“It is a go.”

There it was. He immediately slid back into the shadows. The phone would be broken and placed in a trash can at the other side of town, somewhere near the airport. He wore thin gray gloves, of course, never risking a print.

He studied the network of shadows and the tubes they provided. The pull was strong enough that his chest felt as if it were flying apart, his insides coming out. It was an uncomfortable sensation and one that he’d never gotten used to, no matter how many times he’d done this over the years.

Instinctively he chose the longer, narrower shadow, the one that led up onto the back porch and under the door. Inside, a faint light was on over the stove. He could use the shadows cast along the floor to find his next ride. The wrenching in his body was hard as the ride took him fast, nearly throwing him out of the portal and onto the kitchen floor. He stopped his forward momentum and took a moment to breathe and get his bearings. The narrow tunnels were always a difficult traveling experience because they acted like a slide, the body moving at such tremendous speeds. The strips of light and dark were fused closer together, providing a kind of rail that felt like greased lightning. He preferred the larger, darker shadows, and a slower, but more sustainable ride.

He stood very still just inside the tube, listening to the rhythm of the household. Every house sounded and felt different. Outside, chimes blew a soft melody into the night. A few insects made their presence known. Inside the house, it was eerily silent. The two daughters were teenagers and yet there was no television, no music. Just silence. He kept listening. Eventually, someone would make a noise. It was late, but he knew from the lights in the three rooms, that at least those rooms were occupied with someone awake.

A board creaked overhead. That would be in the smallest room upstairs. That one had a soft glowing light, as if a lamp rather than an overhead fixture illuminated the space. The footsteps were very light. The girls then. Not their bedroom, but the little room they used as a library.

He studied the shadows spreading out from the pale light source over the stove. Most were too short for what he needed, but two tubes went off in different directions. Stefano chose the one that reached toward the darkened hallway. It ended just by the stairs in the family room. Another portal took him up the stairs and beneath the door of the library, where Edgar’s daughters were.

He expected them to be quietly reading. They weren’t. One lay on a short couch, her face distorted with swelling. The other girl leaned over her, pushing back her hair with gentle fingers and applying ice. Neither made a sound. Silent tears tracked down both faces, but not a single sob escaped. He stood just inside the portal, waiting to get the ice back in his veins. Deliberately he flexed his fingers, keeping from rolling them into a tight fist. He’d seen countless such things, most much worse. He wouldn’t be standing in the house if there weren’t a good reason. He could only put down his unexpected reaction to the fact that his woman’s shadow had touched his and made him more susceptible to emotion. He couldn’t have that—not while he worked.

He found the place in him that was dead—a place inside that could look at two young girls and feel nothing at all. He needed that, needed balance. He didn’t try to comfort them, or soothe away those hurts. He wasn’t there to do that. He was there to make certain it didn’t ever happen again. Warm feelings weren’t wanted or needed. Only ice. Only dead space that couldn’t ever be filled because that was what allowed him to retreat to the other side of the door and find the slide to the room where he was certain Edgar Sullivan sat behind his desk, feeling powerful now that he’d beat up his thirteen-year-old daughter.

The slide took him under the office door. It was a plush room. The furniture was good leather. Sullivan sat drinking whiskey out of a cut-crystal glass. It wasn’t good whiskey, Stefano noted, but then Sullivan probably didn’t care about the actual taste. His hand, wrapped around the glass, dripped blood from scraped knuckles. He looked over papers and muttered to himself, clearly not happy with whatever report he was reading.

The shadow tubes radiated through the room in a starburst pattern. The light overhead, as well as the lamp on the desk, threw shadows all over the floors, and more climbed up the walls. Two went directly behind Sullivan. Stefano chose the larger of the two and rode it through the room, past the desk, between the chair and the wall until he stood behind the man. He stepped out of the portal and caught Edgar’s head in his hands.

“Justice is served,” he whispered softly and wrenched hard. He heard the crack, but still he waited, making certain.