And they did leave. It took another fifteen minutes of worrying and hand-wringing and fretting and general parental inefficiency, and by the time Hazard shut the door, he wanted to crack their heads together like all three of them were trapped in an old Stooges’ movie. And then he was alone with Evie, and she wriggled out of his arms as she had escaped from Cora’s and began to wander around the apartment. She went first to the bookshelves where she began to drag volumes free. After studying the covers for a moment—some of them upside-down—she would either toss the book aside or yank it open.

  “Not that one,” Hazard said, rescuing a rare copy of A Statistical Analysis of Danish Herring Boats under Nazi Occupation. “Here. These are Somers’s books.”

  She yanked a fat volume and held it up questioningly.

  “That’s James Joyce.”

  One pudgy hand folded the book open. She grabbed a page. With a sudden, vicious cry, she tore the page free. Then her big, dark eyes cut towards Hazard.

  He shrugged. “Nobody will even notice.”

  After demolishing the bookshelves—Somers’s books, exclusively, a sign of her good taste—she tottered into the kitchen and ransacked the drawers. Squealing with delight, she rummaged through measuring cups, teaspoons, and Hazard’s biscuit cutters. Then she found the meat tenderizing mallet, and with one swing she took off the pull on the adjacent cabinet.

  To Hazard’s surprise, he found himself laughing as he snagged the mallet. Evie squawked and tried to recover it, but he slid it to the back of the counter.

  “You’re a regular vandal, huh? Just like your dad.”

  And it went on and on like that. Hazard trailed behind the dervish as she wrought a path of destruction through the apartment. He stopped the worst of it—when she tried to get the shaving cream into her mouth, and when she found the hunting knife Hazard kept bedside, and when she tried to crawl under the sink where they kept the bleach and cleaners. For the most part, Evie took the course corrections with indifference, although she howled to bring down the roof about the hunting knife.

  After fishing her out from under the sink, Hazard decided enough was enough. Carrying her over one shoulder, he set up the pack-and-play in the bedroom he shared with Somers, laid out her blankets, and readied a bottle and the pajamas. She accepted the change of clothes with minimal fussing, and her fat toddler hands grasped greedily for the milk. But when he went to lay her in the pack-and-play, she started to cry.

  “Tough,” he told her, drawing the door mostly closed and flipping off the light. Hazard had a gut instinct about parenting, a conglomeration of half-retained ideas—for about six months, Billy had been crazy about a baby, and there had been books and websites and long, long conversations—and pop culture depictions and what he assumed were fairly reliable memories of his own childhood. She had a bottle. She had a dry diaper. And she was perfectly healthy. That meant the best thing right then was to let her cry.

  Pulling a bottle of Guinness from the fridge, Hazard congratulated himself. It wasn’t that hard, being a parent. Tonight, for example. It wasn’t easy—God, he wasn’t that stupid to think it was easy; he had to watch her constantly, just look at what she’d wanted to do with the shaving cream—but it wasn’t hard. Feed them. Play with them. Keep them clean. Make sure they didn’t kill themselves. And top it all off with tough love. He cracked open the beer. Easy.

  But she was still crying five minutes later as he watched the news with the volume off. And five minutes after that, as a car dealership flashed low interest rates across the screen, she was wailing—a high-pitched, frantic noise, mindless and terrified. And the beer tasted like shit after that because all Hazard could think was if she had somehow hurt herself, or if she really was sick, or if he had missed something—Christ, under the sink, had she managed to get the Clorox? He checked the caps, all tight, but that didn’t mean shit. Had she licked something? Jesus Christ, what made a kid howl like that?

  Five more minutes, and he’d just about paced a hole in the floor. He inched towards the half-closed bedroom door, where the crying was hiccupy and shrill and panicked. The hair on his arms stood up. Sweat prickled, hot and sickly, and wadded his shirt. This was crazy. This was goddamn insane. Kids didn’t make noise like this, not if they were ok. He saw the Clorox bottle again under the sink. Or it could be a million different things. It could be rheumatic fever, and he didn’t even know what the fuck that was. His hand drifted to his phone. Somers might know. Somers might be able to tell him this was all perfectly normal.

