Brenda pressed the volume button and walked away.

Piper kept watch until her eyelids closed.

Just before she slept, she leaned close to my ear.

“Tomorrow, Uncle Gabriel will come,” she whispered.

“He listens.”

PART 5: The Brother at the Door

Gabriel Whitcomb arrived at 6:12 the next morning, according to the security footage investigators would later recover.

He was Wyatt’s younger brother, a forty-year-old architect who had never been comfortable with the family habit of pretending unpleasant truths were matters of etiquette.