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worthless kid from the ghetto who deserves all the horrible suffering he gets.
    McCutcheon clutched on to another buried secret, as well. One worse than any other. In his heart he believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that if he ever did take his first life it would lead to
the taking of many, many more.
    If I taste the blood of death, it’s over. I know me. It will be all over.
    Bury enough anger in a warrior’s heart and like gunpowder it one day explodes.
    You can’t do it, M.D.,
McCutcheon told himself.
You can’t. A single death will lead to dominoes, and only I can contain myself.
    No, he would not kill. Not even for Kaitlyn.
    After eighteen hours and forty-five minutes, the silver Greyhound cruised across the Iowa border and entered Nebraska. Sleep escaped McCutcheon the entire trip. Too many thoughts. Too many
concerns. Too many worries.
    Too much awareness of the idea that most people become the thing they fear the most.

“D oc’s home! Doc’s home!”
    McCutcheon’s baby sister Gemma rushed to M.D. and threw her arms around his neck with a giant squeeze.
    Gemma loved Bellevue, Nebraska. She loved the swing sets at the parks, the pies at the diner, and all the nice neighbors who never scowled and only locked their doors at night.
    But most of all she loved Doc. He was the big brother who tickled her tummy, did push-ups with her sitting on his back, and had gotten them out of D-town. Escaping the projects of Detroit used
to be their mantra, their chorus, their dream.
    “Who’s tough?”
    “I’m tough.”
    “How tough?”
    “So tough.”
    “And why are we tough?”
McCutcheon would ask, a steely look in his eye.
    “’Cause that’s the way we get out.”
    “Gimme a kiss,”
M.D. would say, and Gemma would peck him on the cheek.
    They’d spoken these words to each other a thousand times. When their father stole the grocery money for drugs and left them with nothing but ketchup in the refrigerator for dinner. When
their mother disappeared from their lives without a note, a wave, or even a hug good-bye. When birthdays came and there was no money for presents, when snow came and there was no money for coats,
when the storms of life crashed down on them, and there were no adults anywhere to provide safety and protection, they’d speak these words to each other because these words were all they
possessed.
    Somehow, like Jack’s magic beans in the fairy tale, they’d worked. Gemma and M.D. did get out, and when it came to Detroit, Gemma prayed nightly that she’d never go back.
    McCutcheon, of course, felt differently about the matter.
    “Wanna see my habitat? Do ya, do ya?” Gemma, still in her koala bear jammies, pulled her brother by the arm and dragged him into her yellow and pink bedroom. With M.D. home,
Sarah—McCutcheon didn’t call her
Mom
anymore, he called her
Sarah
—left early that morning for the preschool where she worked as an early childhood specialist. It
was Back-to-School night there and a thousand things still remained needing to be done.
    It’s true that Sarah once abandoned her kids, but she said she only did so in order to save her own life. Maybe theirs, too. Back in Detroit, Demon was turning his son into a savage cage
warrior, and once some real money started to roll in from M.D.’s underground battles, Sarah stopped being a fan. Too violent. Too dangerous. Too illegal.
    But Demon only saw stacks of green, and when push came to shove, he put a knife to his wife’s neck and said “Leave or be carved.” High on a combo of speed, coke, and booze,
he’d do it, she knew. As a former boxer who grew up in a violent home himself, Demon had been knocking Sarah around for years. Even hospitalized her a few times. To call the police seemed
stupid to Sarah, though. Cops in Detroit weren’t even able to keep up with all the murders, so how were they going to help with a tiny little domestic dispute?
    With nowhere to turn, no one to phone, Sarah fled. Just packed a hasty