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“You’ve got to have a firm hand,” Jenny said flatly. “You must not waver. You must be strong, just like you were with Sara.”

Sara. He didn’t want to think about Sara.

Tad stomped down the stairs, stomped fast.

But how could a little boy sound so heavy?

Thadeus watched Jenny lean back into the hall again.

An arm, a huge arm, las.h.i.+ng down, a hissing sound like a golf club swinging just before it hits the ball.

Then a dull, wet thonk, like the sound of a watermelon dropped on the floor.

Jenny’s head snapped down, then limply bounced back up but only halfway. The very top of her head wobbled like shaking Jell-O. She managed one staggering step, then dropped to the floor. Her Ginny Kitty cup landed with a ceramic clank, spilling four shots’ worth of liquor onto the kitchen’s linoleum.

Thadeus’s grip on little Stephen tightened as he stood. He started to come around the table, heading to the kitchen counter to grab a knife, a frying pan, something, when the monstrous man turned the corner.

Thadeus McMillian Sr. froze in his tracks.

“Holy f.u.c.k,” he said.

The huge, wet, blond nightmare stood in his kitchen doorway. Thadeus had seen a man that big once. Almost that big. He’d met Detroit Lions’ defensive tackle Dusty Smith in a bar. Dusty was six-foot-four, 270 pounds. More like a refrigerator with legs than a human being.

This guy was bigger than Dusty Smith.

And Dusty Smith hadn’t been holding a tire iron.

In one hand the man held the tire iron that had just killed Jenny. In the other ma.s.sive hand, he held Thadeus’s baby, Sam. He wasn’t cradling Sam; he was holding the tiny baby the way you might pick up a toy doll that’s been left on the floor. Thumb and forefinger circled Sammy’s little neck, the three remaining fingers wrapped around Sammy’s yellow-pajama-clad body.

Sammy’s eyes were closed.

Oh no it’s him!

The voices in Thad’s head. They had been quiet most of the evening.

It’s the sonofab.i.t.c.h!

“I’m here to help you,” the sonofab.i.t.c.h said.

Little Stephen raised an arm and pointed at the man. He spoke in his baby-boy voice.

“Da-dee,” he said “Kill dis moderf.u.c.ker.”

Stephen suddenly squirmed and kicked. Thad dropped him. The little boy fell clumsily, but scrambled to his feet. Stephen’s little Milwaukee Bucks T-s.h.i.+rt slid up when he stood, exposing a light blue triangle on the skin at the small of his back. The boy screamed a murderous, gravelly battle cry that sounded almost comical from such a tiny voice, then charged the giant man.