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    “What?” she asked.  
    Then it hit her. The explosion—it had been loud enough to cause her ears to ring, only she hadn’t realized it at the time, not with the taste of blood in her mouth and the bile rising and her need to get outside.  
    She put her finger to her ear, pressed down on it, then tried the phone again.  
    Cain was saying, “... don’t you think?”  
    “I couldn’t hear you. My ears were ringing. What did you say?”  
    “I said that must have made quite an impression on the neighborhood.”  
    At once she became conscious of the fact that she was still in a neighborhood, a quiet place where the only normal noises were the birds singing in the trees and the occasional car driving down the street. Anyone within one hundred yards or more could have heard the explosion and probably did, and she wondered how many of them were right now calling 911. Maybe someone across the street, or right next door, a concerned neighbor who despite the fact the house belonged to a child molester was still worried that something awful had just happened.  
    And something awful had just happened indeed. A man had died brutally. It didn’t matter that he was a child molester. Nobody deserved to die like that. Except, she thought, maybe Cain.  
    “Why did you do that?” she asked.  
    “I told you. To give you an example of what’s to come.”  
    “Where’s my son?”  
    “Home, Elizabeth. He’s waiting for you.”  
    She was running before she knew it, back down the driveway, under the shade of elms, toward the side of the street where she’d parked her car. She was inside and had the engine started a moment later, the tires squealing as she sped away.  
    It hit her much too late that she should have taken her time, that her squealing tires would draw attention to her, but then she figured what did it matter—at the moment she had no control over the events at hand, was merely a game piece being moved around at will, and the only thing that mattered right now was her son.  
    Her foot never once touched the brake, the needle of the speedometer rising steadily with every second. She had no choice but to stop at the intersection on the main drag.  
    The light turned green and she made the left, punching the gas. Here it became two lanes and she whipped past the other cars. Their apartment was less than ten minutes away; she thought she might be able to make it in seven minutes. Not that it made much difference in the larger scheme of things, but after just witnessing a man having been denied his extra minute of life, sixty seconds had become a tangible concept.  
    The speed limit here was forty-five miles per hour, strip malls and car washes and chain restaurants on both sides, and the speedometer’s needle was at fifty-five, working its way toward sixty, when she saw the cop car.  
    Parked in the same spot as it always was when running speed trap, just waiting for that careless driver who was in a hurry for no good reason, it didn’t move for a couple of seconds—Elizabeth’s gaze transfixed on the rearview mirror—but then, predictably, its roof-lights started flashing as it rolled out into the street.  
    Her fingers tightened against the wheel, her foot lifting off the gas. The phone was silent and still, Elizabeth for the first time wishing Cain would call because he would know what to do. Or would he? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that a cop was coming up behind her, the car growing larger and larger in her rearview mirror, and one of the things Cain had told her was she couldn’t talk to the police.  
    For an instant the idea to try to outrun the cop popped into her head, but she immediately dismissed it. That would only make things worse, at least as worse as things could get, and besides, the cop was right on her tail now so there was no thinking he was after anyone else. She had no choice, so she pulled the car over and waited.

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 10

    “L ICENSE