Perfect nightmare

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  Begin Content
Also by John Saul
Suffer the Children
Punish the Sinners
Cry for the Strangers
Comes the Blind Fury
When the Wind Blows
The God Project
Nathaniel
Brainchild
Hellfire
The Unwanted The Unloved
Creature
Second Child
Sleepwalk
Darkness
Shadows
Guardian
The Homing
Black Lightning
The Blackstone Chronicles
part one: An Eye for an Eye: The Doll
part two: Twist of Fate: The Locket
part three: Ashes to Ashes: The Dragons
Flame
part four: In the Shadow of Evil: The Handkerchief
part five: Day of Reckoning: The Stereoscope
part six: Asylum
The Presence The Right Hand of Evil
Nightshade The Manhattan Hunt Club
Midnight Voices Black Creek Crossing
Perfect Nightmare
Perfect Nightmare
tine Booksationew York
Perfect Nightmare
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents are the products of the author's
imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright [*copygg'2005 by John Saul
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine
Books,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing
Group, a division
of Random House, Inc., New York.
Ballantine and colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
Saul, John. Perfect nightmare : a novel
I John Saul.
that . cm.
ISBN 0-345-46731-0 (walk. paper)
1. Girls-Crimes against-Fiction. 2. Mothers
and daughters-Fiction. 3. Long Island
(n.y.)-Fiction. 4. Loss
(psychology)-Fiction. 5. Missing
children-Fiction. 6. New York
(n.y.)-Fiction. 7. Kidnapping-Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3569.A787P47 2005
813'.ed-dc222005047426
Printed in the United States of America on
acid-free paper
www. ballan 11 nebooks. corn
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
First Edition
Text design by Laurie Jewell
For Terry and Judine-
Our parallel lives seem constantly to be
intersecting. May it always be that way!
Prologue
I prowled through their house for a long time last night
before I finally did what I knew I had to do.
I loved the house the first time I saw it-loved it
almost as much as I loved the girl who lived there. And
last night it was as perfect as it has ever been.
It was the candlelight, I think.
I remember the house being candlelit the first time I
saw it-indeed, I think perhaps it was the candlelight itself
that drew me to it.
Like a moth being drawn to a flame?
It's a cliche, I know, but didn't someone once
say that a cliche is only a cliche because it's
true?
And the candlelight did mesmerize me, almost as much as
the girl's face.
Her face, and her body.
The first time I remember being in the house, the candles
were lit. The family was having some kind of a
party.
A birthday?
I don't know.
Now I shall never know.
It doesn't matter that I shall never know, of course,
just as it never mattered that I didn't know her age.
All I know is that she was perfect, that I knew
I loved her from the moment I saw the candlelight
flickering on her face, making her flesh glow as
if with an inner light.
A light I have never known.
Could that be why the candles fascinated me? Because of their
strange, flickering light that warms as much as it
illuminates?
I don't know.
Nor do I care, if I am going to be
absolutely honest about it. All I know is that the
first time I saw the house it was glowing with candlelight,
and her beautiful young face radiated even more heat
than the candles, and I was drawn to that heat.
After that first night, I came back to the house as
often as I could, slipping into it at night and lighting
the candles-just enough for me to make my way around. And the
first time I slipped into her room, feeling my way
through the darkness of the corridor, moving so
silently I could hear my own heart beating-but nothing
else-I knew.
I knew she was mine.
She, you see, loved candles as much as I do.
Her room was filled with them. She had them on her
dresser and on the table by her chair, and on her desk
and on the nightstand by her bed.
Most of them were out, of course, but there was one still
burning.
I remember it even now, remember how I stood
at her door, which I had opened just far enough to peep
inside, and found myself gazing at a flame.
A flame that drew me toward her even from that very first
moment.
I slipped into the room, closing the door so
silently there wasn't even the softest click
to betray my presence. Inside the room-her
room-an odd sensation came over me. It was as if
I was floating, drifting over the thick rug on the
floor, my feet not even touching it.
When I was close by her bed, I looked down and
beheld her perfect
beauty in the light of that single candle, and knew that
we belonged together.
I didn't touch her that night. No, I was
content merely to hover above her, gazing down on her
youth and innocence.
It was a long time before I finally touched her. I
don't know how long.
And she didn't mind.
I know she didn't, for she lay still and let my
fingers trace her soft contours, let my lips
brush hers.
So perfect... so very perfect.
I thought it would stay that way forever, that we would share
our perfect love, but then one night she pushed me
away.
Just like the other one had.
And I knew what I had to do.
I even knew it had to be last night.
Last night, after all, was Christmas Eve.
I'd seen the house once before on Christmas
Eve, as I lurked hidden in the shadows, watching the
candles being lit one by one, each of them pushing the
cold and darkness a little farther away, until the
entire house was suffused with a flickering golden
light.
Even the Christmas tree, standing in front of the great
picture window that overlooked the lake, was aflame
with candles, each set in its own holder,
clipped to the very ends of the branches so no wick had
a twig above it.
It was a beautiful sight, that tree, and last night
I lit it once more.
They had all gone to bed by then, of course, and I was
alone downstairs.
I only lit that one room, but I lit every candle in
it. The ones in the sconces on the walls, and the ones
in the uplifted hands of the pair of brass
figures-they look oddly Russian, though I
don't know why-that stand on the mahogany game table.
I even lit the six tapers in the three pairs of
sterling silver candlesticks atop the glass-fronted
bookcase that fills the wall opposite the
picture window.
Then I lit the tree.
For a long time-I don't know how long-I gazed at
the tree, knowing it would be the last time I saw it.
Knowing it would be the last time I saw this house.
Then I carefully extinguished every candle I had lit
and went upstairs.
As always, she had a single candle lit by her bed, and
I gazed at it for a long time, too.
It, and the perfect face it was illuminating.
Her hair was spread around her face like a
halo, glowing in the soft light of the candle's flame,
and as I beheld her innocence, I wanted to touch it
one last time.
Touch
her one
last time.
I didn't touch her, though. No, not last night.
Last night I did what I knew I had to do, and
as the candle by her bed burned low, I lit the dozen
others that she had in her room.
With each match I struck, with each wick I lit,
the room grew brighter, washing away the shadows that
concealed me.
It didn't matter, though, for after tonight I would never
come back here.
Never see this perfect place-this perfect child-this
perfect family- again.
When all the candles were blazing, I turned to look
one last time on the girl.
She was smiling, content in her sleep.
Did dreams of Christmas morning dance in her
head?
I shall never know.
As I stood near the door, a slight breeze
came through the window I had opened only a
moment before.
A breeze that moved the light lace curtain just
close enough to the flame of one of the candles so that it
caught.
Caught, as my breath caught in my throat.
The flame on the curtain seemed to die away in
an instant, fading to nothing but a glowing ember, but then
another gust of air came through the window, and the fading
ember leaped back to life.
Flames climbed up the lace toward the ceiling like
a great glittering spider racing up its web. A
second later the flames had jumped the gap to the
curtain on the other side of the window.
,
Now the wallpaper was beginning to burn, and I knew
it was time for me to go.
I beheld the face of the girl one more time.
"It's all right," I whispered. "We'll be together
again someday soon."
I know she heard me, for I saw a smile cross
her lips.
I turned away and left before she could awaken.
As I think about it now, I know it wasn't that I
didn't want her to awaken and see me-or see
what I had done-that made me leave so
quickly.
No, it was something else.
I simply didn't want to hear her scream.
Chapter One
Kara Marshall glanced surreptitiously at her
watch and wondered if there were any way-any
tactful
way-to get Claire Sol- linger to eat just a little
faster. But of course there wasn't; everyone in
Camden Green knew that if you had lunch with
Claire, it was going to be at least a two-hour
event. Not that Kara minded. She and Claire had
known each other ever since Claire had turned up
as a volunteer for her
project to restore the old town square to the park it
had been before succumbing to the "modernization" of the
post-World War II era when Camden Green,
along with a dozen other towns along the north shore of
Long Island, had decided to pin their future to the
automobile and ripped out the old square in favor
of a parking lot. The plan hadn't worked: ten years
after the lot went in, so did the mall on the southern
edge of town, and parking lot or not, Camden
Green's downtown had gone the way of dozens of
others. At least it had until she and a few
of her friends decided to change things, and organized a
committee to rebuild the square in an effort
to revitalize the town.
Claire Shields Sollinger had shown up at that
first meeting. A silence fell over the room when she
walked in, for no one expected anyone from the huge
mansions in the Flinders Beach area along the shore
to come to the meeting.
Give money, yes. But not come to the meetings, let
alone do any actual work.
But there Claire had been, and after looking around at
the shocked faces, she'd raised a sardonic
eyebrow and spoken directly to Kara. "It seems
my husband has traded me in for his secretary, which
means I have a lot of time on my hands. I'm a
good gardener, and I don't mind getting my hands
dirty. So how can I help?" By directly
confirming the gossip that had been running through the town
for weeks, she utterly disarmed everyone in the room,
and she'd proven as good as her word, showing up at every
work party in the square, helping Kara find (and paying
for) a landscape architect to re-create the square as
it had looked decades earlier, and generally making
herself useful. Except that the lunches tended to drag
on, and even after ten years, neither Kara nor
anyone else had worked up the courage to tell
Claire Shields Sollinger that they had other things
they needed to do.
Now, Claire's head was cocked and she was frowning,
and Kara knew she'd been caught glancing at her
watch. "I'm keeping you," Claire said, making it
a statement rather than a question. As Kara searched for an
answer that wouldn't be offensive, Claire signaled
the waiter for the check. "Haven't we known each other
long enough for you to tell me when I'm dragging lunch on
too long, Kara?"
"You're not-was Kara began, but Claire cut her
off.
"Of course I am-I always do. After all, it's not
like I have much else to do, do I? And it's all your
fault, you know."
"My fault?" Kara echoed. "Claire, what are
you talking about?"
"Your committees," Claire said as she dropped
her credit card on the waiter's tray without so much
as a glance at the check. "You haven't formed a new
one in months, and I have to tell you, I'm getting
bored. And when I get bored, I keep everyone
at lunch too long."
Kara took a deep breath, deciding she
might as well come clean with Claire now, rather than
put it off any longer. "Well, I'm afraid
you're going to have to start organizing things yourself, then.
I have an appointment with a real-estate agent."
Claire's eyes widened. "You're moving?"
"To the city. Steve and I just don't have enough time together,
and-was Kara cut herself off, remembering the
circumstances a decade ago that had left
Claire Sollinger with too much time for lunch.
"And you don't want your marriage to end the way
mine did," Claire finished for her. "Well,
we'll miss you. At least I will."
Kara tilted her head. "That's it? Not going to try
to talk me out of it?"
Claire shook her head. "Not after what happened
to me. If you love Steve-which I know you do-you need
to be with him. At least, if he wants to be with you,
which I assume he still does. Unlike
Phillip Sollinger." The waiter returned with
Claire's credit card, and she added a generous
tip and signed the voucher, still without checking the
figures. "What about Lindsay?" she said as she
stood and picked up her purse.
"She'll get used to the idea," Kara replied.
They left the restaurant and stepped out into the
bright spring afternoon. "She'll have to."
"Not necessarily," Claire said as they walked
to the parking lot tucked well out of sight a block
south of the village, which, after a decade of
ministrations by Kara Marshall, Claire Sollinger,
and a dozen other women, now looked much as it had a
century earlier. The last trace of "modernism"
had vanished last year when the electric street
lamps were replaced with replicas of the old gas
fixtures. "At Lindsay's age, a year is a
long time, especially when it's your senior year. I
remember when Chrissie-was
Now it was Claire who fell silent, but Kara
didn't finish her thought, as Claire had finished
her own a few minutes ago. It had
only been a few months since her niece died in
a fire at the Shields's
ski cabin in Vermont, and Claire still found it
difficult to talk about it. "I'm going to miss you,"
Claire sighed, just as the silence seemed
to stretch on too long. "Anyone else would have
tried to find the right thing to say when there is no right thing
to say." As they came to their cars, Claire laid
a hand on Kara's arm. "If I can help you out with
anything, just call, all right?"
"Don't you think I've called you enough over the last
ten years?"
"That was for the "common good," was Claire replied,
emphasizing the last two words just enough to make both
women smile. "This is for you. Anything you need, you
just call. Just keeping your house straight so it can be
shown will be a full-time job, and since I hire people
to take care of my own house, I might as well
help take care of yours. As long as it's not
windows."
"I'll keep that in mind," Kara said. "And
thanks." She got into the car, started the engine, and
pulled out of the lot, but instead of turning left on the
most direct route home, she found herself turning
right and driving through the streets of the town she'd lived
in for so many years.
The town she'd help to make what it was today.
The trees were leafing out, and the flowers in the square were
coming into bloom. In another month the tourists who had
begun discovering Camden Green over the last few
years would begin to wander around the street that no longer
looked like just another Long Island town full of
strip malls and shopping centers, but more like the main
street of one of the small New England villages
in rural Vermont or New Hampshire
that time seemed to have forgotten. In a few years,
perhaps, it would become overrun with tourists, and be
well on its way to being ruined again. But for right now,
it was exactly what Kara had always wanted it to be.
A charming little town, where everyone got along with
everyone else, the kids didn't have drug problems,
and the streets were safe at night.
The kind of small town that Ronald Reagan had
always talked about, but hardly existed anywhere at
all.
And now she was going to have to leave it.
And move to the city.
Kara hated the whole idea of it. Hated having
to sell her house, hated having to find an apartment,
hated the thought of moving to the city.
But she knew it had to be done, so she would do it.
She and Lindsay both.
And the family would survive.
indsay Marshall did her best to control the anger that
had been building in her since breakfast, but even
so, she jerked open her locker to throw her books
inside, then slammed it loudly. Her parents were
ruining her life, and until she was eighteen and out of
school, she had to do what they wanted her to do.
But it wasn't fair.
How could her mother have been so casual about it? "I'm
meeting with an agent today," she'd said, like it was no
big deal. "Your father and I are thinking of selling the
house and moving to the city."
Lindsay had stared at her mother in openmouthed
astonishment. "Just before my senior year?"
"It'll be fine," her mother said.
It'll be fine?
It'll be fine?
Lindsay hadn't been able to think of anything else
all day. The phrase kept going through her head and
she couldn't stop it.
It'll be fine.
Life as she knew it was about to be ripped out from
underneath her, and no matter what her mother said, it would
not be
fine.
Now she sat on the bench in the locker room,
adjusting her sports bra and putting on her white
socks and Nikes, unable even to listen to the rest of the
girls. Their chatter usually cheered her up, but today
it seemed totally frivolous in the face of the disaster
that had struck at breakfast.
"Hey, Linds." Dawn D'Angelo opened the
locker next to hers, threw her backpack
inside, and pulled out her practice clothes.
Dawn's big chestnut eyes-the same color as
her long wavy hair-
were a perfect contrast to Lindsay's blue eyes and
blond hair. But though the two girls had
opposite coloring, that was the end of their
differences-they'd been best friends since kindergarten.
"Hey," Lindsay sighed, making no attempt
to mask her mood from Dawn.
One of Dawn's brows lifted. "What's up with
you? You feeling all right?"
"I'm okay."
Dawn looked doubtful. "I hope it isn't the
flu. My brother's got it. He puked all last
night."
"Not the flu," Lindsay said as she finished lacing
up her shoes. The coach's whistle blew from the
gym, and she lifted herself off the bench to follow the
rest of the cheerleaders out of the locker room, eager
to work off some of her anger.
The varsity squad was just back from Florida, where
they'd come in second in the regional
championships held at Daytona. Until this
morning, Lindsay had dreamed of being on that team
next year.
Now that was simply not going to happen.
Inside her head, the endlessly repeating chorus of
It'll be fine
turned into
What's the use? and
her anger dissolved into hopelessness. In another two
weeks the graduating cheerleaders would choose next
year's squad and-most important-name the head
cheerleader, but what did it matter now? Even if
she performed perfectly today, with the entire varsity
squad watching, it wouldn't matter. Her dream of
trading in her black JV uniform for the red varsity
uniform had been thoroughly crushed at breakfast this
morning.
Her mother had been a cheerleader
-
she should understand how important this was! How could she
have been so casual about it? Like it just didn't
matter?
Lindsay tried to concentrate on the exercises, but
kept losing count and getting off rhythm. Even
worse, she was finding it impossible to finish with the grand
gesture and big smile that was as important as the
stunts themselves.
Smile, girls,
the coach always said.
This isn't just a cheer leading practice, its smile
practice, too!
Keeping the coach's words firmly in her mind,
Lindsay jogged in place, did her best to smile,
and tried to find some energy as she waited for her turn
to execute the simple flip they always used as a
warmup.
Then it was time. Lindsay smiled, took a deep
breath, skipped a couple of steps to get her
footing, took a short run, threw her hands down
on the mat and began a perfect flip.
And the worst possible thing happened. Just as she was
upside down, one elbow crumpled and she
collapsed, her shoulder and then her bottom smashing
hard onto the mat.
Fire flooded her wrist.
The coach and Dawn were on her in an instant,
helping her up.
"I'm okay," Lindsay insisted, horrified that the
varsity cheerleaders had seen her screw up a
simple flip.
Then, unable to control her emotions any longer, she
started to cry.
Sharon Spandler, the coach, helped her up
and walked her off the mat. "Okay, girls," she
called back as she led Lindsay toward the locker
room. "Run through them one more time, then do two sets
of backflips. Consuela, you're in charge."
In the locker room, Lindsay took a drink of
water and blew her nose. The coach came out of her
office with tape and scissors, and they sat facing
each other on the bench. The coach gently took
hold of her wrist and bent it slightly. "Hurt?"
Lindsay shook her head.
"Just a sprain, then." As she began to wrap the
wrist with tape, Sharon eyed Lindsay carefully.
"Everything okay with you?"
Lindsay nodded, but the coach could see the lack of
conviction in her eyes and tried again. "Boyfriend
troubles? Things okay at home?"
"Everything's fine. I'm just not feeling real good. I
probably shouldn't even have come to practice."
The coach finished wrapping the wrist, then looked her
square in the face. "I'll tell the girls you're
sick." Then, thinking she knew what
Lindsay was worried about, she said, "A simple
fall shouldn't affect the vote. Don't worry."
Lindsay forced a wan smile. What would it matter
if it did affect the vote? She wouldn't be
back next year anyway. Someone else would be
living her dream. The thought brought the hot lump up
her throat all over again, but she managed to swallow
it. "Thanks," she said.
"Just take it easy," Sharon said. "Rest up."
Lindsay nodded, then wiped her eyes on her soggy
tissue.
A few minutes later Dawn D'Angelo came
in from the gym, grabbed some toilet paper from one of the
stalls, and sat down in the same place the coach
had. Dawn stuffed the wad of paper into Lindsay's
hand. "Okay, enough," she said. "What's going
on?"
Lindsay started to cry again. "We're moving
to Manhattan."
Dawn stared at her in utter incomprehension.
"What?"
"Mom says we have to move to the city to be closer
to Dad's work." She took a ragged breath as
Dawn's expression dissolved to disbelief.
"But we only have one year left," Dawn
whispered. "And you're supposed to be head cheerleader
next year! And we need to do our senior year together.
We have to graduate together. If you leave, who's
going to be my best friend? Jeez, Linds-you
haven't even gone out with Zack yet! How can they do
this to you?"
Lindsay looked bleakly into Dawn's eyes.
"They're my parents," she said, her voice hollow
with despair. "What can I do?"
Dawn didn't even try to answer Lindsay's
question; they both already knew the answer.
There was nothing either of them could do.
Nothing at all.
Kara Marshall's stomach knotted as she stared at
the listing agreement on her dining room table. She
didn't even try to stop herself from picking at the already
torn cuticle on her left forefinger. Why bother?
Though her nails were about the last thing she had any
control over, she'd already pretty much ruined them.
She could barely believe the low figure the agent
had suggested their beautiful home was worth. When
Steve saw it...
She didn't want to think about what he would say.
A blinding flash of light jerked Kara out of her
reverie.
"That should do it." She looked up at Mark
Acton, whose professional smile looked phony
even as he tried to make it look sincere. "This
house photographs beautifully."
She didn't respond, and instead looked down again
at the array of forms and color brochures on the
table as the agent put his camera into its case.
"I'll just leave the papers with you," he went on.
"I can come back
to answer any questions you might have when your husband is
home. Do you know when that might be?"
"That's part of the problem," Kara said, looking up,
wondering even as she spoke why she was telling this
perfect stranger-one she'd already decided she
didn't like-things that were none of his business. "I
don't know when he'll be home. He commutes to the
city and sometimes stays over. In fact, he's
hardly home anymore- that's the main reason
we're selling. Maybe I'd better just call you
after we've talked this over."
Acton nodded. "I'll put these pictures up
on our Web site as soon as you and your husband
sign the listing." His voice took on the drone of a
rehearsed speech. "Our normal procedure is
to keep the listing in-house for two or three days.
If it doesn't get sold by one of our people, I'll
put it into the Multiple Listing Service on
Monday and we'll hold a brokers' open house
on Wednesday to show it to all the agents in the
area. Then we'll have a public open house on
Sunday. It's a wonderful house. I think it will
sell right away."
Though she'd barely heard him, Kara nodded as if
following every word. "Good. Okay. I'll call you."
Mark Acton pulled a sheet of blue paper from the
pile and set it on top. "This is the schedule I
just laid out for you. Please initial it when you sign
the listing agreement and I'll put everything
into motion."
Once again she nodded. "Yes, fine."
Acton picked up his briefcase, and she took that
as a cue to usher him to the door. "I'm sure you'll
be more than happy with the marketing our firm will
provide," he said.
That must sound canned even to him, Kara thought. "I'm
sure I will," she said. "Thanks for coming."
As she stood at the door, a car pulled up in
front and her daughter got out. Kara watched
Lindsay wave to her friend Dawn and to Phyllis
D'Angelo, who was driving. "Call me!"
Lindsay yelled to Dawn, then passed the agent on
her way to the front porch.
Mark Acton nodded to Lindsay, then turned
to watch her as she walked up the porch
steps.
Kara scowled at him, but if he saw her, he
gave no sign. She forced the scowl from her brow,
told herself she had to get used to it. Her daughter was
seventeen now, and pretty, and men would look at her
every day for the next twenty years. Then, seeing the
bandage on Lindsay's wrist, all thoughts of Mark
Acton vanished from her mind. "What happened?"
she asked. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Lindsay said, brushing by her and into the
house. She dropped her backpack on the foyer
floor, and only then held out her hand for the examination
she knew there was no way of escaping. 'It's just a
sprain. I goofed up a flip at practice."
"Nothing's broken?" Kara fretted.
Lindsay pulled her hand away. "No, Mom. I
told you, it's just a sprain." She tipped her head
toward the front door. "Who was that?"
"Just an agent," Kara said, shrugging dismissively.
Lindsay winced as if she'd been struck.
"Don't I have any say in what this family
does?" she asked as she wheeled around and started
toward the stairs. Though she'd tried to hide it,
Kara saw her daughter's eyes glistening with tears.
"Lindsay, wait!"
But of course, she didn't.
When Lindsay vanished up the stairs, Kara
looked again at the listing agreement on the dining room
table, and had to resist the urge to pick up the forms and
brochures and rip them to shreds. She didn't want
to move to the city any more than Lindsay did, but
what choice did she have? Being away from Steve so
much was destroying their marriage. Still, Lindsay
only had a year of school left. Maybe they could
find some way to work it out.
But as she unconsciously picked at a different
cuticle, she knew there would be no working it out. Not
only was the commute killing her marriage, but
Steve's promotion, which required him to be in
Manhattan even more, hadn't been enough to even cover
the cost of
the tiny apartment he'd rented. In fact, the apartment
had turned his raise into just another liability.
So there wasn't any choice; they had to move.
Kara waited long enough for Lindsay to pour out her
tears into her pillow, and as she moved up the curving
staircase to her daughter's room, she realized
once more just how much she was going to miss this big
house. She'd helped design it, and they'd moved
in two weeks before Lindsay was born. The
entire history of the family was in this house.
Whatever they found in Manhattan would not only be
much smaller, but an abandonment of their entire past as
well. Could they really do it?
She knocked twice on Lindsay's door, then
opened it a crack. "Linds? Can I come in?"
She took the silence as assent and went inside. It
was a quintessential teenage girl's room, with
its neglected but not forgotten stuffed animals and
Barbie dolls, new and often replaced posters of
buff young men on the walls, stacks of COULD'S, a
computer, and enough makeup to beautify half the women
on Long Island.
Kara perched uneasily on the edge of the bed. As
she'd suspected, Lindsay's face was turned
away, but the emotional storm seemed to have passed.
Lindsay was quiet as she lay facing the wall.
"Honey?" Kara smoothed her daughter's silky
blond hair. "You know we love it here as much as you
do. We'd never move if we didn't have to. I
just wish there were another option."
"Just one more year." Lindsay's voice was muffled
by the pillow, but her anger was still audible. "Then it
won't matter so much, because at least I'll have
finished school."
"We can't make it another year like this," Kara said.
"We can't keep up both places-it's too
expensive. And your father needs us. We need him.
You
need him."
"I know," Lindsay sighed, rolling over to look
at her.
Seeing the desolation in Lindsay's eyes, and hearing
the hopelessness in her voice, Kara's heart nearly
broke. The sight of those red,
swollen, unutterably sad eyes bespoke every
wonderful thing her daughter was-caring, dedicated,
loyal. But as she eased a strand of blond hair
away from Lindsay's face and put her cool hand
on the girl's forehead, she could see a change in
her eyes.
Abruptly, Lindsay sat up. "What if I
move in with Dawn's family for my last year?"
she asked, her expression brightening. "I could come to the
city on weekends and for holidays." Her words
tumbled out. "You know, Christmas and stuff."
"We can ask your father, honey," Kara said, knowing that
Steve would never agree, "but I know what he's
going to say, and so do you."
Lindsay sagged back down on the pillow,
her excitement deflating like a collapsing
balloon. "Yeah, I know."
Kara took her hand. "We've talked about this for
months-you knew it was coming."
"I know," Lindsay sighed, "but I didn't think
it would be so soon."
"It'll be fine," Kara said, squeezing her
daughter's hand. "You'll see-it'll be just fine."
But even as she spoke the words, Kara wondered how
true they would turn out to be.
Steve Marshall squinted at the deposition on his
desk, but it did no good-he could feel his eyes
closing, despite his best intentions. Outside his
office window the lights of the city were coming on and the sky
had darkened; all that was left of the day was a pale
streak at the horizon.
But half the day's work still lay on the desk in
front of him.
He reached over to turn on his desk lamp, hoping
the bright light would wash away the exhaustion the
onset of dusk had brought. Rubbing his eyes, he
turned his gaze from the window to the open door of his
office. He could see a few lights still on down the
hall, but the overheads had long since been turned
off, and not even an echo remained of the hum
of the departed staff.
Steve sat back in his chair and stretched-no point
leaving until he'd at least finished the deposition
he was working on. It looked like he'd have to stay in the
city again tonight, even though he promised Kara that
he'd be home. He dragged his fingers through his hair,
ruefully reflecting that right now he far preferred the
pressure on his
scalp to that of either his job or his family. Still, tomorrow
was Friday, and if he got enough done tonight, he'd
knock off at noon and go home for the weekend.
