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I left Sampson with the Bogners and went up to the waiting room outside the OR. The attending surgeon on my brother’s case came out around one in the morning and woke me up.

He said the surgery had been complicated, which was why it had taken so long, but Charlie was out of the OR.

I asked if I could see him, but the doctor thought it would be better to wait a few hours. Sampson was long gone, and when I looked in on Boog, I saw his mother sleeping in a chair beside him.

When I left the hospital, the streets were quiet. As tired as I was, I savored the light rain coming down, gently pattering on the sidewalk and the roofs of cars.

The porch light wasn’t on when I got home, which was a little odd. I used my phone flashlight to get my key into the lock and slipped inside.

I kicked off my wet, sooty shoes and was about to unholster my service pistol and nine-millimeter to put them in the lockbox when I heard voices coming from the living room. I decided to go give Nana the good news about Charlie, something for her to take comfort in.

The front room was dark. So was the dining area and the kitchen, other than a small light glowing above the stove. I padded to the living room and saw my grandmother sitting up in her hospital bed looking at something out of my line of sight.

The night nurses, Bobby Jain and Juanita Jones, were by Nana’s bed. All three of them were staring in the same direction, toward the back porch. I took a few more steps, my stocking feet making no noise.

Now I could see their expressions.

Nana and the nurses were clearly afraid of whatever they were looking at.

I started to reach for my weapon.

A big bald dude dressed in black stepped out and leveled a pistol with a suppressor at me from no more than fifteen feet away. A red laser beam from the gunsight found my chest.

“Drop your weapon, Dr. Cross,” he said. “Or you die first.”

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I HELD UP MY left hand, and with my right I reached slowly into my jacket, withdrew the Glock from its holster, and got ready to turn it over to a bad guy for the second time that day, which frankly ticked me off.

I started to consider other options, but after glancing over the gunman’s shoulder and seeing Nana Mama’s deep concern, I did as he asked, stooping over and sliding the gun across the floor. It skittered down the little plywood ramp we’d had built to accommodate my grandmother’s medical equipment.

I looked around but didn’t see Bree, Damon, or Ali. I prayed they were sleeping and not dead.

When I stood, the bald man nodded. “Good. Smart,” he murmured.

My ears registered a heavy Eastern European accent. My eyes took in the thick, simian brow, the head and neck like stacked concrete blocks, and the shoulders that could have belonged to an aging NFL linebacker.

“Egon Bijan, I presume,” I said. “Or whatever your real name is.”

Bijan seemed mildly surprised that I’d identified him, but he winked at me. He started to walk toward Nana Mama.

As he did, he said quietly and somewhat apologetically, “You know, I meant only to creep into your house tonight, plant bugs, figure out what your nosy wife knows. But circumstances, circumstances. I did not expect there would be blackout curtains on a dark house. All lights were off. I thought you were all gone or upstairs asleep. I did not know this one sleeps off the kitchen with nurses.”

I took several steps toward the top of the ramp but stopped when he kicked my service weapon into the far corner of the room.

A pro, I thought, and several things clicked into place.

Bijan pointed his gun at Nana Mama from the foot of her bed. “Why are your hands under your sheet, old woman? What are you hiding there?”

My grandmother scowled, pushed back the sheet, said, “Bedpan. See?”

Juanita said, “She was peeing when you broke in.”

Bijan’s nostrils flared, and he looked away. “Too much information.”

“You asked,” the nurse said.

I took another sliding step in my stocking feet toward the ramp. Wanting to get his attention away from Nana, I said, “You shot and burned that homeless guy outside the condemned building where my wife met you, Frost, and your friend Tatiana Volt. Why would you do that?”