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“Never google anything.”

They were upstairs in the kitchen stress-eating the charcuterie platter, and Opal was laying down some rules.

“It feels like every single time I read a true crime story that’s taken place in the past twenty years, every single time, the perp is convicted after the police look at his search history and find something like ‘how to build a bomb out of common household objects.’ So: no googling how to keep a man captive, or how to convince him not to turn you in to the police, or even anything about Zachary Dickens or Xavier Sheppard or Zander Bolt or whatever name you know him as. And no visiting each other’s social media platforms or looking each other up. We need time to get our stories straight, and meanwhile we don’t want to produce any evidence that says anything different.”

“How did you find Lilah and me if you didn’t look online?” Marina asked.

“Burner phone. Can’t be traced to me.”

“Seriously?”

“I watch a lot of true crime, okay?” Opal spread her hands out on the table. Like her lips, her nails were painted blood-red. “Second rule is the one that Marina agreed to in the first place: we can’t confront Zander about his scams until all of us together decide to. If he doesn’t know exactly what we know about him, he can’t twist the truth or try to manipulate us. He’s extremely good at charming women. He’ll lie through his teeth and sweet-talk you into believing him, and before you know it, you’ve forgiven him, and then he’ll convince you that it was all your fault in the first place. He did it to me for years.”

“Third rule,” piped in Marina. “We can’t leave him in my house by himself. At least one of us has to be here, in case he escapes.”

“What good is that going to do?” asked Lilah. “If he got out, we couldn’t stop him from leaving. Well, you might be able to,” she said to Opal, who couldn’t disagree.

“Hold on a second,” said Marina. “I might have an idea.”

She got up and left the room.

“I’m a little worried that Marina is a criminal genius,” said Lilah.

“She really isn’t. She is a divorced mother of three who is desperate for a man to bolster her self-esteem. That’s why we have to agree on basic rules to keep from getting in trouble.”

“Then maybe you’re a criminal genius.”

“What I have is common sense, and a certain amount of bitterness.”

“Why did you ask me if he’d hit me?”

“Did you check your other bank accounts, by the way? Did he get all of your lottery winnings?”

Lilah folded a slice of cheese in half, and half again.

“All of it?” Opal asked.

“Not the investments.”

“But all of the ready cash and credit? He got all of that?”

Lilah put down the mangled cheese. “It’s brought me nothing but evil. I was going to sell everything and give the money away.”

“That’s very charitable of you.” Opal pulled the fat off a slice of prosciutto, rolled it around some cherry tomatoes and ate it in two bites.

“Why don’t you like me?” burst out Lilah. “Is it because I fell in love with your husband? Because if that’s so, then it’s not exactly fair that you keep on defending Marina and being mean to me.”

“Marina doesn’t love him, she’s just been shagging him. But I don’t care what either of you did with my scumbag husband. I wanted him to fail, that’s all. I don’t like Marina any more than I like you. But don’t take it personally. I don’t like many people.”

“Even if you don’t like someone, that’s no reason to be horrible to them.”

“But you make it so easy, Lilah. You’re a frightened little bunny rabbit.”

“I’m not—”

Marina reappeared. She was carrying a large mahogany box, which she set on the table next to the depleted charcuterie platter. The box had brass corner reinforcements and brass catches on the front. “These were in the attic,” she said. As the other two women watched, she unlatched the box and opened it to reveal two antique pistols lying on a green felt interior. The guns had wooden stocks, silver detailing, elaborate silver workings. Other compartments held a variety of mysterious-looking implements.

“Manton flintlock dueling pistols,” said Marina. “Handmade in 1797 and presented to the Earl of Devonshire, who quite liked a quarrel. Or so my grandmother told me. I was never allowed to open the box myself, but she showed me on my birthdays.”

“Your grandmother had a set of antique dueling pistols and an articulated skeleton wearing a bow tie,” said Opal.

“What can I say? She was wonderfully eccentric.”

“Weird.”

“Eccentric,” said Marina assertively.

“So, you brought these downstairs in case Zander wants to duel.”

“No. I thought we could use them as a deterrent. If he escapes, we can point one at him and make him get back into the bomb shelter.”

“We might as well point a banana at him. Those things are ancient.”

“They’re in perfect working order. Nana Sylvia serviced them herself. I told you: she liked target practice.”

Lilah said, “I’ve read enough Georgette Heyer to know that flintlock pistols take a long time to load. They’re not something we could use spontaneously.”

“I’m not going to load them,” said Marina, shocked. “I have children. I just thought...we could scare him. If we needed to.”

Opal sighed.

“It’s a good idea,” said Lilah, for no other reason than to annoy Opal.

“Okay,” said Opal. “Fourth rule. If Zander escapes, we threaten him with an empty gun. How much are those things worth, by the way?”

“About a hundred thousand each.”

“Right. So ideally, we don’t want to use them as clubs.” She turned to Lilah. “Now, fifth rule. Most important rule. No calling the police.”

“Yes, yes,” said Lilah. “I get it.”

“I’ll need someone to babysit him tomorrow morning.”

“I will,” said Opal. “I can prerecord my workout session and schedule the post.”

“Having a man in the basement is like having a fourth child,” said Marina.

“Don’t we have to discuss what we’re going to do with him?” asked Lilah. “We can’t leave him down there forever.”

“I need some time to think,” said Marina. “He’s not going to come to any harm down there. I can hear him through the baby monitor if he’s sick. And I need to find someplace safe for my children before I can decide anything.”

“We all need time to think,” said Opal. “So let’s convene here tomorrow afternoon.”

“You are really quite bossy,” said Lilah.

“It’s my greatest strength.” Opal picked up a ripe sliced fig and considered its blood-purple interior. “Rule six. While he’s in that bomb shelter, let’s only feed him carbs.”

“Mean,” said Marina. “I sort of like it.”