Maybe there was something the three of them could do together.
Go to a crafts fair or something. He knew Kara
would love it, and so would Lindsay, and making them
happy had always made him happy, too.
Rubbing his eyes again, he turned his attention back
to the deposition. There were at least another fifty
pages to slog through, either here or in the cramped joke
of an apartment that served as home on the nights when
he couldn't make it back to Long Island.
Might as well be here.
Just as he was getting back into the dry prose of the
blandly worded document, the harsh overhead office
light went on. He looked up at the janitor
who stood in the doorway, his hand on the
light switch. "Sorry, sir, didn't mean
to bother you."
Jesus Christ, can't he see I'm working?
But when he spoke, Steve did
his best not to betray his annoyance. "Can you come back
a little later, maybe?"
The janitor shook his head. "This is my last
office. I'll just dump your trash and be gone."
Steve nodded toward the wastebasket. This guy
didn't look familiar. "You new?"
The man nodded. "Just started today. Didn't mean
to get in your way." He gathered the plastic bag
full of trash, dumped it in the large bin he'd
left just outside the door, then replaced the
plastic liner in the wastebasket. As he
straightened up, his eyes fell on the framed
photograph of Steve, Kara, and Lindsay at the
beach that had been sitting on Steve's desk since
last summer. "This your family?"
Steve nodded, not even looking up, wishing the man
would just go away.
"Nice. Very nice," the janitor said. "Looks
like Long Island."
"It is," Steve mumbled.
"Pretty girl," the janitor said.
Leaning back in his chair, Steve saw that the man's
eyes were now
fixed on another of the photos on his desk, this one
of Lindsay in her cheerleader's uniform.
"Very nice," he said, so softly that Steve wasn't
sure he was even aware he'd spoken out loud.
"Beautiful."
He was about to reply when the phone rang, startling
both of them. Nodding almost curtly, the janitor
disappeared out the door as Steve picked up the
receiver.
"Hello?"
"Hi, honey," he heard Kara say, and there was
something in her voice that belied her cheerful tone.
"Hi."
"Are you coming home?"
He sighed. "I don't see how-I've got too
much work."
"You promised."
He could almost see her struggling not to sound
plaintive. "I know," he sighed. "I tried, but
I'll get out of here early tomorrow and we'll have the
whole weekend. We'll do something-just the three of
us."
Kara was silent for a second, then: "I was
hoping you could be home before Lindsay went to sleep
tonight. She's kind of upset."
Steve sat up straight in his chair. "Upset?
Why? What's up?"
"She hurt her wrist at cheer leading practice,
and then the real- estate agent was here when she got
home. I think we all ought to sit down and talk.
You know, like a real family?" Kara quickly added,
perhaps at hearing the sarcasm in her voice, "I'm
sorry-that wasn't fair. I'm just-well, I just
really wish you'd come home tonight."
"What did the agent say?"
Kara chuckled hollowly. "You won't like it."
Steve looked down at the deposition. If he
called a driver, he could finish it on the way
home. But he couldn't afford a driver-not with what it
cost to keep the apartment. "Kara, I'm sorry,"
he said. "I've got to finish this deposition tonight."
"Okay." Her voice was small now, and he knew
she wasn't going to argue anymore, which only made
him feel worse.
"Let me see what I can do," he finally said.
"Okay. 'Bye."
was 'Bye."
He heard her say "Love you" just before he
put the phone back in its cradle.
Crap!
First the damn janitor had thrown him off his
concentration, and now Kara was angry at him, and he
couldn't blame her.
And Lindsay was hurt and upset, and that made his
stomach churn.
And on top of everything else, he was going to hate
what the agent had to say.
Enough was finally enough. He glanced down at the
deposition one more time, then flipped its cover
closed, turned off his desk lamp, and headed for
home.
indsay dialed up the volume on the iPod her father
had given her for her last birthday, but no matter
how loud the music coming through the headphones was-even
if it drowned out the argument going on downstairs-it
couldn't cover the tension that filled the house.
And it was her fault-all of it.
She grabbed a pillow and pulled her arm back
to hurl it at something-anything-but the warning stab of pain
in her injured wrist made her change her mind.
She dropped the pillow to her chest instead and hugged
it, tears of frustration stinging her eyes and clouding her
vision. "Grow up," she told herself.
The song she'd been listening to ended abruptly, and
now she could hear her parents" voices drifting up
the stairwell.
Though the anger was clear, the words themselves were not. Not that
it mattered; she knew perfectly well what they were
arguing about.
Her.
In fact, it seemed that all they did anymore was
argue. But until tonight, it had been mostly about her
father's new job, and the little apartment he had to rent in the
city, and the fact that so many nights he couldn't make
it home at all.
But their argument now was focused on her, and with every
angry sound she heard, she felt worse. All
she wanted was for everybody to be happy, and even
without hearing what they were saying, she knew that nobody
in the house was happy.
She lay on her bed, listening to the muffled words as
long as she could stand it. She heard her mother's voice
rising, but her father's voice stayed steady.
What's happening?
she wondered.
What's Mom yelling about?
And even though part of her wanted to clamp the pillow
against her ears, shutting out the sound of her
parents' argument, she knew she couldn't.
No matter how much it hurt, she had to know what they
were saying. Putting the iPod on the nightstand,
Lindsay got up from the bed, opened her bedroom
door and listened.
you're asking too much of her," Kara said for what she
was certain must be at least the third time, if not the
fourth or fifth. She was perched stiffly on the edge
of the couch, and could see by Steve's expression that she
looked every bit as shrill as she knew she was starting
to sound. But how many times did she have to go over all this
before he would actually
hear
her? "She's only seventeen years old, and you're
asking her to give up everything. I know being on the
cheer leading squad doesn't mean much to you, but so
what? She's your daughter, Steve! And it's not just
cheer leading You're asking her to move away from all
her friends-friends she's known since kindergarten-and start
all over again in a new school where she doesn't
know
anybody.
And it'll be her senior year. Believe me, I
remember what it was like when I was her age. The
cliques are formed, and they're rock
solid. There won't be any room for Lindsay."
Steve spread his hands helplessly. "I don't know
what else to do," he said, his own voice starting
to rise, though not as much as hers. "There just doesn't
seem to be any other answer. We can't afford-was
"Another year," Kara broke in. "Let's stay
here just until she graduates." Seeing his
expression harden, her voice rose another notch.
"For heaven's sake, Steve-the real estate market
is down so badly, we'd only get about
three-quarters what we would have gotten a year ago,
and you know as well as I do that even though the market's
dropped out here, it hasn't in Manhattan.
We'll be lucky if we can afford a tiny little two
bedroom, and you better believe it won't have more than
one bath!"
Steve shook his head and picked up the glass that
sat on the table next to his chair, downing the last
of the scotch in a single gulp. "We've been over
the numbers, Kara," he said, his voice taking on
a steely edge. "We can't afford to keep this house
and pay for the apartment, too. We have to get a place
in the city that's big enough for all three of us."
"But we won't get enough for this place," Kara
insisted. Hadn't he heard anything she said?
Steve set his empty glass on the end table and
ran his hands through his hair. "I thought we'd already had
this whole conversation."
"That was before I met with the agent," Kara shot back.
Seeing Steve's eyes narrow angrily, she added,
"And it was before I watched Lindsay's heart
break."
"She's young," Steve said, his voice taking on a
tone she'd only heard him use in court when he was
trying to make a point to a recalcitrant witness.
"She'll survive. In a year she'll be off
to college anyway. Frankly, I don't understand
why-was
"Don't take that tone with me," she suddenly
flared. "This isn't a case you're defending! It's
your family! And moving to the city is not the best thing
for your family. Remember when we first decided to have
kids? We said we'd always put their best interests
first."
"And what's best for her-for all of us-is that we start
living together like a family again," Steve shot back.
"You know-having dinner together every night, with me actually
coming home? How many times have we had dinner together in the
last week? In the last month?"
"Whose fault is that?" Kara demanded, almost
able to taste the bitterness in her voice.
Steve's eyes glinted. "That's a cheap shot,
Kara. If I'm going to be the sole provider for
this family, then maybe this family needs to rally
around a few of my needs, okay?"
Kara felt what little control she still had over her
emotions start to slip away. "This family does
nothing but cater to your needs," she said, her voice
rising yet higher. "All we ever do-was
She was interrupted by a new voice.
A voice even louder and more furious than her own.
"Stop it!" Lindsay yelled. "Just stop it!"
Kara's breath caught in her chest, and Steve
looked as if he'd been struck. Both of them
looked toward the stairs to see Lindsay, clad in
her pajamas, her wrist wrapped in an Ace
bandage, tears streaming down her face. "Just stop
it!" she cried again. "I can't stand your arguing
anymore! I thought-was Her voice broke and she
raised her hands to cover her face as her body
began to shake.
"Whoa, kitten," Steve said, quickly getting up and
going to her. Sobbing, Lindsay fell into his arms.
"Take it easy."
Kara thought her heart would break as she
watched them, and the anger she'd felt toward Steve
only a moment ago dissolved as she saw him comforting
their daughter.
"It's just an argument," he said. "It doesn't
mean anything at all. Your mother and I love each
other and we both love you even more." He held her,
stroking her hair as she cried. Slowly, he
guided her to the sofa, where they sat down next
to Kara.
Kara took Lindsay's hand. "I'm sorry,
darling," she said. "We're just trying to work out what's
best for everybody."
"Everybody," Steve echoed, looking pointedly at
Kara, "because we're a family. And we all
agree we need to be together-we're just trying
to figure out the best way to accomplish that."
"You need to stop arguing," Lindsay said, sniffling and
wiping away a tear with the back of her good hand.
"I-I just can't stand it."
"I'm sorry, kitten," Steve said.
"It's okay," Lindsay said, but with a catch in her
voice. Beseechingly, she looked first at her father,
then her mother. "We can move, okay? I'll
adjust. Just don't fight anymore, all right?"
Steve gave her a hug. "Hey, it's not
the end of the world, sweetie. It'll be all right,
I'm telling you. You'll
like
living in the city. It's an exciting place."
Kara gazed uncertainly into Lindsay's
eyes.
"You're sure?" she asked. "You're not just saying
it's okay because we were arguing?" Lindsay
hesitated, then nodded. "Okay," Kara sighed.
"I'll call the agent and tell him we're signing
the listing. They can start doing their thing, and we'll see
what happens."
Steve nodded. Lindsay was sitting with her head down
now, her hands in her lap, and as he watched, a tear
rolled down her cheek and fell onto her
pajamas. "Tell you what," he said, lightening his
tone. "Let's go into the city on Sunday. We'll
look at some places- maybe hit some open
houses and see where we might like to live." He
tipped Lindsay's face up so she couldn't avoid
looking at him. "We might get lucky and find the
perfect place. Something we all love."
"And we can have lunch at that Thai place on West
Sixty- seventh," Kara said. "Remember their
cabbage salad?"
Lindsay nodded, sniffling once more, but her eyes were
no longer flooding with tears.
Kara gave her a nudge. "And we'll go shopping
at Bergdorf's."
"Whoa," Steve interrupted. "This is a trip
for-was
"Shopping at Bergdorf's," Lindsay broke
in, a smile lighting her face.
Steve threw his hands up in mock resignation.
"Okay-I get it. I'm outnumbered. Again."
Lindsay shoved her elbow into his side. "You think
you're
outnumbered? How do you think I felt when I was
listening to you two fighting about what we should do?"
Kara gave her daughter's shoulders a squeeze,
and for the first time in months felt that just maybe things would
turn out all right. With a silent prayer of thanks,
she smiled at her husband.
He smiled back.
I think perhaps I've found her at last!
I can't be sure, of course-not yet.
But when I first got the alert on my computer this
morning, I felt a tingling in my belly.
The same kind of tingling I used to feel whenever she
was near: a tightening in my groin, and cold
fear in my belly.
Though it wasn't strong, it was enough to make my fingers
almost vibrate as I typed the keystrokes that took
me to the listing.
But not just one listing! No! This morning there were two!
My heart beat faster as I went to the first listing, but
as the image of the house came onto the screen, the
tingling began to fade. It was an ugly house-a kind
of squat, shapeless bungalow. Not at all the kind
of home I like.
But then I saw the other house, and my heart started
to pound, and when I took the virtual tour, my
excitement only grew. It may be the house.
I am almost sure it
is the
house!
A teenage girl lives there, and something inside me
tells me she is perfect for me.
I know it. I know it!
I could tell from the first moment I saw the pictures
of her room, but I had to be sure. But now I am
sure, because I've gone over the photographs so
many times that I have every detail memorized. Even as
I write these words, I can see the room-her
room-as clearly in my mind as if I were
standing in it.
Touching it.
Smelling it.
Oh, yes-she is the one.
But I mustn't be hasty, mustn't let my hopes
get too high. After all, I've had these thoughts
before, and been so often disappointed.
This time, I won't get ahead of myself.
No, this time I'll hold some part of myself aloof, and
force myself to wait. After all, the address won't be
posted until the house goes into the Multiple
Listing Service, and I'll just have to contain my
excitement until then. But it's so hard-I am so
tempted to get into the car and drive around, and keep
driving until I find the house.
The perfect house.
Her
house.
I know the idea is ridiculous. I could drive for
weeks and never run across it-never find her-yet the
feeling is almost overwhelming.
It is as if the house itself-and the girl who lives in
it-are drawing me like filings to a magnet.
Yet I have to be patient. After all, it will only
be a few days.
In a few days, I shall get the address.
And in a few days, she will still be there. . . .
Still, I'm not used to being patient.
I hate being patient.
But soon . . . soon I shall see her, and touch
her, and smell her.
And she will know all the feelings I knew so long
ago.
But this time it will be different.
This time all the feelings will go on forever.
Manhattan is impossible,
Kara thought. Traffic was unaccountably snarled, there
were no places to park, and if there was a parking lot
anywhere in this part of town, neither she nor Steve had
seen it.
"Is something going on?" Lindsay asked from the
backseat. "Why is everything so messed up?"
Kara could feel Steve's nerves starting to fray as
everywhere he turned the streets were barricaded and
traffic hopelessly snarled. She turned on the
radio, and Lindsay's question was instantly answered.
"The vice president's motorcade has the
entire West Side gridlocked from Forty-second
Street north to 125th," a soothing voice
intoned. "Motorists are advised to-was
Steve snapped it off. "Who asked the vice
president to come to town today?" he grumbled. "I
don't recall his office calling to see if it was
convenient for me." He scowled, funneling his frayed
nerves into a comically exaggerated mask of anger.
"And if they had, I'd
have told them to keep him in Washington! Who needs
him? Especially on Sunday in Manhattan?"
"Bad luck," Kara sighed. If the motorcade
didn't hurry up and get where it was going, they were
never going to make their appointment with the agent who
claimed she had the perfect apartment.
"We should have taken the train," Steve said through
clenched teeth, and Kara sighed again, knowing he was right.
And knowing it was her fault they hadn't done it. After
all, she was the one who'd thought a drive in the
family car would be a better idea.
"I'm sorry," she said, sighing again.
Steve's thin-lipped expression didn't change.
"This sucks," Lindsay muttered from the backseat.
Kara sighed a third time, silently agreeing with her
daughter, and checked her watch. Their appointment was
in five minutes. The agent wouldn't wait around for
long if they were late.
Miraculously, a car pulled out of a parking
space just in front of them, and Steve quickly slid
their Toyota SUV into it, ignoring the blare of the
horn from a Ford Focus whose driver seemed to think
he was the rightful heir to the slot. "There is a
God," Steve muttered. "C'mon, we've got
to hurry."
Just in the nick of time, Kara thought, certain that if the
parking space hadn't seemingly dropped from heaven,
Steve's temper would have given way.
He locked the car and they hustled along the
sidewalk, threading through the pedestrian traffic far
faster than they'd been able to maneuver through the
car-jammed streets. In less than five minutes
they made the three short blocks uptown and the two
long ones over and found themselves in front of a tall
brownstone. Steve checked the address. "This is
it," he said, pressing the bell.
Kara eyed the building and decided it looked
presentable, if not perfect. She checked her watch
again when there was no response to Steve's buzz.
"We're not late. She couldn't have left, could
she?"
Steve took a deep breath but said nothing, and
Lindsay dropped onto the front step and put her
chin in her hands.
"Ring again," Kara said.
Silently, Steve pressed the buzzer a second
time.
Still nothing.
Then Kara saw a tall, thin woman in a long
black coat striding around the corner, a folio
clutched tightly in one hand, a set of keys in the
other. "Mr. and Mrs. Marshall?" she asked as
she came abreast of the building.
Thank God,
Kara thought. She smiled and nodded in response.
"This is our daughter, Lindsay," she said as
Lindsay stood up.
"Lm Rita Goldman," the agent said, her hand
coming out to grasp first Kara's, then Lindsay's, and
finally Steve's hand. "I'm so sorry to be late.
The traffic-was
"We know," Steve said, his mood lightening as finally
something seemed to be going right. "It almost made us
late, too. In fact, we were afraid we might
have missed you."
The woman opened the front door and held it for
them. The building seemed well-maintained, with a
clean marble floor in the foyer and contemporary art
on the walls. But the dark mahogany
moldings and vaguely Victorian light
fixtures made it seem older than it was. Still,
the elevator moved smoothly and looked modern, with
mirrors on the walls.
Kara began ticking items off her mental
checklist. So far, so good.
She glanced at her reflection in the mirror,
decided her makeup had survived the drive into the
city, then noticed Lindsay's unhappy face.
Leaning over, she whispered, "Thai salad," which
made Lindsay smile.
The fourth floor hall was carpeted and nicely
lit.
Two more check marks on her mental list.
The agent, chatting with Steve, walked them down
to 409 and used three keys to open the door.
A black mark on the checklist.
Then the door opened, and suddenly Kara felt
better. Light. Lots of light, let in by lots
of windows.
And hardwood floors and nine-foot ceilings.
Things were looking up.
The living room windows looked down over
Amsterdam Avenue, which was okay. Not Central
Park, but there was no way they could afford that.
"There's a rooftop garden," she heard the agent
tell Steve. "I won't pretend it has the best
view, but it's quite charming."
Kara caught Steve's eye, and they nodded at each
other. So far, so good.
Then they came to the kitchen. It was barely big enough for
one person to maneuver in, the stove had only two
burners, and the tiny countertops were covered with Formica
in a particularly ugly shade of brown. It was
nothing like the enormous, custom-designed kitchen with
granite countertops that Kara had lived with so long
that she'd almost forgotten there was anything else. Now the
ugly truth hit her.
You can get used to it,
she told herself. But even if she could adapt to the
size, she knew the kitchen would still need a complete
remodeling.
A remodeling they'd never be able to afford if they
bought the place.
So she'd just have to get used to it, she decided,
hustling Lindsay down the hall, hoping her daughter
hadn't noticed quite how bad the kitchen was.
"Let's take a look at the bedrooms."
The master bedroom seemed almost as small as the
kitchen, but at least it had windows. On the
other hand, the windows faced another building, which was
barely ten feet away. If the neighbors hadn't
had their shades drawn, Kara realized, she would be
looking directly at them and see whatever they were
doing.
And they could look back, which meant she'd have to keep
her shades drawn, too.
The master bath looked like it belonged in an old
motel.
A
cheap
old motel.
It's the city,
she reminded herself.
This is how people live here. Modern plumbing is not
an option.
"Two blocks to Central Park," the agent was
saying as she and Steve followed Kara and Lindsay
into the bedroom end of the apartment.
"Hear that?" Steve said to Lindsay. He turned
back to Rita Goldman. "What about the
schools?"
Lindsay, obviously uninterested, wandered away, and
Kara followed her into the other bedroom.
Small.
Tiny closet.
Saying nothing, Lindsay turned, walked out of the
bedroom and headed for the front door. Kara,
Steve, and Rita Goldman followed. As they
left the apartment and moved toward the elevator, no
one said anything at all. The silence stretched
until the elevator arrived, its door slid
open, and they all entered.
As the elevator started down, Kara finally spoke.
"Nice light in the living room. I love those
big windows."
"Maybe we should have gone up to see the rooftop
garden," Rita Goldman suggested. "Shall we do
that?"
Kara glanced at Lindsay and read her daughter's
feelings. "I don't think we need to," she said.
"I don't really think this is what we're looking
for."
The Realtor nodded, her lips pursed, and no one
spoke until they were back on the sidewalk.
"I'm sure you'll all love the next one," she
said, smiling just a little too reassuringly.
But even before she'd finished speaking, Kara saw the
expression on Lindsay's face and knew that one of
them, at least, would not love anything that
Rita Goldman had to show.
And Kara knew there would be nothing she could do about it.
Suddenly she felt like crying.
Sunday morning is when the big edition of the
New York Times
comes out.
Which is why Sunday morning is my favorite time
to wake up.
I know Sunday is a lot of people's favorite day,
and I know that for a lot of them, it is also because of the
paper. But for most of the others, the paper is loved
because of the Arts section, or the book reviews or the
sports or the editorials.
I love it because it lists the addresses of open
houses.
And every open house presents me with a possibility.
An exciting possibility.
Today there were two new listings in the real estate
section. I circled each of them with my red felt
pen, then located them on my map.
Finding them on the map is especially exciting, because
it gives me clues as to the kind of people who live in
the houses. Today, both the houses seemed to give
promise of the kind of girl I'm looking for, and
since they are both convenient, I was at first
tempted to visit both of them.
I began my very meticulous routine.
First, I plot my route. In the event I
decide to actually go visiting today, I shall rent a
car from an agency in Port Jefferson. Perhaps some
kind of Chevrolet-the sort of car one sees by the
dozens every day but never notices.
Exactly the sort of car I like best for my outings.
Then I plan the route I shall take from the car
rental agency to the first house, then to the other, and then
back to the agency, always using the busiest-and the most
anonymous-roads. Most of the looky-loos (a
term I deeply despise) show up in the middle of
open house hours, so I shall time my trip to slip in
when the houses will be at their fullest.
After all, it doesn't take me long to find out
whether I've found the home of the girl for whom I
search. . . .
And no one will notice me at all.
I reread the ads, studying them carefully. The first
house had four bedrooms. That's a good sign, but
its listing agent turns out to be one of those vile,
pushy women who darts from room to room keeping
track of everyone, babbling inanely, and insisting that
everybody sign her book. The last time I
saw her, she talked about interest rates and market
conditions until I wished I'd never awakened that
morning. Now I try to avoid her, but I'm not
sure I can today.
After all, the house has four bedrooms, and chances
are strong that one of those bedrooms belongs to a girl,
although there is no virtual tour of that house on the
Internet.
The other house is smaller, but is listed by an
agent who is lazy and invariably spends most of his
workday smoking on the front porch or the back
steps, or the terrace if the house has one,
smoking cigarettes and letting the prospective
purchasers wander through by themselves.
I shall certainly go see this one.
After all, one never knows what surprises await
just around a blind corner.
Still, neither of these listings gave me a shiver of
anticipation like the one I saw on the Internet a
few days ago.
I just have a feeling about that one.
After plotting my route and planning my day, I
doodled on the news
paper with my red felt-tip pen, circling the two
ads over and over again. Oddly, the circles
around the open houses seemed to turn into eyes.
Two big red eyes that reminded me of something, but
I couldn't remember what.
Underneath the eyes, I drew a mouth.
A big, red, smiling mouth under the big, red eyes.
It was absurd, I know, but for some reason, I
couldn't stop. The larger and more grotesque they got,
the more they made me smile.
Perhaps I won't go out at all today.
Perhaps I'll just spend the day dreaming.
Still, the open houses call me. Oh, I do love
Sundays!
This is the last place I have to show you," Rita
Goldman said, and Lindsay silently sighed in
relief. The morning, which had started off badly with the
traffic jam, just seemed to be getting worse, and
even before she looked at her watch, her stomach
told her it was at least an hour past lunchtime. But
her hunger was only part of it.
The worst of it was that as the morning had worn on, and
they'd gone from one awful apartment to another-each of them
seeming worse to Lindsay than the last-she'd
slowly come to the conclusion that despite her brave
words the other night, moving was going to be a lot
harder than she'd dreamed, even in her worst
nightmares. She hated everything about the city-the
crowds, the noise, the traffic- everything.
And now she was starting to get a headache.
As if in response to her mood, a dark cloud had
formed over the city and the wind was blowing cold. Still, there
was just one more place, and then they could get to the good part
of the day.
Lunch and shopping.
It was an open house on the Upper West Side.
Lindsay followed her parents and Rita Goldman
into the building. The elevator opened, half a
dozen people got out, and even more got in with them.
Crowded.
Lindsay hated that about elevators. People you didn't
even know were always touching you, even when they didn't
mean to. She pulled her shoulders in, pressed
her arms against her sides and herself against the wall of the
elevator, but even so, the man next to her brushed
against her and she felt a chill pass through her. The knowledge
that this would be happening every day after they moved to the city
only made the chill worse.
The apartment was on the sixteenth floor, actually had
a good view and a big kitchen-big enough to hold a
breakfast table. Not so bad.
A nondescript man with greasy hair was
the hosting agent, and he had a plate of cookies
and a stack of color flyers, which he pushed into the hands
of anyone who would take them. There were at least a
dozen people standing in the living room in groups of two
or three, whispering among themselves and examining every
detail of the room.
Lindsay headed for the bedrooms, leaving her parents
to listen to Rita Goldman's sales pitch, which
by now she was pretty sure she knew by heart: "...
close to the subway . . . good school . . . great
restaurants . . . fantastic view . . .
blah blah blah . . ."
She edged past a young couple coming out of one of the
bedrooms. It was a girl's room, with posters on
the wall and a pink bedspread. She looked at the
jewelry box on the dresser and the cluster of framed
photographs that could only be family pictures.
A bunch of high school photos were stuck around the
edges of the mirror over the dresser, and Lindsay
wondered if one of the cute guys was the girl's
boyfriend.
She felt a sudden urge to look through the girl's
COULD'S to see what kind of music she liked, but just
as she was about to flip through
them, she realized there was going to be an open
house at her house next week.
An open house just like this one.
With strangers looking through her things.
She jerked her hand away from the COULD'S almost as if
her fingers had been scorched.
She suddenly felt creepy about even having looked
at the pictures and wondering if one of them was the
boyfriend, and silently apologized.
The thought of this happening in her own room, with
anybody at all going through her stuff, made her
queasy. Having an agent show people through apartments and
houses that belonged to other people was bad enough, but open
houses, where anybody-
anybody
- could just walk in and look through her underwear . . .
Lindsay felt her queasiness turn to nausea, and
knew that if she didn't get out, she was going to throw
up. She hurried back through the rooms and found her
parents in the kitchen discussing the apartment with Rita
Goldman, who looked just like a raven cawing over a
prize piece of garbage.
"Mom?" she whispered, trying to pull her mother
aside. But her mother, still listening to the cawing of the
raven, put her arm around her shoulders and tried
to draw her into the conversation.
"It's only a block to the subway," she heard
her father telling her. "That's really terrific,
kitten!"
"Did you look at the bedrooms, sweetheart?"
her mother asked. "What do you think?"
"I think I've got to get out of here," Lindsay
managed, bile rising up in her gorge.
