The front door was open when Miggs came home. In itself this wasn’t so unusual — Tiffany liked fresh air and kept the doors and windows open when she was home to ‘let the world in’ — but there was something disturbing in the way the steady April breeze slammed the screen door over and over again, its inefficient hydraulic pump wheezing asthmatically. The lights were off and the day was bright so the doorway opened into darkness. The red paint of the oak door caught the light as it fluttered in the wind.

“Tiffany,” he started to call as he crossed the porch, but a flash of light warned him, some flicker of movement, and he threw himself aside just as the gun cracked. The bullet caught at his vinyl coat and the smell of burning plastic nauseated him. The wood railing exploded into flinders. He threw himself back down the stairs and sprinted down the block toward his car, back muscles knotted against a bullet that didn’t come. He was peeling away from the curb, right foot pressed to the floor, before he noticed the white business card on the passenger seat.

This could have been a bomb, it read.