Gran had found the stove knobs.

I raced down the hall and through the living room into the kitchen, expecting to find flames engulfing the room. Instead, I found my grandmother standing in a crimson pool, in her house shoes.

“What happened? Where are you cut?”

Gran scowled at me. “I’m not cut, I’m just old and clumsy.”

Several sets of footsteps slowed to a stop at my back and Sera laughed as she brushed past me and took the open can my grandmother held. Thin red liquid dripped down the side of the label, over her fingers. “It’s tomato sauce.” She set the can on the counter next to three others lined up there, and took my grandmother’s hand. “Here, let me help you out of that mess.”

Gran stepped out of her house shoes and onto a clean spot on the floor, clutching Sera’s hand for balance. “Thank you, hon.” She shook her head. “I guess that’s what I get for using marinara out of a can, but you don’t leave me much choice when you buy the wrong tomatoes and lose all the chopping knives, Kristopher.”

I’d “lost” all the chopping knives just like I’d “misplaced” the stove knobs. Life and work had both gotten much harder when senility had started to affect Gran’s everyday function, instead of just her perception of time.

“Gran, that’s way too much sauce. There are only five of us now.” Six if I counted Kenley. Or Sera.

Sera shot me a questioning look, but I couldn’t figure out how to explain what reality Gran was living in at that moment without telling her about the kids. And I could not afford to tell her about the kids.

She turned back to my grandmother. “Here, you have a seat, and I’ll get that cleaned up.” She pulled out a chair at the table for my grandmother, then turned toward the mess on the floor and grabbed a roll of paper towels.

“Don’t worry about that, hon. You’re a guest. Kristopher will get it. Kristopher?” Gran glanced at me expectantly and I held up my arm, silently pleading my bloody hardship.

Gran rolled her eyes. “Oh, fine, bring me my sewing kit, and I’ll stitch you up.”

Ian noticed my panic as I tried to come up with a reason to refuse my grandmother’s offer—some reason other than the fact that she could no longer see well enough to cross-stitch, much less repair my open, bleeding wounds—and he stepped in.

“I got it, Gran.” Everyone called her Gran. That’s the only way she’d have it. “I need the practice, but maybe you wouldn’t mind giving me some pointers while I work?” Ian pulled out a chair for me and I sank into it, grateful both for the rescue and for his tact.

“Be glad to, hon.” Gran scowled at me as she spoke. “Anything for a man not ashamed to admit when he needs help.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need help. I need stitches.”

Ian chuckled as he pulled the first aid kit from the top of the fridge.

Sera turned off the stove, then knelt to help Vanessa clean up the spilled sauce. When she gasped, I turned to find her staring at the series of straight, thin scars climbing Vanessa’s bare forearm. “What happened?”

Van scooped up a sloppy handful of sauce with a paper towel, then dropped it into the trash can. “Jake Tower had me tortured to get to Kenley.” She shrugged as if the memory meant nothing to her. And maybe it didn’t. She’d certainly been through worse. “It happens.”

Sauce dripped from the napkin Sera clutched. She looked sick. “No, it doesn’t. Torture doesn’t just happen.”

Vanessa blinked at her with round, sad eyes, as if she pitied Sera’s naïveté. But I remembered the warring pain and anger I’d seen in in her earlier, and I wondered if we weren’t seeing naïveté at all, but the memory of some trauma of her own.

“Let’s see that arm.” Ian sat on the edge of the chair next to mine and opened the first aid kit on the tabletop, while I laid my forearm on a clean white dish towel.

Sera stood and dropped her soggy napkin into the trash, then plucked a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the kit and handed it to Ian, who burst out laughing. Too stubborn to ask for the hydrogen peroxide instead, I glared at her and clenched my teeth while he poured alcohol over my forearm.

“Clean and shallow,” he said after a close look at the cuts, while they continued to sizzle in sterile liquid. “How did this happen?”

“She sliced my arm open.”

“I was going for something lower,” Sera said, and my own grandmother laughed out loud.

“That would have made this moment much more awkward.” Ian popped the cap from a tube of liquid bandage. “You want this, or sutures?”

I studied the two two-inch cuts. Then the wickedly curved suture needle. “Liquid bandage.”

He sealed my cuts while Sera and Van mopped up the spilled sauce, and my grandmother made a production of directing both operations. As Ian was packing up the first aid kit, the closet door opened once again.

I stood so quickly my chair scraped the floor, and Sera backed away in surprise. Ian put one hand on the butt of his gun and Vanessa grabbed a knife from the butcher block beside the stove. Gran’s knuckles went white as she grasped the edge of the table.

We had no reason to suspect that Julia had found our hideout yet, so we kept the closet dark, for ease of use. But there was no stopping that moment of tense silence, waiting to see who would step out into the hall. Especially since Julia had sprung a trap for us at Meghan’s house.