Her mother's smile faded into a look of concern.
"Honey, what's wrong? You look a little pale."
"I just need to get out of here."
Kara's motherly instincts came to the fore and she nodded.
"Okay." She turned to Steve. "I'm going
to take Lindsay out for
some air." She looked at her watch. "Oh, good
Lord, she must be starving-look how late it is!"
"Why don't we find a little place for some lunch?"
the raven clattered. "I can make a few phone
calls-maybe find something even better than this-and
we can all get a bite."
Lindsay tugged at her mother. She didn't want
to have lunch with this woman. All she wanted was the
Thai cabbage salad she'd been promised. Then
she wanted to go shopping and to forget moving to the city.
She struggled against the tears now threatening to overwhelm
her. "Mom, please?"
As if she'd read her daughter's thoughts, Kara
nodded, then glanced at Steve. "We'll see you
downstairs."
The elevator was crowded again, and Lindsay's
queasy stomach began to escalate into an anxiety
attack. She felt hot and clammy at the same
time, and steel bands seemed to be tightening around her
chest, making it hard to breathe. As the elevator
crept downward, she felt the strange heat rise
up through her chest and her neck and into her face, and when
the doors finally opened on the ground level, she was
unsteady on her feet.
She dropped onto a bench in the foyer and leaned
against her mother, who sat down next to her.
"What's the matter, darling?" Kara asked, her
brow creased with worry. "Are you sick?"
"I'm hot," Lindsay said. She picked up her
mother's hand and pressed it to her face.
"You're burning up," Kara said.
But already the flush was starting to pass. "No, I'm
going to be okay," Lindsay assured her. "I just
needed to get out of there."
"Then we'll just relax here for a few minutes and
wait for Dad. Okay?"
Lindsay nodded, closed her eyes and
silently prayed for some kind of miracle that would
mean they could just stay in their house and never have to go through
this again.
"Did you like this place?" Kara asked. "It
certainly seems to be the best thing we've
seen-close to the subway, and close to a very good
school, and not too far from your father's office." She
paused, then added, "And we can afford it. Barely,
but we can make it."
Lindsay hardly heard the words, a single thought
filling her mind: "Are people going to be going through our
house like this?"
Her mother looked puzzled. "Well, of course they
are. At the open houses next week. Why?"
Lindsay's eyes widened and she paled. "I
don't want anybody in my room," she
whispered. "And I don't want to move. Can't we
just forget about all this and go home?"
Kara hugged her close. "I wish we could," she
said. "But you know we can't! Come on, sweetheart."
Turning so she could face Lindsay, she tipped her
daughter's head up and looked into her
eyes.
"It's a new chapter, Lindsay. A new
adventure. I know it's scary, but you'll
get through it! We've had a wonderful life out on
the Island, but we'll have a wonderful one here,
too."
"But I hate all these places," Lindsay
whispered, her voice breaking. "I hate the city."
"You'll grow to love it. Trust me."
But as the elevator dinged and her father came out with
Rita Goldman and a flood of other people, Lindsay
knew it wasn't true. She hated the city now, and
she always would. "Someone already made an offer on this
place," she heard her father say, sounding
disappointed. "And it's been accepted." Lindsay
immediately felt better.
"Timing is everything," she heard the agent say.
"I'll do a little more research, and now that I've got
a better idea of what appeals to you, 1 can zero
in. We'll keep looking until we find the
place that's just right."
"Thai salad," Lindsay whispered to her mother.
"Thank you so much for your time," her mother said as her father
shook the agent's hand. Rita Goldman swirled
her black coat like a pair of wings, turned and
swooped out of the building with a promise to be in touch
soon.
ml
"We'll find something we all like," her father said, but
Lindsay knew the truth.
Her parents would find something
they
liked.
The best
she
could do was cope.
But she would do it. Somehow, she would do it.
Kara was just fastening the last button on her blouse
when she heard the doorbell. Damn. Was he
early? A glance at the bedside clock told her
he was right on time-
she
was late. "Lindsay?" she called. "Are you about
ready?"
The only response was the sound of the toilet flushing
in Lindsay's bathroom, which meant that she was still a
while away from being ready.
Kara slipped into her shoes and hurried down the
stairs, tucking the blouse into her skirt. "Coming,"
she breathed, hating, as always, to make anybody
wait, and wondering why even the few seconds it
took to get to the door made her feel guilty.
Mark Acton stood at the door,
briefcase in hand, his agent's smile covering his
face like a mask. "Good morning!"
Kara pulled the door wide. "Hi, Mark. Come
on in. We're running a little late this morning."
"No problem. You take your time, and I'll just get
started setting up."
Kara put Steve's breakfast dishes in the
dishwasher and turned off the coffeepot. "Coffee
before I throw it away?"
"No, thanks."
She took a final swipe at the countertops, then
looked around to make certain the kitchen looked clean
and appealing. Suddenly the yellow paint she'd
decided on two years ago didn't seem like such
a good choice. Too late now. "Lindsay!" she
called up the stairs. "Time to go!" She turned
back to the real-estate agent. "How's the
response so far?"
"I'm expecting twenty or so agents to caravan
through."
"Twenty! I didn't know there were that many agents in
town." She wished she'd researched it more thoroughly
and chosen a listing agent she liked a little better.
Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted by Lindsay's
voice.
"Mom?"
"Hi, honey," Kara said, glancing up at her
daughter, who had paused halfway down the stairs.
"Time to go." Lindsay didn't move, and it
wasn't until she spoke that Kara realized her
gaze was fixed on Mark Acton.
"Is he showing the house today?"
"It's the agents' open house," Kara said. "Are
you ready? I'm already late."
"Where are you going?"
Kara frowned. "I told you last night-I'm going
into the city to see some more apartments and have lunch with your
father."
Lindsay's eyes followed Mark Acton as he
moved around the living room, making tiny adjustments
to the furniture and carefully leveling the pictures
on the walls. "What time is this open house going
to be finished?"
Kara frowned as she watched Lindsay stare at the
agent with open hostility. "Honey, where are your
manners?" She shrugged apologetically to the agent,
but he waved it off.
"I just don't want to come home and have a bunch of
strange people here," Lindsay said, her tone annoying
Kara.
"Not a problem," Mark assured her, exaggeratedly
ignoring the teenager's hostility. "I'll be
finished by early afternoon."
"And 1 should be home by five," Kara said, her
voice tightening as Lindsay's expression only
darkened further. "Mark will be gone and I'll be
home. Will that suit Your Highness?"
Stung by her mother's words, Lindsay turned and fled
back up the stairs.
Kara sighed, knowing she'd handled Lindsay badly.
But she was late and still had a lot to do, and for once
Lindsay would just have to take care of herself. "I'm
sorry," she murmured, more to herself and the departed
Lindsay than to the real-estate agent.
"Moving is hard on kids," Mark said. "I
know."
"It's hard on everybody," Kara said.
Then Lindsay came running down the stairs again,
purse slung over her shoulder, book bag in hand.
She stopped short and turned to face Mark Acton
without a trace of the hostility she'd shown only a
moment before. "I'm sorry," she said, almost shyly.
"I didn't mean to be rude-I just don't like people in
my room."
"It's all right," he replied. "Nobody
likes having strangers in their house.
Unfortunately, it's just part of the game. No way
out of it if we're going to sell this place."
"Nobody's going to go through my stuff, are they?"
Lindsay asked, her voice anxious.
"Lindsay!" Kara said.
But once again Mark Acton appeared unoffended.
"It's okay," he told Kara. "It's a fair
question." He turned back to the girl whose prettiness
was now marred by a worried frown. "The only people who
will be here are professional Realtors. Wednesdays
are the traditional days for Realtor open houses.
There will be a caravan coming through from each real estate
office, and they'll be in and out very fast. They
probably have fifteen listings to look at today.
Believe me, nobody is going to touch anything."
"You're sure?" Lindsay fretted.
"I'm positive."
"And you'll be gone by five?"
He nodded. "Definitely. Probably
by noon-one at the latest."
Kara picked up her purse from the hutch and steered
her daughter toward the door. "And I'll be home
by five, too. Then we can work on your social
skills," she added pointedly, earning herself
a glare from Lindsay.
"Have a good day," Mark said.
"It'll be a good day when you bring us an offer,"
Kara replied. As they walked out into a clear cool
morning, she squeezed Lindsay's arm. "It's
going to be okay," she said.
"I know," Lindsay sighed. "And I'm sorry.
I'm trying-I really am."
"I know you are, sweetheart."
"How about if I go to Dawn's after practice?"
Lindsay suggested as she got into the car. "Could you
pick me up?"
Kara opened her door and got in, too. "Oh,
Lord, do I have to?" she pleaded. "Even after I
get back from the city, I've got to get
groceries and go to the cleaners and half a dozen other
things. Can't you just come home after practice?"
Lindsay hesitated, then decided further argument
would be useless. "I guess," she mumbled. As her
mother backed slowly out of the driveway, she asked,
"Are you and Dad going to see the raven again?"
Kara hit the brake and stared at her. "The raven?
What on earth are you talking about?"
A grin curled at the corners of Lindsay's
mouth. "You know-that woman we were with on
Sunday. Between her voice and that black coat, she
seemed just like a great big raven."
Kara laughed. "Well, thanks a lot for that!" she
said. "Now I'll never be able to look at her again
without thinking of a big black screeching bird. And the
sad part is, you're right!"
A few minutes later they pulled up in front
of the high school. "Just don't buy anything ugly,
okay?" Lindsay said before getting out, trying
to control the tremor in her voice.
Their eyes met, and Kara knew how hard it was for
her daughter
to put on a brave face. "I promise," she
said, reaching over to squeeze Lindsay's hand. Then
she grinned. "Raven!" she repeated
deliberately, before both of them would have dissolved
into tears. "Mean, but a perfect description.
Wait until I tell Dad."
A moment later she pulled away, leaving Lindsay
standing at the curb, watching her go. In the rearview
mirror, Kara could not see the tear running slowly
down her daughter's cheek.
ark Acton was feeling great. The open house was
over, and now he was at Fishburn's-the pub where
half the agents in Camden Green seemed
to hang out-with his third stein of beer sweating in front
of him.
Around him, people he knew were bragging noisily about the
huge deals they'd put together, but Mark knew it was
mostly bullshit- three-quarters of the people in
Fishburn's had never sold a house for over a
million, and that included him. And the Marshall
place wasn't going to go for anywhere near a
million, either, despite the granite countertops
in the kitchen and the nice furniture Kara Marshall
had filled the place with.
Not that the open house had gone badly-it hadn't.
By eleven- thirty three caravans had come through, with
Rick Mancuso and the Century 21 crowd as
well as the bunch from ReMax.
And it wasn't just caravans coming through, either-there had
been a fairly steady stream of independent brokers
and agents as well, and he'd done his best to make
sure every one of them left their cards in the rosewood
bowl he'd set on the table in the entry hall. He
gave out a lot of flyers and talked to as many of them
as he could, and more than a few of the drop-ins told
him they'd be calling for an appointment to show it to a
client. The Marshalls would be very happy with his
report.
But mostly he'd done what he liked to do best when
he was doing a brokers' open: wander around, getting the
feel of the place. He had figured out years ago
that not only did every house have a unique feel
to it, but so did almost every room in every house. The
trick was to determine which rooms felt best and which
worst, and then plan future tours so you got the
bad rooms out of the way early and progressed
steadily to the best ones. It was a strategy that had
kept him at his agency's Million Dollar
Roundtable every year for almost a decade, and it would work
perfectly for the Marshall house, because it didn't have
any bad rooms.
It was one of those houses that just felt good, and he'd
known almost from the moment Kara and her
daughter-Lindsay? Yeah, that was her name,
Lindsay-had left him alone and he made his first
quick tour, that it wasn't going to be hard to sell.
He'd adjusted Kara's canisters and then gone into the
living room, where he automatically picked a bit
of lint from the carpeting and rearranged the pillows on
the sofa and wing chairs. And just standing in the living
room, he'd known. This was exactly the kind of
place he himself wished he lived in.
Nothing in any of the other rooms had changed
his mind, especially the kid's-Lindsay's.
He'd stood still in that room for a while, and it seemed
he could feel her presence, and it felt good.
Pretty room for a pretty girl.
Then car doors started slamming outside, and he'd
straightened the stack of color flyers one more time,
checked his tie and his name tag, and put on his
professional smile.
He opened the door, and the event began.
The hours had gone by quickly, and he listened to the same
comments and answered the same questions, to the point where they
almost became meaningless:
"Nice listing, Mark."
"This place'll sell in a heartbeat."
"What's the asking price?"
Over and over again he had patiently repeated every
detail to every agent, all the time keeping an eye on
the steady stream of agents who cruised through the
downstairs, opening every door and checking
the cabinets, then glancing quickly into the garage before
heading upstairs to get a feel for the rest of the house.
What was it about garages?
"Mark wondered now as he drained half his third
stein of beer. But of course he knew-garages were
boring. And they were boring because people didn't
live in them.
That's what
everyone wanted to see at an open house. The
places where people lived.
After the agents came back downstairs, they'd
checked out the kitchen one more time-always the kitchen, because
that's where people spend most of their lives-then dropped
their business cards in the rosewood bowl on their
way out and picked up flyers.
He knew that the more flyers they picked up, the
better they liked the house.
And today they'd taken a lot.
Over and over, in the lull between each caravan, Mark
went back through the house, moving things back to the
exact places they'd been, doing his best to keep the
house as the Marshalls had left it that morning. After
all, even though almost everybody loved poking around in
strangers" houses, nobody liked having
strangers poke around in their own. So he always did
his best to make it look as if no one-not even he
himself-had been there at all. When the Marshalls
came home, everything should look exactly right.
It had been late in the day when Sam Cousins and
Ike North showed up. He knew they'd be there at
the end of the event so they could all go
to Fishbuin's together. And he'd been especially
pleased when they came down from their tour of the second
floor and Ike spoke before they even hit the landing
at the bottom of the stairs.
"Is this going to be open on Sunday?"
Mark nodded.
"I'll bring some people by. I wish I could get them
in tomorrow, but they're in the city and won't be able to make
it until the weekend."
"You'll be lucky if this place is still available
on Sunday," Sam Cousins put in.
Music to Mark's ears.
"So," Ike said, glancing around at the house,
empty now except for the three of them.
"Fishburn's?"
Mark nodded. "Meet you there. I have to lock up, so
order me a cold one."
Alone, he'd gone through the rooms one last time,
turning out all the lights, checking to see that the
doors were locked and everything was exactly as it had
been that morning. At the top of the stairs, he went
first into Kara and Steve's bedroom, then their bath.
Everything looked good. He turned out the lights and
closed the door, then did the same with Steve's
study and the guest room.
Then he'd gone to Lindsay's room and smiled as
he turned out the light and closed the door, knowing that
this was the room that would sell the house. It was neat and
tidy, and you could almost feel the girl who lived in
it. A sweet girl-a girl the Marshalls were
fortunate to have.
At the front door, he'd picked up his
briefcase and the rosewood bowl and looked around one
last time. Everything looked perfect, and he felt
great.
And now, as he drained the third stein of beer and
ordered a fourth, he still felt great.
Great, and lucky that the Marshalls had chosen him
to sell their house.
I didn't expect the house to smell so sweet.
Nor was it the fake smell of rose petals in a
bowl, or the kind of canned aroma of baking bread that
so many agents fill houses with nowadays-as if
anybody really bakes bread anymore! No, the
house today was filled with the scent of love and harmony,
and the moment 1 walked through the front door, I could
feel the warmth of affection as well.
Some houses fairly reek of suspicion or
wariness or anger, and in an instant you can feel the
misery of the family who lives there.
Even worse, some houses have no fragrance at
all-the poison of indifference hangs in the air.
But not the house I went to today-the house 1 found on
the Internet last week that set me to tingling from the
moment I went on the video tour.
This house has balance. Wholeness. Wholesomeness.
Here there will be no religious icons on the walls,
no evidence of secret perversions hidden beneath the
mattresses.
That is the wonderful thing about being utterly
nondescript; it is almost the same as being
invisible. And being invisible is like being God.
Today I had nearly a whole day of being like God,
and the feeling was sublime. As I moved from room
to room, seeing everything, touching everything, feeling
everything, no one noticed me at all.
Though people were milling around me nearly every moment I was
in the house, it was as if I was utterly alone.
Alone with her.
And everything-
everything
comwas perfect.
A calendar hung on the kitchen bulletin board
next to some snapshots. One photo was of a blond
girl in a cheer leading uniform, and the moment
I saw the picture, I knew.
I knew her.
I'd always known her.
She was so obviously the one who lives in the
girlish bedroom on the second floor whose every
detail I memorized from the tour on the Internet.
And according to the wall calendar, this coming Sunday there would
be an open house.
Below that, written in a slightly different hand-a
girlish hand-was another notation: "Cheerleading
practice."
And then another notation, written small and by yet a
third hand: "House-hunting. Dinner at Cafe
des Artistes?"
So it will be Sunday. What could be more perfect?
After seeing her picture and reading the calendar, I
moved with newfound purpose through the first floor
rooms just slowly enough to seem nothing more than a
mildly interested agent, then headed up the stairs
to steep myself in the aura of my new love-my
perfect child.
The instant I walked into her room, I knew that
she was the focal point, the absolute center, not
only of this house, but of this family.
The lovely aroma that imbued the whole house
was strongest there in her room, and I wanted to sink
into the soft comfort of her bed, to run my hands over the
sheets that enveloped her body every night, to feel
myself sinking not just into her bed, but into her.
Yet I restrained myself.
I had to be patient.
My digital camera-one so tiny it can be concealed in
the palm of my hand-captured every aspect of the room,
but when I turned to her bed, I couldn't quite restrain
myself.
I let the back of my hand run across her pillow,
and as my skin touched the place where her head had
lain, I could feel the residue of her psychic
aura.
Oh, yes! It was her!
In that moment, I knew that my instincts had been
right: this is the one! It isn't just the way she
looks, but everything else as well.
After I touched her pillow, I touched everything
else, too: the things on her desk, the photos on
her dresser, the stuffed animals on the windowsill.
I opened her drawers and touched the soft silky
garments she wears next to her skin.
Surely it was only natural to slip a pair of
her panties into my pocket, given how they
soothed my tortured soul.
With my fingers clutching the silken garment that was hidden
in my pocket, I drifted invisibly down the
stairs and out the door.
And in all the time I was in the house, nobody
spoke to me.
It was as if nobody even saw me.
Indeed, it was as if I hadn't been there at all.
Just as it always has been-no one seeing anything.
As I made my way home, I held those
panties pressed to my cheek, barely able to contain
my euphoria.
Then, with her image clear in my mind, I crushed
her panties in my fist.
Oh, yes-this is the one.
This is the girl, and finally I shall have her.
Soon. Very soon.
I can barely wait for Sunday.
Lindsay paused on the sidewalk, gazing at the
house across the street. From here, it looked no
different at all. It was still her house, still the
familiar house she had grown up in.
The house that held all her secrets.
Yet even in the bright light of the sunny spring afternoon,
something about it had changed. And she knew what
it was.
All day long, people she didn't know and would never know
had been wandering through the house.
Strangers.
Going through her room.
Going through her things.
Just the thought of it made her shudder, and now that she was
across the street, all the horrible thoughts and feelings
that had been plaguing her as the day crept by came
flooding over her once again.
Except now they were even worse.
Throughout the day, she had been so preoccupied with the
idea of strangers milling through her house and her
room and her things
that she'd found herself behaving completely different than
usual as she walked through the halls at school.
Where she'd always reached out to everyone she knew, touching
their shoulders or their arms or even just brushing against
their fingertips as they passed, today she didn't want
to touch anybody else.
Then, when she'd gone to Dawn's house after
practice and tried to explain how she was feeling,
Dawn hadn't gotten it at all.
"They're just real estate people," Dawn said. "It's
what they do. They don't even care what's
in the house, as long as they can sell it."
"It's creepy," Lindsay declared, thinking of Mark
Acton. But then she told Dawn about the Raven and
they both started laughing, and for a few minutes she
felt better. In fact, by the time she left
Dawn's, the whole thing seemed silly.
But now she was home, and all her creepy feelings
were back, only there was no place else to go.
Remembering that her mom should already be home, she
crossed the street, walked across the lawn and onto
the porch, and unlocked the front door.
The house smelled different.
And it didn't smell good, like when the cleaning lady
came.
No, it smelled like people.
People she didn't know.
"Mom?" she called. "I'm home." The clothes
washer was going, but her mother didn't answer.
Lindsay dropped her backpack on the kitchen
counter and ran up the stairs.
Her room smelled wrong, too, but not like the rest
of the house. It smelled different.
There was a musky odor, and there was something about it that
made her skin crawl.
Lindsay opened the window wide, and as she
did, noticed that her stuffed animals had been
moved. Why would anybody touch the stuffed animals
she'd lined up on the sill?
"Mom?" she called out again, almost unconsciously.
She looked around. Everything else seemed to be in the
right
place. A fresh breeze came in through the window and
some of the musky odor went away.
But not all of it.
And it was going to be even worse on Sunday, when
dozens- maybe even hundreds-of people were going to go through
the house. How could her parents stand it?
Lindsay hated the whole idea of it.
Hated
it.
"Hi, honey," Kara said from the doorway, startling
Lindsay out of her reverie. "I was just on the phone
with Mark Acton. He said he had twenty-eight people
through and thought maybe we'd get an offer or two
even before Sunday."
"Good," Lindsay said, feeling a surge of
relief.
Kara leaned against the doorjamb and cocked her head
quizzically. "That's a change of tune."
Lindsay shrugged. "I just don't want
any more strangers in my room." Her eyes met
her mother's. "They touched my stuff, Mom, just like I
knew they would. They moved things around."
Kara sighed heavily. "Nobody touched anything,
Linds. Besides, how could you tell if somebody moved
something?"
"I just can," Lindsay insisted, and wrinkled her
nose at the musky odor that still hung faintly in the
air. "And it stinks in here. Can't you smell it?"
When her mother only offered her the kind of indulgent
smile that told her she was being humored, not taken
seriously, Lindsay felt her face getting red.
She wasn't a child anymore, and her mother shouldn't
treat her like one. But before she could say anything, her
mother seemed to sense her mood and quickly changed the
subject.
"Dad's coming home tonight. And we saw some good
places today."
"I guess that's good," Lindsay sighed. She
flopped on the bed, and the strange musky smell
grew stronger.
It was on her pillow!
She jumped off the bed as if it were on fire.
"Mom, somebody was touching my pillow.
My pillow!"
"Honey-" Kara began, bur Lindsay didn't
her her finish.
"I'm telling you," she said, snatching up rhe
pillow. "Smell this!"
Kara took a quick sniff of the pillow, then shrugged.
"Sorry, honey-it just smells like pillow to me.
Old pillow, maybe, but just pillow."
When her mother went downstairs to start dinner,
Lindsay ripped the pillowcase off and threw the
pillow in the corner.
But it didn't matter. Everything had changed.
This room, she knew, would never feel the same again.
Maybe it might be a good idea to move after all.
Why she woke up, Lindsay didn't know. All
she knew was that one moment she'd been sound asleep
and the next wide-awake.
Wide-awake and listening.
But for what? The silence of the night was almost palpable.
And then she heard it.
The sound of breathing. She relaxed, certain it was her
mom or dad checking up on her. Then she realized
the door was closed and the room was dark. Faint light
came in around the edges of the closed curtains, and
that-along with familiarity-illuminated her room just enough
so she knew the room was empty.
And yet she could still hear it: raspy, and uneven.
And now she could smell something, too, and as the scent
filled her nostrils, she knew what it was: the
same musky odor that had hung in the room when
she'd come home this afternoon.
And now someone
was
in her room.
Stay still,
she told herself.
Stay still and maybe he'll just go away.
She
tried to regulate her breathing, but her heart was
pounding so hard it was all she could do to keep from gasping
for breath.
Though she still couldn't see him, she felt him move
closer, and as the smell grew stronger, she could
feel the warmth of his breath on her arm.
He was going to kiss her!
She wanted to scream-wanted to turn on her
bedside lamp and flood the room with light, but she
couldn't.
She couldn't move at all.
The hot breath moved up her arm to her neck, then
something touched her hair.
The musky aroma was so heavy she wanted to gag, but
even that was beyond her. She felt paralyzed. She
tried desperately to move her mouth, to move her
hand, but her lips were numb and her arms had become so
heavy that her muscles didn't have the strength to lift
them.
She was going to faint! But if she fainted, she
wouldn't know what was happening.
What he was doing to her?
She had to know. Had to!
Now she felt a hand snake up under the covers, and
she struggled with her paralyzed body to shrink away from
it, to strike out, to hit him, to sink her fingernails
into his face and rip the skin from his cheek. But her
body wouldn't obey her commands. She lay frozen as
the strange aroma filled her nostrils and the hands
roamed over her body.
How had it happened? How had he gotten in? But
she already knew-he'd been there all afternoon, hiding,
waiting. . . .
A tiny, helpless whimper finally crept from her
lips.
One of his hands caressed her cheek and then covered her
mouth while the other hand covered her breast, and once
again she willed her body to respond.
Once again she tried to struggle, tried to scream, and
again succeeded in making a tiny sound, but it was no more
than a pitiful gurgle in the back of her throat.
Yet somehow it
was enough to break the paralyzing fear, and then she took a
deep breath and found her voice.
She sat straight up screaming.
The hands vanished.
Then her parents were there, and the light was on, and her
mom was smoothing the hair from her sweating forehead.
What had happened? He was there-she
knew
he was there! She'd heard him and smelled him and
felt him touching her! But now her parents were with her and
she was afraid she might throw up.
"Honey," Kara said, perching on the edge of the bed and
gently drawing a strand of hair away from her face.
"It's all right-it was just a bad dream."
A bad dream? She rubbed her face. Smelled
her hands.
The aroma was gone; all she smelled was the almond
lotion she'd used before going to bed.
Her gaze shifted from her mother to her father, who stood
at the foot of her bed, wearing his pajama bottoms
and a white T-shirt, his eyes clouded with
concern.
"Daddy?" she squeaked out.
Her father came around, sat on the bed next to her mother
and rubbed her hand as gently as her mother had eased the
hair from her forehead. "It was just a nightmare,
kitten."
Her eyes darted around the room as if they were
unwilling to accept her father's words, but everything
looked normal.
So it
had
been a dream-a nightmare. But she hadn't had one
since she was little. And it had been so real.
She took a deep breath, embarrassed now that she
had yelled in her sleep and awakened her parents.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
Kara smiled and kept smoothing her hair. "Nothing
to be sorry about, darling-everybody has bad
dreams."
Lindsay managed a smile. "I feel so
stupid. I-was
"Would you like some warm milk?" her mom asked. "That
always cured the bad dreams when you were little."
Lindsay shook her head. "I better just go back
to sleep. I've got a science test in the
morning."
"We'll leave the hall light on," her father said.
Lindsay nodded, and snuggled under her covers, which
smelled just fine now. No strange aroma-just the
scent of her own lotion.
Her parents kissed her, then turned out the light and
left the room. The hall light went on, and her
father came back to close her bedroom door. But
he left it open a couple of inches, without her even
asking. "Wrap yourself in the wings of your guardian
angel, kitten," he said. "She'll hide you from the
nightmares."
