What did you do?”

She had known something was coming.

She had texted me that morning to take my daughter away, something bad is coming, because she had known enough of her son’s plan to want my child clear of it — but not enough, or not the courage, to stop it, or to warn me of what it truly was.

Even her one act of grim mercy had been a coward’s half-measure, and now she stood in a morgue doorway and understood, at last, the full shape of the thing her family had done.

And then there were two police officers in the doorway, and the officers had their handcuffs in their hands.

“Luke Vance.