The Sprite House was entirely dark, no light shining out from behind the ugly gray blanket tacked up over the picture window.

“No! Let me. This is a dedicated cell line, just for Ezra. I’ll call the police from my real phone,” Faith Wheeler said. Her sobs had abated, a little, but her urgent words were running all over one another. “There’s a detective on the case. Morris. He’s good. He never gave up. He can call the locals from here, so they know to be careful. So they know my child is in the house with her. Morris told me to call him, not 911, if I got a tip. I just want Ezra safe. She’s dangerous. I don’t want Ezra hurt. Where are they?”

Even as I told her the address, I was hurrying on quick and quiet feet up the driveway, past the dark house. Understanding but not understanding. God, I didn’t want to understand, but my feet kept moving, taking me back to the tall privacy fence. My fingers lifted the latch.

“They’re home,” I whispered. “The car is here.”

She didn’t answer, and a few seconds later I could hear her voice talking to someone else. She must be on the other phone with her detective.

I made my way around to the master-bedroom window. I knew which one it was. No window treatments. No light was on, but the window glowed faintly all the same.

I pushed a quiet path through the high azaleas shielding it. Peered in.

Roux was there. Luca, too. He faced her in profile, wearing only pajama bottoms, his pale, bare chest gleaming in the light from a small spray of candles. She had on even less. Only a bra. She had her hands on his shoulders, and his hands were on her bare hips. She pushed him, down and down, until he was kneeling before her. Then she lifted one leg to wrap over his shoulder, her hand on the back of his head, pressing him in, close.

I turned away so fast the bushes rattled, and then I dropped to my knees. I had seen it, though. I could not unsee it. Now Roux’s old words were rattling in my head. Boys are sweet, she’d said when I accused her of hating men. I remembered her hands on Oliver, compressing his chest and his hips when he’d woken at her house, crying. He had quieted at her touch, but I could hardly bear the thought of her hands on my tiny boy. I’m a baby whisperer, she’d said, and the memories nauseated me. I hadn’t understood her. I hadn’t understood her game at all.

“Are you there?” Faith Wheeler said. Too loud.

“Shhh,” I said, my voice a sick, faint whisper. “They’re awake. Inside. I see them.”

Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “Is he okay? Detective Morris is calling for help. Keep your eyes on them. Don’t let them go. The police will be there very soon.”

For the first time since I’d seen the pictures of Ezra and his mother, I wondered what this meant for me. Nothing good. My life as I knew it was over. My truths were all going to come out. Once I had Roux arrested, revenge would be all that was left to her. She would take it, and I had no way to shield Charlotte.

It didn’t matter. This boy—I felt so sick down in the pit of me. I could not stop seeing him, this child, kneeling before her. His fingers clutched tight on her hips, indenting her flesh. I had to get this boy away from her. He must be safely sent back home.

I wanted to peek up over the sill, make sure they hadn’t heard me, but I could not make myself look. I could not bear to see that child—I realized I could hear faint music in the room, her janky, discordant jazz, and I had to hope that it had masked my movements.

“How long?” I whispered. “How long until they get here?”

“I don’t know. Soon? I hope soon. Oh, God, is he okay?”

“Yes,” I lied.

He wasn’t. He was being raped. I understood that. The boy in that room was only fourteen years old. I was witnessing a rape. Maybe his fiftieth rape by this time, maybe his hundredth. It didn’t matter. It was happening to him now. As I waited for the cops, this woman, who had twice put her hands on my own infant son, was using up a child. If some man had Maddy, if he were using her this way, would I wait here? Would I let it happen one more time, even knowing the police were coming, even knowing how many times it must already have happened?

I was moving, my body answering the question before my mind could.

“I have to hang up,” I whispered into the phone.

“Wait—” Faith Wheeler began, but I disconnected. I flicked the button on the side, making sure the ringer was off. Within three seconds the phone was buzzing in my hands. I shoved it into my back pocket.