"Thanks, Daddy." He hadn't said that to her in
years-not since she was in third grade, at least.
But tonight the words gave her the comfort she needed.
Her father's shadow vanished from the crack in the
doorway, and a few seconds later she heard the
master bedroom door close.
She tried to relax, reminding herself that nobody was in
her room. Yet she was sure she wouldn't go back
to sleep, even with her parents in the next room, because
despite their reassurances, she knew that even though
her room was empty now, it hadn't been earlier in
the day.
Someone
had
been in her room-someone evil-and he'd left something
behind; something more than just the vestiges of his strange
aroma.
And she knew that no matter what she did, she would
never be able to rid her room of his presence.
Suddenly, in the darkness of the night, she wished the
house would be sold tomorrow and they could move away.
Far, far away, where the man who had been in her
room could never find her.
She lay quietly, staring at the silhouette of the
stuffed elephant on her windowsill-the stuffed
elephant the man had moved.
Getting out of bed, she picked the elephant off the
sill and put it in the hall outside her door.
She felt better with it gone, just as she'd felt
better after she tore the pillowcase off earlier.
She got back into bed and again told herself that she was
safe.
But she still couldn't sleep.
knew it," Kara said as she and Steve got back in
bed. "I woke up about ten seconds before she
screamed, and I
knew
something was wrong." Steve put his arm around
her and drew her close, so her head lay on his
chest, and she fell gratefully into the luxurious
feel of his warmth. "Remember when she fell off that
horse at camp and broke her collarbone?"
She felt Steve's chest move as he nodded.
"I knew then, too. Remember? We were at the
Billingslys for dinner, and suddenly I knew I
had to get home, even though we'd barely been gone
an hour. And by the time we got home, there was a
call on the machine. Remember?"
"I remember," Steve said in a tone that told her
she'd told the story a few times too often.
But it wasn't just the story that Kara remembered. It
was hearing the terrible words:
Lindsay . . . accident. . . hospital
... on the message machine. "A mother knows these
things," she said. "This move is even harder for her
than I thought it would be." She put her arm around
Steve and clung to him. "I feel so guilty."
"Hey, it was only a nightmare," he said, pulling
her closer. "It'll all be over soon."
"It wasn't 'only" a nightmare," Kara said.
"She's upset. She's upset enough that she was
absolutely terrified."
"And this afternoon she'd convinced herself that someone
moved things around in her room, too," Steve said.
"And went through her drawers and rubbed his face on her
pillow, and even took her underwear. his
"You think any of it could have happened?" Kara asked,
her voice sounding to her as young and as vulnerable as
Lindsay's.
"Not a chance," Steve replied. "There was no one in
the house but a bunch of real estate people. I think she
talked herself into that nightmare. You watch-she'll be
fine."
"I guess," Kara sighed. "At least she will be
once we're out of here and into the city and you can be home
every night to take care of
your wife and daughter." She snuggled against Steve,
and a short while later his regular breathing turned
into a light snore.
But there was no sleep for Kara; though Lindsay
only had a nightmare, she wasn't prone
to dramatics or hysterics. If her daughter said
someone had been in her underwear drawer, she believed
that someone had.
I believe I dreamed of this morning every moment that I
slept. I've slept a lot since
Wednesday-after being in her house-being in her
room-feeling her presence-filling my
nostrils with her sweet aroma- being awake without her
seemed too painful to bear.
So I slept. Hours? Days? I really don't
remember.
But I remember dreaming of Sunday morning, and when
this morning finally came, I think I knew it even
before I awoke.
I felt it-a thrill surging through every vein and every
nerve of my body. I savored the feeling,
delaying the moment when I finally rose. I donned
my favorite robe-a black one with a bloodred
lining-and my outside slippers before going down
to retrieve the paper from the spot the boy always
leaves it. It was quiet-I saw no one else,
nor even heard a car.
I liked that.
Not that I was the least bit concerned, let alone
actually worried-I believe I looked as
casual as anyone could look, bringing in a Sunday
newspaper. But once I was back inside, I had
the paper torn open before it reached the table.
And there on the front page-the front page!-of the
Real Estate section was the open house ad. It was
a good-sized ad, too; this agent had spent some
money to attract a good group of
prospects.
And all of this-the placement, as well as the size of the
ad-works in my favor.
Not that it was perfect. The photograph of the house was
taken from an awkward angle, so it didn't look
its best, but there was an intriguing description, the
kind that would attract a lot of curious people.
The more the better.
I circled the ad with my red felt-tip pen and
felt the excitement and anticipation building inside
me.
It is a feeling of which I never tire.
Still, I need to rein it in. I need to be patient.
I need to keep control.
I sipped a cup of coffee while I planned my
day. The open house begins at 1:00 p.m.; I
would arrive about two hours later, just when the most people
would be there. Earlier, people will still be digesting their lunch,
and later it will be nothing but the last minute stragglers
with an agent trying to shoo them all out.
But not right at 3:00 p.m., either. People tend to be
aware when it is an even hour, and remember things more
clearly. Perhaps thirteen or fourteen minutes before
three would be appropriate.
Yes, I believe that will be perfect.
I've already charted out what time to bathe, what time
to dress, and the route I shall take to get there, of
course.
And the place to park. I know the garages of the
neighbors. I know the alleys that the service people
use, and I also know that those alleys are blissfully
deserted on Sundays. I can idle quietly down
the alley, park, walk around the block, and enter the
house as invisibly as pollen on the breeze.
I did all that on Wednesday, and I think I've
done it dozens of times since in my dreams.
It is all imprinted in my memory, and nothing will
go wrong.
My clothes have been laid out since yesterday
morning. I shall wear
brown corduroy slacks with a brown and blue
plaid shirt. In those colors, I will blend right in
with the look of the house-and all the other lookers.
I think of it as camouflage. No one will even
notice me.
And with luck, it will rain! Rain means more activity
at an open house. Rain means that the agent hosting
the open house will spend more time looking at the carpeting
to make certain that people are wiping their feet or wearing
those stupid little booties than who is coming
and going. (perhaps I should add a brown sweater vest
to my costume-it may be spring, but there can still be a
chill in the air.) But most important, rain
means the house will be gloomier and I will feel more at
home.
More at home.
Now why did I say that? After all, I already
feel at home in that house.
In that bedroom.
That sweet, virginal bedroom.
I can't wait. . . .
Please?" Lindsay pleaded. "I went with you last
weekend and it was awful. And I was awful! I was
rude to that real estate lady, and I hated everything,
and I almost threw up in the lobby of that one building.
Why would you even want me to go?" She saw her father
glance uncertainly at her mother, and decided to play
another card. "Besides, I have cheer leading
practice."
Kara shook her head. "We want to make sure
we buy something we can all live with, honey. That's
why we want you with us when we look-you need to help
us decide."
"But it was all so awful last week," Lindsay
repeated.
"I know it was, but today it will be better, and we
really want you to spend the day with us in the city."
"With you and the Raven."
"C'mon, kitten," Steve said. "It'll be
fun." He wrapped his toast around two pieces of
bacon and bit off half of it, washing it down with
coffee.
"You think that's fun?" Lindsay asked
incredulously. "Well, it
isn't. I don't even know what I'm supposed
to be looking at in those places-all they look like
to me is a bunch of empty rooms that don't seem
like anyone could ever live in them. Can't you guys
choose?"
Kara shook her head again. "We are not going to buy
a place without you seeing it first. We're a
family, remember? And I'm afraid I don't
really see the point of you going to practice, either,
since you're not going to be on the squad here next
year."
"You don't know that," Lindsay said, a note of
desperation coming into her voice. "I mean-not for sure.
Maybe the house won't sell, and I'll at least
get to graduate with my friends. Or maybe you can
move to the city right away, and I'll move
in with Dawn or something."
Kara looked at Steve, and he could see that she was
wavering. "What about that nightmare you had the other
night?" he said to his daughter. "I'm not sure
what time we'll be back, and you don't want to come
home to an empty house this afternoon, do you?"
"I'll go to Dawn's after practice and hang out
until you get home," Lindsay said, speaking so
quickly that her parents both knew it wasn't an
idea she'd come up with on the spur of the moment.
Simultaneously, both Steve and Kara sighed in
surrender, neither willing to have the argument expand into a
full-fledged fight that would ruin the day for all of
them. "I guess that works," Kara finally said.
"If it's okay with your mom, it's okay with me,"
Steve agreed, shrugging. "But I still wish-was
"The open house here is from one to four," Kara
interjected, cutting Steve off before he could
rekindle the argument. "We should be back
by five-six at the latest."
Not if we find a place and decide to write an
offer,
Steve thought, but refrained from saying it, certain that the
idea of buying a place today would only upset
Lindsay even more. "If we're going to be
later than that, we'll call. Okay?"
Lindsay nodded, feeling better now that she realized
she'd won the argument. But then she saw her mother's
eyes cloud.
"Oh, Lord," Kara groaned. "I forgot-we're
having dinner with the Bennetts."
Steve's brows arched as he turned to Lindsay,
seizing the dinner as one last chance to convince her
to change her mind. "C'mon, kitten. We're
having dinner at Cafe des Artistes. You'll
love it-come with us."
For a moment she seemed to waver. "Who else is
going to be there?" she asked.
"Mitch Bennett and his wife."
Lindsay's eyes rolled. "Ooh, that sounds like a
lot of fun. A whole evening of watching an old
man grope his trophy wife. I think I'll
pass."
"Lindsay!" Kara said, even though she didn't
disagree with her daughter. Mitch Bennett had
dumped JoAnne-and there was no other word but
"dumped"-for a girl scarcely ten years older than
Lindsay. And since Mitch Bennett was also third
in seniority in Steve's firm, no one could say a
word about it. All any of them could do was
pretend that the new wife was faintly interesting, which
she wasn't.
Steve, thankfully, didn't argue, either.
"Okay, then. You stay at Dawn's," he said.
"Can you spend the night there?"
"I'll be fine!" Lindsay insisted. She rose from
her chair, picked up the milk and her dirty
dishes and took them to the dishwasher.
"Then we're going to take off," Kara said,
glancing at her watch. "We're meeting Rita
Goldman at eleven-thirty. Mark will be here
soon to go through the house and get himself set up-I
told him we'd all be gone by ten. Do you want
to stay here until practice?"
Lindsay's brow furrowed. "With that real estate
guy? No way. How about if you just drop me at
Dawn's?"
"How about if you say 'please" and offer me a
smile with that request?" Kara countered.
Lindsay pasted a hugely exaggerated smile
onto her face and drawled an equally exaggerated
"Puh-leeeeezx?" and suddenly all three of them
were laughing.
Maybe the day was going to work out for all of them after
all.
Fifteen minutes later Steve stood in the
kitchen, waiting-as he always did-for the two females
in his life to come downstairs and get in the car. It was
already ten after ten, and they would have to hurry if they were
going to meet Rita Goldman on schedule. He
opened his mouth to yell up the stairs, thought better of
it, and decided to kill whatever time they took by taking
a swipe at the countertop, adjusting the coffeepot
and putting the dishcloth into the laundry. As he
came back into the kitchen, he realized just how much
he was going to miss this house. He and Kara had
designed it themselves, and supervised almost every moment of
its construction, and now that it had that perfect lived-in
look, and the landscaping had matured into the vision they'd
only been able to see in their minds for the first fifteen
years, they were leaving it.
For just a moment he was almost tempted to skip the
meeting with Rita Goldman, take the house off the
market, and figure out some other way to solve their
problems. But even as the thought came to mind, he
knew there was no other way. The die was cast, and it
was time to move on. But if only-
The doorbell jerked him out of his reverie.
"Mr. Marshall!" Mark Acton said, coming through the
front door as Steve entered the living
room. "I didn't expect you to be home."
Steve uttered a hollow chuckle. "We're trying
to get out of here," he said, offering the other man his
hand. "You know women."
Mark Acton's hand felt limp in Steve's.
"Don't I know it!" he said. "Can't live with
"em, and can't live without 'em!" As the tired
cliche lay quivering between them like a dying fish,
Steve understood exactly why Lindsay hadn't
wanted to be here when the agent arrived. Acton
seemed not to notice his reaction. "I just thought I'd
get things arranged in the house," he said, "get my
signs up and then come back about twelve-thirty."
"That's fine," Steve said. He turned and called
up the stairs. "Ladies? Time to go!"
Seconds later Kara and Lindsay came
downstairs, Kara carrying
her purse and the portfolio she'd been keeping of
Manhattan real estate, Lindsay with her gym
bag slung over her shoulder.
Steve watched as Acton greeted them. While
Kara shook the agent's hand warmly and gave him a
few last minute instructions, Lindsay avoided
him completely, walking around behind Steve so she
wouldn't have to touch Mark Acton's hand or
even say hello to him. And he realized he felt
more sympathy for his daughter's open dislike of the man
than for his wife's apparent warmth.
Not that he didn't understand what Kara was doing. For
years he'd watched her treat people he knew she
despised as if they were her closest friends.
And as a lawyer, he was even better at it than she
was.
"Well, we're in your capable hands now," he said,
slapping Acton jovially on the shoulder. "I've
got a feeling you're going to sell this place today!"
"I've got that feeling, too," he replied as
Steve followed his wife and daughter toward the
kitchen and the garage beyond. "I think we've got a
good chance of doing just that."
"Excellent," Steve said.
And if you do,
he added silently to himself,
I'll
never have to see you again.
Then he was out the garage door and put Mark
Acton-and his open house-out of his mind, focusing
instead on finding his family a new home. But as
he drove away and glanced at the house in the
rearview mirror, he knew that no
matter where they went, it wouldn't be as wonderful as the
house they were leaving.
After all, despite the problems they'd had
lately, it was a house that had no bad memories.
Mark Acton glanced at the clock on the
mantel: 2:45. Only another hour and fifteen
minutes and he could close up the house, head over
to Fishburn's, and start unwinding over a cold one.
But right now he still had a houseful of people, and more were coming-
in fact, they'd started arriving early, and continued
streaming steadily in since even before the official one
o'clock opening.
Which meant the ad had worked.
As had putting signs up early.
And the weather was cooperating, with a low, chilly cloud
cover and threats of rain-just bad enough to keep people from going
jogging, playing softball, or heading out on the Sound
for a day of boating. But not bad enough to keep them at
home. Indeed, it was what Mark thought of as
"perfect open house weather," and obviously a lot
of people had agreed with him.
The first couple had knocked on the door, then opened
it and called out a "Yoo-hoo" before he even had the
brochures laid out on the dining room table.
That alone had been enough to tell him this was going
to be a good open house. Even if he didn't
sell the place today, there would be plenty of
opportunities to prospect for new customers.
He'd given out a couple of dozen business cards,
and almost as many flyers. The worst that could happen would
be that he'd pick up a new client or two, and
if he couldn't sell one of them this house, he had
half a dozen more houses to show them some other time.
"Hi!" The woman's cheery greeting jerked Mark
out of his thoughts, and he put on his best smile and
started toward her. But even before he was close enough
to offer her his hand, she held up her own as if to fend
him off. "We're just nosy neighbors."
"Hey, that's fine!" Mark assured them, giving no
visible sign that his interest had dropped from high
to next to none. "C'mon in and look around." Then
he fished a business card out of his pocket. "You
live in a great neighborhood," he said. "But if
you ever decide you're ready to make a change,
give me a call. I'll bet you have no idea
what you could get for your own house."
"I think we're starting to," the male half of the
couple said as they headed off to look at the kitchen.
As soon as they were gone, another couple came through
the front door, but they were very young-maybe
newlyweds-and Mark could see at a glance that there was
no way they could afford anything like what he was selling
today. Still, you never knew what the future held, so
he was pleasant enough to them, and by the time he'd given them
a quick rundown on the house and turned them loose
to poke around on their own, more people were arriving.
The next couple said they were working with an agent across
town, and that was a good sign-whoever it was hadn't come
up with what they wanted, but they were seriously interested
in finding something to buy. Mark gave them a personal
tour, pointing out every feature of the house and implying that
there was enough interest in the place that they'd better run
back to their guy within the hour with earnest money ready
in their hands.
Just as he was about to lead them up to the second floor,
a single man came through the front door. Mark
called out a greeting to him, but knew this wasn't a
house for a single man, and that a married man would never
buy a house without his wife seeing it. If this guy
was previewing it for her, then he probably knew
what he was doing, so Mark saw no point in wasting
time on the latest arrival unless he came back with
his wife. Then, as he was turning away, another
man came in, and for a moment Mark reconsidered his
appraisal- perhaps the two men were a
couple, which was a whole mother kettle of fish. This could
be the perfect house in a perfect neighborhood for
two well-heeled, professional men. Most of the
kids in the neighborhood were growing up, and soon it
would be pretty much an adult community, just right for
two men who were getting too old for the city.
Mark continued talking to the couple on the stairs
while keeping an eye on the two men, but as they
moved off in different directions, it was clear they
weren't together. His interest in both of them dropped
to zero-even lower than was his interest in the neighbors.
Refocusing on the couple he was escorting, he
deftly moved them toward the bedrooms.
Then, at four o'clock, everything was suddenly over. The
house emptied out quickly. The day had been a
success, and he sat down on the couch to enjoy a
few minutes of quiet, then opened the guest book
and began making notes about as many of the people as he could
remember. Already, he'd divided them into those who were
prospects for this house, or another house, or just
looky-loos to be forgotten, at least until he
saw them again at his next open house. Then he
began to mentally associate each person in the book
with the faces he'd been seeing all day. For the most
part it was easy-he'd always had a good
memory for names and faces-and today it had mainly been
couples, as usual, and only one single man.
No, that wasn't right. He remembered
two
single men.
So one of them obviously hadn't signed in.
The one who had-Rick Mancuso-had introduced
himself when they'd run into each other in the master
bedroom, and Mark had no trouble recalling what he
looked like.
But what about the other man?
The one who hadn't signed the book?
Apparently he'd merely come and gone, not staying more
than a minute or two. Which was okay-it happened
all the time.
But the funny thing was, he couldn't remember
anything about him.
Nothing.
Weird, given how good his memory for people had always
been. Still, it had been a great day. Though no one
had written an offer on the spot, Mark was sure
that Ike North would bring something in tomorrow or the next
day, and he had a couple of follow-up calls
to make, one of which he was fairly certain would
result in an offer. The Marshalls were
going to be very happy that they'd given him the listing.
After a quick walk-through of the house to make certain
everything was as it ought to be, he locked it up and headed
for Fish- burn's.
And didn't give the man he couldn't remember
another thought.
Lindsay slammed her locker door, liking the sound
as it echoed through the halls. She loved being at
school when nobody else was there-somehow, it made
her feel special. She couldn't quite describe it
even to herself, but that didn't matter because even if she
could, she'd never say anything about it to anybody.
They'd just laugh at her for feeling anything but disgust
at having to be at school at all.
But she liked the quiet of the huge, cavernous
building that was usually throbbing with noise and
activity, and she knew she was going to miss it next
year as she walked down the polished floor of the
hallway and pushed out through the front doors out into the
chilly, overcast afternoon.
Dawn was waiting for her outside. "What are you
doing tonight?" Lindsay asked as they began walking
home. For the last hour she'd been trying to figure
out how to get Dawn to invite her over for dinner-or
even to spend the night-without revealing that she
was afraid to go home, at least until her folks
were back from the city.
Dawn groaned. "I have to go to my dad's for
dinner." Dawn's father and stepmother lived across town-not
far, but not close enough to walk, either. "He's been on
the road for a week, and I haven't seen him for a
while, so he's picking me up at our house at
five." She checked her watch. "I better
hurry-I want to change before he gets there."
"My parents are apartment hunting in the city,"
Lindsay said, kicking at a pebble on the
sidewalk. "They won't be home until late.
They're having dinner."
"Cool!" Dawn said, oblivious to the gloom in
Lindsay's voice. "You'll get the house to yourself.
I love it when my mom takes off- I make
popcorn for dinner and play my music as loud as
I want."
"Yeah," Lindsay said. "Except I don't
feel much like that tonight." She didn't quite know how
to invite herself to Dawn's father's, but she didn't
want to go home alone. She glanced at Dawn,
then decided to take the plunge directly. "Can
I come with you to your dad's?"
"I wish," Dawn said. "But it's
'quality" time night." Her voice took on a
mocking singsong note as she said
quality.
"He's always wanting more "quality" time.
"Quality time with my princess," is what he
always says."
"I think that's nice," Lindsay said, cocking her
head.
Dawn rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right! If he
really wanted "quality time," maybe he shouldn't
have left us in the first place. Sorry, but I think
he and his new wife are total dorks. And she'd
pitch a hissy if I brought someone over with less
than two weeks' notice." At Lindsay's
crestfallen look, Dawn touched her shoulder.
"I'm sorry."
"It's all right."
Dawn stopped walking and reached for Lindsay's arm,
but Lindsay kept walking to avoid looking her friend
in the eye. The problem was, she didn't want to go
home to an empty house, but didn't want to tell
Dawn that she was afraid, given how stupid she
felt about the whole thing.
What happened the other night was only a bad
dream-nothing had actually happened.
But still, she didn't want to go home alone to a
house where people had been roaming and poking around, going
through her things all day long.
And she didn't want Dawn to ask her what was
wrong, because she was afraid she'd start to cry.
"You okay?" Dawn finally asked, catching up
to her.
"Yeah, I'm all right," Lindsay answered.
"I'm just depressed, I guess."
"Depressed? You think
you "re
depressed? I have to spend the whole evening with
Anthony and
Sheeela
and their little brat."
Lindsay glanced at Dawn, seizing the
opportunity to turn the conversation away from herself.
"Come on-you like Robert. What is he, two? How
can you not like a two-year-old?"
"Yeah, actually, I do. I like having a little
brother. He's the only good thing about going over there.
I can relate to him. Sheila is beyond me. And what
Dad sees in her ..."
Lindsay tuned out Dawn's rant about her stepmother,
wishing she could unburden herself about how scared
she was to go home to the empty house, but she couldn't
figure out how to approach it without having Dawn
think she was being stupid. She began casting around in
her mind for somewhere else she could go.
As they approached the corner where they would go their
separate ways, Dawn caught Lindsay's arm,
stopping her. "Don't be depressed. Please?"
"I just don't want to move."
"I know. Just don't stress, okay? I mean, it
hasn't happened yet, has it?"
Lindsay shook her head. "And maybe it won't
happen. Maybe we'll figure out a way for me
to stay through next year."
"We will," Dawn assured her. "Call me.
You've got my dad's number, right?"
Lindsay grinned. "Speed dial six."
"Aren't you the efficient one," Dawn said. Then:
"Hey-you did good today."
"So did you," Lindsay replied. "You're going
to be head cheerleader next year."
"Unless you are."
"Fat chance. Especially if I'm not even here!"
Dawn shrugged and spread her arms. "Miracles
happen."
Lindsay regarded her best friend darkly.
"Yeah," she said. "But not to me." She turned
away then, crossed the street, and sped up as she
walked down the last two blocks toward the house.
Walking slowly, after all, was only going to postpone
the inevitable.
indsay warily eyed the open house sign the agent
had left leaning against the garage, as if it were a
cobra coiled and ready to strike at her. The wind
had come up, bringing with it a cloud that was even darker
than her mood, and now a few raindrops were falling
on her bare arms. It was as if spring had vanished
back into winter, with late afternoon darkness closing in
around her. She rubbed her arms, shivering, but even as
she tried to warm herself, she knew the chill she was
feeling came more from the solid evidence the forgotten
sign provided that people-strangers-had been in the house
all afternoon.
And now, knowing that, she didn't want to go inside.
She wanted to turn away and go somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
She looked up and down the street, but the yards and
sidewalks were empty, and nowhere did she see a
neighbor with whom she could strike up a conversation,
putting off the moment when she would have to go into the house.
Maybe even cadge a dinner invitation,
without having to explain.
And she wasn't about to tell anyone that, and sound like a
little girl too young to be left at home by herself.
Besides, she'd come home to an empty house dozens
of times- maybe hundreds! Except that today was
different. Today-
"Stop it!" she
whispered to herself, rubbing her arms again, then walking
determinedly up to the front door to let herself in with
her key.
And felt once more the urge to turn around and walk
away, to go somewhere else-anywhere else-until her
parents came home.
Again she conquered the urge to flee, turned the key,
and let herself into the house.
Silence.
She scanned the living room, and everything looked
exactly as it had this morning, almost as if nobody
had been there at all. Feeling calmer, she went
to the kitchen.
The agent had left a note on the counter. Dozens
of people had been through the house-dozens! But that was a good
thing, Lindsay reminded herself. It was what they
wanted! And maybe one of those dozens of people would buy
the house and she'd never have to go through this again.
She took a deep breath and looked at the clock.
Five-thirty, on the dot. Her parents would
surely be home by ten. Four and a half hours
wasn't a big deal-she'd do a little homework,
watch a little TV, and maybe make a plate of
nachos. . . .
She turned on the television, more for the background
noise than because she wanted to see the news, and
made herself go through the rest of the downstairs.
Except for the note from the agent and a few flyers that
still lay on the dining room table, the house looked
exactly as it always had.
And it would be the same upstairs, she thought.
Everything would be exactly as she'd left it, and no
one would have gone through her drawers, and there would be nothing
wrong at all.
Except she still didn't want to go up to her room,
and round herself gazing at the stairs with the same feeling
of dread with which she'd looked at the house itself only
a few minutes ago.
And she felt even colder than when she'd been out
standing in the chill and drear or the rainy afternoon.
"Stop it!" she commanded herself again, barely realizing
she was speaking out loud to an empty room. "You're
just freaking yourself out." The sound of her own
voice somehow making her feel better, she got a
Diet Pepsi from the refrigerator, and then mounted
the stairs.
Her room looked exactly as she had left it.
She sniffed, and thought she could still smell traces of the
strange odor that had hung in her room on
Wednesday.
No,
she told herself.
You're just imagining it!
She went to her underwear drawer and slowly opened it.
The tiny scrap of paper she'd left balanced on
the front edge was still there.
Undisturbed.
Her drawer had not been opened.
See?
she told herself.
Nobody went through my stuff
She picked up the fragment of paper with a wet
fingertip, shook it off into her wastebasket, and
felt much better as it dropped away.
The closet door was closed tightly, as she always
left it. When she was little, she had always been
afraid that the bogeyman was in the closet, and whenever
she called out to her parents to tell them how
afraid she was of the person in the closet, her father
would march right to the door and pull it wide open while
she cowered in the big mahogany bed, clutching the
covers around her neck.
And of course there had never been anyone-or
anything
comin the closet.
Now, as she stared at the door, those childhood
terrors came flooding back, but she forced them
aside, took a deep breath, and did as her father
had always done. She walked right over and opened the
closet door wide.
And, as always, there was nothing there.
No bogeyman, or anything else, either. She
smiled then, realizing how silly her fears had
been.
And still were! That was it-she'd been afraid that somehow
the bogeyman-who had never been anything more than a
figment of her own childish imagination-had somehow
gotten into the house when it was open.
Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!
There was nothing to be afraid of, and never had been.
She was older now-almost grown up. How could she have
been so dumb as to let herself be afraid of the
bogeyman!.
