Like a tear, a bead of sweat trickled down from her temple.

Steve saw his fingertips catch that drop on her cheek.

She sucked in his finger.

Then he was kissing her, she was kissing him. White pearl snaps popped like machine-gun fire as he ripped open her shirt No!she said pressed his hands to her swollen breasts. Ohshe pulled open his jeans Don’t wanthe whispered as she leaped onto his neck like a vampire while he pulled off her jeans and panties, her legs thrashing them down to her still-on boots. They crashed onto the bed. Dust billowed. His mouth devoured her she knew she’d never come like this over and over again Stopshe pulled him deep into her and it was like he’d never been this good, had this so good Want Highwaysand Not Himand they cried out came collapsed on the bed.

Knew that in this house, they’d do that again and again and again, like running their hands along the bars of a cage until their fingers bled.

Whump-ruh. Whump-ruh.

“Listen,” Bob in the basement told Louise. “Guess Parker can work.”

“He’ll do what it takes to get out of here.” She positioned a sheet of drywall against the wooden studs of an insulating wall.

“Yeah.” Bob reached for a hammer. “Took fifty years, but his dad ran out of the money he inherited with this place a few weeks before he died.”

“We could fix the house up to live here,” came out of her mouth.

“Who?” Bob drove a nail through the drywall to the stud. “ All of us?Forget that. Me and Ali? Sticking us in Nowhereland isn’t our deal. You and Steve? The only thing he’d want about this place is the hundred miles of highway between here and any job he could get, and one day driving that much road, he’d just keep on keeping on.”

“Somebody’s gotta live here!”

“Damn, Louise, what’s your problem?” Bob hammered in a nail.

“I . . . don’t know. I felt like . . . Somebody’s gotta keep this place going.”

“That’s not our flip.” Bob hammered in counterbeat to the noise upstairs in the dining room, the only noise that was close enough to hear.

Louise knew that look on Bob’s face as they positioned new drywall. That was his ain’t-I-cool look that paid off only if he confessed.

“What’s going on, Bob?”

Whump-ruh. Whump-ruh.

Bob worked his hammer, too. “I was going to tell you guys when we got back to Denver. If I’d told you before, you might’ve settled for less than the big payoff.

“Didn’t you wonder,” he said, “who’d want to buy this nowhere place from us for enough cash to make us fixing it up worth our while?”

He hammered Sheetrock into place.

Said, “You know the Nature Preservation League?”

“You’re on its national board of directors.”

“If the economy’s going green, green is how you gotta go.”

“What did you do?”

“Our names aren’t on the deed, just the limited partnership for a place that’s being rehabbed as a ‘luxury getaway home.’ Figure the stats of a mansion, pictures of rehab happening, and the ‘paper worth’ becomes what it could beif this was what it’ll never be, which is paradise.

“In five weeks, NPL will announce they’ve bought the land all around here for a new edge-of-the-mountains preserve. Of course, a house smack in the middle of that fucks up the NPL plan, so the board—”

“Which you’re on.”

“—so the board will offer the owners of this being-fixed-up mansion a buyout of what the place would be worth—”

“If this place were that paradise,” said Louise. “Board member youwill make sure it happens. And the rest of them will never know.”

“Everybody gets what they want! We’re doing well by doing good. This house gets rehabbed back to nature for people to love forever.”

“I want something to love forever,” whispered Louise from her bones.

“No forever here,” said Bob. “This house is headed to the bulldozers.”

She said, “Why is it so quiet?”

“That asshole upstairs quit working,” said Bob.

Louise left him in the basement.

Walked upstairs.

Alone.

Bob swung his hammer, Bam!

His plan was beautiful. Bam!Perfect. Bam!Nothing could stop—

Screaming!

Upstairs!

Bob ran from the basement to where Louise stood in the living room.

To where Parker sprawled on his spine in an oozing pool of blood, the back of his head impaled by nails jutting from a chunk of discarded molding.

“Holy shit!” Bob checked: no heartbeat, no breathing. Stared at the chunk of wood jutting from under Parker’s head, knew nails on the other end of the wood stuck deep into that skull.

Bob nodded to other chunks of wood scattered around the room.

“If he hadn’t been stoned, if he’d worked neat, not left trip-and-fall-on-me danger lying around . . . Easy explanation.”

Clumping feet ran down two flights of stairs.

Ali charged into the room, stopped.

Louise wondered, Why is she looking at Bob and not the body?

Ali cried, “Tell me what happened!”

Her husband said, “An accident. Must have been.”

In ran Steve, wearing his Bruce Springsteen concert T-shirt that had been under his flannel shirt. Louise thought, Why is Bruce on backward?

Bob pulled his cell phone from its belt pouch. “No signal.”

The blood pool oozed toward them.

Louise suddenly knew Steve would never give her morning sickness.

Ali stared outside at the raging blizzard. “What are we going to do? We can’t get to help and help can’t . . .”

“We figured to be here four days,” said Bob. “Now we got no choice. No phone. Heat, enough food, but . . . We can’t live in here with a corpse.”

Bob and Steve zipped into their ski parkas. Put on gloves.

Dragged the body through the door held open to the storm by Louise.

The chunk of wood stayed nailed to Parker’s skull.

Louise wiped clean the fogged glass of the newly framed window to watch Bob and her just a husbanddrag the corpse through shin-deep snow to Parker’s pickup.

Steve and Bob plopped the corpse in the pickup’s passenger seat. The wood chunk nailed to a skull bumped the rear window. They slammed the pickup door, then struggled through bitter cold swirling snow to the house.

“It’s over,” Bob told everyone as he and Steve shed their coats in the front hall. “Done. Tragedy, but it ain’t the being dead, it’s the dying, and we’ll get through the storm—Hell, fix the place up. The probate will work as long as we’ve got a straight story.”

Ali whispered, “What do I know?”

“Honey,” said her husband, “we all know . . .” Bob stared at his wife. “Why are your snaps done up crooked?”

Louise heard Steve say, “All this, what’s happening, it’s like . . .”

Steve shook his head. Like he couldn’t free the right words.

Ali reached out her hand to Bob. Whispered, “Please!”

He lurched toward her like a robot.

“Please get me out of here!” she told her husband.

Bob dropped to his knees before his wife. His strong hands cupped her perfect moon hips as he buried his face in the front of her jeans.

A bellow tore from Bob: “That’s not our smell!”

Bob rocketed to his feet, lifted Ali off hers. Threw her away.

Ali flew through the dining room crashed onto the table/bounced off it to the floor. Bob charged Steve, yelling, “That’s not the deal!”

Steve backpedaled as dizziness swirled Louise. She saw Bob slam into her husband, knock Steve onto the table, choke him.

Louise leaped onto Bob. He reared away from Steve to shake the wildcat off his back. Louise felt herself flung from him, flying—

Slamming into the dining room wall.

That absorbed her collision softer than wood should: Why—

Bob’s fist hooked toward her face.

As Steve swung the hammer and cracked Bob’s skull.

Bob crumpled to the floor.