They Won't Be Hurt

by Kevin O'Brien

Genres: Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

The lights are on at the Singleton vacation home on Lopez Island, Washington, illuminating the horror within. Scott Singleton, former NFL-star-turned-television-evangelist, lies dead. The bodies of his wife and four of their five children are found on the second floor, bound, gagged, and stabbed repeatedly. The oldest daughter was shot downstairs. And the police's main suspect — the property caretaker — has disappeared.

In her secluded vineyard home two hours away, Laura Gretchell is on edge. Her husband is out of town on business, and the children are understandably shaken. Laura tries to tell herself there's no reason to fear. Then the door handle rattles, and the real terror begins.

They're in her house, holding her children hostage, and Laura has only one option: Do exactly what the intruders say. But as Laura races to find the information they seek, she realizes that the enemies within her own home are only part of the nightmare. Because someone wants to keep the truth hidden at any cost, no matter how many more must die....

Release date: July 31, 2018

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 544

Sample

“Huh, someone left the gate open,” Jae observed from the passenger seat.

Wes Banyan had already lowered the driver’s window to punch in the six-digit code on the little box at the start of the driveway. The frigid night air drifted into his rented Ford Fiesta. After two days and nights of driving in and out of the Singletons’ compound, Wes now knew the front gate’s code by heart. The property was surrounded by a tall fence with barbed-wire trim along the top. Jae referred to the house—nestled on a huge wooded lot overlooking Lopez Sound—as the “family cabin.” After hearing her call it that for the last few days, Wes had been expecting a cottage with a potbellied stove, maybe some bunk beds in a spare room and an outhouse in back. Instead, it was a freaking six-bedroom mansion.

That was just like her. Jae Singleton was full of surprises, not all of them good.

Wes was determined to break up with her tonight. And if he was going to do it, he needed to do it now, before he dropped her off at the house.

They’d met at a frat party three weeks ago. They were both freshmen at the University of Washington. Wes had seen her around Alder Hall and been immediately attracted to her. Jae was a gorgeous blonde with big green eyes and a lithe body. She smelled nice, too. She actually asked him out, which left Wes a bit stunned, because he knew he was hardly anybody’s idea of a stud. Pale and skinny, he shaved only twice a week. A friend of his sister’s once deemed him “geeky cute.” He figured that was a fairly accurate compliment, and about the best he could hope for—at least until he started shaving more often. Girls who looked like Jae Singleton didn’t usually date geeks.

Wes had friended Jae on Facebook, and he noticed she posted something on her timeline about their upcoming dinner date:


“Gee, you think she expects you to bring her flowers?” his roommate, Steve, asked him. “I mean, could she be any more obvious? You should post something on there saying you like blowjobs. Blowjobs, blowjobs, blowjobs.”

Steve also mentioned that he knew a girl who posted stuff on Facebook about her dates to make an ex-boyfriend jealous: “She might be using you, man. I mean, just saying . . .”

Wes tried not to pay too much attention to his roommate, a chubby, sarcastic know-it-all whose chances of getting a girl—any girl—were in the vicinity of zero. Steve seemed to assume the two of them were in the same boat, just a couple of losers. He also wrongly assumed that Wes was only out to get laid. In truth, Wes was still a virgin, and the impending date with Jae left him breathless and scared. Here was this beautiful young woman who made him feel so important. He didn’t want to screw it up.

Wes brought Jae mini carnations when he came to her dorm room for their date the following night. Over dinner, she seemed interested in everything he said. And at the end of the evening, when he walked her to her door, she gave him a slightly wet kiss on the mouth.

It was one of the best nights of his life.

On their second date, Jae told him about the guy she’d recently broken up with: a junior in a fraternity, Carson Something—one of those last-name-first-name guys. Wes pictured a cocky, rich party boy, the type who smoked cigars and hit golf balls at the range after class—sometimes in his plaid bathrobe, because that was just the way Carson rolled. He probably had one of those perfect five-o’clock shadows if he went a day without shaving.

From the way Jae talked, it was pretty obvious she still liked him. But it was too late for Wes. He’d already fallen for her. Smitten, his grandmother might have said. It didn’t matter that his roommate was right about her Facebook posts, which went on and on about how she’d never been out with a guy who was so nice and considerate, “so much nicer than you-know-who!” she wrote. If Jae was trying to convince Carson that she was in love with someone else, Wes didn’t mind being that someone else.

