“Okay, let’s get out of here,” I say. “You have the gun, you have the power, we can figure this out once we’re outside.”

Tears spill from her eyes and her expression crumples and then smooths as she battles to keep her composure.

“Did you know about Drea all this time?” She sucks in a breath, and turns the gun from side to side but with the muzzle always pointed at me. “While I worried and checked my phone? While I was pissed off at her for taking their money? Did you know she died like a rat in the wall?”

Her voice fades into a broken, wounded wail, and I understand that something horrifying has happened in the few moments since I talked to her on the phone.

A second shadow moves against the wall near the top of the stairs—someone walking slowly along the second floor landing.

“We need to get out of here,” I press. “Remember? The man who—”

“Did. You. Know?” Her eyes are wild, and I don’t think she even remembers that someone is trying to kill her, or if she does, she’s stopped caring.

“I didn’t,” I say gently. “I’m sorry, but—”

I reflexively chuck the iPad as hard as I can as the shadow takes solid, bulky form at the top of the staircase. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt much as it smacks into the man, but it does the job of knocking him off balance—a bullet bites into the wall to the right of Sydney’s head.

He’s got a gun. With a silencer.

“Motherfucker,” she growls, turning and popping three shots off at him. She isn’t using a silencer, and the sound echoes loudly in the hallway.

The intruder twists and tries to dodge, but the motion paired with at least one bullet hitting him sends him sliding down the steps. I snatch up the knife and run to meet him as he reaches the bottom.

He tumbles ass over feet when he hits the bottom landing, and I jump onto him before he can get his bearings. I straddle his chest with enough force to crush his solar plexus between the steps and my body weight, knocking the wind out of him. His muscles tense beneath me as he pulls against something; his gun hand is between the poles of the banister and in my peripheral vision I see Sydney trying to tug it from his grip.

Shit. One wrong move and he might—

No. She smashes a booted foot into his elbow and I hear him hiss, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the ground.

I bring a fist down on his nose and then his windpipe with one hand before plunging the knife into his side with the other. It goes in smoothly, gives barely any resistance as I twist, and I finally understand why Kim paid so much for this thing.

He cries out, and tries to throw me off, but I press down with all my weight, jabbing the knife with one hand and punching him in the side of the head with the other, again and again, until he stops resisting and goes limp beneath me.

The light switches on and I blink back over my shoulder at Sydney. My left hand is wet and stained red, and I use the bottom of the guy’s black T-shirt to wipe it off. The iron-rich scent of blood, like a butcher shop, and shit fills my nose and I try not to gag.

The face of the man who tried to kill Sydney is bloody and swollen, but I can see that he looks a little like me: tall, burly, light brown hair. Kim has a type. He shakes a little, and writhes as I take his cell phone and hold his thumb to the home button. When it unlocks, I get up, not looking at him again.

After quickly changing the password so I don’t have to worry about it automatically locking me out, I pick up his gun, walk over to Sydney, and open his texts.

I knew things were over, but seeing a nude of your recent ex sandwiched between requests to kill the woman you currently have . . . something with is just a bit of a mindfuck.

Did you get rid of the skank?

I reply with , and then in a second reply, .

And my loser ex? pops up.

Ouch.

I send a and a , this time following it up with a , then screenshot the conversation.

Sydney’s hand grips my arm. “He was honeycheeks?”

“I think,” I say. My heart is racing and I feel kind of like I’m gonna puke, but it passes. “Kim is supposed to be in the Hamptons. That picture isn’t her parents’ place, though. I don’t know why she’s involved in this. I don’t know what she has to do with hired killers. Fuck!”

The anger I felt when the man took a shot at Sydney isn’t going away, isn’t fading as I come down from the high of the fight. He lets out a rattling breath and I want to walk over and kick him in the head, stomp him . . .

No.

“What happened to Drea?” I ask Sydney, remembering her defiant hope in her friend and the emptiness in her eyes when she stepped out in front of me.

Sydney’s eyes fill with tears, and I slide my free arm, with the gun in my hand, over her shoulder and pull her into my side. She points toward the door through which she seemingly magically appeared in the hallway.

“Even if she did betray us, I never wanted this. Ever. I couldn’t tell what they did to her. I think she tried to escape through the old servants’ staircase. I don’t know why, even though I was—”

She raises a fist to her mouth and I feel the dry heaves rack her body.

I can’t tell her everything will be all right anymore. I hold her more tightly, my thoughts going a mile a minute as I try to figure out how we get out of this. There are at least two bodies in this house, one of which we’re responsible for and the other of which could easily be pinned on us.

Her best friend is dead. There’s a man bleeding out on the floor—a man my ex sent to kill her.

An OurHood chat notification pops up on the screen. I tap into the account and see that the notification is coming not from the main Gifford Place hub, but from a conversation under the heading PRIVATE GROUPS. There are two groups, Marketplace and Rejuvenation Planning, but only the second is highlighted.

Gifford Place OurHood/privateusergroup/Rejuvenation

Kim DeVries: Dad, I told you I would handle it. They’re dead. So is her friend who got the photocopies. So is the guy who snuck them to her. This loose end is tied off.

Mikel DeVries: Are you sure? The last thing we need is this popping up in the news. Everyone else will be handled but she was the only one who stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. Make sure her house, emails, social media, and close friends are cleared too.

Kim DeVries: It will be taken care of.

Josie Ulnar: Do you know how many stories are reported each day that should have people burning this country down? Dozens. A few people get mad on social media. Every once in a while, some poor sap goes to prison for a few years to satiate the plebes. To be frank, if we pull off tonight’s rejuvenation with minor complications, it doesn’t matter who finds out.

Josie Ulnar: As I tell Arwin, we are the sticks and stones, and we are the words. No one can hurt us, especially not social media stories, which have the life cycle of a fruit fly. Let’s just get this done.

Terry Ulnar: Yes. We have contacts in most major newsrooms, and there is always a more titillating spin on the story. With the parade and parties this weekend, there will doubtless be a shooting or molestation for them to focus on. If not, we’ll make one happen.

Kim DeVries: Besides, what can they do, call the police? lmao Let’s just get ready for the meeting tonight. After the rejuvenation, the next phase is going to move fast and we have to get our press releases, contracts, and containment services lined up.

Sydney is reading over my shoulder and I’m pretty sure both of us are too shaken up to really process everything that’s happening.

“What is a rejuvenation?” Sydney asks. “They keep mentioning it.”

I scroll through the group conversation but see nothing else that makes sense to me.

“Can’t find anything,” I say. I click to the other private group and see a post asking if there are any houses available with central air-conditioning. It seems to just be a real estate listings page. “There are posts in the other private group, but we need to get out of here. They might figure out this guy didn’t finish the job soon.”

She nods, then continues to nod as if running through things in her head. “They’re gonna do something big tonight, something worse than what they’re already doing. That’s all we need to know.”

I check the gun to reacquaint myself with the feel of one and make sure there are no tricks to it. It’s a simple Glock, older model with a silencer screwed on. Sydney checks her revolver, too, loading bullets into the chamber to replace the ones currently lodged in her hallway and in the body of the man on the floor.

“Sydney? Sydney?” Someone is calling her from outside.

“Let’s go,” I say.

When we step through the front door, there are people gathered in the street and more arriving, the glow of the streetlights silhouetting them.

Of course they’re out there.

This is a neighborhood where people care about each other, and three gunshots went off in Sydney’s house.