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away, the kids posed no immediate danger, but as one of them took a step closer, her hand tightened on the pistol’s grip. When it turned out that he was merely moving around to sit on the end of the sliding board, she relaxed. She tried to tell herself that her paranoia was silly, but it was the kind of silliness that kept you alive in The Pines.
    She’d once counted the steps, from her parking space to her front door, and the number 182 remained burned into her brain forever. One hundred eighty-two steps, exposed to the whims of whoever might decide to take advantage of her. Yet, no one ever had. She wondered sometimes why that was. Maybe it was because she stayed clean and sober and never hassled those who could not make the same claim. Maybe she was seen as a kind of Switzerland among the warring drug factions. She liked to think of it that way.
    Soon, though, Justin would grow from a toddler to a little boy, and along about the time he started school, the druggies would come after him. Not to use—that came in junior high—but to carry money from one spot to another. The gangs liked to use little ones because police didn’t hassle them as badly. Even when they were caught, the kids were usually home with their parents by the next morning.
    That’s if they were just carrying money. More and more, the dealers were using little ones to shuttle guns, and that scared the daylights out of her. Guns brought death, it was that simple. Just like in the pocket of her jacket right now. How close would she have let that kid on the sliding board approach before drawing down and threatening him? And once drawing, how much closer still before she pulled the trigger?
    Sometimes, the world seemed bleak as hell.
    Finally, she arrived at her apartment door, relieved to find it locked. Usually, that meant that William was reasonably sober, and there’d be no fight. There’d be sex instead. William liked getting laid in the mornings, after a good night’s sleep for him, and an endless workday for her. Her friends called his demands a power play—lofty psychological analyses from the Oprah school of medicine—and they were probably right, but what the hell? Five minutes of grunting and sweating beat the hell out of the whining and yelling that were the only alternative. Jesus, it wasn’t even a contest.
    April had to turn all three dead bolts, and as the door swung open, she nearly screamed. William was waiting for her on the other side, sitting in the La-Z-Boy opposite the door. In the blue light of the television he looked like somebody’s ghost.
    “My God, William,” she exclaimed. “You scared me to death.”
    He didn’t seem startled at all. “Sorry,” he grunted. “I’ve been waiting up for you.”
    “What’s wrong?” Call it woman’s intuition or a premonition or whatever, but she knew that something terrible had happened. She felt it in the pit of her stomach.
    He didn’t say anything. He just pivoted his head, and then she saw the bruises. Mottled shades of black and red marred the whole left side of his face, swelling his eye shut, and drooping his lower lip.
    “Jesus, William, what—” She took a half-step closer, then froze. “Justin,” she breathed.
    Dropping her purse to the floor, scattering keys and change everywhere, she bolted down the short hallway toward the baby’s room. She slapped at the light switch, missing it twice before the single, dangling sixty-watt bulb jumped to life and bathed everything in a dim yellow light.
    Justin didn’t sleep on a bed per se, but rather on a mattress on the floor, and that mattress looked for all the world to be empty. “Justin?” she said, first at a whisper, and then as her panic grew, she shouted it. “Justin! Where are you!” Frantic, she fell to her hands and knees and tore at the covers, trying to convince herself that her son was under that mess somewhere. He’d just rolled off, that was all. He just was lost somewhere among the covers.
    But he