Never, never cut glass when you’re upset.

Tom had told her that a dozen times and yet Lacey needed to lose herself in something, and working on a stained glass project had always been her release. But she was making a shambles of things in the sunroom. She cut pieces too big or too small. She cracked one of the most expensive pieces of glass she owned, and got a sliver of glass caught in her forearm where she rested it on the table.

She’d hoped that the work might drive the previous night’s incident at Rick’s cottage from her mind, but that did not seem possible. When she’d arrived home the night before, she’d found Gina, Clay and Bobby in the living room, watching a movie on the VCR, and for once she was glad that Mackenzie preferred the company of her computer to that of the adults in the house, because she’d needed to fall apart and didn’t want to do it in front of her.

She’d been calmer than she’d expected to be, sitting on the sofa as she simply told them the facts, trying not to embellish them with her emotions. Clay, though, was livid.

“He hung around this house like he thought he belonged here, manipulating all of us,” he’d said. He was on his feet, pacing, the way their father did when he was upset over something. “Give me the directions to his cottage, Lacey,” he said. “I’m going over there.”

It took both her and Gina to calm him down. “He’s with his mother right now,” Lacey said. “It’s not the time.”

“Did he sleep with you?” Clay asked with such righteous fury that she loved him for it. Especially since he’d asked if Rick had slept with her rather than the question that would be, to her ears, at least, more accusatory: “Did you sleep with him?” She assured him that she had not. She didn’t bother to tell them that he was gay.

Bobby said very little while she spoke, and she avoided his eyes as much as she could, afraid that something in her face might give away their altered relationship to Gina and Clay.

Later, when she was alone in the kitchen pouring herself a glass of lemonade, Bobby came into the room and put his arms around her. She waited for him to mock her, however gently. After all, she’d told him that she was afraid of him, but not of Rick. That she thought Rick would be good for her. Bobby would be perfectly justified in taunting her with her words. But he said nothing of the sort.

“I’m sorry” was all he said, before squeezing her shoulders and leaving the room, and she had the feeling that he meant it from his soul.

She stopped in Mackenzie’s room on her way to bed to tell her good-night, then climbed into her own bed with her notepad. She’d planned to pour her fury into the victim’s impact statement, only to find that the words still eluded her. If she couldn’t write the statement when she had her anger to propel her, she was never going to be able to write it. She gave up after ten minutes, then tried to sleep, but the evening at Rick’s played over and over in her mind. Finally, she got up and knocked on Bobby’s door. He was still awake, and when he opened his door his expression was one of frank curiosity at finding her there.

“I was wondering if you had anything to help me sleep?” she asked, speaking quickly to prevent him from thinking she might be there for something more.

He shook his head. “Sorry, Lace,” he said. “The only drug I take these days is aspirin.”

She’d nodded and took a step out of his room.

“Lacey?”

She turned to look at him.

“Do you want to talk?”

She shook her head. “Thanks,” she said. “Not now.” Talking to Bobby, in his room, in the middle of the night, when she was feeling so fragile, could only lead to trouble. Plus, she felt a strong need to be by herself. She was the only person she knew she could trust—and, occasionally, even she was suspect.

Lacey finally managed to score a piece of glass cleanly and was congratulating herself when she heard the screen door creak open and closed. In a moment, Mackenzie was in the doorway of the sunroom, Sasha next to her. Lacey knew she’d been outside, walking around the perimeter of the house with the dog, trying to find the best reception for her cell phone. It was not working well inside the house today.

“Did you get your phone to work?” Lacey asked, slipping her safety glasses from her face to the top of her head.

Mackenzie nodded. “I talked to everyone,” she said.

“That must have felt good.”

Mackenzie sat down at the second worktable in the chair Bobby usually used and began to swivel it back and forth. “I think they’re all forgetting about me,” she said.

“No,” Lacey said with sympathy. Sasha walked over to her chair and she ran her hand over the dog’s shiny black fur. “They might be getting involved in activities you’re not a part of, but they’re never going to forget about you.”

Mackenzie sighed.

“You’re missing them, huh?” Lacey asked.

“That’s the weird thing,” she said. “I feel like I should be missing them, but I don’t so much anymore.” Mackenzie ran her fingertip over a small piece of ivory lying on the worktable. “Like, I talked to Sherry about Wolf and everything, but she doesn’t even like dogs, so she wasn’t really interested. And all Marissa talks about is this boy I don’t even know at her swim club, and she doesn’t get why I’d want to hide in the woods waiting for a dog to find me. And the most annoying part is she keeps saying ‘tight.’”

“Tight?”

“Yeah, it’s like this new word that’s supposed to be cool or something. The boy she likes is tight. She thinks the new store at the mall is tight. Doesn’t that sound stupid?”

