It was a perfect setting for the late Chaz Smith. Dead on the toilet, a fitting last pose for this crud.

“You deserved this. You deserved worse, you son of a bitch.”

It had been a good kill, and now he had to get out.

He put the plastic bag containing the shell casings, the GSR, and the gun back into his jacket pocket and closed the stall door.

Then he carried the trash can out of the men’s room and put it down so that it blocked the door from the outside. That would hold people off for a while, make them think that the men’s room was temporarily closed.

The man in the blue suit heard a rush of sound. The auditorium doors had opened for the crowd. He headed back by way of the main hallway, turning left just as people poured into the lobby, chattering and laughing. None of them noticed him, but even if they had, they would never have connected him to the dead man.

There was a fire alarm box on the wall next to a door marked TEACHERS’ LOUNGE.

Using his handkerchief to glove his hand, he opened the door to the box, lifted the hammer, broke the glass, and pulled the lever; the alarm bell shrilled.

Then he walked directly into the thick of the crowd.

Children were already starting to scream and run in circles in the lobby. Parents called out to their kids, took their hands or lifted them into their arms, and moved quickly toward the front doors.

The man went with the crowd, through the glass doors and out onto California Street. He kept going, turned onto a side street, passed Chaz Smith’s Ferrari, and unlocked his scarred SUV parked right behind it.

A moment later, he cruised slowly past the school. All the good people — the kids and their parents — were facing the building, staring up at the roof, watching for smoke and flames.

They didn’t know it, but they were all safer now.

Chaz Smith was only one of his targets. The media had started tracking this shooter’s kills — drug dealers, all of them. One of the papers had given him a nickname and it had stuck.

Now they all called him Revenge.

Fire engines approached from Thirty-Second Avenue, and the man called Revenge stepped on the gas. Not a good time to get stuck in a traffic jam.

He had shopping to do before he went home to his family.

Book One

THE HOUSE OF HEADS

Chapter 1

YUKI CASTELLANO OPENED HER eyes. She was in her lover’s arms, in her mother’s bed. If she was dreaming, it was a pretty funny dream.

She grinned to herself, almost seeing her dead mom sitting in the green slipper chair by the dresser, a look of disapproval on her face — and, as sometimes happened, her mother’s voice got into her head.

Yuki-eh, you want to have hus-band. Not lover.

Mom. Mom, he’s so great.

He so married.

Separated!

Jackson Brady stirred beside her, pulled her toward him, lifted her hair, and kissed the side of her neck.

She said, “It’s … early … you can sleep for another …”

Yuki sighed as Brady ran his hands over her naked body, started her engine, and revved it up.

Pillows went over the side, blankets bunched up at the footboard, and he fitted himself inside her. She cried out and he said, “I’ve got you.”