Suddenly, things were back to normal, her fears
fell away, and she felt so good, she almost wanted
to dance. Flipping on the CD player, she took
a drink of the soda, then did a couple of
pirouettes that weren't quite in time to the music. But who
cared? Everything was fine again.
She perched on the edge of her bed and rested one of her
feet on the step stool that still stood next to the
mahogany four-poster, even though she hadn't had
to use it to climb into the high bed for years. She
untied her shoes, pulled off her socks, and
dangled her feet for a moment, then slid off the bed
and took the socks to the laundry hamper.
A second later her shorts and T-shirt joined
the socks.
Clad only in her sports bra and bikini
panties, she stuck one foot in a slipper that
lay by the bed, then looked for the other one, fishing around
under the bed with her bare foot, feeling for it. How far
could she have kicked it last night?
She got down on her knees and was about to reach under the
bed for the wayward slipper when her cell phone
rang. It startled her, and she banged her
knuckles against the hard mahogany of the bed frame
as she jerked her hand back. With one
slipper on, and sucking at her stinging knuckle, she
flopped onto the bed and reached over to pick up the
phone from the nightstand.
"Hey," Dawn said before she'd even spoken. "You
okay?"
"I guess so," Lindsay replied, shaking her
hand, then pressing it against the pillow to try and ease
the stinging. "Are you at your dad's?"
"Yeah, we just got here. Sheila's making dinner and
Robert isn't up from his nap yet." She
hesitated, then: "You sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine," Lindsay insisted. "I just banged
my hand, that's all. At least it's the same one I
twisted my wrist on last week." She gazed
dolefully at her knuckle, which was already turning
black and blue. "So what's your dad doing? How
come you're not having 'quality time"?"
Dawn groaned. "He's working, of course. Said
he had reports he had to e-mail in before tomorrow
morning. He'll be finished by dinner, and then we'll
eat, watch
60 Minutes,
and then I'll go home. It's so totally stupid.
I wish we both could have just gone to my house."
"I do, too," Lindsay confessed. "Ever
since Mom and Dad decided to sell it, I hate
it here. I-was
"Oops," Dawn interrupted. "I've got
another call. Want to hold?"
Lindsay hesitated, then: "I guess not-I need
to change and figure out what to do till Mom and
Dad get home. I just wish-was
"Okay," Dawn said, and Lindsay could tell by her
voice that she was already thinking about the other call.
"See you tomorrow." Dawn clicked off, and the cell
phone went dead in Lindsay's hand. She put it
back onto the charger on her nightstand, feeling
bleak at how far away they were moving and the difference that
would make in her friendships with Dawn and everyone
else.
She looked down at her feet. One slipper on,
one slipper off. Somehow, the lost slipper suddenly
seemed appropriate-one of her slippers was just as
lost as she felt, and the other was right where it was
supposed to be.
Just like her. Supposed to be right here in Camden
Green, but half of her already feeling lost in New
York.
Sighing, she knelt down once more to fish the other
slipper out from under the bed.
And smelled it again.
That awful, disgusting, musky odor that had filled her
room on Wednesday, but that her mother hadn't been able
to smell.
Now it was back, and stronger than-
With sudden, horrifying certainty she knew, and all
her terror came crashing back in on her.
He was in her room.
Now.
Under her bed-the bed that had always been her final
refuge, the one place where she felt utterly
safe.
And he was there.
Waiting.
Paralyzed, Lindsay knew she had to move, knew
she had to scream, to run, to get out.
Get out!
Now she could hear him breathing.
Her heart pounded so hard, she thought it was going
to explode, and her mind raced. But panic was already
overwhelming reason, and her terror seemed to have
utterly sapped her of the ability to move or even
cry out. . . .
I liked the place on West Eighty-eighth,"
Kara said as Steve pulled onto Route
25A and headed out to the north shore of the Island.
"What wasn't to like?" Steve asked, turning on the
windshield wipers as rain began to dribble from the
clouds that had been gathering. When the wipers did little
more than smear the city grime across the windshield,
he sprayed them with cleaner, which barely helped.
"Except that we can't afford it," he sighed.
"I know, but-was
"No buts, Kara." He glanced over at her.
"I knew we shouldn't even have looked at that one.
It's out of our price range, and I don't see
the advantage in trading one bad situation for
another."
"You got a raise," Kara argued, but Steve could
hear more hope than certainty in her voice. "If
we get a good price for the house and give up your
city apartment, I don't see why-was
"Maybe after a year or so," Steve interrupted.
"Maybe after I see
how my promotion works out, and get another raise,
and we're back on our feet again."
"After a year?" Kara echoed. "What would be the
point? By then Lindsay will be off to college and we
won't need anything that big. And the way prices are
going in Manhattan, we could sell it at
a big enough profit to buy ourselves something really
terrific!"
Steve sighed. He'd liked the apartment, too. It
was big and bright and airy and had everything they'd hoped
to find. But it was a quarter of a million more than the
absolute outside limit of what they'd agreed
they could afford. "I just don't see it. I mean,
it's perfect, but so what? We just don't have the
money."
"But it has granite countertops in the kitchen-was
Kara began.
"Granite countertops-or the lack of them-aren't
going to make the difference in
our family.
Besides, we've already had those, we'll have them again. Just
not right now, okay?"
Kara sighed in defeat and closed her eyes. She
had a headache from looking at too many apartments that were
just too small, too dark, too old-fashioned,
too modern . . . too . . .
Too
not
their house on Long Island.
Steve slammed on the brakes and her eyes
snapped open again. A river of red
taillights flashed ahead of them, reflected on the
wet pavement, and a hand with an uplifted middle finger
was waving at them from the small sports car that had
cut in just ahead of them, forcing Steve to dodge
to avoid rearending it.
And now the jerk was flipping
them
off!
"This commute is something I'm not going to miss,"
Steve said through clenched teeth. "It's a wonder more
people don't get killed out here." He glanced at
Kara, then reached over and patted her knee
reassuringly. "Hey, things are going to be
okay-we'll find the right place, and we didn't
get killed just now, and in the end everything's going to be
fine." When Kara made no response, he
squeezed her leg, then returned his hand to the steering
wheel. "Why don't
you give Lindsay a call?" he suggested.
"Tell her we'll be home in another half hour
or so."
Kara dialed Lindsay's cell phone, but all she
got was Lindsay's voice mail. "Hi, honey,"
Kara said, leaving a message. "It's nine-
twenty and we're on our way home. We
should be there around ten." After a slight hesitation, she
added, "Call my cell when you get this, okay?"
She clicked off.
Steve, frowning, looked at her. "Isn't she
supposed to keep her cell phone on?" Kara
nodded, but Steve wasn't sure she'd heard him.
"That was the deal, right?" he pressed. "We'd pay
for the phone if she'd leave it on so we could reach
her?"
Kara chewed at her lower lip, then pressed the
speed dial digit that would connect her to their home
phone.
On the fourth ring the answering machine picked up, and
she pressed in the code that would let her listen to any
messages that might have been left. Nothing.
"She's probably in the shower," Steve said. "Or
maybe she left us a note."
"Maybe," Kara agreed, but she didn't believe
it. In fact, she had a feeling that something was wrong.
"Maybe I ought to call Dawn's," she said, as
much to herself as to Steve.
He glanced over at her again, hearing the worry in
her voice. "Hey, come on, honey-nothing's
wrong."
"She's not home, and her cell phone's not
on," Kara replied. "That means-was
"That means she's seventeen," Steve broke in,
hearing a note of panic creep into his wife's
voice. "She could be at Dawn's, or she could have
gone to a movie, or she could be any number of other
places. Her phone might even be on but she's just
in some dead spot-God knows, half the time I can't
get any reception at all in Camden Green."
And I know when somethings wrong,
Kara told herself. I
always have.
As traffic thinned and they picked up speed, she
looked out
into the dark countryside, rain sliding past the window,
and tried to tell herself she was wrong, that it was just the
cumulative discouragement of the entire day that was
getting to her. And it wasn't just the apartment hunting,
either. It was the prospect of having to turn into an
urban corporate wife, spending more and more time with people
like the Bennetts, who had managed to make even a
dinner at Cafe des Artistes a miserable
experience. Maybe she was just tired, and upset with
everything that was going on in their lives, and there was nothing
wrong at all.
She closed her eyes and tried to quiet
her mind.
But it didn't work.
Something was wrong.
Something was terribly wrong.
Suddenly all she wanted was to be home.
Home with Lindsay.
I must write down every detail of what happened,
lest I forget even the tiniest fragment of this
perfect day.
My planning was flawless, of course. The spot
I'd found for the car was as secluded as I'd
remembered, and as deserted as the rest of the area. People
are so predictable.
When I entered the house, it was also exactly as I
had anticipated. People were wandering through every room, thinking
they were seeing everything, but in actuality seeing nothing.
When I first entered, I saw the agent in charge standing
on the stairs, talking to two people who were of
absolutely no interest to me-too young to have children yet
not old enough for any other role. The agent looked right
at me, but I knew even as his eyes scanned me
that he was dismissing me.
As they always dismissed me.
If he held any memory of me at all from that
disinterested glance, it has long since faded
utterly away.
Perfect.
I drifted invisibly through the house, awaiting my
opportunity, and
when I finally came to her room, it was empty. It
was less than a second before I had slipped under the
bed.
Under the bed!
It is such a cliche that I knew the moment I saw
the huge old-fashioned mahogany four-poster on
Wednesday, it would make the perfect hiding place.
The trick, I had been afraid, would be to stay
awake as I lay waiting for her, but as I smelled
her delicate fragrance, I could almost feel her
all around me, and it was enough.
I knew I would not sleep.
And it was marvelous, hiding under her bed. Marvelous
to lie hidden only inches away as people wandered through the
room. I watched their feet and listened to them talk
about the house and the family who lived there. I was
particularly thrilled when someone mentioned her-talked
about how well she kept her room, how pretty she
was in her photographs. It was exactly as people
described the others, thinking they were perfect when I
knew what they really were.
I found one of her bedroom slippers. Pink, it
was, and well-worn. I held it to my cheek,
feeling the softness of its silk, and filled myself with the
scent of her feet.
And as I pictured her perfectly formed foot
nestling into that glove-soft slipper, I crushed the
slipper in anticipation of crushing the foot itself, just
as I crushed her panties on Wednesday last.
And heat poured through me.
As the hours passed, I fantasized that she was
sleeping in the bed above me, mere inches away, with
no idea how close I was.
And then at last the house fell silent, and I was
alone.
Alone with my passion and my fantasy, and the knowledge that
soon the fantasy would become reality.
I'm not sure how long it was before I finally heard the
front door close, but the moment it did, my
heart began to pound so hard that I found it hard
to breathe.
She turned on the television.
I don't like that.
I felt my groin begin to ache as I heard her
slowly come up the stairs, and as I watched her
feet as she padded into the bedroom, opened a
drawer, and sighed, I felt myself begin to harden. .
. .
A moment later she sat on the bed, and the mattress
sagged and touched my chest. It was incredible-I could
almost imagine it was her fingers themselves touching me. Then
a shoe dropped, and then the other, falling to the floor
with a carelessness that I like no more than the sound of the
television. Once her shoes were off, she stood
up, turned on her music and danced a few steps,
her naked feet only inches from my face.
I could have reached out and taken her then.
Next her blouse dropped to the floor right before my
eyes, and then her shorts as well!
It was as if she knew I was there, and doing what
she's always done.
There she was, only inches away, and clad in
nothing more than her bra and panties.
Thin, light green bikini panties, I imagined.
Or perhaps the ones with butterflies on them that I'd
seen in her drawer on Wednesday.
As I watched, she slid one of her feet into a
slipper and put the other foot under the bed, feeling
for the second slipper. I wanted to touch her foot
so badly I could barely rein in the urge, but I
held fast!
Patience! That is the key to everything.
A moment later her hand came snaking under the bed,
and for an instant it seemed she was reaching out for me.
I shrank away, of course. The moment of
capture was not yet at hand, and I was about to nudge
the slipper closer to her grasp when the telephone
rang.
In an instant her hand vanished and the mattress
sagged above me once more.
As she talked with her friend, I felt the moment draw
closer and knew I wouldn't have to wait much longer.
Though the torture had been sublime, it was time
to take her home.
I began to slip out from beneath the bed, and knew the
exact moment when she became aware of my presence.
It was a moment we shared together-the first of what I know
will be a lifetime of such moments.
Before she could even speak, I seized her, my fingers
closing on her ankles. If she screamed, I have
no memory of it.
Perhaps she didn't scream at all.
Or perhaps the music drowned out her scream.
Certainly, any scream she might have made would have
been like music to my ears.
Would have been, and will be for a very long time to come
. . .
I held her tightly, covering her body with my
own.
Then I covered her lips with mine, and this is when I
nearly lost control in the feel of her skin against my
body, in the smell of her that filled my nose.
And in the terror I saw in her eyes.
I wanted to lie atop her for hours, feeling her
submitting to my power, but the glue on my
fingertips-the glue that saved me from leaving my
fingerprints anywhere in this house-now prevented me from
touching her cheek or her lips or her eyes the way
I wished.
Once again I drew upon my patience; there would be
time for all of that later. But first there were chores to be
done.
Chores must always be done before pleasures are to be
taken.
Just after the sun set, I took her home. Everything
about that brief trip was entrancing-not just the fear I
felt from her, but everything else as well.
Her ineffectual struggle against the bindings on her
hands and feet-a silent struggle, given the gag in
her mouth. But the struggles won't last long.
Certainly no longer than my own.
Soon.
Soon she'll submit to me, just as I submitted
to her.
As she struggled and trembled, I wrapped her
snugly in a blanket from her bed and kissed her
forehead.
Then I carried her home so that we may begin.
All will be once more as it was the last time we were together.
But it will be different, too. Oh yes! This time it will
be different.
This time I'll be saved.
The house was ablaze with light as Steve and Kara
pulled into the drive. "See?" Steve said.
"She's home."
Kara remembered turning all the lights on in the
house when she had been a nervous teen left home
alone for the first time, but also knew that it didn't mean
anything.
Lights on didn't mean anyone was at home.
She jumped out of the car before Steve even turned the
engine off. "Lindsay?" she yelled as she burst
through the door from the garage into the kitchen.
In the living room, the television was blaring, and she
switched it off, then went through every room, turning off
half the lights even though she was barely
aware she was doing it. "Lindsay?" she called out
again when she came to the bottom of the stairs.
Now Steve was in the house, too, standing in the dining
room holding the note Mark Acton had left on
the table. "Well, this looks good," he said.
"Seems like there were a couple of dozen people here
today, and this guy Acton seems to think he might have
an offer by tomorrow!"
Kara ignored him, heading upstairs, but even as she
approached Lindsay's room, and heard no music
drifting from her daughter's open door, she was all
but certain what she would find.
Something was wrong-she could feel it. And the feeling
hadn't started in the car when Lindsay didn't
answer the phone. No, she'd first felt it at
dinner, but told herself it was nothing-that there was no
reason to think Lindsay wasn't exactly where
she'd said she'd be- first at cheer leading
practice, then at Dawn's. She should have called
then-she should have excused herself from the Bennetts"
less than scintillating company, gone to the
ladies' lounge and called her daughter.
Instead she'd ignored her feeling and finished her
meal.
And now, if Lindsay really was in trouble,
Kara knew she would never forgive herself.
"Lindsay?" she called yet again.
No answer.
Feeling her panic rising, Kara stepped
into Lindsay's room, found it as empty as she'd
known it would be, then quickly searched the rest of the
upstairs-her own bedroom, the bathrooms, the guest
room, even the office that doubled as a sewing room,
which Lindsay had always hated because it meant mending
clothes she'd rather replace.
No Lindsay.
"She's not here," she called down to Steve. "I'm
going to call the police."
"The police?" Steve echoed, emerging from the kitchen
with a drink in his hand to peer up the stairs at his
wife, whose face looked ashen. "Why? What's
going on?" He hurried up to Kara's side.
"I'm telling you," she said, her voice trembling,
"she's not here, and something's wrong."
With Kara behind him, Steve went into Lindsay's
room. To his
eye, everything looked perfectly normal, but when
he turned back to Kara, she was biting at a
fingernail, something she only did when she was
extremely upset.
"Honey, what's going on?" Steve asked. "She
probably just went over to Dawn's, like she said-was
"I'm telling you," Kara cut in, "something's
wrong." She opened the laundry hamper and pulled
out shorts and a T-shirt. "Look! These are what
she wore to practice today."
Steve shrugged. "So she came home-it's obvious
she came home. She turned on the TV and every
light in the house. And there's her cell phone."
"So where is she?" Kara demanded. "If she came
home, where is she?"
"Call Dawn," Steve sighed, wishing now he'd
let her do it from the car. "That's where she's got
to be."
They went back to the kitchen, where Kara pulled the
address book from the drawer. But even as she looked
for the number, she knew Lindsay wasn't at
Dawn's.
No, something had happened.
Something bad.
And every second they delayed in calling the police was
only going to worsen whatever danger Lindsay was
in. Now Kara was furious at herself for having
ignored Lindsay's fears about coming home after the
open house.
As she dialed Dawn's number, Steve moved
quickly through the house, intending to check the doors and
windows, more to put Karas mind at ease than because
he expected to find anything amiss.
And nothing was.
All the doors and windows were locked.
Going back to the kitchen, he turned on the patio
lights and looked out into the yard.
No Lindsay, but nothing else, either.
Everything was perfectly normal.
"She's not at Dawn's," Kara said as she hung
up. "Phyllis said that
Dawn told her Lindsay was upset after
practice today, but that she came home because Dawn was
going to her father's house."
"Upset about what?" Steve asked. He picked
up his drink, started to take a sip, then thought
better of it. After they found out exactly where
Lindsay was, there'd be plenty of time for a drink.
For him, and for Kara, too.
"Upset about the move, of course," Kara said as
she picked up the phone again. "And probably about
coming home alone after an open house." She looked
away from Steve as someone answered at Dawn's
father's house. "This is Kara Marshall.
May I speak with Dawn, please?" She talked
for a moment, then hung up and faced Steve again.
"She was here. Dawn talked to her, but only for a
minute." Kara's voice began to rise. "But she
did come home, and now she's not here! I'm telling
you, something's wrong!"
"Settle down," Steve said. "Let's reason this
out."
"We need to call the police," Kara said, reaching
for the phone once more. "Something has happened."
"Nothing has happened," Steve said, trying to stop
her hand before she could pick up the receiver.
Kara pulled her hand away. "She never leaves the
house without letting us know where she's going. Never!
She'd leave a note or a message on the
machine-was
Steve shook his head. "Maybe she left in a
hurry-she left all the lights on, the television
on. Maybe one of her friends came by and she took
off with them."
Kara nodded and took a deep breath, telling herself
that what he said could be true. She stood, opened the
address book again, and began to call Lindsay's
friends. Steve watched her, feeling helpless and almost
more worried about Kara than Lindsay, and
already rehearsing the speech Lindsay would get when she
finally showed up.
Kara might ground her for the rest of her life.
But by the sixth call that yielded nothing, Kara was
crying, and now Steve, too, was beginning to worry.
"I knew it," Kara said, struggling against a sob that
was
threatening to strangle her. "I knew it at the
restaurant, Steve. I had a feeling something was
wrong." She glanced around, shivering though there
wasn't the slightest chill in the room. "Someone was
in the house, Steve. We should have listened to her.
Somebody has her." Her voice rose.
"Someone has her!
And it's my fault. It's all my fault."
"Now just take it easy," Steve began.
"Let's-was
"No!" She grabbed Steve's wrists. "Will you
listen to me?" Suddenly, Kara was rigid with a rage
born out of the terror that had seized her. "Someone
has her! Someone has been in here!
We have to
call the police!"
"I'm not going to call the police," Steve
insisted, making one last attempt to reason
with her. "What are they going to do? She's not even
missing-she's just not home. And it's barely even
ten-thirty!"
"Then
I'm
calling them," Kara said, brushing his words aside and
picking up the phone again. But now she was trembling so
badly she wasn't sure she could dial, and she
couldn't even read the numbers on the phone through the
tears flooding her eyes.
Steve tried to take the phone from her hand. "I'll
do it."
Kara steeled herself and refused to give it up.
"No," she said. "You don't believe any thing's
wrong, so you won't be able to make them understand." She
wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her
blouse, focused her mind, and dialed 911.
Sergeant Andrew Grant sat on the Marshalls'
sofa, a clipboard on his knee. His partner, younger
and even bigger than Grant, sat next to him.
Kara wasn't sure if it was their no-nonsense, just
the facts ma'am attitude or their navy blue
uniforms, handcuffs, and guns that had imbued the house
more with an aura of danger than of comfort from the moment
they walked in. Nor had she taken any
comfort from their search, which hadn't taken more than fifteen
minutes, both inside and out.
Then, for fifteen more minutes, Steve-all his
lawyerly training coming into play at the moment the
officers arrived-had made
Grant read every note he made out loud, as if
afraid that the officer, if left to his own
devices, might skew his report to make
Lindsay herself look like a criminal. Now Steve
was perched on the arm of Kara's chair, one arm around
her, the other holding one of her hands while the fingers
of her other hand twisted a damp handkerchief into a
shapeless wad. Every one of her nerves felt as raw
as those in her nervously working fingers, and she thought the
muted but constant squawk from the officers' radios
might very well elicit a scream of frustration and
annoyance from her before their questioning was over.
Seemingly oblivious of Kara's state of mind,
Sergeant Grant glanced over his notes, then
shifted his attention back to her. "Does Lindsay
have a boyfriend?"
"No," Steve said before Kara could reply.
Grant's brow arched skeptically. "She's a
cheerleader and she's not dating anybody?"
Kara shook her head.
"Could she be dating someone you don't know about?"
Grant pressed.
"No," Steve said, forcefully enough that Grant's
partner-whose name Kara couldn't remember-recoiled
slightly. "Lindsay's not the kind of girl who
keeps secrets from her parents." Then, as if
to underscore his words: "She's not the kind who has
to."
"Bad breakup with an old boyfriend?" Grant went
on, utterly unfazed by Steve's words. "Maybe
dumped someone recently, or vice versa?"
Kara shook her head, but even as she denied the
suggestion implicit in the policeman's question, she
realized that she didn't know for certain. Lindsay
never talked about boys; was it possible she could have a
boyfriend, or an ex-boyfriend, whom she knew nothing
about?
"Internet chat? Does she engage in a lot of
that?"
Kara shrugged helplessly, realizing that she had no
idea whether Lindsay chatted on the Internet or
not, at least with anybody but
Dawn D'Angelo, with whom she seemed always to be
exchanging instant messages. "I guess I
don't know," she finally admitted. "She
spends a lot of time on the computer, but she gets
straight As, so I've always assumed she was doing
her homework."
"Straight As?" Sergeant Grant said. "That's a
good sign-not consistent with drug use."
As Grant made a note, Kara's nervousness
morphed into indignation. "Drug use?" she began.
"Lindsay would nev-was Before she could finish, Steve
squeezed her shoulder gently and she lapsed
into silence.
"Anything been bothering her lately?"
Grant looked expectantly at Kara, as if
certain she would give him at least three or four
things to add to his notes, and though Lindsay's
resistance to the prospect of moving instantly
occurred to Kara, she wasn't about to admit it.
Instead, nervousness and frustration welled up inside
her and she abruptly brushed Steve's hand from her
shoulder and leaned forward, her eyes fixed on the
officer.
"Listen to me," she began, her voice low and under
total control. "I know my daughter. She is a
perfect student, has dozens of friends and no
enemies-male or female-and has no secret
life involving drugs or anything else.
She shares things with us-she talks to us. I'd know if
she was sneaking around doing things, but she isn't,
hasn't,
wouldn't!
Then, last Wednesday, she thought someone had been in
her room. Not just going through it the way people do at an
open house, but going through her things. And today she's
missing. I didn't believe her at the time, but now
I do, and I'm telling you, someone was in this house, and
now he's taken her."
As a great wave of emotion began to rise up
inside her, her voice trembled, but she steeled
herself, and went on. "Someone has taken her," she
said, enunciating her words carefully, lest they begin
spilling hysterically from her lips. "And the longer we
sit here, the-was Her voice cracked, and she couldn't
bring herself to utter the thought of what might be happening
to Lindsay as they sat there talking. She
looked at Steve, then took a deep breath.
"We need to stop
talking
and start
looking for
her!"
The policeman offered Kara what she
knew was supposed to be a reassuring smile, but it
struck her as patronizing. "I'm not discounting any
of what you've said," he said in a tone that clearly
told her he wasn't counting it for much, either. "I
understand exactly how you feel." He turned
to Steve. "But I still have to ask:
has
something upset her lately?"
As Kara glared at him, willing him not to respond,
Steve nodded. "We're moving to the city," he said.
"That's where we were all day, apartment hunting. She was
at cheer leading practice."
Now Grant's brows rose as if he understood
everything, and he closed the metal lid on his
report. "And she's just finishing her junior year,"
he said, and, when Steve nodded, leaned forward. "I
think we've just figured out what's going on here.
You've got a seventeenyearold daughter who
wants to graduate with her class. Which means she's
pretty upset right now. And when kids that age get
upset, they do all kinds of things. Some of them
turn to drugs, but, frankly, it doesn't sound like
yours is that kind of kid." As he began listing all
the possible things Lindsay could be doing or places
she could have gone, Kara saw what he was
leading up to.
He wasn't going to do anything.
Nothing.
Nothing at all!
And sure enough, just as her fury grew to the point where
she was about to demand that he get to the point, he did just
that.
"... that's why we don't consider them missing for
twenty-four hours," he was saying as she tuned
back in to his words. "Mostly, nothing's happened
to them at all-they've just taken off for a while."
"Not Lindsay," Kara said coldly. "She would have
left a note and taken her cell phone."
"Not necessarily," Sergeant Grant argued.
"Not if she's feeling like she wants to punish you.
It's the only power they have-get their
them as upset as they are." He glanced at his
watch. "It's not even midnight, and the odds are good
she'll be home in an hour or two, but frankly,
I wouldn't be surprised if you don't hear from her
until tomorrow."
As Kara opened her mouth to object to what she knew
was coming next, Grant spoke again, quickly enough to cut
her off.
"Tell you what-I'll call you in the
morning." He handed Steve a card. "If she shows
up, give me a call at this number, no matter
what time it is."
"That's it?" Kara said, staring at the officer. "My
daughter's been abducted and all you do is take a
quick look around the house and ask us questions for half an
hour?" Though his partner had the decency to redden at
Kara's words-presumably in embarrassment-
Sergeant Grant only took a deep breath.
"I'm afraid there's not much more we can do right now,
Mrs. Marshall," he said. "Given that there aren't
any signs of a forced entry or a struggle-or
anything else that would suggest she was taken against her
will-I'm afraid we have no choice but to wait
twenty-four hours. And I have to tell you, the odds
are overwhelming that she'll come home, or at least
call you." As Kara started to interrupt him, he
held up a hand-as if no matter what she was going
to say, he'd heard it all before. "Look, I know
what you read in the papers and see on TV about how
many perverts there are out there, but I have to tell you,
it's not nearly as bad as everyone thinks. If we
went chasing after every kid that took off for a night or
two, we wouldn't have lime to do anything else."
"But she said-was Kara began, and once again
Grant didn't let her finish.