On date number three, they’d made out furiously, and she’d even let him feel her up. She didn’t pull away or anything—so he must have been doing it right. The whole experience was pretty intoxicating for him.

Then, like an idiot, he told Steve about it.

“Some over-the-bra action, big whoop,” Steve replied. “That’s all you’re probably going to get, considering who her old man is.”

Steve acted as if Wes was an absolute moron for not knowing that Jae’s father was Scott Singleton, the former Seahawks linebacker. Wes had to go online to find out more about him. After discovering God, Scott had become a self-ordained minister and started his own religious sect: the Church of the True Divine Light. Handsome and youthful-looking, he wanted to outlaw all abortions, advocated conversion therapy for gays (including electric shock, ice baths, and verbal admonishment—anything as long as it got the job done), and he firmly believed that a wife should be subservient to her husband. When a fellow NFL player was suspended for beating his girlfriend, Scott caused a brief uproar by telling the press: “Sometimes there are reasons for these things between couples—and it’s not always bad.”

Headquartered near Spokane, the Church of the True Divine Light had over 480,000 followers across the country. Scott Singleton had gotten rich in the religion business, and he had a lot of political pull.

Jae had told Wes that her father was in public relations. Small wonder she’d lied about her old man—especially at progressive University of Washington, where Scott Singleton might as well have been a card-carrying neo-Nazi.

Wes didn’t much agree with anything Scott Singleton and his church stood for. But Jae wasn’t shoving her father’s beliefs down his throat. So he decided not to hold it against her.

Besides, she’d invited him to spend Thanksgiving weekend with her at her family’s cabin on Lopez Island. “I’m a good cook, you’ll see,” she told him.

Wes couldn’t afford to fly home to the Chicago area, and he’d figured he’d be stuck in the near-empty dorm for the holiday. But Jae had thrown him a lifeline. Hell, she was offering him a dream come true: four nights alone with her in a cabin in the woods. He got butterflies in his stomach just thinking about it. He wondered why she wasn’t spending Thanksgiving with her family, but decided it really didn’t matter. Why even bring it up?

It wasn’t until after Wes had rented the car for their trip that Jae told him “some family” would be at the cabin, too. And it wasn’t until they were on the ferry to Lopez that Jae found out the entire family was coming—her mom, dad, and all four siblings. None of the kids—apparently, that included Jae—wanted to double up, so there wouldn’t be any room for Wes at the island house. At the last minute, he had to book himself a single queen room at the Lopez Islander Resort for the next four nights. It would take a huge bite out of his savings.

Wes realized it would have been cheaper for him to have flown home and celebrated Thanksgiving with his own family in Winnetka.

And he would have had a hell of a better time, too.

He spent the first two days of the extended weekend running errands for Jae’s mother, a beautiful but bossy platinum-haired woman in her late forties. His roommate, Steve, would have called her a MILF. The caretaker’s minivan was in the shop, so all chauffeuring duties fell upon Wes. A cook, a maid, and a woman who served the dinner had to be shuttled around on Thanksgiving Day, from the ferry to the “cabin” to the hotel. The three women had rooms just down the hall from him at the Islander. He was staying with the help. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

Wes was also in charge of picking up Scott Singleton on Thanksgiving afternoon. Scott arrived by seaplane and talked on his phone the whole time Wes was driving him to the compound. He appeared a bit older in person, and had silver streaks in his curly brown hair. But he was still ruggedly good-looking. He just wasn’t too friendly.

“Do me a favor and get my bag for me, will you, Brad?” he said distractedly when Wes pulled up to the house.

Wes was in good company. Singleton couldn’t get the name of their caretaker right either. Apparently, the guy was new. He was a handsome, nervous-looking, wiry guy in his early twenties. He lived in a small apartment above the three-car garage, which was separate from the house. He must have been hiding in there most of the time while Wes was busting his ass for the Singletons. The caretaker’s name was Joe. But at the beginning of the meal, when Singleton called the help into the dining room for a solemn Thanksgiving prayer, he twice referred to the guy as “Jim”—and Mrs. Singleton corrected him both times.

Wes actually felt sorry for Joe—and for the three other servants. They looked so downtrodden, standing there in meek silence while Singleton prayed at the head of the big table, elegantly set with flickering candles and a cornucopia centerpiece.

