“Who?” O’Connell’s shout leaped across the line.

“Do you know where I am, Michael?”

“No.”

“I’m a short ways from your home, Michael. Not the apartment where you live, but the home where you grew up. I’m on my way right now to see your father,” Ashley lied as coldly as she could, pausing slightly between each word. “He can help me.” And then she hung up. And when the phone started to ring within seconds, she ignored it.

Sally looked up from behind the wheel and felt a current of electricity surge through her entire body. Michael O’Connell, moving furiously quickly, had exited the apartment building. He was jamming his arms into his overcoat as he took the steps in a single leap, then hurried down the block, almost sprinting. Sally reached down and grasped a cheap stopwatch from the passenger-side car seat. She punched the ON button when she saw O’Connell lurch into his car and rapidly pull out, tires complaining loudly.

She picked up the cell phone and hit the speed dial.

When she heard Scott’s voice on the other end, she replied, “On his way right now,” before hanging up.

Scott would start his own stopwatch.

She could not hesitate. There was so little time. Sally grabbed a backpack that contained several critical items and immediately exited her car, rapidly crossing the street toward O’Connell’s apartment. She kept her head lowered and pulled a ski cap down as low as she could. She was dressed in Salvation Army clothes: jeans, worn sneakers, and a man’s peacoat. She wore leather gloves over a skintight set of latex surgical gloves.

She told herself, The gun will be there.

There was no backup plan if it wasn’t. Only an agreement that they would abort the entire scheme, go back to western Massachusetts, and try to invent something new. She thought it possible that O’Connell might take the gun with him to visit his father. His sudden rage was one variable that she hadn’t been able to anticipate. In a way, she hoped he would take the gun with him. Perhaps he would use it in the way they had hoped to; that he would make the mistake that would solve all their problems.

Or, he might take the gun and use it on them.

Or, he might take the gun and use it on Ashley.

There was no plan except flight and panic if this one blew up.

Sally followed the same route that Hope had traveled a few days earlier. Within seconds, she found herself standing outside the apartment. She was alone, key in hand.

No neighbors. The only eyes that watched her belonged to the clutch of cats mewling in the hallway. Did he kill one of your number today? she wondered. She slipped the key into the lock and let herself in as quietly as she could.

Sally told herself not to look around. Not to examine the world where Michael O’Connell lived, because she knew it would only fuel her own terrors. And speed was critical to everything that she’d mapped out. Get the gun, she repeated to herself. Get it now.

She found the closet. She found the corner. She found the boot, with the dirty sock stuffed in the top.

Be there, she whispered to herself.

She lifted the sock, taking note as to how it was placed. Then she leaned in and reached inside the boot.

When her gloved fingers touched the steel of the barrel, she gasped out loud.

Gingerly she pulled the weapon free.

For a second, she hesitated. This is it, she thought. Go forward or go back.

She could see no option other than fear. Taking the gun terrified her. Leaving the gun terrified her.

Feeling as if someone else were guiding her hand, she carefully slipped the gun into a large plastic bag inside her backpack. She left the sock on the floor.

One more thing to do. She walked quickly into the small living room and stared at the battered desk where Michael O’Connell kept his laptop computer plugged in. He’d created a great deal of trouble for all of them while he was seated at that desk, she thought. And now it was time for her to do the same for him. As scared as she was, this next step gave her a nasty sense of satisfaction. She removed the similar-model computer from her backpack, then quickly replaced his computer with the one she had prepared for him. She didn’t know whether he would immediately see the difference, but he would, sooner or later. She was pleased with this. She had spent some hours in the past day downloading a variety of pornographic materials, and from extreme right-wing antigovernment websites, filling the computer’s memory with as much rage-filled, satanic-inspired, heavy-metal rock music as she could find. When she was persuaded that the computer was laden with enough incriminating items, she had used one of the word files to start writing an angry letter, one that started, Dear Dad, you son of a bitch, claiming that O’Connell now knew that he should never have lied on his father’s behalf years ago, and that he was now prepared to rectify that one big mistake in his life. He was the only person on this earth capable of dealing out the appropriate kind of justice to pay back his mother’s murder. Scott’s research of the O’Connell family history had helped her immensely.

Sally had done two other things to the computer. She had unscrewed the back panel, giving her access to the innards of the machine, and had carefully loosened the connection where the main power cord entered the machine, so that it wouldn’t start up. Then she had replaced the back entry with one additional detail: she had taken two drops of Super Glue and made sure that one of the screws that held it all together was completely locked in place. O’Connell might know how to fix the machine, she thought, but he wouldn’t be able to get into it. A police forensic technician would.

She quickly double-checked its position. It seemed to be just the way he’d left it.

Sally stuffed O’Connell’s computer into the backpack, next to the gun.

She looked down at her stopwatch. She was at eleven minutes.

Too slow, too slow, she told herself as she threw the backpack over her shoulder. She could feel the weight of the gun bouncing against her back. She took a deep breath. She would be back, before too long.

The cell phone on the car seat rang urgently. Scott had not been certain that he would get this call, but thought it highly possible, so he was fully prepared when he heard the voice on the other end.

“Hey, this Mr. Jones?”

O’Connell’s father sounded rushed, a little unsteady, but excited.

“Smith, here,” Scott replied.

“Yeah, right. Mr. Smith. Right. Hey, this is-”

“I know who it is, Mr. O’Connell.”

“Well, damned if you weren’t right. I just got a call from my kid, like you said I would. He’s on his way over here now.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. It’s about a ninety-minute drive from Boston, except he’s gonna be moving fast, so maybe a little less.”

“I will make arrangements. Thank you.”

“The kid was yelling something about some girl. Sounded real upset. Crazy almost. This got something to do with a girl, Mr. Jones?”

“No. It’s about money. And a debt he owes.”

“Well, that isn’t what he thinks.”

“What he thinks is irrelevant to our business, Mr. O’Connell, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I suppose so. So what should I do?”

Scott didn’t hesitate. He’d expected this question. “Just wait there for him. Hear him out. No matter what he says.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“We will be taking some steps, Mr. O’Connell. And you will be earning your true reward.”

“What do I do when he decides to leave?”

Scott felt his throat go dry. He could feel a spasm in his chest.

“Step aside and let him go.”

Hope sipped a cup of coffee while she waited for Sally. The bitter taste burned her tongue.

She was parked in a strip-mall lot, perhaps a hundred yards from the entrance to a large grocery store. There was plenty of traffic, but she was a little farther away from the entrance than she needed to be, having left perhaps two dozen parking spaces between her and the next car.