"I know. There was an open house, and she thought someone
was going through her stuff."
"And there was another open house today," Kara insisted.
"Which is why I don't understand why you're so interested
in looking for comsigns that someone broke in. Anyone
could have just walked into the house, hidden, and waited for
Lindsay to come home!"
Grant and his partner exchanged a glance, and then
Grant frowned and reopened the clipboard he'd
closed as he stood up. "I guess it wouldn't
hurt to talk to the agent," he said. "Do you have his
home phone number?"
As the two officers left the house a minute or
two later, Kara wondered if they were going to talk
to Mark Acton or whether they'd just taken his number
to appease her.
She strongly suspected it was the latter.
Pain. Pounding pain, hammering at her head like a
great mallet.
Pain so overpowering that it was all Lindsay felt as
she slowly rose up through the layers of consciousness.
She tried to shrink back from it, tried to sink back
into the blessed nonreality of unconsciousness, but the
pain wouldn't let her.
And with consciousness came the memories.
Memories of
him.
Except they were barely memories at all, for she
had no face to put to them.
Only impressions.
Hands closing on her ankles.
Then he was on top of her, scuttling out from beneath the
bed like a rat from the sewer, his weight pinning her to the
floor, crushing her.
Then there had been something over her face, pressing
down on her, and she couldn't breathe and tried
to struggle but she wasn't strong enough and she thought she was
going to vomit and-
Nothing.
She opened her mouth to scream, to cry out against the
blackness and the throbbing pain in her head, but before any
sound could escape her throat, she cut it off.
Quiet,
she commanded herself.
Be still and make no sound and maybe it will go away.
Maybe the pounding will stop.
Maybe it's just another bad dream.
Lindsay tried to take a deep breath, but her
heart was racing harder and faster, which made
her head hurt even more, and she knew it wasn't just
a bad dream.
She moaned, and heard the sound of it echo hollowly.
Where was she?
Panic rose up now, and she tried to move, but
couldn't. It was like the terrible helplessness of
nightmares in which her feet felt mired in mud and
no matter how hard she tried she couldn't escape
whatever terror pursued her. But this was even worse.
Her wrists were so tightly bound to the arms of a hard
chair that she couldn't move them at all, and her hands
felt numb. Both her ankles were bound to the front
legs of the chair, and something in front of her neck
held her head utterly immobile-even the
slightest movement made her feel as if a blade
was about to slash into her throat.
As the wave of panic threatened to break over her,
Lindsay suddenly knew with terrible clarity that if
she gave in to it and began thrashing against her bindings,
she would surely die, her neck laid open by the
razor-sharp edge she could feel against her larynx.
Forcing the panic down, holding it at bay by nothing but
her will, she pulled against her bonds.
And flinched again as fire shot through her right wrist, the
one she'd injured at practice.
The pain in her wrist penetrated the throbbing in her
head, and more memories came slinking back into her
consciousness.
He had been under her bed all along!
She felt sick as she remembered peeling off her
shorts and T-shirt.
He'd been under her bed, watching her all along.
Watching her, and listening as she talked to Dawn.
Listening and waiting and-
She breathed as deeply as she could against the wave of
panic suddenly looming over her again.
Where was she? The air smelled moldy and damp. Like
Dawn's basement.
With each deep breath, her head cleared a little more.
He'd covered her face with something, and then her
nostrils had filled with fumes that made her sick.
She'd fought-fought as hard as she could-but he was heavy,
and her wrist had hurt and-
He'd said something-whispered something.
Angel.
He'd called her Angel.
Then nothing.
Blackness.
Quiet.
Unconsciousness.
Now there was still blackness around her, and quiet, too.
But she was no longer unconscious. She was alive,
and awake, and whatever had happened, it wasn't a
dream. She began going over her body, trying
to feel every part of herself. Nothing seemed broken, nor
was she bleeding anywhere, at least not badly.
So she wasn't hurt.
Just bound to some kind of chair, with a terrible taste in
her mouth.
She tried to think, to tell herself it was going to be all
right. She was smart, and strong, and somehow she would get
out of this.
She'd escape.
Just the thought of finding a way out somewhat calmed her,
and as her pulse slowed and the agony in her head finally
began to recede, she concentrated on the blackness
around her.
She was in a room, and it was dark and cold and damp.
Her wrists were bound to the chair with something.
Not rope.
Duct tape?
Yes, that had to be it-duct tape.
And something was pressing against her throat, holding her
head in place.
She licked her lips, trying to get rid
of the bad taste in her mouth.
Then, out of the darkness, she heard something.
A whimpering sound.
She froze.
What was it?
A dog?
She heard it again, and even in the darkness, Lindsay
was certain it wasn't a dog.
Was it possible she wasn't alone?
She wanted to call out, to cry for help from the unseen
person in the darkness.
But what if it was
him?
Then the sound came again, but this time she was almost sure
it wasn't just a sound.
This time it sounded like a word.
And then it came again, still almost inaudible, but clear enough
for Lindsay to hear: "H-Help ..."
The voice trailed off, and Lindsay's mind
spun. She wasn't alone!
There was someone else here!
Someone who could help her? Without thinking, she spoke
into the darkness. "Who is it?" she whispered. But her
voice emerged from her throat as little more than a low
croaking sound, the words barely comprehensible
even to herself.
There was a silence for a moment that seemed to go on forever,
and then she heard another sound.
"Shh . . ." the voice said, quivering in the
darkness. "Shhh . .
More silence.
As Lindsay began to wonder if she'd actually
heard anything at all, the voice spoke again.
A fragile voice, barely audible. A girl's
voice. "Shannon..."
The voice fell silent, and once again the
silence-and the darkness- closed around her.
This is crazy!" Kara exploded. "Were sitting
here, helpless, waiting! Waiting for what? Waiting
for nothing. Waiting for no reason!"
"Kara . . ." Through red-rimmed eyes, Steve
looked at her from the shadows of his wing chair.
Tiredly, he rubbed his unshaven chin.
"It's seven o'clock," she said. "The sun's been up
for an hour and I'm not waiting any longer! I'm
calling the police again-they have to do something!"
"Honey, it hasn't been anywhere near twenty-four
hours-was Steve began, but Kara cut him off.
"I have to

something. I can't just sit here and wait for the phone
to ring. I've called everyone and every place I can
think of, and she's not with anyone she knows and she's not
in any of the hospitals- not on Long Island,
anyway-and I can't just sit here and wait for a
ransom note or somebody to find a body-was
Putting voice to that thought for the first time was like a punch
in her own chest, and
Kara sagged back. But a second later she rose
from the couch and began to pace.
And to pick at her last remaining undamaged
fingernail. "Make some coffee, babe," Steve
said, searching for something- anything-to distract her.
He didn't have to ask twice.
"Coffee," she said, her voice taking on an almost
hysterical edge. "Okay, I'll make coffee.
And I'll wait. I'll wait until eight
o'clock. But at eight o'clock I'm calling Sergeant
Grant."
Too tired to argue, and every bit as frightened and
exhausted as his wife, Steve nodded.
Kara put the coffeepot on, then came back
to fidget once more on the edge of the couch. "I feel
like I want to go do her laundry. I want
to change her sheets and clean her room
and-and-was Her voice faltered and she fell silent.
"I'm so scared," she finally whispered. "What
if-was she began again, but now her voice dissolved
into a helpless sob.
"Shhh,"
Steve said, rousing himself from his chair and going to her.
He put his arms around her and drew her close, and a
moment later thought he felt some of the tension in her
body ease.
Kara rubbed the tears from her cheeks, pulled away
from him and went back to the kitchen. She returned with a
cup of coffee for each of them. "At eight o'clock
I'm going to call the police, and the newspapers,"
she declared. "And then I'm going to make flyers and
start taking them around. Somebody must have seen something!"
"Kara-was Steve began, but she shook her head,
cutting off his protest.
"What do you expect me to do, Steve?" she asked.
"Sit here like a helpless idiot while nobody
does anything?"
"The police-was
"This is not Sergeant Grant's daughter we're
talking about," Kara said, her voice taking on an
edge. "He thinks she ran away, remember?
He's not going to do anything." She felt a
mixture of panic and
anger begins to rise inside her, and in the end it was the
panic that won out. "Oh, God," she sobbed, and
collapsed onto the couch again. But as quickly as the
panic overcame her, she forced it back. Taking a
deep breath, she steeled herself and stood up.
"I've got to do
something."
Taking her coffee cup, she headed upstairs,
leaving Steve sitting alone in the living room.
In the silence, Steve's exhaustion from the sleepless
night began to overtake him, and despite his worry
about Lindsay, his eyes drifted shut.
And then Kara screamed.
Steve sat bolt upright in the wingback chair and for
one terrible instant thought that Kara must have found
Lindsay.
And she was dead.
Then Kara yelled again. "It's gone, Steve!"
"What?" he called back, taking the stairs two
at a time. When he got to the top, Kara was waiting
for him, her face ashen, a slipper- one of
Lindsay's slippers-clutched in her right hand.
"Her blanket's gone!" Kara said. "The one she
always kept folded at the foot of her bed.
And I can't find her other slipper." She gazed
at him, her eyes wide, her voice bleak.
"Where's her other slipper, Steve?"
Steve ran his hands through his hair and massaged his
scalp. "Did you look in her closet? Under the
bed?"
Kara's look told him she had. "I'm calling the
police again," she said, her tone leaving no room for
argument. "Right now."
Steve nodded and followed her back down to the
kitchen, feeling utterly useless. All night he
had tried to convince Kara that the police were right, that
Lindsay had just taken off somewhere and would come home
when she cooled off.
And not once had he taken the time to go upstairs and
look around the room for himself-to look at it the way
Kara just had.
Now, seeing that single worn and forlorn-looking
slipper in Kara's hand, he was finally as terrified
for his daughter as his wife was.
But it might already be too late . . .
ark Acton and Sergeant Grant arrived at almost
the same time. Steve poured each of them a cup of
coffee while Kara introduced the two men, then
told Grant what she'd been doing all
night, from calling every one of Lindsay's friends-and every
one of
their
friends-to calling every hospital and police department
on Long Island, and then she told Grant about
finding the slipper and the missing blanket. But even as
she spoke, she could see in Sergeant Grant's
eyes that he didn't feel nearly as certain about
what had happened as she did.
Mark Acton, apparently stunned by what Kara was
saying, handed his logbook to Grant. "Your girl
is missing?" he kept repeating, over and over again,
as if the concept were somehow evading him.
"She isn't technically missing yet," Grant
said, "given that it hasn't been twenty-four hours
since she-was He hesitated, saw the look of
cold fury in Kara's eyes, and smoothly shifted
gears. "comt she's been gone," he went on,
glancing at the names in the book as he spoke. His
eyes shifted to Acton. "Did everybody sign
in?"
The agent shrugged. "It was busy-I was talking with people
the whole time. I'm pretty sure everybody
signed in, but-was He spread his hands helplessly.
"I always ask them to, but I guess I
can't be sure."
"Did you see everybody leave?" Grant asked,
more to appease Kara Marshall than because he thought there
might be any merit to the idea she'd expressed
last night and repeated again this morning.
Mark took the guest book back from the policeman
and looked down the list of names. But now his hands were
sweating and he was trembling, and he was sure the
sergeant knew just how nervous policemen made him.
Kara Marshall noticed it as well, and her eyes
bored into Grant, willing him to see what she was
seeing. But if he was aware of Mark Acton's
nervousness, he gave no sign.
"Rick Mancuso was at both open houses,"
Acton finally replied.
"He's an agent with Century 21.1 remember
him coming in yesterday, but I'm not sure I remember
seeing him leave." He pointed to the name near the
bottom of the list.
Kara fixed her eyes on Acton. "Did
anybody-was She hesitated, searching for the right word,
then settled for the first one that came to mind. "com
strange
come through?"
"Strange?" The question seemed to catch him
off guard.
Sergeant Grant took back the logbook and,
to Kara's relief, picked up the thread of her question.
"Anybody who seemed out of place? Nervous?"
"It's a public event," Acton said, shrugging.
"We get lots of strange people." He paused,
reflecting. "Nobody who stood out."
"And what did you do afterward?" Grant asked.
"Afterward? After the open house?"
Grant nodded.
"Went to Fishburn's, like I always do. Had a
couple of beers, ate a little something, went home and
watched television."
Grant eyed the agent speculatively for a moment,
then seemed to come to a decision. "Thanks for your
time," he said. "If I have any more questions, I'll be
in touch with you."
Mark Acton shot off the couch and almost ran toward
the door.
"I've got some things to follow up on, Mrs.
Marshall," Grant said, rising to his feet as the
front door closed behind the real estate agent.
"And I've got a reporter from the
Sentinel-Gazette
coming over at ten," Kara replied, her
eyes fixing on the policeman as if daring him
to ask her not to talk to the press. To his credit,
he only nodded, and then she pressed a
wallet-sized school photo of Lindsay into his
hand. "She's our only child," she said.
"Please-you've got to find her. I'm begging you."
"She'll be home," Grant assured her, but she
could see in his eyes that he wasn't as certain as
he'd been last night.
"Only if we find whoever took her," Kara said.
Grant looked at her appraisingly, clearly
taking her measure. Then:
"I'll be in touch." He shook hands with Steve,
who opened the door for him, and when the door closed
behind him, the house again was quiet.
Too quiet, and too empty.
"No," Kara said softly, "I'll be the one in
touch."
Everything about the place had changed, and though
Claire Shields Sollinger knew exactly why
it had changed-and when that change had come-she still
wasn't used to it. Until last Christmas, she'd
always felt a sense of peace fall over her as she
waited for the big estate gates to swing open. Today,
though, her fingers tapped nervously on the
steering wheel of her Range Rover as the gates
moved back. She looked again at the newspaper on
the seat beside her and firmed her resolve as Lindsay
Marshall's eyes seemed to look right into her own.
The crunch of the gravel on the quarter-mile-long
driveway gave her no comfort as she approached the
house, and as she pulled to a stop in front of the
immense Tudor pile her great-grandfather had
built, the title of a book she hadn't read since
her days at Miss Porter's suddenly popped
into her mind.
Bleak House.
That was what Cragmont had become. There was a
melancholy air about the place that even the bright
spring morning and the fresh
breeze off Long Island Sound couldn't wash
away. It was as if the house itself somehow knew that for the
first time in its history, it was occupied by a single
resident.
A single, very unhappy resident.
She brought the car to a stop at the front door, and
by the time she stepped out, straightened the skirt of her
suit, and tucked the morning paper under her arm, the
front door had opened and a figure had appeared
on the porch. For a moment Claire felt
a flash of optimism, but then realizing it wasn't
her brother on the front porch, her optimism
faded.
"How is he today?"' she asked, though Neville
Cavanaugh's dour expression had answered her question
even before she asked it.
Neville, never long on words, shook his head
gravely. "He spends all his time in the library
these days, with the curtains drawn. He even sleeps
there. I do my best, but . . ." The servant's
voice trailed off and he spread his hands in a
gesture of helplessness.
Claire sighed heavily as she looked at her
brother's factotum, who was, as always,
impeccably dressed. His long face reflected the
sorrow every member of the family felt, but as she always
did, Claire wondered if Neville truly
felt the pain of Patrick's loss, or whether he
was merely playing the role of the devoted servant.
Even after having known the man for most of her life,
Claire had never warmed to him. Still, her father had
trusted him, and so did Patrick, so now she
carefully masked her antipathy. "Thank you,
Neville. I don't know what he'd do without you.
How is his leg?"
"Completely healed," Neville said. "Even the
scars are beginning to fade, but he insists we put
ointment on them every night. It's as if he wants
to keep them as wounds."
"Is he eating?"
"Some soup last night."
Claire took a deep breath. "Well, he'll
eat today. Would you bring us some coffee, please?"
She strode to the heavy double library doors and
knocked with what she hoped sounded like authority, then
tried
the handle. The door was locked. "Patrick?
Patrick, it's Claire. Open the door."
Eventually, she heard noises from the room beyond. The
lock clicked and the door opened a crack. The
unshaven, pale face of her brother peered out at
her.
Claire pushed the door open and walked into the
darkened library, shaking her head at what she saw.
Nothing-absolutely nothing- had improved since the
last time she was here. She went to the windows and opened
the heavy velvet draperies to let the bright morning
sunlight flood the room. Patrick squinted, but
raised no objection to the light. "Neville
tells me you're sleeping in here," she
said, and wrinkled her nose at the sour odor that
hung in the room. "It smells like it."
Patrick merely shrugged, and in the bright light of the
morning sun, Claire realized how much he'd
changed. A mere shadow of the robust brother who
until a few months ago had still, even in his early
forties, played the occasional raucous game of
rugby with his friends. Now his thinning, sandy hair had
gone as dull as his spirits. He appeared not to have shaved
for a couple of days, and his linen slacks needed
laundering, as did his polo shirt.
"I can't sleep in our bedroom anymore,"
Patrick said. He sat, sagging into one of the leather
chairs that flanked an ornate chessboard. "I
reach for Renee in the night and-was His voice caught.
Claire steeled herself against the whirlpool of her own
grief. Renee had been like a sister to her, and her
nieces- She distracted herself by opening the French
doors and letting in the cool, fresh spring air.
As she did, Neville arrived with a tray.
Claire poured her brother a cup of coffee and
sweetened it with enough sugar and cream to give him some
instant energy.
As he took an almost reluctant sip,
Patrick gazed out at the old boathouse
that stood at the foot of the lawn that rolled from the
house down to the Sound. "I'd be taking the girls
sailing on a day like this," he said, his eyes glistening
with tears.
Claire moved around the room, folding the
blankets and setting them on the table next to the
door and putting the pillow on top of the pile. There
would be no more sleeping in the library if she had
anything to do with it.
Then she saw that all the family photographs had
been turned to the wall. She turned to face her
brother. "I don't believe you've done this," she
said.
"I can't look at them," he replied, seeming
to shrink even deeper into his chair.
Claire strode across the room, dropped into the
chair across from her brother, and reached across the chess
table to put a hand on his arm. "You can't pretend they
never existed, Patrick. The fire was a terrible
thing-a horrible, tragic thing. And everybody feels
it- everybody we know loved Renee and the girls. But
the rest of us aren't trying to shut them out. They loved
you, and you loved them, but you can't bring them back.
Life goes on."
Patrick finally met her gaze, and the pain
in his expression tore at her heart. "I'll never
get over it."
"You will," Claire replied. "You're not the only
person terrible things have happened to." She laid the
morning newspaper on the table.
Patrick hesitated, then picked up the paper,
flinching as he saw the picture of the girl on the
front page.
"Her name is Lindsay Marshall," Claire said.
"I know her mother. Kara and I worked together on the town
square renovation and a dozen other projects. Now
her daughter is missing-either a runaway or she's
been abducted. Kara believes the latter."
Patrick said nothing, but Claire could see his
eyes scanning the article. She sipped her
coffee, giving Patrick time to finish it. "When I
saw this, I went to Kara's. Do you know what she was
doing?"
Patrick looked up from the paper. "She must be
terrified," he said softly.
Claire nodded. "She is. But she's not just sitting
there, Patrick.
She's calling people. She's organizing a search.
She's printing up flyers and calling the paper, and
doing everything she can to find her daughter.
She's not just sitting around feeling sorry for herself."
"The girl looks like Jenna, doesn't she?" he
said, and Claire saw the tears well up again in his
eyes.
Claire nodded. "And her loss is just as
tragic."
Patrick dropped the newspaper to the floor.
"It's hardly the same," he said with a harshness
bordering on anger. "She's just missing. Your friend's
whole family didn't-was He fell silent,
unable to complete the thought.
"That's true," Claire agreed, then leaned
forward, her eyes fixing on him. "But at least you
know where your family is-know what happened to them.
Kara doesn't have the slightest idea where her
daughter is, doesn't know whether she's even
alive. But she's not just sitting around feeling sorry
for herself!"
Patrick recoiled as if he'd been slapped.
"I just want to be left alone."
"Well, that's not going to happen," Claire said.
"As of today, you won't be left alone anymore.
If Kara Marshall can deal with her reality-without
even knowing yet what it is-you can start dealing with
yours." He seemed to cower from her words, but
Claire continued. "Would Renee want to see you
living like this?" she asked. Before he could answer, she
went on. "Of course she wouldn't." She stood
up. "You need to get out of here," she said, taking his
hand and pulling him to his feet. "You need fresh
air, and you need to eat. So we're going out for
lunch."
Patrick seemed on the verge of panic. "I-I
can't-was he began, but Claire cut him off.
"Of course you can." She pointed to the shoes he'd
dropped on the floor at the end of the sofa. "Put
them on."
Before Patrick could object, Claire went to the
library door and called for Neville to bring one of
Patrick's jackets.
A few minutes later Patrick reluctantly
passed through
Cragmont's huge oaken door for the first time since
his wife and children had been interred back in December
and he'd returned to the house after seeing their coffins
disappear forever into the family crypt.
"Where would you like to go?" Claire asked.
"I'm not hungry," Patrick whispered.
"Then we'll go to Julia's," Claire decided,
ignoring his tone. "If you're not hungry,
you might as well not eat good food as bad." She
put the car in gear, rolled down Patrick's
window so he could feel the wind in his hair, and
drove down the long drive, passing through the gate and
turning toward town.
Neville Cavanaugh surveyed the veal cutlets
in the butchers case, decided they looked decent,
and turned his attention to the bacon.
Too fatty.
And the roasts seemed a little grizzled.
So it would be veal tonight, and waffles for breakfast in the
morning.
He fingered his paper number, glanced up and saw on
the digital counter that he was now fourth in line. He
waited impatiently by the rack of bottled sauces
and marinades, and when a voice spoke to him from behind,
he didn't even have to turn around to know it was Martha
McGinn, who had cooked for the Ashcrofts at
Beech House even longer than he'd worked for the
Shieldses at Cragmont. And he disliked
Martha almost as much as he despised the cuteness of the
name of the estate at which she worked.
"So good to see you," Martha gushed, taking his hand in
her plump fingers and holding it despite his best
efforts to extract it from her grip. "How
is poor Mr. Shields?"
"As well as can be expected," Neville said,
masking his dislike of the woman and finally freeing his hand
from hers. Then, knowing that whatever he said-or didn't
say-would spread along the north shore even faster
than the food poisoning after Martha McGinn's
On
fortunate experience with the salmon mousse two
summers ago, he added, "Actually, I believe
he's doing better."
"Such a tragedy," Martha McGinn said, shaking
her head with enough emphasis that some powder shook loose
from the broad expanse of her bloated face.
Neville hated to think that this woman considered him
her peer. "Yes," he said, starting to turn away.
Martha McGinn's fingers closed on his arm,
immobilizing him. "He's fortunate to have you to see
him through this, Neville."
"I believe I'm the more fortunate," Neville
replied. "Having loved Mrs. Shields and the children
in my own way, it's a privilege to be able
to look after Mr. Patrick now."
"Yes, of course," Martha said uncertainly.
"Number forty-seven!" the butcher called out.
Neville held up his number. "You'll
excuse me?" Without waiting for an answer, he
turned away and moved to the counter, and moments later
stepped into the bright spring sunshine, white paper bag
in hand. He checked his mental list and headed toward
the drugstore in the middle of the next block. But
halfway down a door opened and Patrick
Shields and his sister emerged from Julia's Dining
Room, a restaurant that Neville found even more
repulsively cute than the name of the Ashcrofts"
beach house.
"Neville!" Claire said. Then her eyes fell
on the white bag from the butcher shop. "Oh, dear,
I hope you haven't bought something wonderful for
dinner."
Neville's brows lifted uncertainly. "As a
matter of fact, I have," he said. "The veal
cutlets look excellent today."
"Well, I'm afraid they'll have to hold,"
Claire said, not so much as a hint of apology in
her voice. "My brother has agreed to dine with me
tonight."
"Better even than the veal," Neville said,
betraying no hint of annoyance. "And it's good to see
you enjoying the day," he added, turning to Patrick.
For the first time in months, he saw a hint
of a smile play around his employer's lips.
"When Claire makes up her mind to something, there's
no stopping her," Patrick said.
"Indeed. Well, I'm off to the drugstore, then the
cleaners."
"Thank you, Neville," Patrick said. "I
don't know what-was
"My pleasure, sir," Neville said before
Patrick could finish.
"And enjoy your evening off," Claire said.
As she was passing him, Neville stopped her with a
gentle touch on her arm. "You're a godsend," he
whispered. She flashed him a quick smile and followed
Patrick down the walk, and Neville felt his
mood lighten considerably. He'd finish his errands
and then have the rest of the day and the entire evening to himself, and
his employer wouldn't be home until after dinner, which,
knowing Claire, would be very late indeed.
So he could spend the afternoon and evening doing anything he
wanted.
Anything at all.
he Range Rover pulled to a stop before
Cragmont's massive front doors.
"Are you sure, Patrick?" Claire asked.
"All you have to do is say the word and I'll
just keep going. You can spend the night at my
place, get up, have breakfast with me, and I'll
bring you home."
Patrick smiled at his sister but shook his head.
"I'll be fine," he assured her, knowing the words were
a lie even as he spoke them, but knowing too that
Claire would see through the lie. Both of them, after
all, had been raised in a culture of social
platitudes, where little truth-emotional truth,
anyway-was ever spoken. "I might even try
sleeping in my own bed tonight."
"Well,
that's
a good sign," Claire said, leaning across to kiss his
cheek. "I'll call you tomorrow."
Neville was waiting in the foyer with a scotch and
soda, but for the first time since the fire, Patrick
left the drink on the tray. "Shall I draw a
bath?" Neville asked, his brow lifting.
Patrick smiled wryly. "Actually, leaving the
house seems to have worn me out. I think I'll just
go to bed." He climbed the staircase to the second
floor, and as he started along the corridor to the
master suite, steeled himself against everything he was about
to see. But when he finally passed through the
door into the small sitting room and saw the
portrait of Renee that had hung over the
fireplace since the day they were married, his
resolution nearly failed him. Then he
determinedly tore his eyes from the portrait, went
through to the bedroom itself, stripped off his clothes, and
slid between clean, fresh sheets. The soft bed, after
months of sleeping on the library sofa, felt
delicious.
But the feeling was short-lived, as all the memories
of his wife and children rose out of the darkness, and he felt
once again the overwhelming urge to reach out to them,
to take them in his arms, to protect them.
But he hadn't protected them. Instead, he'd
failed them, and as long as he lived, that failure-and
their faces-would haunt him.
He sat up and switched on a light to clear the
darkness and the memories from the room, and as the images
of his family faded, the words Claire had spoken
over dinner echoed in his mind.
There are groups you could join, Patrick
-
groups of people who've gone through what you're going through.
But who else had lost everyone they loved on
Christmas Eve?
As the pain of his loss threatened to overwhelm him
once more, he picked up the remote control and
turned on the television.
And was instantly confronted with the face of the girl whose
image had dominated this morning's front page of the
newspaper.
Kara Marshall's daughter.
Lindsay-that was her name.
Patrick clicked off the television, but the image
of Lindsay Marshall-who looked so much like
Jenna-lingered.
The silence grew almost as massive as the house itself,
and Patrick found himself straining to hear the little cry that
Jenna used to utter when a bad dream had awakened
her in the night.
