“Mister, put your dog in timeout!” Three-year-old Lucy Bennett marched into the private meeting of the most feared man in Chicago with one hand on her hip and the other gripping what remained of a stuffed rabbit.

The rain turned to driving sleet by eleven in the morning.

Nora tried to keep Lucy occupied in the second-floor solarium. The room was glass-domed, filled with heavy ferns, blooming orchids, and deep leather armchairs. It was bright despite the gray skies, but Nora couldn't sit down. She paced the perimeter of the room, dust rag in hand, her eyes continually drifting to the long, winding driveway below.

Through the curtain of sleet, two black Suburbans sat idling near the gatehouse. The Calder security team looked like wraiths in their dark tactical rain slickers, moving between the iron pickets with their heads low against the wind.

Bishop wasn't resting.

He paced beside Nora, his claws clicking rhythmically on the marble tile. Every few minutes, his ears would swivel toward the east wall of the estate—the side that bordered the heavily wooded public park.

"Mommy, look," Lucy said, holding up a drawing. "I drew the bad dog."

Nora glanced down. Lucy had used a black crayon to scribble a massive, four-legged creature with enormous yellow eyes and what looked like a halo over its head.

"Bishop is not a bad dog," Nora said softly, stroking Lucy’s curls.

"He ate Captain Carrot’s tummy," Lucy pointed out. "That is bad. But he said sorry."

Suddenly, Bishop stopped dead.

His head snapped toward the glass doors leading out onto the terrace. His lips peeled back, exposing long, pristine canine teeth, and a sound rumbled from the depths of his chest—a vibration so deep Nora felt it through the soles of her shoes.

"Bishop?" Nora's heart lurched. "What is it?"

The dog didn't bark. He gave a single, explosive *whuff*, his muscles bunching like coiled steel springs.

Down below on the driveway, an alarm sounded. It wasn't a siren; it was a rhythmic, pulsing chime that echoed through the manor's internal intercom system.

*Sec-Two breached. East tree line.*

Mason's voice crackled through the wall speaker in the hallway. *All units, hold perimeter. Do not pursue into the brush. Secure the main house.*

Nora scooped Lucy off the floor in one frantic motion. Lucy squealed in surprise, dropping her crayons. "Mommy, my car picture!"

"Shh! Lucy, be quiet. Be totally quiet."

Nora rushed to the heavy oak door of the solarium and slid the brass bolt home. Her breath came in short, jagged gasps. She ran to the window overlooking the east garden.

Through the bare branches of the winter oak trees, she saw movement.

A figure in a gray hooded sweatshirt was stumbling through the wet brush, slipping on the muddy slope just outside the secondary iron fence. He wasn't armed with an assault rifle; he was thin, frantic, moving with the jerky, uncoordinated gait of a man high on adrenaline and cheap amphetamines.

Nora gasped, the blood draining completely from her head.

Even through the sleet, even from forty yards away and behind frosted glass, she recognized that gait. The hunched shoulders. The nervous, twitching roll of the neck.

Greg.

He had actually come.

He was standing outside the iron bars, shaking them with bare, red hands, screaming something lost to the roar of the wind. He threw a rock against the security sensor on the stone pillar.

Below in the courtyard, three Calder guards emerged from the shadow of the garage. They didn't draw weapons; they moved with chilling, methodical coordination, spreading out to encircle the section of fence where Greg was thrashing.

Then, from around the corner of the drive, a sleek black Mercedes sedan pulled through the main gates.