  But he froze, the phone still dark under his fingers, because this was his chance. This was his one chance to show Somers he could do this: be a father, be a partner, be a husband. That was just as batshit as any of the other thoughts in Hazard’s head, but it was real and present and true. He wanted John-Henry Somerset, wanted him for himself, permanently, for life. And for Somers, that meant kids. It meant Evie, yes, but Hazard knew it meant more than just Evie. And he thought of Clyde, of the way the wind had pulled at his ginger hair, how his skinny arms had flapped out, and the broken-wing angle of bone when he lay on the pavement. He’d already fucked up once. He couldn’t do it again.

  With a sigh, Hazard pushed open the door. Evie was sitting up in the pack-and-play, her face puffy and red and shiny with snot, but she quieted when she saw him. She gave a little, mucusy warble, and her whole body shook with the noise and then went still.

  “It’s all right,” Hazard said, taking a step into the room. “You’re fine.”

  That’s when all the lights went out.

  IT WAS A SUDDEN, SHUTTERING DARKNESS that closed over the whole apartment with a snap. Hazard had drawn the blinds, and it took time for his eyes to adjust to the fractional slashes of the streetlights. Evie cried again, but Hazard ignored her. His mind cycled through possibilities. The streetlights were on. That was a fact. Their light, lunar gray, streamed between the blinds. But the apartment was pitch black. Hazard took careful steps around the bed, ignoring a second, more insistent cry from Evie, and parted the blinds with one finger.

  Two floors below him, the Crofter’s Mark glowed. He shifted his angle. Two floors above, lights splashed against glass. But the third, fourth, and fifth floors of the Crofter’s Mark were dark. Black. Dead.

  He knew, then. And in the instant he knew, he heard the front door open.

  Evie, or the gun?

  That instant of hesitation was too long. The footsteps were muffled, but they were still audible, and whoever it was had already breached the apartment. Hazard’s .38 hung in a holster by the door, and to get to it, Hazard would have to pass the intruder. He had another gun hidden in his room—a backup—but it was still there, on the opposite side of the apartment. Again, he would have to pass the intruder to get to it. Another quiet footstep sounded in the stillness, and it sent Hazard into motion.

  He dialed 911. Scooping up Evie, he padded around the pack-and-play, putting it between him and whoever had broken into the apartment. The phone rang in Hazard’s ear, and Evie snuffled into his shoulder, but by luck or fortune or some miracle, she had gone quiet. Perhaps she, too, sensed the danger. Or perhaps she was simply exhausted and grateful to be held.

  Whatever the case, it gave Hazard a few extra precious seconds. The footsteps grew fainter, moving towards the other bedroom—Hazard’s bedroom—and the hinges squeaked on the far door. Hazard took advantage of the noise and slid open the nightstand drawer. In his ear, the phone continued to ring. Footsteps resumed, moving now towards him, and Hazard dropped his hand into the drawer, searching blindly for the hunting knife he had kept there.

  His hand scraped bare wood.

  He had moved the knife. Moved it when Evie had opened the drawer, moved it somewhere she couldn’t get it. Where? Where in the hell had he put it?

  The phone was still ringing. The door rattled, and the knob turned. Hazard tossed the phone on the mattress, and then he dropped to his knees and slid Evie under the bed. She squalled then, clutching at his arm, terrified all over again, but he shoved her deeper into the dust bunnies. Her pudgy hand curled around his index finger, and she held onto him, as though she could pull him back to her. Then he pulled free and regained his feet.

  “911,” a soft, familiar dispatcher’s voice said from the phone on the bed. “What is your emergency?”

  The door burst open.

  Hazard shouted something—he wasn’t sure what—and kicked. It saved his life. The pack-and-play skidded across the hardwood, catching the intruder at the thighs. He—Hazard could tell that much, at least—staggered, and a shot went off. The muzzle flare and the explosion of noise plunged Hazard into a silently ringing blackness.

  He staggered sideways, still shoving on the pack-and-play, as his eyes adjusted. As his vision cleared, the gun swam towards him. Hazard brought his hand down hard. It wasn’t a punch or a chop or any type of coordinated blow, but Hazard had a lot of fear and a lot of fury behind it, and the shock of the blow reverberated up his arm. Through the ringing in his ears, metal clattered on wood, and the gray citylight gleamed on gunmetal as the pistol slid across the floor.

