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shoulders down they were open to the breeze. He had an impulse to drop low and do his talking through the opened part of the window, but he resisted it and instead walked away. He wanted no more to do with the possible second victim of the Hayward-Hodene fiasco than he did with young Tyler —arguably its third victim.
    Seething all over again at the risk of the carnage to come, Zack began pulling off some siding farther away from the windows as he waited for the man of the house to make an appearance downstairs. He was aware that his heart had begun pumping harder and his adrenaline to flow in anticipation of the imminent meeting, and it infuriated him. He wanted to be calm. Collected. Merciless. Above all, satisfied.
    He worked, and he waited.
    After a while, Pete returned with another compressor hose, and they replaced the leaky one and began work on the second-level floor. Zack knew, everyone knew, that the first priority was to get the shell enclosed and the addition watertight. It had been a wet spring so far, and there was no reason to assume that the pattern would change.
    The three of them worked quickly and with little conversation, which was fine with Zack. The less said about himself, the better. In the meantime, he kept his eye on the big blue E xpedition parked on the street. He'd figured out that the monster SUV belonged to her husband, the Taurus to the wife. Wendy, yeah. She looked like a Wendy, somehow. A nice, normal, unaffected mom who obviously hadn't let that mind-boggling jackpot go to her head. With any luck, Zack would be in and out of her life without her missing a beat.
    And if it turned out differently than that ... if it all blew up in their faces ...
    That's the breaks. If she dumped the bigamist, so be it. At least she'd still have half—after the adjustment for Zina—of the winnings. And she'd have her son. Which is more than Zina had the chance to have, damn it.
    His thoughts plunged back to that horrifying day when he drove his sister, bleeding profusely, to the emergency room. It still amazed him, how something so normal as having a baby could go so agonizingly wrong. He beat back the memory for the thousandth time, but immediately another, even more horrific one rushed in to fill the void: blood everywhere, on the floor, against the windows , in his eyes, over her, blood.
    His parents, bloody and broken.
    "Hey. Zack. You listenin'? I said sixty- five inches, not fifty-five."
    Pete was holding up the too-short two-by-four that Zack had just cut, and the look on his face was no longer harried but pissed.
    "Agh, sorry," Zack said.
    "You okay?" Pete asked. "You look a little green around the gills."
    "Not at all. Green's my natural color," said Zack, unwilling to take it to a personal level.
    "Yeah, well, okay then. Let's get on the ball. Like I tell the boys, wood don't grow on trees."
    "Measure twice, cut once. I know," Zack quipped, but the reprimand stung. He was used to working within millimeters of accuracy, and he'd just blown a cut by a ful l ten inches. Jesus, man, focus. You lose this job, you lose your entr é e.
    Of course, Zack could've just shown up at the Hodenes' door, but he wanted, if possible, to avoid destroying innocent lives. He turned to his work with a vengeance, and when he looked up again, it was lunch break. The Taurus was still there, parked on the street where it had been all morning—but, hell and damnation, the Ex pedition was gone.
    Pete and Billy took off in different directions, leaving Zack on his own. He wasn't savvy about the best place to grab a quick meal, but he'd not iced a little café on Wick enden Street called Hurry Curry that might fit the bill. It. was a warm day, despite the threat of rain, and he remembered that the eatery had a couple of outdoor tables. He'd been holed up in his workshop for months—except, of course, for the necessary foray out for casual sex—and sitting outside for a few minutes, watching the flow of humanity pass back