Wes sat between Jae and her sixteen-year-old sister, Willow, who had a raging cold. She kept coughing and blowing her nose throughout dinner. Wes was convinced he’d be deathly ill before the week was out. The youngest kid, eleven-year-old Connor, was nice to him. But the older brother was a jerk. And the oldest sister ignored him. He didn’t much like the family.

After a couple of days, he wasn’t sure he much liked Jae either.

She was nasty to her sisters and constantly arguing with her mother. Plus, she’d barely paid any attention to him throughout the trip.

The two of them had just come back from a party at the house of one of her “island friends.” It was a snotty, cliquish group. Jae kept disappearing, leaving him to stand there alone with his beer. At one point, she told him she might go back to Seattle on Monday with one of her friends. Would he mind terribly?

Yes, he minded. It broke his heart. It proved he wasn’t really important to her after all.

But Wes said it was fine with him. He said he might just leave tomorrow morning and save a couple of hundred dollars on the hotel room cost. Maybe he could get some money back for taking the rental car back early.

Jae barely even blinked. It was as if she didn’t care that he was leaving early, or that he’d spent a small fortune on this trip and had an utterly miserable time.

That was the moment Wes decided he had to break up with her. And he had to do it tonight—before he dropped her off at the family compound. If he waited until they got back to school, he’d chicken out or talk himself out of it. He was tired of feeling like a chump. What had he been thinking? He’d known from the start she was out of his league. If he broke up with her tonight, he would return to the dorm tomorrow with a clean slate.

Driving her back to the compound, his stomach was in knots. He didn’t want a confrontation. He just wanted to end things with her.

The only radio station the car picked up on the island played nonstop Christmas music. Slightly drunk, Jae sang along with each selection. When “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime” came on, Wes reached over and switched off the radio because he absolutely loathed the song—and because he couldn’t stall any longer on having the talk with her.

“Hey, why’d you do that?” she asked. “I love that song!”

Figures, Wes thought. But he didn’t say anything. He just tightened his grip on the steering wheel, sighed, and shook his head.

“What’s wrong with you tonight anyway?” she asked. “I mean, would it have killed you to be nice to my friends? All you did at the party was sulk.”

“That’s because I didn’t know anyone—and nobody would talk to me.” He took his eyes off the road for a moment to glance at her. “You introduced me to—like—a total of three people, and then you disappeared. You left me there all alone. I felt like an idiot . . .”

“Well, I’m sorry, but they’re my friends, and I haven’t seen most of them since the summer! And you were being a grouch. What was I supposed to do, stick by your side and hold your hand the entire night?”

“It might have been nice if you’d held my hand there just once,” he murmured.

Jae sighed and then looked out the car window. “You know, maybe it’s a good thing you’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Probably,” he said, “because this isn’t working out, none of it is.”

Wes kept waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t. He wondered if that was it. Were they broken up? Or did he actually have to say the words?

Up ahead, he spotted the side road that led to the Singleton compound. He slowed down and took the turn. The dark road snaked up a wooded hill. Branching off the narrow two-lane road were driveways and winding lanes that led to other houses and cabins. Through the trees, Wes spotted a few lights in the distance, but very few. Most everyone was asleep at this hour. He’d made this trip several times now but was still uncertain about a couple turns. He usually had someone in the car giving him directions. He was already worried about getting lost after he dropped Jae off tonight.

The silence in the car made him even more nervous.

The woods grew so dense that Wes couldn’t see much beyond the car’s headlights. Last night, he’d almost hit a deer. Now he imagined some guy in a hockey mask brandishing an ax, springing out of the darkness into the illuminated path.

Wes shuddered.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jae asked.

“Nothing. I’m just cold, that’s all,” he murmured.

“You need to turn right at the Tall Pines sign,” she muttered.

Nodding, Wes followed the gravel road to the right. He knew the compound was around one of the curves coming up. He kept following the road, and then he spotted the big house. A couple of the lights were on upstairs. He slowed down and pressed the switch on the armrest to lower his window.

That was when Jae noticed someone had left the front gate open.

He turned into the driveway. The older brother’s Fiat was parked in front of the house, so Wes pulled up beside the garage. The windows above the garage were dark. Wes figured the caretaker was asleep.

“That’s weird,” Jae said. “All the curtains are closed on the first floor . . .”

