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It was one of Cody’s sheepdogs He stopped in the road and started barking at us Good God Aaron I hadn’t even thought about hi barked some more and then ran back up the road from where it had come

We went around a slight curve in the dirt road and saw the house for the first tiht on in the s Not a sound In the dull, grainyit for the first tierbread trim The Queen Anne–style Victorian looked like it should be in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, not out here in the h desert

I shook my head and stared at the dormer where Mary Catherine slept

Mary Catherine

I pictured her

Mary Catherine sewing a vintage laht on eBay Mary Catherine down on her knees in the hallith the girls around a bucket of joint co the How to make a house, even a safe house, into a home

In ether so Now, in a fewher family back in Ireland that she was dead I squeezed

“You OK, Mike?” Eo back?”

I shookto throw up, but then it passed

“Let’s keep going,” I said

I stepped on soot to the front yard It was a Wiffle ball, or as left of one Brian hit theht about Brian then Watching ame back in New York, the s field when the coach sent him in off the bench

I turned and looked at the open front door as the SWAT tea flung open “Clear!” someone called I squatted down and stared at the dirt as I listened to uys swept the house

Then one of the agents appeared at the front door It was the preppy-looking one I’d hit He waved us up

“Mike, you really, really don’t have to do this,” Emily said

I lifted the crushed Wiffle ball and stared at it as I gathered myself