“I’ll be right back.”

She went downstairs to the kitchen, her eyes somewhat adjusted to the dark. She rummaged in the junk drawer for some book matches. She found a pack. Matches from her wedding. She could feel the gold embossed jessica and vincent on the glossy cover. Just what she needed. If she believed in such things, she might imagine that there was a conspiracy afoot to drag her into some deep depression. She turned to head back upstairs when there was a slash of lightning and the sound of shattering glass.

She jumped at the impact. A branch had finally snapped off the dying maple next to the house and smashed in the window in the back door.

“Oh, this just gets better and better,” Jessica said. The rain swept into the kitchen. There was broken glass everywhere. “Son of a bitch.”

She got out a plastic trash bag from under the sink and some pushpins from the kitchen corkboard. Fighting the wind and gusting rain, she tacked the bag around the opening in the door, trying not to cut herself on the shards that remained.

What the hell was next?

She looked down the stairs into the basement, saw the Maglite beam dancing about the gloom.

She grabbed the matches and headed into the dining room. She looked through the drawers in the hutch, found a variety of candles. She lit half a dozen or so, placing them around the dining room and the living room. She headed back upstairs and lit the two candles in Sophie’s room.

“Better?” she asked.

“Better,” Sophie said.

Jessica reached out, dried Sophie’s cheeks. “The lights will be on in a little while. Okay?”

Sophie nodded, thoroughly unconvinced.

Jessica looked around the room. The candles did a fairly good job of exorcising the shadow monsters. She tweaked Sophie’s nose, got a minor giggle. She just got to the top of the stairs when the phone rang.

Jessica stepped into her bedroom, answered.

“Hello?”

She was met with an unearthly howl and hiss. Through it, barely: “It’s John Shepherd.”

He sounded as if he was on the moon. “I can barely hear you. What’s up?”

“You there?”

“Yes.”

The phone line crackled. “We just heard from the hospital,” he said.

“Say again?” Jessica said. The connection was horrible.

“Want me to call on your cell?”

“Okay,” Jessica said. Then she remembered. The cell was in the car. The car was in the garage. “No, that’s okay. Go ahead.”

“We just got a report back on what Lauren Semanski had in her hand.”

Something about Lauren Semanski. “Okay.”

“It was part of a ballpoint pen.”

“A what?”

“She had a broken ballpoint pen in her hand,” Shepherd shouted. “From St. Joseph’s.”

Jessica heard this clearly enough. She didn’t want to. “What do you mean?”

“It had the St. Joseph’s logo and address on it. The pen is from the hospital.”

Her heart grew cold in her chest. It couldn’t be true. “Are you sure?”

“No doubt about it,” Shepherd said. His voice was breaking up. “Listen... the surveillance team lost Farrell... Roosevelt is flooded all the way to—”

Quiet.

“John?”

Nothing. The phone line was dead. Jessica toggled the button on the phone. “Hello?”

She was met with a thick black silence.

Jessica hung up, stepped over to the hallway closet. She glanced down the stairs. Patrick was still in the basement.

She reached inside the closet, onto the top shelf, her mind spinning. He’s been asking about you, Angela had said.

She slipped the Glock out of the holster.

I was on my way to my sister’s house in Manayunk, Patrick had said, not twenty feet from Bethany Price’s still-warm body.

She checked the weapon’s magazine. It was full.

His doctor came to see him yesterday, Agnes Pinsky had said.

She slammed the magazine home, chambered a round. And began to descend the stairs.

The wind continued to bay outside, trembling the windowpanes in their cracked glazing.

“Patrick?”

No response.

She reached the bottom of the stairs, padded across the living room, opened the drawer in the hutch, grabbed the old flashlight. She pushed the switch. Dead. Of course. Thanks, Vincent.

She closed the drawer.

Louder: “Patrick?”

Silence.

This was getting out of control really fast. She wasn’t going into the cellar without light. No way.

She backed her way to the stairs, then made her way up as silently as she could. She would take Sophie and some blankets, bundle her up to the attic, and lock the door. Sophie would be miserable, but she would be safe. Jessica knew she had to get control of herself, and the situation. She would lock Sophie in, get to her cell phone, and call for backup.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she said. “It’s okay.”

She picked up Sophie, held her tight. Sophie shivered. Her teeth chattered.

In the flickering candlelight, Jessica thought she was seeing things. She had to be mistaken. She picked up a candle, held it close.

She wasn’t mistaken. There, on Sophie’s forehead, was a cross made of blue chalk.

The killer wasn’t in the house.

The killer was in the room.

FRIDAY, 9:25 PM

Byrne pulled off Roosevelt Boulevard. The street was flooded. His head pounded, the images came roaring through, one after the other: a demented slaughterhouse of a slide show.

The killer was stalking Jessica and her daughter.

Byrne had looked at the lottery ticket the killer had put in Kristi Hamilton’s hands and not seen it at first. None of them had. When the lab uncovered the number, it became clear. The clue was not the lottery agent. The clue was the number.

The lab had determined that the Big 4 number the killer had chosen was 9–7–0–0.

The address of St. Katherine Church rectory was 9700 Frankford Avenue.