“What’s so weird about it?” Wes asked.

“We never close the curtains,” Jae said. “There’s no reason to out here in the woods.” Frowning, she glanced back toward the open gate.

Wes followed her gaze. Then he turned toward the house again. He could see light peeking through the slits between the curtains. Maybe someone had left a few lights on for her downstairs and decided to leave the gate open, too.

Was that really so unusual?

Jae seemed to shrug it off. She turned toward him and sighed. “Well, I guess I won’t see you until I get back on Monday . . .”

Wes cleared his throat. “Well, actually, I thought—”

“I’ll miss a couple of classes, but who cares?” she interrupted.

She didn’t seem to understand that he wanted to break up.

“You know, I think it works out better that you’re leaving tomorrow,” Jae continued. She flicked her blond hair and then rolled her eyes. “My mother has been riding her broomstick all weekend. You must think she’s awful. She totally screwed up my plans for us this weekend. It was supposed to be just you and me here . . .”

Wes squirmed a bit in the driver’s seat. He had a hard time believing that. For starters, didn’t the caretaker live there year-round? And second, if they were alone in that big house in the middle of the woods, it would have been pretty damn scary—especially at night, like now.

He thought he saw a curtain move in one of the first-floor windows.

“Do you think someone’s waiting up for you?” he asked.

“At this hour?” she said. “I doubt it.”

Wes couldn’t help thinking something was wrong. Then again, the house, its surroundings—and even Jae—seemed strange to him. She’d been concerned about the gate and the curtains just a minute ago, but not anymore. Of course, she was still a little drunk, so her judgment might be off.

Jae smiled and touched his shoulder. “Tell you what. I’ll make you a sandwich for the ride home tomorrow.”

“Oh, you don’t have to,” he said. “In fact, listen, I really think we—”

“Nonsense,” she interrupted. “There’s all that turkey left. And you have a mini-fridge in your room at the Islander. You can keep it fresh for tomorrow. Come on in with me while I make the sandwich.”

“No, really, I think—”

“Okay, then you stay put. I’ll be back in just a couple of minutes . . .”

She opened the passenger door.

“Jae, wait—”

But she jumped out of the car and shut the door.

“Shit,” Wes muttered under his breath.

He watched her weaving slightly as she headed to the front door. She seemed to take forever to find the keys in her purse.

Wes kept the headlights on, figuring that might help Jae in her search. Besides that, everything about this place gave him the creeps right now. He just wanted to get out of there.

He lowered the window a crack and then glanced back over his shoulder at the open gate again. He heard a noise and swiveled around in time to see Jae duck inside the house. He realized it was just the sound of her unlocking and opening the front door.

Wes let out a little laugh. “Quit creeping yourself out,” he said under his breath. Still, he reached for the armrest and pressed the lock for the car doors.

Slumping back in the driver’s seat, he glanced at his wristwatch: 1:46 A.M. He couldn’t believe he had to wait around here while she made him a lousy sandwich. He had no intention of eating it. When she’d invited him to spend this “intimate weekend” with her at “the cabin,” Jae had said something about showing him what a great cook she was. Outside of opening a bag of Fritos and a couple of Diet Cokes, he hadn’t seen her perform any tasks in the kitchen so far. Maybe this turkey sandwich was supposed to prove something to him.

Wes listened to the car engine idling. Past it, he thought he heard a scream.

He sat up straight.

The shrill, aborted wail seemed to have come from inside the house. He was almost certain it was Jae.

He switched off the engine and listened. There wasn’t another sound. He kept staring at the house, waiting for one of the curtains to move again. But everything was so still. Even the tree branches weren’t moving.

He glanced up toward the windows above the garage—still dark. Obviously, the caretaker hadn’t heard it. But without a doubt, there had been a scream.

Maybe one of the other kids had played a joke on her and surprised her or something.

Biting his lip, Wes took out his phone and speed-dialed her number. It rang twice and then went to her voicemail: “Hi! It’s Jae,” the familiar, perky recording said. “I can’t pick up right now. So you know what to do!”

Wes grimaced. He didn’t want to hear that voicemail recording right now. He wanted to hear her. He wanted Jae to tell him everything was fine and she’d be out with his sandwich in a minute.

Instead, he waited for the beep. “Hi, it’s me,” he said in a slightly shaky voice. “Are you okay? I heard a scream. I’m worried. Call me—or come out and tell me everything’s okay just as soon as you can. All right?”