  Watching the gun slide away, though, cost Hazard precious time, and his attacker clubbed him on the side of the head. Hazard staggered. The intruder hit him again, and then a third time. Hazard brought his hands up, but he was on the defensive now, and the attacker pressed his advantage. As Hazard stumbled clear, the intruder gave the pack-and-play a kick that tumbled it against the window. The pack-and-play knocked the blinds aside, and a fresh wave of that tremulous, moonscape light slapped down on the room. And in that fresh wash of light, Hazard recognized Rex Kolosik. And he saw the knife.

  The blade seemed like the purest condensation of the light off the sodium lamps: nothing more than a line of light that flicked towards Hazard’s face. He staggered back, still off balance, and felt the air from its passage. Kolosik pressed the attack, lunging again, and Hazard got his feet under him. He darted. He was big, and he carried a lot of muscle, but at heart he was still that scrawny kid built like a piece of baling wire, and he’d always been a dodger.

  Kolosik overextended, and Hazard followed with a punch that cracked against the other man’s ear. Kolosik stumbled into the door. It thumped into the wall, and Hazard moved for another blow. His hearing was starting to clear. Someone was shouting on his phone, trying to get an answer, and Evie was screaming. It all registered, background noise like the hum on a bad piece of vinyl. He was going to break Rex Kolosik’s skull into a million fucking pieces.

  Except Kolosik was younger and faster and, Hazard realized too late, had exaggerated the effect of Hazard’s first punch. As Hazard swung the second blow, with a lazy, furious windup, Kolosik jabbed with the knife. Too late, Hazard recognized the trick, and as he tried to compensate, that length of steel, the same color as the vibrating glow of the city, slid into his shoulder.

  Hazard twisted away from the blade; even through the adrenaline rocketing along his bloodstream, though, he felt the steel bite deep. He skipped back, feinted right, allowing Kolosik to slash empty air, but it was all just buying time. He had made a mistake. A big one. Wet heat ran down the inside of his arm, and already it was difficult to lift his hand. Evie’s crying was louder now, and Hazard realized he was being driven backward. He would be cornered, pinned. Just him, alone, even with that voice blaring from the phone on the mattress. If by some miracle the dispatcher recognized his voice, if by some miracle they sent a squad car, even then it would be too little, too late. Kolosik was here, with that gleaming knife, that glittering, foggy steel. There were things Hazard could do. He had a plan, although not much of one. He needed to get to the bed. He needed time, a few seconds really, but enough to wrap the blanket around his arm as an impromptu shield. If he could get in close enough, he might be able to slow down Kolosik. But first he needed those precious seconds.

  Hazard had heard of terror making people weak in the knees. He had read that description, seen it a thousand times in banal, tired prose. But when he heard the sudden clarity of Evie’s crying behind him, when he realized what it meant, that she had crawled out from under the bed, that she was toddling towards him, hysterical, he felt the truth of it. It was like his legs had turned to empty garden hoses, a kind of flexible, spongey support that threatened to collapse if his weight shifted too far.

  Evie stepped out in front of Hazard. Everyone stopped. Kolosik, knife high, stared at the little girl as though she’d popped out of a Jack-in-the-Box. Evie stared back, confusion drawing down her face as she realized she did not recognize this man. And Hazard stared at Evie, dazed from the wound and the adrenaline, and suddenly seeing that this was it: his chance to act, the precious seconds he had wanted.

  Kolosik stabbed at the girl.

  Hazard never even thought about it. There was no rational weighing of options. No complicated calculus of cost and benefit. No cool, logical analysis. It was instinct. Or maybe something below instinct, something that he couldn’t even name. Later, he would comfort himself with the explanation that his behavior was biological, cellular, an evolutionary response to preserve genetic code that he identified as his own. But at night, alone, he couldn’t escape the other questions this explanation raised, and he would face deep into the abyss of his own behavior, aware that he had no answer.

  He threw himself between the two. His hip caught Evie, and she bounced against the mattress. He remembered, later, the secondary thought that he should catch her, that the bed frame might leave a bruise. Then the knife entered his arm.

