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trembling hands.
    The blanket was twisted over itself, and she tugged at the folds frantically but gently, the cries growing louder, until finally
     she pulled back the last edge of fabric and stared down, dumbfounded.
    A microcassette recorder.
    The red ‘play’ light beamed up at her, the baby’s squawks issuing from the tiny speakers.
    The crunch of a dead leaf floated over from the darkness ofthe front lawn, and then a man’s massive form melted into the cone of porch light. A gloved fist the size of a dumbbell flew
     at her, shattering her eye socket and knocking her back into the front door, rocketing it inward so hard the handle stuck
     in the drywall.
    A moment of tranquillity. Even the crickets were awed into silence.
    The large man stood at the edge of the porch, breath misting, shoulders slumped, his very presence an affront to the quiet
     suburban street. His plain, handsome face was oddly smooth, almost generic, as if his features were pressed through latex.
     He held a black duffel bag.
    Another set of footsteps padded across the moist lawn, a second man finally entering the light. He was lean and of normal
     height, but he looked tiny next to his counterpart. He shuffled as he walked, one foot curled slightly inward, matching the
     awkward angle of his right wrist. As he finished tugging on his black gloves, his arms jerked ever so slightly, a symptom
     of the illness.
    Ellen Rogers grunted on the foyer floor where she’d landed, one eye screwed off center, the skin dipping in the indentation
     where her cheekbone used to be. Her nose was split along the bridge, a glittering black seam. One leg was raised off the tile,
     paddling as if she were swimming. Her breaths were low, animal.
    The men stepped inside, closed the door behind them, stared down at her. The lean one, William, said gently, ‘I know, honey,
     I know. Dodge can put some muscle behind a punch. I’m sorry for your face. Don’t think we wanted this any more than you.’
    She whimpered and drooled blood onto the tile.
    When Dodge dropped the duffel, it gave a metallic clank. He placed two cigarettes in his mouth, cocked his head, got them
     going with a cheap plastic lighter plucked from his shirt pocket, and passed one to his colleague. William sucked an inhale
     past yellowed teeth, closed his eyes, let a ghostly sheet of smoke rise from his parted lips.
    ‘Mr Rogers,’ he called down the hall. ‘Can we please have a word?’
    The muted light thrown from the Tiffany lamp seemed the only thing holding darkness at bay. The office’s mallard-green walls
     dissolved into black; they might as well have not been there at all. Beyond the lip of the desk, a stock-ticker screen saver
     glowed out of nowhere. An artful photograph framed on the sofa’s console table showed the family a few years earlier posed
     cute-casual on the rear deck: proud parents leaning over beaming teenage son and daughter, matching smiles and pastel polo
     shirts. A nautical motif suffused the room – burnished brass compass, gold-plated telescope, antique loupe pinning down the
     parchment pages of a leather-bound atlas. It was the office of a man who fancied himself the captain of his own destiny. But
     William and Dodge hadn’t chosen the room for the design.
    They’d chosen it because it was soundproof.
    Ted Rogers propped up his wife on the distressed-leather couch, which Dodge had covered entirely with a plastic tarp. Ted
     had a softness befitting a man his age and circumstances. A fine, well-fed belly, spectacles accenting a round face, a close-trimmed
     white-gray beard – all jiggling now with grief and terror. When William had asked him into the study, he’d taken one look
     at Dodge and complied with all instructions.
    Ellen shuddered in her husband’s arms, murmuring incomprehensibly. Her neck kept going slack, Ted’s plump hands fussing to
     keep her head upright.
    ‘Boss Man is displeased.’ William scratched calmly at the patchy scruff on his