In the end, though, it was Lyle’s fault. He never should have agreed to make sure those packages from Whitlan made it to Allison. But he had, even though Allison had wanted nothing to do with her father. A man who’d abandoned her before she’d even begun to crawl.

Still, Allison would never talk to the police, so there must have been another way they’d found out. Had Lindow’s business finally been busted by the police? Had he turned rat in order to protect himself? Lyle didn’t know, and he was afraid to look into it. Afraid the cops would be able to make a case against him based solely on his actions. What did his lawyer call it . . . evidence of a guilty mind?

But Lyle wouldn’t tell any of that to his wife. His time as an associate of Whitlan’s was done now that the police had showed up at his office door, and he wasn’t about to involve her.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” His wife smiled, and together they got out of the car and headed into their spacious home.

Lyle went to the kitchen, in desperate need of a scotch. He was just pouring it when he heard his wife call out, “Lyle!”

Setting his drink down, Lyle rushed down the hall. He found his wife standing in the laundry room and staring.

“What is it?” he asked, coming up next to her.

“Look at that.” She pointed at a hole chewed into the wall. “Rats?” she whispered. “Do we have rats?”

Lyle crouched by the hole. It was huge, bigger than a rat would make. But it could be a raccoon or some other pest.

“Hopefully not, but—”

“Here’s another.” His gaze followed where his wife pointed. And yes, there was another hole.

“Were these here yesterday?”

“No. Besides, Lilah would have said something.” Lilah was their maid, but she was off today. “She was doing laundry all day yesterday.”

Lyle stood and decided to walk through the house. As he and his wife looked, they found more holes. In the living room, the kitchen, the playroom, the closets, the bathrooms. Not only low in the wall but in the ceilings.

“What the—”

“Dad!” one of his children screamed out. “Dad!”

Terrified his children had stumbled into a rat’s nest, Lyle ran up the stairs, only to crash into his children running down. They didn’t even stop. They just charged past him, screaming and moving faster than he’d ever seen.

Lyle, once he’d steadied himself, continued walking up the stairs until he reached the top. That was where he stopped, his mouth dropping open, as a six-foot-long snake slithered from his eldest daughter’s room and right into his son’s. The snake hissed as it moved by, but then Lyle realized that he was hearing more than one hiss. He was hearing . . . several.

He began backing up as several snakes fell from a hole in the ceiling andplopped onto the floor in a slithering, hissing ball of scales.

He screamed in horror and charged down the stairs, hustling his terrified wife out the door. He got his family into the car and raced down their driveway.

Once away from the house and checked into a nice, local hotel, Lyle used his cell phone to contact the only exterminator in their small upper-class town. The woman who answered the phone promised to have someone out to his house the next day, but Lyle demanded “now” and promised to pay double the usual fee.

Leaving his family in the safety of the hotel, Lyle went back to the house and waited inside his car.

Several men showed up. Short, powerfully built men. The oldest-looking one walked over.

“You have snakes, yes?” An accent. Russian, maybe? Definitely Eastern European.

“Yes. I need you to do whatever you have to and get them out of there. All of them.”

“Won’t be cheap. Snake removal very expensive.”

Immigrants, Lyle thought. Always looking to shake that last buck from people who shouldn’t have to worry about getting snakes cleaned out of their homes.

“Yes. Whatever. Just do it.”

“But first you pay.”

Lyle was no fool. He wasn’t about to play this game with these people. “I’ll pay when you clean this up.”

“We clean this up when you tell us how we find Frankie Whitlan.”

Lyle blinked, took a step back. “What?”

“Frankie Whitlan. You contact him yourself? Or he only contacts you?”

Lyle took another step back, but one of the other burly men was now standing behind him. Somehow they’d managed to surround him.

“I don’t under—”

“Do you talk to him yourself? Or does he call you?”

“I don’t know any Frankie Whitlan.”

“Don’t lie, rich man. You get gifts from Whitlan and have them delivered to Whitlan’s pretty little daughter?”

“Look, I don’t know who you people are, but—”

“Just tell us. Then we clean your house and we go. No money needed. Just information. Truthful information.”

“Or,” the man behind him said, the younger man’s English perfect, if low-class, “the next batch of snakes will be poisonous . . . and in your bed.”

Lyle looked at the men surrounding him. They all had dark, dark eyes. Eyes that watched him, waited for him to do something stupid.

Protecting Frankie Whitlan wasn’t worth all this. It would never would be worth this.

“I haven’t been in contact with Whitlan for years. Not directly. He doesn’t call me, and I don’t call him.” The men waited, so Lyle continued. “But I help with . . . managing his money in some foreign accounts.”