  His behavior must have taken Kolosik by surprise because the younger man jerked back, twisting the blade, and almost tearing it from his hand. Hazard might have disarmed him except that the sudden pain whited out his thoughts, and Kolosik recovered, drawing the blade free and stabbing again. Hazard rocked away from the blow, a mixture of training and instinct forcing him away from the knife. He caught the next cut on his forearm. Kolosik stabbed and slashed with a frenzy, two more long lacerations across Hazard’s arm, and then twisting the point along a long, spiral gouge in the bicep.

  And through the pain, Hazard came to a staggering conclusion: he should be dead. More than once, now, Kolosik had missed an opportunity to wound him fatally. And on the heels of that thought came another: what Kolosik wanted, what had driven him here in an insane, killing rage, was Evie. He wanted to murder a child. And Hazard thought of Kolosik sitting next to Britney on a soiled quilt in the Smithfield Arms, and Kolosik’s hand drifting to Britney’s stomach, and then, with a degree of grief that gripped Hazard by the throat, the truth: Kolosik had thought she was pregnant, had thought she was carrying his child. That was why he had rescued her from Walden. That was why he had tagged after her even when she tried to get rid of him. And that was why he was here now: to kill another man’s child, to spread that grief like a disease.

  In the bleak shining of that knowledge, Kolosik’s ragged panting sounded like something else: tears. The younger man slashed again and again, the knife biting deep into Hazard’s arm as he fended off the attack. Evie, sobbing uncontrollably, was pinned between Hazard’s leg and the bed. He didn’t dare move because Kolosik couldn’t reach her at this angle, but he knew the girl was uncomfortable, maybe even in pain, and he knew he was only increasing her terror. But he couldn’t stay here forever, either; Kolosik’s knife had ribboned his arm, and even through the adrenaline haze, Hazard knew he was losing too much blood. He had minutes, maybe less.

  Then, through his manic sobs, Kolosik began to speak. “I’m going to kill her. That little bitch. I’m going to kill your little bitch. I’m going to kill her. Your bitch. Your little bitch.” And the knife came down again and again, the blade biting against bone, a stinging, skipping sensation.

  Your bitch, Hazard thought. For one moment, he felt huge and inflated, outrage swelling him like hydrogen gas because Evie wasn’t his. She was Somers’s. Hazard didn’t have a child. Maybe he never would. But his brain flashed pictures of Clyde, of the burns on his chest, of the scars, of the bruises and the split lip, of the boy leaping out the window like he was floating out into deep water, and at the end, in that fraction of an instant before he had hit the ground, of the way the ginger hair had stirred, of the legs and arms akimbo, of Hazard’s last clear thought about the boy: that he was free now, that he wouldn’t hurt anymore.

  And then the ember that Hazard had buried under fear and jealousy and suspicion flared to life, and all that outrage caught fire. An inferno raged through him. Anger at the people who had hurt Clyde. Anger at Kolosik. Anger at the men and women at the Valley of Elah Conversion Center. Anger at his parents. Anger at himself, mostly, for being afraid all these years. Afraid of losing his parents, afraid of losing Alec, afraid of losing Billy, afraid of losing Somers. That last one most of all. Because Hazard loved Somers, loved him even though it hurt, loved him even though Somers might leave him today or tomorrow, next month, next year. And because he loved Somers, he loved his little girl. And she was his. Kolosik might have thought he was fighting Somers. Kolosik might not even know what he was saying. But he was right: Evie was Hazard’s as much as she was Somers’s. And Hazard sure as hell wasn’t going to die and let Rex Kolosik get anywhere near her.

  Kolosik pulled back the knife, readying himself to stab again, and Hazard lunged. He caught Kolosik with his bad shoulder, carrying both of them through the door and into the living room. They fell backward together. The knife whistled past Hazard’s ear, and its tip stitched up and down across Hazard’s shoulder blade. When they hit the floor, Kolosik was pinned under Hazard, but he kept his grip on the knife. The blade twisted into Hazard’s back, the point sliding through skin and muscle, tearing tissue as it plunged deeper. Somewhere in the room, an animal was roaring. The blood loss made it hard for Hazard to think as he grappled with Kolosik, battling to subdue the other man with his one good arm. What was making that noise? A toy, maybe one of Evie’s toys? The noise was huge and ferocious, and it wasn’t really fitting for a child’s toy. The kid could get scared. It was one hell of a noise. And part of him knew where the sound was coming from, part of him knew and was too damn terrified to admit it.