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‘So, I guess you really don’t know the meaning of ASAP?’ Jet raised her voice over the sound of the screaming baby, banging his little fists against his high chair.

Luke didn’t react, scooting past Billy to the cupboard over the sink.

Billy stuck his tongue out at Cameron, tried to make him laugh; didn’t work.

‘Luke?!’ Jet said.

‘I heard you,’ he snapped, a muscle ticcing in his jaw, something alive beneath the skin.

‘I need that list.’

‘I’m in the office later, I’ll send it to you then.’

Jet folded her arms. ‘Why can’t you go now? Where’s Sophia?’

Luke closed the cupboard, harder than he needed to, snatched open the one beside it. ‘Sophia has Pilates on Wednesday mornings so I have Cameron.’

Jet turned to look at the baby, face reddening, his awful screeches reverberating inside her skull, finding all the cracks.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ she asked.

‘He’s teething.’

‘Well, can you turn him down?’

Luke tensed. ‘That’s what I’m trying to do, it’s – Ah, here it is.’

He pulled a red box down from the highest shelf. Infants’ Tylenol. Opened the flap to pull out the glass bottle and little plastic syringe. ‘OK, it’s coming, Cam. Shh-shh,’ he said, which made absolutely no difference at all.

Jet’s head ached, pushing back against the sound, returning fire.

‘Shit, I don’t know how much.’ Luke narrowed his eyes at the tiny syringe. ‘Jet, can you check my phone? Sophia texted about it the other day. There, on the table. Should say the amount.’

Jet sighed, tapped the darkened phone screen. ‘Code?’ She repeated the phone’s demand.

‘213024,’ Luke said, unscrewing the medicine as Jet tapped the code in.

She pressed the Messages icon, opened Luke’s thread with Sophia.

‘What am I looking for?’ she asked, scrolling up.

‘Tylenol,’ Luke said through gritted teeth, like the sound had made its way inside his head too.

‘OK.’ Jet clicked her tongue, scanning the screen. ‘Is it normal to talk about your baby’s poop this much?’

‘Jet!’

‘Found it. Just called doctor ,’ she read from the screen. ‘ He says try Tylenol instead of Advil when he’s bad. 3ml. ’

‘Three,’ Luke repeated. ‘Perfect.’ He dipped the syringe into the bottle, but Jet’s eyes strayed back to Luke’s phone screen, to that message from Sophia.

It was sent on Friday, at 3:06 p.m. But wait … Jet shifted. Wasn’t that in the time span between the Sophia sightings on the doorbell camera, when she said she’d left her phone at the Masons’? How was Sophia texting from a phone she’d left behind?

Maybe Jet was wrong; she’d have to check the times in her notebook.

But there was something else too, a few messages below.

A text from Sophia to Luke.

Call me.

That’s all it said. Jet swiped to the left and the screen told her it had been sent at 10:52 p.m. that Friday night.

Six minutes after Jet’s head was split open.

When Luke and Sophia were supposed to be here, together, in this house.

That was what they’d said in their police statements.

But Sophia wouldn’t have texted Call me if they were here, together, watching Friends.

So … one of them wasn’t in the house, and both of them had lied about it.

Jet narrowed her eyes. Billy caught her, widening his in response. She shook her head. Not here, not now.

‘There we go,’ Luke said, oblivious, his back turned, pressing the plunger of pink liquid into Cameron’s open mouth.

The baby swallowed and the screaming stopped, Jet’s ears ringing with relief. Cameron clacked his tongue, poked it through his lips. Then his little mouth bared again, a silent scream, revving up, followed by a not-silent one.

‘He’s still screaming,’ Jet said, hands to her ears.

‘It doesn’t work immediately.’ Luke threw her a look, rinsing the plunger.

‘OK, I need to leave.’ Jet crossed the kitchen, heading for the hall. ‘Send me that list of employees, Luke. As soon as you get to the office. Or I’ll ask Dad instead.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Luke said, head over the sink, the loud splatter of the water joining in with the screams, an assault of sound.

Jet ran away from it, to the front door, Billy on her heels.

‘What was that face for?’ he asked her, closing the front door behind them, shutting away all that noise. They headed to her truck, parked in front of the double garage. ‘What did you see on Luke’s phone?’

‘Luke and Sophia lied.’ Jet opened her door, slid inside.

‘One of them wasn’t at home around the time of the attack, like they said.

Sophia lied twice, actually. Said she left her phone at my parents’ house that afternoon, but I’m pretty sure she was texting Luke at that time.

I’ll have to show you the doorbell footage. ’

Billy clicked in his seatbelt. ‘So, what are we going to do now?’

Jet slotted the keys into the ignition.

‘I needed that list, fucking Luke,’ she said, looking over her shoulder to scowl at his house.

‘I wanted to interview those employees this morning. After Andrew Smith, that’s our strongest lead: someone who works at the company, would have known about the foundations on the North Street project, might own a hammer like that. ’

‘We could go back to the site, ask some of the builders there?’ he suggested.

‘It’s been shut down; it’s a crime scene now. Won’t be anyone there.’

Billy sat back. ‘I don’t know what to suggest.’

Jet started the engine. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘I know someone who works for the company, whose name will be on that list. Maybe he can help us.’

‘JJ’s brother?’

Billy closed the truck door, staring across at the small, two-bedroom house: gable roof and once-white panels. Tiny yard along the road and a broken fence. It wasn’t broken the last time Jet had been here.

‘Yeah. Henry,’ she said. ‘He works for Mason Construction. Or … he did, before his accident.’

‘What accident?’ Billy asked, still sizing up the house.

‘Like seven, eight months ago. Henry got stupid drunk and fell off a wall, fell like a whole story. Shattered his kneecap, had to have surgery. Also fell right on a nail or something, went through his eye.’

Billy winced.

‘Doctors couldn’t do anything about that, though.

He’s blind in that eye now. JJ was so mad at him for being so fucking stupid.

He won’t admit it, but his little brother is his world.

They come as a pair.’ Jet copied Billy, stared at the little house.

There would have been space for her in that pair too, if she’d wanted it.

‘Anyway, obviously Henry couldn’t walk, so he couldn’t work, but he can now, so maybe he’s back.

Might be able to tell us about other employees or contractors who worked on North Street, anyone who might seem, I don’t know …

murdery. Anyone with reason to hate me, or my family. ’

Jet started to move but Billy stepped backward, blocking her way to the front door.

‘JJ lives here too?’ he asked.

‘He’s not here.’ Jet sidled past him. ‘We know that. He skipped town. Billy, stop worrying, there’s no danger here.’

Jet walked up the path, gravel crunching under her mud-caked shoes. She reached the front door and balled her fist, knocked three times.

They waited.

Billy glanced down at Jet and she up at him.

‘Thanks again,’ she said, ‘for helping me wash my hair.’

‘No problem again.’

Except it had been – a problem, that is. Jet bent over the kitchen sink, Billy pouring lukewarm cups of water over her head, the sting when the shampoo found the wounds, clinging to the clumps and clots.

They’d waited long enough; Jet knocked again, three more times.

A dog started barking, down the street.

‘I don’t think he’s home,’ Billy said.

Jet put her ear to the door, closed her eyes to focus. Behind the glass, down the hall, there was a faint rumble of voices, and the tinny laugh of a studio audience.

‘TV is on,’ she said. ‘Someone’s home.’

Jet knocked again, knuckles on wood, then the backside of her fist, door juddering in its frame.

The door wrenched open and Jet’s hand couldn’t stop in time, crossing the threshold. Her eyes next.

A gun, pointed straight at her face.

Finger on the trigger.