and Kolya were the only two people doing this to them. But he knew he could no longer wait.

He sidled up to the northern edge of the property, then along the side of the house. He edged up to the window in the first floor bedroom, the bedroom they used as an office. He saw no one inside.

He inched along the back wall of the house, pushed open the sliding glass door, drew the weapon, then thought better of it. He put it back into the waistband of his slacks. He stepped into the house.

The kitchen was empty. Two juice glasses sat on the table. Michael glanced around the room, trying to take it all in. He wanted to call out, but stopped himself. He looked at the refrigerator magnets, the letters and numbers he and Abby often used to teach the girls new words. It was a pretty strict rule, a daily routine. Every day Abby would choose a word, and she and the girls would go over it, sometimes looking it up online or in the big dictionary in their home office. Abby would always leave the word in place until Michael got home. Many times the girls would be waiting for Michael at the door when he returned from work, dragging him excitedly into the kitchen to teach him the new word.

Today there were no words spelled out. The letters were all bunched together at the top of the door, a jumble of nonsense. A pair of numbers had been dragged to the bottom.

Michael sidled up to the living room, peered in. Another empty room. One of the dining room chairs had been positioned in front of the sliding glass door.

A lookout position? Michael wondered.

He crossed the foyer, moved silently up the steps. He peered into the bathroom. The shower curtain was pulled open. The room was empty. He looked into the girls’ room. The beds were made, the room tidy as always. He edged down the hallway and caught a whiff of something at the back of his throat that tasted like warm brass. He looked into the master bedroom.

The room was covered in blood.

“Oh my God. No!”

The bed sheets were bunched in the middle of the bed, the TV had fallen off the dresser, things were scattered all over the room. There was blood on the walls, the ceiling. The room where he slept, where he made love to his wife, was an abattoir. He steadied himself against the wall. He saw a thick rut of scarlet leading from the foot of the bed over to the closet. He took the gun in his unsteady hand, eased open the closet door.

There, inside, was Kolya. There was no point in trying to determine if he was still alive. His face was a bloated plum, crusted with blood. There was a gaping wound in his neck.

Michael ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time, the madness all but overtaking him. He quickly crossed the living room and was just about to enter the kitchen, when he almost tripped over something on the floor. He stopped, looked down. It was the body of Desiree Powell.

He lurched into the kitchen and vomited in the sink.

Aleks had Abby and Emily. Gone. And his house was strewn with corpses.

Michael looked out the front window. At the bottom of the hill, just visible through the trees, he could see a car turning into the drive, the unmistakable dark blue of a city police car.

Michael knew that even if the police believed him – and there was little chance of that, considering that Michael himself, if the positions were reversed, would have a hard time believing he had nothing to do with these crimes – it would cause two courses of action. One, he would be taken into custody. Two, the police department, not to mention the FBI and the Crane County sheriff’s office would kick into high gear to locate Abby, Emily, and the man who was terrorizing his family.

And who knew what would happen if the police found Aleksander Savisaar?

No. He would turn himself in, but not until Abby and Charlotte and Emily were with him. He had to be in the same room with his family. He would never believe in the world again until that moment.

He glanced out the window. Marco Fontova was just getting out of his car. The good news was that he was alone. He had not brought in the troops. Not yet.

Michael ran to the back door, looked around the yard, the area behind the house. No cops. He heard the doorbell ring as he slipped outside, the revolver now a dead weight in his pocket, his mind a jumble of dark scenarios.

There was no way to lock the sliding glass door from the outside. He would have to leave it open. He glanced back into the house. He could see Desiree Powell’s feet from the patio, and knew it would be all the probable cause Fontova would need to enter.

Michael sprinted across the yard, ran down the hill, leaping over fallen trees. He forded the creek at a low point, being careful not to slip on the rocks, all the while expecting to hear a gunshot. A few moments later he made it through the woods to the Meisner house. He picked up Charlotte, telling Zoe Meisner nothing. She would hear the sirens soon enough.

Five minutes later, with Charlotte strapped into a seatbelt in the front seat with him, he left Eden Falls, and headed for the 102, and Ozone Park. There was only one place to go. There was only one man who could help him.

FORTY-FOUR

“Des.”

Lucien stood on the corner, his blinding white smile a beacon in the steamy dusk of a Kingston summer night. His two skinny chums – a pair of funny bwois who never brought luck or favor – poked him in the ribs.

Jealous, she thought. Who wouldn’t be? She was a princess.