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When he’d slaughtered the doggen in the kitchen, there had been a roasting chicken in the oven, the kind that had one of those little popup thingies that let you know when it was done. After he’d bled out the last of the servants, he’d stopped by the Viking stove and turned the light on. The chicken’s popper had gone off.

He’d opened the slim drawer to the left of the stove and taken out two white-and-red-striped oven mitts that had Williams-Sonoma tags on them. Turning the oven off, he’d slid the roasting pan from the heat and put it on the gas burners. Golden brown with corn-bread stuffing. Giblets were in the bottom, on their way to spicing up the gravy.

He’d turned off the potatoes that were boiling in water, too.

“Get me out of here,” he said as he slid into the car. He had to move his legs inside using his hands.

A moment later, the Focus’s sewing-machine engine turned over, and they started down the driveway. In the dense silence of the shit box, Lash took his father’s wallet out of his fresh cargo pants, flipped the thing open, and checked through the cards. ATM, Visa, Black AmEx ...

“Where you want to go?” Mr. D asked as they came to Route 22.

“I don’t know.”

Mr. D glanced over. “I kilt my cousin. When I was sixteen. He was a bastard, and I liked it while it was happening and it was the right thing to do. But afterward, I felt bad. So you got nothing to apologize for if you done feel like you wronged ’em.”

The idea that someone knew even a little about what he was going through made the whole thing seem less like a nightmare. “I feel . . . dead.”

“It’ll pass.”

“No . . . I’m never not going to feel like— Oh, fuck it, just shut up and drive, okay?”

Lash slipped the last card free as they took a right on Route 22. It was his father’s fake driver’s license. As his eyes hit the picture, his stomach rolled. “Pull over!”

The Focus shot onto the shoulder. As a massive SUV passed them, Lash opened the door and heaved some more black shit onto the ground.

He was lost. Utterly lost.

What the hell had he just done? Who was he?

“I know where to take you,” Mr. D said. “If y’all just shut the door, I can get you to where you’ll feel better.”

Whatever, Lash thought. At this point, he would take suggestions from a bowl of Rice Krispies. “Anywhere . . . but here.”

The Focus pulled a U-ie and headed toward downtown. They’d gone a couple of miles when Lash glanced over at the little lesser. “Where we headed?”

“Place where you can catch your breath. Trust me.”

Lash looked out of the window and felt like a total pussy. Clearing his throat, he said, “Tell a squadron to go back there. And take everything that isn’t nailed down.”

“Yes, suh.”

As Z pulled the Escalade up to the Tudor mansion Lash and his parents lived in, Phury frowned and sprang his seat belt free. What the hell?

The front door was wide-open to the summer night, the light from the chandelier in the front foyer casting a golden yellow glow over the stoop and the pair of topiaries standing at attention on either side of the entrance.

Okay, this was just wrong. You expected colonials with porch pots and gnomes in their flower beds to have their doors languishing open like that. Or maybe ranch houses with bikes in front of the garage and chalk drawings on the sidewalks. Or, hell, even trailers with busted windows and decrepit plastic chairs dotting their weed lawn.

But Tudor mansions on manicured grounds didn’t look right with their grand front doors wide open to the night. It was like a debutante flashing her bra thanks to a wardrobe malfunction.

Phury got out of the SUV and cursed. The smell of fresh blood and lessers was all too familiar.

Zsadist palmed one of his guns as he shut his door. “Shit.”

As they walked forward, it was pretty damn evident they were not going to be talking to Lash’s parents about what had happened to their son. Chances were good he and Z were going to be finding bodies.

“Call Butch,” Zsadist said. “This is a crime scene.”

Phury already had his phone in his hand and was dialing. “I’m on it.” When the brother