Then I was at the front door, banging on it. I had no plan beyond getting her hands off that boy. No thought past stopping this final violation.

I banged and banged, and when nobody answered, I reared back and kicked the door with the flat of my foot.

“I know you’re home!” I yelled into the door. I kicked it again and then again, making loud, reverberating booms.

Finally Roux snatched it open. I was rearing back to kick again, and it threw me off balance. Her seamless face was furious, and she was wrapped in that spectacular raw silk dressing gown I’d seen before. Alone. Luca, I assumed, was still in her bedroom. Waiting.

“What?” she said, cold and sharp.

“Char’s finally asleep,” I said. I had no idea what I would say next. “We need to talk.”

I pulled a move from her playbook, barging in, pushing past her, letting my fury and my horror carry me. She melted out of my way as I stomped across her den.

She closed the door but stayed beside it, watching me, hands in her pockets, all her weight on one hip, as if perfectly relaxed. The Botox helped her hide her expression, but I could see a little wariness seeping through the lines of her body. Her eyes glistened, wide and bright and glossy.

“Come to bargain?” she asked. “No use. I won’t go under two hundred.”

I stopped at the fireplace, beside the wrought-iron stand that held a poker and a miniature broom for sweeping ashes, in front of all the game boxes. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I wanted to be between her and Yahtzee. Between her and the gun.

“A hundred fifty,” I said, to be saying something.

She was looking at my face, trying to get a read on me.

In my pocket my phone began vibrating again. We could both hear it, buzzing in my jeans. I should have taken the extra ten seconds and gone into the menu to turn vibrations off.

Roux said, “Better get that. Might be Char.”

“A hundred fifty,” I said, dogged, ignoring the sound.

She stared me down until the phone went silent. A few seconds, and then it began buzzing again.

The wariness was all over her body now, in the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her head.

“Why are you really here?” she asked.

“To bargain. Like you said,” I told her, but I was panting. I couldn’t seem get my breath, and my phone would not stop.

She took her hands out of her pockets then, and I’d been stupid. She already had the gun. It gleamed, black and sleek, in her pale hand. She’d gotten it before she ever opened the door. I was standing between her and an empty box.

“Set that phone down. Kick it over here,” she said.

The gun had grown since I’d seen it last. It had looked so small and snub-nosed before. Now, pointed at me, it was a huge thing, almost blotting out the woman who held it. I fished my phone out and knelt carefully to set it down, kicked it across the carpet. Roux bent at the knees to pick it up.

She straightened, then glanced down to check the number lighting up my screen.

“Shit,” she said, and dropped it like it was burning her hand.

Either she knew that number by heart or the 206 area code was enough for her to guess. Her eyes came back to mine, the pupils blown wide, as round and black and unfathomable as the eye of the gun itself.

“Luca!” she called, her voice gone harsh. No answer. He must be hiding in her bedroom, wondering why Maddy’s nice Monster, his diving teacher, was beating down his front door in the middle of the night. If he hadn’t known I was Roux’s client before, he did now. Or maybe he was too busy worrying about how much I knew. She called again. “Luca! Get in here.”

He appeared. He’d been around the corner, listening. He was still only in pajama bottoms. They had SpongeBob on them, I saw now, and they hung off his fragile hip bones. His arms were crossed protectively over his narrow, lithe chest. It was nearly hairless. I could hardly bear to look at him, and he couldn’t seem to meet my gaze. His cheeks were flushed, a bright, hot red.

Roux said, “Start loading the car. We have to go.”

He stared back and forth between us, and then he seemed to notice the gun for the first time.

“Buh,” he said, a small, sharp noise, surprised.

“Get the Picasso and the cash. Put a shirt on. And shoes. We’re leaving in ninety seconds,” she said. He was frozen, still staring at the gun, and she raised her voice and barked, “Now!” at him. He jumped, started moving.

“Ezra,” I said. The name made him stop. He turned to me with such wide eyes. I could see blind panic in them. “Don’t. Your mom is on the way.”