Lacey had to laugh, the warmth she felt for Mackenzie pushing the venom from her heart. “You are so cute, you know that?” she asked.

Mackenzie nodded, smiling herself. “Yeah,” she said. She peered out the windows, then leaned forward, her elbows resting on the worktable as she pressed her cheek against the glass. “You can’t see the kennel from here,” she said.

“No.”

“Do you know when Clay’s coming home?” Mackenzie sat down again.

Lacey shook her head. “I don’t know.” As they often did on the weekends, Gina and Clay had taken Rani to Shorty’s Grill to entertain Henry and Walter and the other regulars. She wasn’t sure where Bobby was, but she guessed he was at a meeting. “Were you supposed to do some training with Clay today?”

“No, but Wolf’s bone is stuck behind his doghouse and he’s going crazy trying to get it out,” Mackenzie said. “I went over to the kennel when I was out there and he was, like, crying trying to get at it. I felt so bad for him.”

“He’ll be okay,” Lacey said. She gave Sasha a dismissive pat on the head, and, with a heavy sigh, the dog lay down next to her worktable.

“Don’t you think I could go in and get it for him?” Mackenzie asked. “He loves me.”

“Clay said no one should go into his kennel except him.”

“That was a while ago, though,” Mackenzie protested. “Wolf loves me now.”

“Yes, he does.” Lacey smiled. “But you know what Clay said.”

“Well,” Mackenzie stood up. “Maybe I can use a stick or something to reach through the fence and try to get the bone unstuck for him.”

“That’s a good idea,” Lacey said. “Just be careful.”

The phone rang the moment Mackenzie left the room, and Lacey checked the caller ID display: Rick, for the third time that morning. She was not ready to talk to him, and was not sure she ever would be. She lowered her glasses over her eyes and thought once more about the statement she needed to write. What if she simply avoided any discussion of her mother’s character? All the other statements would be addressing how wonderful and generous Saint Anne had been. But none of them could describe her murder with the sort of detail Lacey could provide. It seemed like a brilliant idea and she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. She would write the facts about what had happened that evening in the battered women’s shelter. She didn’t need to pass judgment on her mother’s morality.

She was setting her glass cutter to a piece of cobalt glass when she heard a scream that made Sasha spring to his feet. Mackenzie. Releasing the glass cutter, she jumped out of her chair and ran from the room, tearing off her glasses and dropping them to the floor. The screams were unceasing. She pictured Wolf, having somehow climbed over the six-foot-high kennel fence, chasing Mackenzie around the yard. But that was not the scene that greeted her when she pushed open the screen door and ran onto the porch.

Mackenzie was lying on the ground inside the kennel, the German shepherd standing above her, snarling and growling and tearing at her clothing or—God forbid—her flesh. From this distance, Lacey could not tell which. The dog shook his head as though he was trying to kill whatever prey he had caught in his mouth. Mackenzie’s screams pierced the air, and Lacey heard the terror in them.

“I’m coming!” Lacey called as she jumped off the porch and raced toward the kennel, sand flying behind her. Sasha was far ahead of her, barking and growling himself. Lacey waved her arms in the air. “Get off her! Get off her!” she screamed. She could see blood on Mackenzie’s leg, blood on the sand. God, please let her be all right!

She reached the kennel and pounded her fists against the fence. “Get away from her!” But the dog might have been deaf for all the attention he paid her. Lacey watched him take a mouthful of Mackenzie’s long hair and lift her head a few inches from the ground, dragging her over the sand while the girl tried to beat him away with her fists. He was going to kill her, Lacey thought, but she wasn’t going to let that happen.

She pulled open the wire door of the enclosure and ran inside, heading toward the opposite end of the kennel, knowing that Wolf would turn on her in a heartbeat. Sasha followed her in, but gentle dog that he was, he only stood by helplessly, barking in distress. Sure enough Wolf let go of Mackenzie’s hair and turned to glare at Lacey, his lips curled up, every inch of his body letting her know that she was his next victim. “Get out, Mackenzie!” she called as the girl struggled to her knees. “Get out!”

Blood dripping down her leg, Mackenzie half hobbled, half crawled, toward the exit. Mackenzie forgotten, Wolf ran toward Lacey, his teeth huge, sharp daggers in his mouth, and although she raised her arms high above her head, trying to appear to be bigger than she was, and although she shouted and screamed in an attempt to frighten him away from her, he didn’t hesitate. She pressed her back against the chain-link fence and watched him open his jaws wide as he dived for her thigh. Excruciating pain shot through her leg as the dog dug his teeth deep into her muscle and dragged her to the ground, and her only prayer was that someone would arrive soon to help Mackenzie, because she would not be able to do it herself. She was going to die.