It was a cry so soft that it rarely woke Renee, but
it had always pulled him from sleep instantly.
Except on Christmas Eve . . .
And then he heard it! He heard Jenna!
In an instant Patrick was out of bed, out of the
suite and rushing down the hall to Jenna's room.
Was it possible? Would he open her bedroom door and
see her face puffed with sleep and surrounded
by tousled hair?
But when he pushed open the door, the
bedroom was dark and cold and its emptiness chilled
him even more than the cold itself.
He turned on the light. It was exactly as
Jenna had left it when they went to Vermont for the
holidays.
Her bed was covered with stuffed animals, her walls
with posters.
Her schoolbooks were stacked on her desk as if
she might pick them up tomorrow morning.
The sound of her voice had, indeed, been nothing but a
dream.
Patrick sank down onto her bed and ran his hand
over her quilt.
The pain in his chest felt as if it might actually
burst through his ribs, andwitha strangled cry, he
grabbed an armful of her stuffed animals and hugged
them to him.
He curled up on Jenna's bed then, aching for one
more hug from his little girl. Just one more hug.
Just one more good-night kiss.
But it was not to be.
It was never to be again.
At last Patrick released his grip on his
daughter's toys, uncoiled his body from the tight
ball into which he'd curled up, and forced himself
to stand.
This could not go on. Claire was right-somehow he had
to learn to deal with what had happened, to accept that his
family was gone and get on with his life.
But how?
Leaving Jenna's room, he went back to his own
suite. As his eyes
swept the room-and the door to the bedroom beyond-he
knew that he could not sleep here tonight.
As long as the rooms were filled with Renee's things,
the memories would only return to haunt him once
again.
He went downstairs to the bathroom off the library
and opened the medicine cabinet, picking up the
bottle of sleeping pills the doctor had
prescribed three months ago. He shook two
of the tiny tablets into his hand, washed them down his
throat with a glass of water, and made a mental
note to ask Neville to begin removing Renee's
things from the master suite tomorrow morning.
Then he switched off the bathroom light, made his
way through the darkness to the hard sofa, and lay down.
He'd try his own bed again another night.
and in the hall outside the library, Neville
Cavanaugh waited for his employer's
breathing to fall into the even rhythms of sleep. . .
.
The sharp pain of Kara's nails digging into the flesh
of his upper arm jerked Steve out of the semistupor to which
he'd finally succumbed after forty-eight nearly
sleepless hours, but it still took a moment or two
before his mind-and his vision-cleared enough for him
to recognize the image on the television at the
foot of the bed.
Lindsay's face, smiling at him.
Her junior class photo.
"dis . . search continues for missing
seventeen-year-old Lindsay Marshall today," the
anchorwoman was saying. "She was last seen Sunday
afternoon about four-thirty, walking home from Camden
Green High. Lindsay is five feet six
inches tall, one hundred twenty pounds, blond,
with blue eyes, and her hair is shorter than in this
picture. If you have any information regarding
Lindsay's whereabouts, we urge you to call the
Camden Green police department or this station."
Two phone numbers were now superimposed over
Lindsay's photo, then her photograph was
replaced with the face of the anchorwoman, flanked by the
sportscaster and the weatherman,
all three of them wearing the kind of empathetic
expressions Steve had never seen anywhere but on
TV. They clucked with sympathy for a moment, but their
expressions shifted quickly back to bland smiles and the
anchorwoman began speaking again. "On a national
level
Kara turned away from the television. "That wasn't
enough," she said. "They had more! They had me telling
them what happened, and they had ..."
Steve barely heard her, the memory of
Lindsay's face on the television screen still
filling his mind. Somehow that image made the whole
surreal experience all too crushingly real, and her
absence from the house came crashing down on him like a
blow from a sledgehammer.
Lindsay was not at camp.
She was not spending a few nights with Dawn's
family.
She had not gone out of town to a cheer leading
competition.
None of those occurrences had ever made the house
feel as empty of her presence as it felt now, for
before, he always knew where his daughter was and when she'd
be home.
But this time was different.
This time they didn't know what had happened.
Had she left with a boyfriend-a boyfriend he knew
nothing about-in a fit of pique?
Had she run away to spite him and her mother?
He didn't know.
All he knew was that she was gone, and that he'd never
felt so helpless.
"They should have shown videos of her," Kara was saying,
her voice taking on the edge of hysteria that Steve
had grown all too familiar with over the last two
days. "I gave them video footage from our trip
to Disney World. And what about the reward? They should have
said we've posted a reward!" She picked up the
phone from the bedside table, pulled a phone book from
the nightstand drawer and dialed, her fingers jabbing
furiously at the buttons. Steve turned down the
volume on the TV as she began to speak.
"This is Kara Marshall," she said, her voice
quavering. "I want to speak to someone at the news
desk." He watched as Kara drew dark arrows
pointing to the telephone number in the book.
"Hello?" she finally said after nearly two full
minutes had gone by. "This is Kara Marshall.
You just ran a short-really short-piece about my
daughter who has been abducted? Yes,
well, it was too short. I gave your people all
kinds of pictures, and they talked to me on
camera, and we're offering a reward-was Abruptly,
she fell silent, listening, and a moment later her
shoulders sagged. "Yes, all right," she said, her
voice cold now. "I understand. Okay. I'll
call back in the morning." She hung up the phone
and set it back on the nightstand.
Steve's stomach knotted as he watched her glare
at the television screen, and he could almost see the
wheels turning in her head.
"I'm going to have to call them every day," she said. "Tomorrow
morning we'll have the police here and we'll hold a
press conference. I'll need fresh flyers, ones
with a different photo of Lindsay on them, and the
reward information. And I'll put them on bright
yellow paper." She turned to look at him, her
eyes filled with desperation. "She's somewhere,
Steve. Someone has to have seen her! Someone has
to have!"
She got out of bed then, wrapped herself in her robe,
and left the bedroom without a word. Steve knew where
she was going-to the room next to the master bedroom,
from which the sewing equipment had vanished on Monday so
it could serve as a full-time office.
A moment later he heard her fingers tapping the
computer keyboard, and he knew she was making lists
of things to do in the morning.
He had nothing on his own list of things to do in the
morning. There was no point in going to work-he wouldn't
be able to concentrate on anything. So someone else was
shouldering his load, which wasn't good. But what could he
do? He was useless in the face of the possibility that
someone had actually taken Lindsay, and though he'd
been clinging to the hope that the police were right- that she'd
just taken off and would be back within another day or
so-there had been something about seeing Lindsay's face
on the television screen that told him Kara was right.
Lindsay hadn't just run away.
Someone had taken her.
Ignoring the tiredness in his muscles and forcing his mind
to overcome the numbness that had gripped it only a
few minutes ago, Steve heaved himself to his feet
and pulled on his own robe.
As the sound of Kara's fingers tapping at the computer
keyboard kept the silence of Lindsay's absence
at bay, Steve went down to put on a pot of
coffee.
It would be another night without sleep.
Flames!
Flames so virulent they threatened to suck the breath
from Patrick's lungs even as their crackling
whispered in his ears with a seductive passion. Its
heat, warm and comforting when he first felt it, made him
feel as if he was melting an instant later.
Flames so beautiful he wanted to embrace them.
Flames that sang to him, beckoned to him, urged him
closer.
AW The flames were evil! They were destroying his
home, devouring his family, consuming his very life!
Now their soft lullabies were drowned out by the screams
of his wife and children, and though he wanted to rush to them,
to reach into the flames and pull them to safety, he
couldn't.
He couldn't even see them. All he could see were the
flames dancing in front of him, mocking him,
laughing at him, torturing him.
And drawing him closer . . .
It wasn't too late-he could still save them, could still
rush into the flames and find them and-
But their screams were fading, and he knew they were dying
and there was nothing he could do and-
As if to punish him for his helplessness, a tongue of
flame lashed out at him, and he jerked back just as
an alarm bell sounded.
Patrick's head slammed into a wall, and the fire
abruptly vanished, its heat instantly replaced
by a terrible cold.
The cold of death itself.
Yet the alarm was sounding again.
But how could that be? If there was no fire-
He groped in the fading amber light that was all that
remained of the glow of the flames, and his hand met cold
concrete.
His left leg felt numb, and when he tried
to move it, he discovered that it was twisted around, pinned
beneath his right leg.
As the last vestiges of the nightmare faded from his
consciousness, Patrick opened his eyes and found no
fire, no heat. Rather, he was in near darkness, in the
cold, his muscles cramped, his joints aching.
His left leg, though, was beginning to come back to life
and tingling painfully. He groped again, but found only
a pair of concrete walls coming together into a corner.
A corner in which he was huddled like some kind of vermin
trying to hide from a predator.
The fire! That had been the predator! It had
hunted down and devoured his entire family, and all
he'd been able to do was cower helplessly, just as he was
cowering now.
But where was he? He tried to concentrate, to think of
what he last remembered, but his mind was still filled
with the memory of the flames, flames that even now
seemed ready to leap at him once more.
The alarm sounded again, but now he knew he was
awake, and the sound seemed unnaturally loud in the
small confines of the concrete room.
He flailed about, and slowly his mind cleared until
he recognized the alarm for what it was: the ringing
or his cell phone.
And the phone was in the pocket of his robe.
As rang again, he realized he was wearing only his
robe and his pajama bottoms and was no longer in the
house.
Then he recognized the amber light slanting down
through a small stained-glass window above a heavy
door, and he knew.
He knew where he was, though he had no memory
of how he had gotten himself there.
The mausoleum.
The huge concrete structure in which generations of
Shieldses were interred. In front of him was his
wife's crypt, and below were those of their children. He could
see the brass plates with their names engraved. He
could see the wilting flowers in their teardrop
vases.
And he could see the still empty crypt next to Renee
where he himself would someday be entombed.
The cell phone rang again, and with fingers that seemed
to be operating under their own volition, he found the key
that would answer it. "Yes?" he asked, his voice
sounding distant even to himself.
"Patrick?" an unfamiliar voice said. "It's
Alison Montgomery."
The name meant nothing to him.
"We met once, through Claire, though I doubt
you'd remember."
He did not remember.
"Claire tells me that you're having a difficult
time getting through your grief."
Patrick stared numbly at the empty crypt
next to the one that held his wife's remains.
"Patrick?"
A faint grunt emerged from his throat.
"Grief is a hard thing to handle," the woman went
on, and he could tell she was choosing her words
carefully, as if he might bolt if she said the
wrong thing. "Especially the feelings of guilt that
always go along with it. I lost my son last year, and
I don't think I'd be here today if it
weren't for the weekly support group."
Suddenly he understood.
"How about if I pick you up this morning and take you
for a cup of coffee?"
Patrick ran his fingers through his hair. He
wasn't sure he could make his way back to the
house, much less dress and go to coffee with this
woman. And how could he tell her-or anyone
else-that he had awakened this morning in the
mausoleum, and not for the first time?
How could he describe to her what he was feeling?
How could he explain that it wasn't just the grief-it
was the guilt.
She'd just said something about guilt, but how could anyone
understand the guilt he felt at not being able to save
them?
"Patrick?"
"Yes."
"Are you having some trouble?"
A small strangled sob erupted from his throat.
"I'll pick you up at ten o'clock," Alison
Montgomery said, seemingly having understood every
emotion that had been packed into his single sob.
"That's an hour from now."
"All right," he breathed, and without waiting
to hear her response, he closed the phone and put
it back in his pocket. Maybe Claire was
right-maybe he did need help. Certainly he
couldn't go on much longer the way he was.
In he hadn't seen Claire's Range Rover
parked in the drive when he came back from his meeting
with Alison Montgomery, the massed yellow
tulips that greeted Patrick would have come as far more
of a shock than they did. Still, he felt his heart
race when he saw them- the first perfect blooms of the
season-arranged in Renee's favorite vase on
the circular table in the center of the great foyer.
Exactly as Renee herself would have arranged them.
But it wasn't Renee who had cut the flowers-it was
Claire.
With a surge or energy he hadn't felt in a long
time, Patrick strode through the hall to the kitchen,
where Neville was disposing of the leftover stems and
leaves, as well as the dozens of not-quite-perfect
blooms that Claire had rejected for the foyer's
centerpiece. Through
the windows, he could see Claire in a blue
sundress with hat to match.
Leave it to Claire to be dressed for a garden party
despite the lack of even a single guest.
And now she was filling yet another basket of
blossoms, most of which he was sure would be as
firmly rejected as the blooms that now stuffed the
wastebasket. He went through the butler's pantry
to the dining room, pushed through the French doors and
walked down the path to her.
"Planning to cut every flower we have?" he asked,
taking her basket.
"But the tulips are glorious," Claire
replied, surveying the now decimated bed. "I just
had to come over and see them!" She turned, shears in
one gloved hand, and gave Patrick such an
appraising look that he wondered if she was planning
to cut him, too, and add him to the basket. Then a
hint of a smile played at the corners of her mouth.
"Well, look at you," she said. "All dressed
up, and looking human!"
Patrick rolled his eyes. She was going to gloat.
Instead, she turned back to her task. "So I
assume it went well?" she asked.
Patrick understood, then, that her visit had nothing
to do with the tulips. "What went well?" he countered,
deciding to make her pull the details of his meeting
with Alison out of him one by one, if he chose
to give her any of them at all. He
took the flowers she handed him and laid them carefully
in the basket.
"Coffee with Alison," she said, making it a
statement rather than a question, and still not looking at him.
"Well enough, I suppose," he said, masking his
true feelings. In fact, it had been almost
impossible trying to talk to a near-total stranger
about what his life had been like since Christmas
Eve. And yet, after the first few minutes, he had
seen something in Alison Montgomery's eyes that
told him that she did, indeed, understand exactly how
he felt, and how hard it was even to talk about it,
let
alone deal with it. "I'm going to a meeting with her
tonight. She's picking me up."
"That's marvelous," Claire said, then stood
upright, rubbing her lower back with one gloved hand as
she handed Patrick the shears with the other.
"I'm not so sure it's
marvelous
at all," Patrick said, putting even more
emphasis on the first syllable of the word than
Claire had.
If she noticed the hint of sarcasm in his voice,
she ignored it. "Of course it is," she
said, pulling off her gardening gloves and eyeing the
heap of tulips in the basket. "I think those should do
it. Come along-I've told Neville to make his
raspberry iced tea." She brushed his cheek with a
kiss as she passed him, and he followed her back
along the path toward the house, until he caught a
glimpse of the mausoleum and stopped dead in his
tracks. Embers of last night's nightmares were still
smoldering in his memory, and when he turned away from
the mausoleum, a flash of reflected sunlight from
the windows of a yacht on the Sound seemed to fan the
embers into hideous flames.
"Patrick?" he heard Claire say, but her
voice seemed far in the distance. "What is it,
darling? What's wrong?"
He squeezed his eyes shut against the bright sunlight
and shook his head as if that could rid him of the images.
When he finally reopened his eyes, he made himself
focus on the basket of flowers in his hand.
Brilliant color.
Beauty.
Life.
"Nothing," he said, finally answering Claire's
question. "I'm all right." Then he continued to follow his
sister up the path.
Claire pulled her sun hat off as they went in the
French doors and left it on a sideboard as they
passed through the butler's pantry into the kitchen.
"We'll have our iced tea in the library, please,
Neville."
Patrick shook his head. "Not the library."
"Why not?" Claire asked, and Patrick thought he
detected a hint of steel concealed in her blithe
tone. "Let's open it up and air it out."
"Not the library," he repeated.
Her eyes glinted for a split-second, and then she
shrugged. "Very well. The conservatory, then." She
selected two vases from the half- dozen
Neville had set out for her and began to arrange the
tulips into perfectly symmetrical bouquets.
"I think we should open the house today," she said as she
worked. "It needs fresh air and sunlight. Spring
is here, and it's time this old rock pile started
looking like it."
Patrick said nothing.
"Including the library," Claire went on. This
time Patrick opened his mouth to protest, but she
stopped him with a gesture. "In time," she
temporized. He followed her out of the kitchen, and
held the door to the drawing room for her.
"Why you even want to keep living in this old
sepulcher is beyond me," she said as they moved on
into the conservatory, where she set the flowers on a
table and looked straight at him. "Why don't you
sell it, Patrick? Why don't you get out of
here? Buy something new, something fresh! You could get
one of those fabulous condos in the city, overlooking the
river or something."
He stared at her. "You're kidding, right?"
"Kidding?" she echoed. "Of course I'm not
kidding." And he could tell by her expression that she
was, indeed, serious.
He shook his head, still barely able to believe it.
"How could 1 ever sell this place? All my
memories are here-all
our
memories. Our childhood, our parents. And
Renee, the girls ..." His voice trailed off and
he shook his head again. "I'll never sell this
house. Ever."
Claire's eyes fixed on him, but before she could
say anything else, Neville appeared in the open
door with a tray bearing a silver pitcher, two
glasses, a bowl of sugar, napkins, spoons,
and a vase containing one single perfect
tulip. As he set the tray on the table,
Claire nodded toward the two vases she'd placed
on it only moments before. "One of those is for the
sitting room, Neville. And I'd appreciate
it
if you'd open it up and air it out. The other should go
into Patrick's bedroom." Her gaze shifted
to Patrick, but when she spoke again, her words were still
for his servant. "And maybe tomorrow we'll air out the
library and fill it full of flowers, too."
A silence hung over the conservatory for a moment, and
then Neville took the two vases, offered
Claire the smallest of nods, and left the room.
Claire's eyes still coolly fixed on
Patrick, she lifted the pitcher from the tray.
"Tea?" she asked.
Patrick dropped into his leather recliner and
closed his eyes for a moment. His head sank into the
headrest, but tonight-for the first time since Christmas
Eve-it wasn't despair that had drained him to the
point of exhaustion. No, tonight it was something else:
a faint sense of hope; hope that perhaps, after all,
he might find a way to survive the grief that
until now had seemed utterly fatal.
Granted, that sense of hope was faint, little
more than a tiny pinpoint of light piercing what
seemed an infinity of darkness. He opened his eyes
as if to see the faint glimmer of light better and
found himself gazing at a vase of daffodils that
Claire had somehow managed to sneak into the library
while he was gone. They glowed on the mantel like a
beacon, each of them perfect, each of them seeming
to infuse the library with a feeling of life.
Claire had been right to fill the house with flowers this
morning.
And she'd been right about the support group tonight,
too.
Alison Montgomery had said little as she drove
them the two miles or so to Shelley and Gordy
Castille's hotise a few hours earlier,
and he'd had no idea what to expect. What he
found were a half- dozen cars-ranging from a battered
and rusty old VW beetle to a brand new
Mercedes-Benz-parked in front of the kind of house
that looked as if it would be owned by someone with a Ford
Explorer.
Inside, nine people were murmuring over glasses of
wine. All of them smiled at him, but no one offered
any of the sympathetic words he'd heard so often over
the last months that they'd become nearly
meaningless. As they sat down, Shelley Castille
turned to a wan-looking young woman who seemed to be
melting into the corner of the sofa. "Beth?" she said.
It seemed that the young woman had not heard her name, but
then she stirred, tried to speak, and pressed a sodden
tissue to her eyes with one hand as she clenched the other
into a fist of frustration at her failed attempt.
After a moment she took a deep breath, then
another, reached for her wine, then seemed to think
better of it. "My husband ought to be here," she
finally said. "I think that's what's killing me the
most." She took another ragged breath, and her
eyes moved to Patrick. "Our baby died-was she
began, then choked on her own words and pressed the
tissue to her nose and mouth. "Oh, God, it's so
hard to say that."
"Take your time," Shelley said, gently touching
Beth's shoulder.
Patrick found himself leaning forward in his chair,
holding his own handkerchief out to the young woman.
"Thanks," Beth whispered, managing a hint of a
smile, which vanished as she began to speak again. "Our
baby died last week. She was only four months
old. We'd been trying to have a baby for ten years.
Ten years! And then-was Her voice broke
and she spread her hands apart. "And then she died.
She just died in her crib!" Her voice began
to rise, her pain palpable. "Our lives revolved
around getting me pregnant, and then being pregnant,
and then having this baby, and now she's- she's gone-and
David-was She choked again, took a deep breath,
and forced herself to finish. "David just went back
to work."
Patrick stared at her, trying to comprehend her words
and failing. What kind of father could have done that?
"I mean, I don't get that," Beth went on.
"I really don't get that at all." Her voice
took on an edge as her grief coalesced
into anger. "Is it like our baby was such a small part
of his life that he could just go back to work like she never
happened?"
"I'm sure it's not like that-was Shelley began, but
Beth didn't let her finish.
"I know!" she cried. "I know it's not like that! But
I just don't see him hurting-not like 1 hurt."
"You know he does," someone said.
Beth nodded, but she looked so forlorn, so
vulnerable, that Patrick wanted to hold her, to comfort
her.
Her eyes darted from one face to another.
"I'm so angry at him," she said. "I'm so
angry about everything, but I know I shouldn't be. I
should-was She broke down again, and now Shelley took
her hand.
"You should feel whatever way you feel," Shelley
said. "There's nothing wrong with being angry-we've
all been angry. Most of us still are."
A slight man with thick glasses-a man whose name
Patrick hadn't caught-cleared his throat and
began speaking in a voice etched with as much pain as
Beth's. "I lost my boys," he said. "My
twins. They were in an accident with my wife." He
bit his lip. "My ex-wife," he went on.
"She had them for the weekend, and after the accident there
wasn't a scratch on her. But the boys weren't in
their car seats, and they both died. She'd fastened her
own seat belt, but couldn't be bothered to strap her own
sons in! Talk about angry! I was furious at
her, and furious at God, and furious at everything.
All I could do was sit in the dark and plot
revenge. I didn't know what 1 wanted more-to
kill her or just curl up and die myself."
Patrick barely heard the murmurs of understanding that
ran through the room, so transfixed was he by the words
he was hearing.
Words that expressed perfectly how he himself had
been feeling the last months.
The man spoke again. "After a while I started
losing track of time. Whole afternoons would pass and I
couldn't remember them. It was
like I'd have blackouts where I'd find myself at the
grocery store and couldn't remember how I got there
or even why I was there at all." Patrick's
focus had narrowed until there might as well have
been no one else in the room. "I was losing my
mind over it-I don't know which was worse, my
grief or my anger. But they were both killing me."
He paused again, collecting his thoughts. "Then I
came here, and found out I wasn't the only person
who'd ever felt that way." His eyes roamed over the
room and came back to Beth again. "You've got a
right to be angry," he said softly.
Beth's eyes were so bleak, they tore at
Patrick's heart. "Will I ever get past it?"
she asked.
The soft-spoken man smiled gently. "In time,"
he said. "If you want to."
"How?" Beth asked, her voice hollow. "How can
I ever get over it?"
The man spread his hands in a wry
gesture. "We all find our own way," he
replied. "I finally decided to join Big
Brothers, and now I have a dozen kids who seem
to need me just as badly as I need them. Seems like
that's what always does it-find someone else who's
hurting as bad as you are, and try to give them a
hand."
Now, in the silence of the library at Cragmont, the
nameless man's words echoed in Patrick's mind.
. . .
find someone else who's hurting as bad as you are, and
try to give them a hand.
Patrick ran his hand over his face and felt the little
scab on his chin where he'd cut himself shaving that
evening. At the time, he hadn't even felt it. In
fact, he hadn't realized he'd cut himself until
he noticed the trickle of blood running down his
neck. He'd stared at the reflected image of the
cut for nearly a full minute, but felt nothing.
Then his gaze shifted to his own eyes, where he'd
seen only blankness.
The same kind of blankness he'd seen in Beth's
eyes tonight.
. . .
find someone else who's hurting as bad as
you are, and try to give them a hand.
His eyes fell on the newspaper that lay folded
on the table next to his chair, and on the
photograph of the girl who had vanished.
The girl who looked so much like his Jenna.
This morning he had used that newspaper to fuel his
grief. Now he picked it up and looked at it in
a new light.
Lindsay Marshall. A nice name.
More of the nameless man's words came back to him.
. . . I
started losing track of time . . . I was losing my
mind. . . curl up and die
. . .
Only that morning, he had awakened in the
mausoleum with no knowledge of how he got there.
And he didn't want to lose his mind.
. . .
find someone else who's hurting as bad as you are, and
try to give them a hand.
His eyes fixed once more on Lindsay Marshall's
image.
What could he do?
What could he offer?
He wasn't sure.
But the point of light that had pierced the vast darkness
in his soul began to brighten.
Rick Mancuso handed his fake Mont Blanc
pen to Ellen Fine, and watched disinterestedly as she
read every line of the fine print on the listing agreement,
knowing that in the end she would sign. This was a nice little
listing; he wasn't sure Ms. Ellen Fine and
her daughter were going to be prospects for another
house, but at least he'd make a nice commission
on this one.
She hesitated, looking up, but before she could say
anything, his cell phone rang.
"Sorry," he said, pulled the phone from his pocket
and looked at the caller ID. Instead of a single
name, or just a phone number, four words were scrolling
across the screen.
CAMDEN GREEN POLICE DEPARTMENT.
Crap.
Mark Acton had told him they'd be calling, but
why did they have to call now, just as he was about to get this
woman to sign on the dotted line?
He'd talk to them later.
Keeping his expression impassive, he switched the
ringer to vibrate and dropped the phone back into his
pocket. "Will you be relocating in this
area?" he asked, his voice betraying none of the
concern the phone call had caused.
Ellen Fine shook her head as a little blond
girl-maybe five years old, he thought-appeared
at the kitchen doorway.
"Mommy?" the child piped, sidling over to her mother
while her eyes remained suspiciously on
Rick.
"Hi, honey." Ellen wrapped an arm around her
little girl. "This is Mr. Mancuso. He's going
to help us sell our house."
"Hi," Rick said, and held out his hand.
The little girl kept her own hands firmly behind her
back. "Nice to meet you," she said. "I'm
Emily."
"You're very pretty, Emily."
The little girl smiled shyly at the floor.
"What do you say?" Ellen prompted.
"Thank you," the girl whispered, her eyes still
avoiding Rick's.
"Sweet little girl," Mancuso said. Ellen
frowned, glanced at Mancuso, and felt a sudden
urge to end the meeting right then. A moment later,
though, she remembered her financial plight,
dismissed her misgivings about the agent, and
signed the listing. "We'll get a good price for this
house, Ellen," Mancuso went on. "You and
Emily can-was
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and though
he tried to resist it, he couldn't help pulling it
out and looking at the screen. The police again, and
obviously not about to give up. "Sorry," he said,
throwing his new client an apologetic smile.
He opened the phone and turned away from Ellen
Fine. "Rick Mancuso."
"This is Sergeant Grant from the Camden Green
police department, Mr. Mancuso. We're
investigating the disappearance of Lindsay Marshall."
The real-estate agent nodded as if the officer were in
the room with him. "Listen, I'm with a client right
now. Can I call you back in
a few minutes?" He scribbled the sergeant's name
and phone number in his notebook, then folded his
phone and tucked it back in his pocket. "I'm
sorry," he said, turning back. "Where were we?"
"I think you were about to pitch us another house,"
Ellen Fine said. "But I'm afraid we'll be
moving out of the area entirely."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"We're moving to Missouri to live with my
grandmom," Emily said.