He clicked off and anxiously stared at the front door.

He thought about calling the police, but what if nothing was wrong? They’d come out here and wake up the entire family—all for nothing.

Well, that’s one way to make sure she’ll never want to see me again, he thought. He let out a nervous chuckle.

But then he thought he saw something, and the feeble smile disappeared from his face. It looked like someone had just ducked behind a big tree at the edge of the driveway. Wes stared at the tree for a few moments, but nothing moved. He told himself it was just his imagination playing tricks on him.

The car lights automatically shut off.

Wes had forgotten that he’d switched off the engine. He quickly turned the key in the ignition and started the car again. The headlights came on once more.

Just go, he thought. Drive away. Something isn’t right. Something happened in that house. And if you’re mistaken, it doesn’t matter that you’ve driven off. You’re breaking up with her anyway. Once you get to the main road, you can call her again and explain that you got tired of waiting. Just go, for God’s sake. Go . . .

Wes’s trembling hand hovered over the gearshift.

He heard a door slam, and he glanced toward the front of the house again.

There was no one by the front door. But at the side of the house, he saw someone dart between the trees—heading toward the driveway. It wasn’t his imagination this time. It was a man, walking at a brisk, determined, robot-like clip.

Panic-stricken, Wes couldn’t move. He watched the shadowy figure coming closer and closer to the driveway. It didn’t look like Mr. Singleton or Jae’s older brother. He disappeared behind some shrubs for a few seconds.

Wes went to start the car, but realized the engine was already running.

The man emerged from behind the bushes and zeroed in on the car. He held a gun in his hand.

“Oh, Jesus,” Wes whispered, his heart stopping.

The man raised his gun.

Wes heard a shot ring out. From the windshield bits of glass sprayed him in the face. God, this isn’t happening, he thought.

He reached for the door handle, but a second shot punctured the glass again, and Wes knew he’d been hit. It felt like someone had slammed a hammer into his upper chest. He saw the dashboard dotted with his own blood.

The front of his jacket was wet.

The man moved even closer to the car.

Moaning, Wes started to black out.

Two more shots echoed in the still night—and then nothing.

On the way to his car at the far end of the parking lot, Jason Eichhorn felt a strange kind of elation. He knew it was wrong. The swarthy twenty-nine-year-old was a stringer for The Seattle Times, covering a horrible multiple murder. But he’d just had dinner at The Rumor Mill with two guys from CNN, a correspondent from Time, an older, Pulitzer Prize – winning reporter from the AP, and a smart, sexy redheaded correspondent from NBC News—some pretty impressive company. They were tapping his expertise about the local haunts and the ferry system.

Reporters from all over the country had descended upon the island, where the county sheriff’s office was located. It was the same way on Lopez Island—and in Anacortes on the mainland. Jason’s dinner companions had invited him to come back to Friday Harbor Suites with them and have a drink at the bar. But he wanted to return to his room at the far-less-expensive Orca Inn so he could phone his wife, Debra, at home in Bellingham. He couldn’t wait to tell her about how he’d been hanging out with these big shots. Plus, he missed her. Deb had taken time off work for Thanksgiving weekend, and they were supposed to have spent the entire Saturday together. But then the newspaper suddenly needed Jason to cover a big story.

Really big.

Scott Singleton and his entire family had been brutally murdered at their Lopez Island vacation home.

There was one survivor, a college student who had been dating one of the Singleton daughters. He’d been shot three times and was now in critical condition at Island Hospital in Anacortes. The Times had sent another stringer there, waiting for the kid to get out of intensive care. Police investigators were hoping that once he was conscious, Jae Singleton’s boyfriend might give them a description of the shooter.

The Singletons’ caretaker, a young man who lived on the premises, apparently slept through the whole thing. He found the bodies early Saturday morning: first, the wounded, unconscious college student, lying beside his car in the driveway; and then the seven dead inside the house.

Jae Singleton seemed to have returned home and surprised her killer—or killers. The other victims were in their pajamas, bound and gagged, and stabbed repeatedly. Jae’s body—along with her father’s—had been discovered on the first floor. Jae appeared to have been attacked and stabbed in the front hallway, but collapsed and died in the living room. Scott Singleton was found facedown on the sofa in his study. He’d been beaten savagely before someone slit his throat. The others were found in various rooms on the second floor.

The senseless, violent murders had people across the country locking their doors and windows. The veteran reporter from the Associated Press said he hadn’t seen anything quite like it since he was a young intern at the Chicago Sun-Times in the summer of 1966, when some creep murdered eight student nurses in their townhouse/dorm quarters. “I guess maybe the Tate-LaBianca murders in sixty-nine brought about the same kind of national panic, too,” he said, amending his own statement. “This isn’t just a local thing on these islands. Hell, even people in Maine are scared. It’s the same gut-sickening terror all over. No one feels safe.”

“I’ll bet gun sales go up again,” said the woman from NBC.

While a jazz quartet played onstage and a waitress took away their dinner plates, one of the CNN guys passed around his phone. Another reporter friend had sent him photos from inside the Singletons’ house. Jason looked at only one of the pictures—of the oldest daughter, twenty-two-year-old brown-haired Mandy, in a bloodstained pink gingham camisole and shorts. With her hands tied behind her, she lay on her side at the foot of an unmade bed. Crimson splotches marred the baby blue bedspread. Her eyes were open with a frozen, stunned stare. Jason couldn’t make himself look at any of the other pictures.

Little by little, more details began to emerge about the caretaker, twenty-five-year-old Joseph Mulroney. Mrs. Singleton had hired him to look after the Lopez Island grounds in September. Mulroney couldn’t explain how he’d managed to sleep through everything—including the gunshots right below his bedroom window. There was no evidence of a break-in at the gated grounds. Mulroney had been covered with blood when the police and paramedics arrived. He claimed to have been trying to revive eleven-year-old Connor Singleton, who had shown signs of life just minutes earlier. This was contradicted in an initial report from the coroner, who set the boy’s time of death at around one in the morning—along with the other family members. The most damning evidence of all came when investigators looked into Mulroney’s background. They discovered he’d been released from a state-run psychiatric facility earlier in the year.

Though Mulroney looked like a prime suspect, the AP reporter had mentioned over dinner that Willy Garretson, the young caretaker at the house Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate had rented, had been the police’s first suspect in her murder. He, too, had slept through the night—while the five victims were viciously slain within shouting distance of his separate quarters on the grounds.

Joseph Mulroney was a thin, handsome, timid-looking guy. “Like Bundy,” mentioned the man from Time, “a real charmer, the boy-next-door type.”

“The angel-faced killer,” the woman from NBC added. “That’s what they’ll end up calling him.”

Mulroney was cooperating with the San Juan County Police, and he’d even agreed to take a lie-detector test for them. He hadn’t been charged with anything yet. They’d moved him from his apartment at the Singletons’ Lopez Island compound to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island so he’d be near the sheriff’s office. In fact, they’d put him up at the Orca Inn—at the other end of the hall from Jason. He’d spotted Mulroney a couple of times at a distance. A cop was stationed in the corridor, keeping guard. It was still up for grabs whether the guard was protecting Mulroney from the public or the other way around.

As the impromptu dinner party at The Rumor Mill broke up, a couple of the reporters offered to switch lodgings with Jason. They were jealous he was so close to all the action, right there practically in the command center. The Orca Inn was also close to the restaurant and the ferry. Jason could have easily walked the few blocks to The Rumor Mill, but it was chilly out and he’d been feeling lazy, so he’d driven.

Now he was the last of their group to leave the parking lot. He and the other journalists had closed the restaurant. As Jason headed to his car, somebody shut off the lighted sign above the entrance. The town had been all abuzz when he’d pulled into the crowded lot three hours ago. Now it seemed asleep. A brisk wind off the San Juan Channel cut through him, and Jason shivered. He reached into his pocket for his car key.

That was when a man stepped out of the shadows near the Dumpster at the side of the restaurant. “Hey, excuse me,” he said.

Startled, Jason halted in his tracks. He couldn’t quite see the man’s face. The stranger wore a dark rain slicker and a knit hat. He looked like a fisherman.

“I’m totally lost,” the man said. “Is the ferry terminal somewhere around here?”

Jason smiled and nodded. “You’re only a couple of blocks away. The terminal is on Front Street. This is First Street right here, and all you have to do is—”

“How about if you drive us there?” the man interrupted, his tone suddenly changing. He pulled a gun out of his pocket. “Okay, asshole?”

With the car key in his hand, J