"Lucky her," Rick said. He picked up his
paperwork and put it in his briefcase. "I'll get
this right into Multiple and we'll start showing it." He
stood up.
Ellen hoisted her daughter to her hip and walked him
to the front door. "The sooner the better," she
said. "Thanks for your help."
Dick opened the back door of his black Mercury
and threw in his briefcase, then got into the driver's
seat, wondering how long he could postpone his call
to the cops. Not long at all, he decided. Might
as well get it over with. He pulled out his phone and
punched in the numbers.
"Sergeant Grant," a gruff voice responded
after the first ring.
"This is Rick Mancuso."
"Thanks for getting back to us so quickly," the officer
said, somewhat moderating his tone. "We're just
following up on a few things. You were at the
Marshalls' open house last Sunday?"
"Mark Acton's open house in Camden Green.
Yes, I was there."
"You were there with clients?"
Rick frowned. "That was the plan, but they
had to cancel."
"But you went anyway?"
"I was meeting them there, and they called at the last
minute. I was already there, so I took another look
at the place, with them in mind. And it's perfect for
them, by the way."
"You were at a broker's open house there the previous
Wednescday." Ir was a statement, not a question, and
Mancuso thought he detected an edge to the cop's
voice now. Whete was this going? Yes," he said,
remembering his father's advice never to volunteer
anything.
"And you went back again on Sunday by yourself?"
Sergeant Grant pressed. "Yes."
"Have you taken your clients to see the house yet?"
"No," Rick said, but the definite edge in
Grant's voice told him he'd followed his
father's advice long enough. "I called Mark
to schedule a showing, but he said the house had been
temporarily taken off . he market because of what
happened to the girl." "What did you do after
Sunday's open house?" Rick told himself this
call was nothing personal. The police were just
following up, calling everyone who had been at the
open house. "Let's see," he said.
"I dropped by the post office to get my mail,
"comwent to the grocery store, drove to my sister's
place to take her some -Ce cream, but she wasn't
home, so I went home and grilled myself a teak."
"Can anybody vouch for any of that?"
Rick's heart began to pound. The post office had
been closed- comhe'd just picked up the mail from his
box. He'd paid cash at the store.
His sister wasn't home, and he lived alone-her
ice cream was still in his freezer.
So he hadn't talked with anybody. There was
nobody to corroborate his story.
"Mr. Mancuso?"
"I-I guess not," he finally said. "Unless
maybe someone at the tore remembers seeing me."
"And what time would that have been?" Grant asked.
Rick hesitated. "I'm not sure. Five?
Five-thirty? I remember getting home in time
for the six o'clock news."
Grant thanked him and hung up, but even after the
phone went
dead in his hand, Rick sat there, staring numbly through
the windshield of his car.
Maybe he ought to stop by Fishburn's, he thought, and
see who else the police had called.
And it wouldn't hurt to show his face after leaving Ellen
Fine's place, either.
That was the other thing his father had always told him:
You can't be too careful.
heard we were the last to see her alive," Tina
McCormick said, tossing her blond hair in the
way she thought was so sexy but that Dawn D'Angelo
thought was just kind of slutty. Both of them, along with the
rest of the cheer leading squad and their coach, Sharon
Spandler, were sitting at a table in the cafeteria,
facing the policeman who had called them all there.
"Well," Andrew Grant said carefully, ignoring
Tina's flirting, "you were certainly among the last
to
see
her."
"And we're sure she's still alive, Tina,"
Sharon Spandler said, fixing her eyes disapprovingly
on the girl. Tina tried to pretend she didn't
notice the coach's glare, but reddened in spite of
herself.
"Iwas
the last to see Lindsay," Dawn said. "We
walked home together Sunday after practice. And
she's still alive," she added, glowering at
Tina. She could hardly believe Tina had said that.
If the policeman and Ms. Spandler hadn't been
sitting with them, she would have thrown her water bottle
at Tina. But the coach was there, looking almost as
tired as she herself felt, and the cop was there, so she
hadn't. Not that doing anything to Tina would help her
feel any better, Dawn thought. She hadn't been
able to eat since last Sunday night, when Mrs.
Marshall had called, saying that Lindsay was
missing.
And she couldn't stop feeling it was her fault. If
she'd only asked her stupid stepmother if Lindsay
could come with her-or better yet, not asked at all and
just brought Lindsay with her on Sunday
night-then Lindsay would be fine, and everything would be
good again, and none of them would have to be sitting here
talking about her.
"I heard she ran away," Becka Saunders
said.
"I heard her parents were taking her to the city and
putting her in a private school," Heather
Blaine offered.
Grant's eyes swept over the group.
"Anybody hear anything else?"
Dawn sat silently as every rumor that had
swept through the school was repeated, each of them with
new embellishments. She sat with her arms
crossed, and with every new theory that was aired, the dull
ache in her belly grew worse.
And it would continue to get worse until she saw her
best friend's face again.
"Did Lindsay have a boyfriend?" Sergeant Grant
asked. "Maybe somebody who didn't go to school
here? Somebody older? Somebody she didn't talk
about too much?"
All the girls shook their heads.
"She was kind of hot on Zack Sorenson,"
Tina McCormick said, "but I don't think he
even knew about it."
"They never went out?"
Tina shrugged, but Dawn rolled her eyes.
"Zack is going with somebody," she said, wishing
Tina would shut up, since she barely even knew
Lindsay.
"No boyfriends?" Sergeant Grant pressed.
"Don't you all have boyfriends?"
The girls all nodded except Dawn. "Lindsay
didn't have a boyfriend," she said firmly.
"At least not one you knew about," Tina
McCormick taunted.
"Is she gay?" Sergeant Grant asked, making
a note of what the McCormick girl had said.
Dawn rolled her eyes. The other girls only
giggled.
"What about drugs?" Grant went on.
The girls glanced at each other, and Dawn could
see three of them
blushing. "Not Lindsay," she finally said.
"Lindsay was as squeaky clean as you can get."
"Not as squeaky as you!" Tina McCormick threw
in, and Grant began to wonder if Dawn
D'Angelo knew Lindsay Marshall as well as
she claimed she did. But when he looked at
Sharon Spandler, the coach shrugged.
"I never heard any talk about Lindsay using,"
she said.
Grant raised his brows noncommittally. In his
experience, most of the teachers were as ignorant about
kids' drug use as their parents were. "So the thing
that was upsetting her was that her folks wanted to move
her to the city?" he asked, his eyes once more
sweeping the group.
And once more it was Dawn D'Angelo who
responded. "She was really upset about that. She
didn't want to go-she wanted to spend her
senior year here, and be head cheerleader and then
graduate with all the rest of us." She glanced around
at the other girls, who were nodding in agreement. "I
mean, we all grew up together-she hated the idea of
going someplace she didn't know with a bunch of kids
she didn't know."
"How unhappy was she about that?" Grant asked.
"Very," Dawn said. "Very, very, extremely."
The other girls nodded again, and so did Sharon
Spandler.
"Unhappy enough to run away?" the policeman went
on.
A long silence fell over the group gathered around the
cafeteria table-a silence that told Grant as much
as anything the girls had actually said out loud.
They didn't know.
They didn't know anything at all.
Sergeant Grant took business cards from his shirt
pocket and handed them around the table. "If you can think
of anything, no matter how small, or if you hear
something, call me, okay?"
"Do you think she's all right?" someone asked.
"I hope so," he said, standing up and closing his
notebook. The
girls watched in silence as he turned
away from the table and walked out of the cafeteria.
Sergeant Grant sat quietly for a moment in his
warm car with his eyes closed. There were no red flags
in this case.
No sign of forced entry to the home.
No hint of anyone who Lindsay might have gotten
on the wrong side of-no boyfriends, no drug
dealers.
Apparently no enemies at all.
But unhappy.
Very unhappy, and probably very angry at her
parents.
He sighed, picked up his notebook, made a
few notes about his interview with Lindsay's friends,
then radioed his office.
"I still think she's a runaway," he said.
"We'll keep our eyes open and keep talking
to people, but I'm thinking she'll show up by the end of the
week. Give her some time to cool off."
Still, as he started his car and pulled away from the curb
in front of Camden Green High, he wondered
once more about that real estate agent. What was his name?
Mancuso-that was it. Rick Mancuso.
Something in his voice just hadn't sounded right.
Lindsay's eyes opened slowly.
She was still bound to the chair, still surrounded by darkness.
Darkness hiding terrors she could feel, even if she
couldn't see them. But even closer than the terrors
concealed in the darkness were the ones inside her.
Pain.
Numbness.
Exhaustion.
And thirst.
A thirst so terrible it threatened to consume her. Her
lips were swollen and cracked, her tongue dry.
She ached for water. Visions began to dance in the
darkness around her-brief glimpses of the water her
body craved: herself, swimming in the school pool;
birds, flitting in water fountains; cold ocean
spray breaking over rocks; glasses of chilled
soda; lawn sprinklers soaking cool green
grass. She wanted to reach for the visions, touch them,
feel the water. But her body had long ago gone from
mild discomfort to aching and
twitching, and now it felt coldly numb. And the
thirst was so overwhelming that even her eyelids felt
like sandpaper as they moved across eyeballs gone dry
from lack of moisture.
If she cried, she knew she would shed no tears-the
thirst made her feel as if every drop of
water had been leached from her body.
She tried to whisper to Shannon but no sound came from
her parched throat. And was Shannon even there
anymore? She strained to listen, searching in the
silence for the sound of the other girl's breathing, but heard
nothing.
She let her eyelids close, and silently
prayed for unconsciousness.
A sound.
A scraping sound. Then bright light-a light so
dazzling she reflexively twisted her head away.
Then she slowly opened her eyes, and her heart
pounded as she felt whatever evil that had locked her
in this dungeon come closer.
Steeling herself, she twisted her head around to face the
evil looming over her, but all she saw was a
black silhouette in the blinding light.
Then she heard a voice-Shannon's voice-moan
a single word: "No."
Now, in the glow filling the chamber, Lindsay could
see her crouched on a mattress on the floor of
what seemed to be a long, narrow, unfinished
basement. Shannon's back was pressed to the wall
and her knees pressed against her chest, as if they could
somehow protect her from the evil presence that
hung against the bright light. Her long, dark hair was
matted, and the deathly pallor of her face made her
look far older than Lindsay, though her voice
sounded much younger.
As the dark silhouette took form and became the
figure of a man, Shannon moaned again and hid her
face against her knees.
The man passed Shannon and came directly
toward her. Lindsay's heart pounded so hard she could
hear it throbbing in her ears, and her breath caught in
her lungs.
He came close enough so her nostrils filled with the
same musky odor he'd left in her bedroom.
He set something on the floor, then touched her.
Touched her breast, squeezing the nipple so hard it
hurt.
She reflexively tried to jerk away from his touch,
but the object pressing against her throat kept her from
moving her head more than a fraction of an inch.
Then he was holding something in front of her, and for an
instant Lindsay was certain it was another
hallucination. But then he gently fed the straw
emerging from the neck of a water bottle through her parched
lips.
Reflexively, she began to suck.
Water!
Fresh, cool water!
She greedily drank as fast as the straw could
deliver the soothing liquid across her tongue,
certain that at any moment her captor would snatch it
away.
And all too soon, he did . . .
Lindsay licked her lips and peered up at him.
A scream rose in her throat as she saw the leering
grin that hovered above her, but it died away to little more
than a helpless gurgling sound as she realized that he
wasn't grinning at all.
He was wearing a mask.
A white surgeon's mask upon which two huge and
lascivious lips had been drawn with some kind of
red marker. Above the surgeon's mask his face was
covered with a black ski mask, his eyes glinting
almost invisibly from deep beneath the eyeholes.
His body was cloaked with a black raincoat.
Then her thirst broke through her terror and her head
tipped up, almost against her own will. "Please," she
whispered, her voice sounding as if someone else must
have uttered the single word.
"Quiet!" the man commanded. He reached for her breast
once more, and though every fiber of her being
wanted to shrink away,
her need for water was stronger. She made herself hold
still beneath his touch, and finally he held the bottle to her
lips once more.
He bent down, and when he straightened, he held a
bowl and spoon.
Lindsay's eyes fixed on the bowl, and her
exhausted mind groped to understand what he might be
doing.
But it didn't matter: if he drugged her, she would
at least fall into the bliss of unconsciousness.
If he killed her, she would be forever released from his
prison and her own terror.
She opened her mouth and let him feed her.
Oatmeal! Oatmeal, sweetened with brown sugar and
cinnamon.
And milk!
She swallowed and opened her mouth for more.
Part of her was revolted that she was letting him touch
her just so she could have water and food, but the food itself
ignited a hunger she hadn't realized was there.
She swallowed every morsel he offered, and sucked
down as much water as she could manage when he held
the bottle to her lips again.
She felt her body begin to tingle as its
numbness gave way to the infusion of energy the food and
water provided.
"Please," she whispered quietly to him. "Please
let us go."
"You never let me go," he said, but a moment later
she could feel him ripping the tape away from her
ankles.
She could barely move her knees, and couldn't feel
her feet at all, nor move her ankles.
Then he tore the tape from her wrists, and her arms
dropped from the hard wood into her lap. She moved
her fingers and tried to get one hand over to the other
to massage her throbbing wrist, but it was too much.
Her joints screamed with pain and her muscles
refused to obey the commands of her mind.
The man untied the object that had pressed against her
throat, and she finally saw what it was-a metal
bit, the kind she'd seen on
horses. Tentatively, fearfully, she rotated
her head on her neck. But it was all right; nothing
pressed against her throat, nothing strangled her
breath.
He peeled the blanket away from her, then grabbed
her by the arms and pulled her to her feet. Her legs
still numb, Lindsay stumbled and fell against
him, and as her body came in contact with his, her
nostrils filled with the musky odor she'd first
smelled in her bedroom on Wednesday afternoon.
Could it have been that recently? The time when every muscle
in her body hadn't ached and her soul hadn't been
filled with terror was a memory so dim it seemed
years ago.
Could it only have been a few days?
She tried to resist her captor, tried to pull
away, but she couldn't even straighten her back,
let alone find the strength to twist herself out of his
grip. He half carried her away from the chair to a
mattress on the floor, where he shoved her down,
hurling her body with enough force that she could feel the hard
concrete even through the thick padding.
A low wall separated her mattress from the one a
few feet away, on which Shannon cowered. But the
wall was just high enough so she could no longer see the other
girl.
The man closed hard, cold, metal handcuffs around
Lindsay's wrists, then chained the cuffs to the wall
behind her.
From the pocket of the raincoat, he produced a
packet that looked vaguely familiar, but
Lindsay didn't quite recognize it
until he tore it open and pulled the contents
loose from the foil.
Baby wipes.
The kind she had seen mothers use on their infant children
in the restrooms at the mall.
She cringed, and had to force herself not to give him the
satisfaction of uttering even a single sound as he
pulled her panties away and began cleaning her.
"How do you like it?" he asked as he worked. "Do you like
it as much as I did?" Tossing the wipe aside,
he put what looked like a
dish towel between her legs, pinned it like a diaper, and
covered her with a ragged blanket.
He vanished behind the low wall, and a few seconds
later Lindsay heard Shannons chains rattling.
"No," she croaked. "Please . . . no ...
please ..."
Then Lindsay saw him again, straightening up,
pulling Shannon to her feet and half leading, half
dragging her across the chamber floor. Naked,
Shannon was so thin Lindsay could see the knobs of
her spine and hollows between her ribs.
"Please ... no ... please . . ." Shannon
whispered again, the words coming like a mantra. "dis . .
No . . . please ... no ..."
Every muscle in Lindsay's body tensed, and she
wanted to hurl herself on the man and tear Shannon from
his grip. But her wrists were cuffed and chained to the
wall, and she knew her body was too weak
anyway.
She watched helplessly as he opened a door on the
far side of the long room, half carried Shannon
through it, and closed it behind them, abruptly cutting off
Shannon's whispered pleas as a terrible, hollow
silence fell over the dungeon.
Lindsay was alone.
She felt like crying, but refused to give in to the
urge, knowing even through her terror that it would do no
good.
She closed her eyes against the threat of tears and
stretched her legs out to their full length.
As the oatmeal and water fed the tiniest bit of
strength back into her body, and the numbness and tingling in
her legs and arms finally began to ease, she tried not
to think about what was happening to Shannon, and what
might soon be happening to her, too.
And there was no way out.
No way out at all.
The sound of the door echoed oddly as Steve Marshall
closed it behind Sergeant Grant.
Sergeant
Andrew
Grant, he thought as he sank back onto the sofa
next to his wife. How had it happened that until
tonight he'd never even thought of the cop in terms of having
a first name, let alone wondered what it was?
Not that it mattered, for knowing Grant's first name
hadn't changed a thing. Not one single thing. His
beautiful, wonderful, perfect wife still looked every
bit as hollowed out and ashen as she had before the
policeman arrived to fill them in on his
progress.
And Lindsay was still gone.
And no one-not her friends or the police or Kara,
or he himself-had any better idea of what happened
to her than they had on the day she vanished.
The only thing new was that he now knew Sergeant
Grant's first name.
And he and Kara were once again sitting side by side,
not talking,
feeling the emptiness of their home. As the silence
threatened to overwhelm them both, faint echoes of
Sergeant Grant's visit seemed to whisper from the
walls of their home, and Steve reached out to take
Kara's small, pale hand in his own.
"She's not a runaway," Kara said, as if
responding to the same echo Steve had heard.
He hesitated, wishing he could offer her some scrap
of evidence- anything-to share with her the same faint
hope he was still clinging to that Sergeant Grant was right
and at any moment the phone could ring, or the door could
open, and their daughter would be with them once more. But he
couldn't. All he could do was hold her hand.
"What did he mean, there was no evidence of foul
play?" Kara asked, her voice as hollow as the
house had been since Lindsay vanished.
"He meant that teenage girls do things when they're
upset," Steve said, choosing his words carefully.
"You know that. Remember when you were seventeen?
Remember what the girls in your class were thinking
about? How many of them were constantly angry at their
parents and threatening to run away? You know what he was
talking about, Kara."
It was as if she hadn't heard him at all. "He
said there was no evidence," she whispered, almost to herself.
"But she's gone. Her blanket is gone. What
kind of evidence does he want?"
"Kara-was
Finally, she looked at him. "Where would she go? With
who? Oh, God, we've been over this a
thousand times, Steve. You know as well as I do that
Lindsay's no runaway!"
"Honey, maybe he's right," Steve began. For the
last hour, as Andrew Grant had gone over every tiny
scrap of information he'd garnered about Lindsay's
disappearance-which was essentially nothing-Steve had
allowed himself to hope that maybe the sergeant was right-that
Lindsay had just taken off in a fit of anger,
wanting to punish them the same way teenagers everywhere
wanted
to punish their parents. And if he could hang onto
that, he could hang onto hope that when she cooled
off, she would, indeed, come home.
At least it was something.
Kara pulled her hand from his. "All he really
came to tell us," she said, "was that they're not going
to do anything."
Steve put his arm around his wife. "They are," he
told her. "They're just doing what the police
do-they're the experts in these things. We have to be
strong and have faith."
She paid no attention to him. "They ought to call the
FBI. But they won't, because-was
"Because we don't know it's a kidnapping," Steve
broke in, and immediately wished he could
retract his words.
"Not to them, it isn't," Kara flared. "But I know
better." She picked at a cuticle that was already
seeping blood, and when she spoke again, her voice
had hardened. "I know better." She turned to face
him. "Tomorrow I'm going to organize a group to post
flyers all over Long Island. I've already
blanketed the town, but it's not enough. And I'm going
to call the FBI myself, if Sergeant Grant
isn't going to, and then I'm going to start
distributing flyers in the city. And you can-was She
fell abruptly silent and her eyes searched his.
"What is it?" she asked when he looked away.
Steve hesitated, then, realizing there was no point
in waiting until morning to tell her, said softly,
"Honey, I have to go back to the office tomorrow."
It was as if he'd struck her. "Your office?
Tomorrow?"
He reached out to her. "I have to. There are so many
things no one else can take care of, and-was
"You believe him," Kara said, her voice suddenly
flat. "You believe Sergeant Grant." Her
voice rose. "You think that if we don't do
anything, Lindsay will just come home!"
"No," Steve whispered, but even as he
said it, he knew it wasn't quite the truth. He
pulled her close, and though at first she resisted,
her exhaustion and grief and terror for their daughter
overcame her
and she folded into him as she used to before Lindsay
vanished and their lives had fallen to pieces around
them.
He rocked her gently, and slowly felt the anger
drain out of her body. "I'll call you," he
promised. "I'll call you every hour if you want,
and you can call me as often as you want to."
She nodded.
"And I'll be home every night-I can promise you
I'll never stay in the city again."
She sniffed.
"She's my daughter, too," Steve whispered,
drawing her even closer. And then they were clinging together
with an intimacy they hadn't felt for years, an
intimacy he knew she had been missing as much as
he.
If only it could have come in some other way.
She is truly the devil-it isn't just her looks,
though of course it was her looks that first told me
what lurked within her soul.
I was almost afraid to bring her here, but now
that I have, I know I've done the right thing; I shall
keep her in exactly the condition-and the environment-she
deserves. And the time will come when she will understand why she
is here, what she has done.
I wish I could visit her more often, but I know I
cannot. I must be patient. But patience is so hard
when I feel this desperate hatred inside me.
Did she feel what I felt when I touched her
body? Her skin is even softer than mine, and her
fragrance-a fragrance that holds me still in thrall-
lingers on the tips of my fingers and in the depths of
my nostrils, and even as I sit writing these
simple words in the loneliness of my chamber, I can
smell her once again-even see her, stretched out on
her mattress, lying in the darkness. Does she
sleep at all, or does the evil inside her
keep her as wakeful as it does me

Is she dreaming of me as I shall dream of her tonight when
at last I put aside my pen and drift into my
own dark sleep?
Perhaps our dreams will come together, and we shall touch again.
And if we do, I hope she feels the pain I shall
feel.
Perhaps I should deal with her-with both of them-right
now. But patience must be my watchword. Everything must
be done correctly, everything perfectly planned,
all things executed in precise order.
It must all be done right.
But it's so hard-so hard to keep away from her, now that
I have her within my grasp.
She looked frightened when I visited a little while
ago. She needed water, and she was terribly
hungry, and I gave her just enough to give her hope.
She moaned, of course, and pretended to turn
away, but I know it meant nothing at all, for even
as she made her feigned protests, she gazed at
me in a way that showed me her true desires as
clearly as if she were pressing her naked flesh
close to my own.
I stripped away the soft material that covered her
loins and slipped it into my pocket.
It's still there as I write, and even though I hold
a pen in my fingers right now, the simple knowledge that in a
moment I will once again clutch that foul fabric-will
once again press it to my nose to breathe in the evil
scent that emanates from the secret places of her
body-makes my own body shiver with an
anticipation that verges on ecstasy.
She will know. Soon she will know.
Soon they both will know.
But I shall not give in to my desires, not until the
time is right and all of them are here. Then, after her
scent has reminded me one more time that I now hold
her in my power, I will press that fabric into these
pages and keep it here forever.
As I will keep her here forever. . .
ara Marshall gazed unseeingly out the train window,
the clacking of the wheels on the tracks-a sound that
normally lulled her into a half doze within moments of
leaving the Camden Green
station-doing nothing at all today to calm the turmoil of
her mind.
She had to
do
something! And she was
going
to do something, the moment she got to the city.
Unconsciously, her hand closed tighter on the
bag filled with the posters she'd made up last
night. Except they weren't really posters- they were
just sheets of standard size copy paper showing an
image of Lindsay and pleading for any information about
where she might be.
And Kara's phone number.
Not that it was going to do any good, for deep in her heart
she knew-knew with a terrible certainty-that Lindsay
hadn't simply taken off for a few days.
Someone had taken her.
Turning away from the world racing by beyond the train window,
she remembered that there were people around her. People who might
have seen Lindsay.
Pulling one of the posters from her bag, she began
to circulate through the train, showing it to anyone who would
look at it. Half the people simply turned away;
the rest shook their heads sadly and looked at her with
pity in their eyes.
When Kara had reached the last car, she collapsed
into a seat and stared vacantly at her daughter's
image.
And felt utterly helpless.
Was she going to show the poster to ten million people? And
even if she could, what good would it do?
It doesn't matter,
she told herself.
You have to do something, and there isn't anything else you can
do.
She got off the train at Grand Central and took
the subway south to Spring Street, emerging from the
station into the streets of SoHo. And everywhere
she looked-on every kiosk and lamppost-she saw
masses of posters just like hers, advertising everything from
rock groups to performance artists to housecleaning
services to free kittens. On some of the kiosks,
the posters were layered more than an inch thick. Even
if she put hers up, how long would they remain
uncovered? A day? An hour? Five minutes?
Steeling herself, she began. She went into every shop, every
store, every gallery and restaurant along Spring and
Prince and Houston. Wherever they let her, she
taped a poster in the window, and sometimes taped one to the
outside if they wouldn't let her put one inside.
But none of them would let her show Lindsay's photo
to their customers. Not in the restaurants, not in the
shops, not in the galleries.
When her stomach finally told her she had to eat
something, she bought a hot pretzel and a bottle of
water and walked up to Washington Square to eat the
makeshift snack. The pretzel seemed to have no
flavor at all, and she could barely swallow the
water. Finally, she threw the last bite to the
pigeons, stood up, took a deep breath and
began her work again.
By four o'clock she was numb from repeating her questions. She
was almost out of posters, and had seen some of the
ones she'd put up earlier already covered by posters for
other things.
How many girls went missing in New York every
day, apparently with no one giving a damn about any
of them, let alone her own daughter?
Kara felt like crying, but would not. Instead she took
another deep breath and looked around to get her
bearings.
She was on the corner of Bleecker and
Lafayette, only a few blocks from where she
began. She'd been in the city nearly all day, and
had covered only about twenty city blocks.
Manhattan had almost seven thousand city blocks.
She had not even made a dent. She felt
exhausted, broken, and almost overwhelmed with
hopelessness.
She wasn't going to find Lindsay this way.
So what was the use?
Before she could decide what to do next-call Steve
or start back home-her cell phone rang. She
glanced at the display, didn't recognize the
number, but pressed the key to accept the call.
"Kara?" a woman's voice caroled. "Hi!
It's Rita Goldman!" For a moment Kara
couldn't quite place the name, but then the woman
spoke again, and Kara remembered who she was.
"I've found the perfect apartment for your family.
It's a three-bedroom, two bath with a great view
on West Eighty-fourth. Lots of light, and
you'll love the price. The sellers are highly
motivated-was
Kara clicked the phone off without speaking at all.
Rita Goldman. Their agent in the city. And she
didn't even know about Lindsay.
With everything that had happened-the TV coverage, the
stories in the paper, the dozens of calls she'd
made and the hundreds of posters she'd put up-even
their own agent didn't know that Lindsay was missing.
The world was just too big, and there were too many places
someone could hide a girl.
Finally it all caved in on Kara. She sank to the
curbing on a corner in the middle of the city, put
her head on her knees, and began to cry.
All things come to he who waits.
I do not know who first said that, but I have always found it
to be true.
I wait.
I am observant.
I am able to see the signs.
And this morning another one came.
Yet even now, as I write this, I couldn't say
exactly how I know that this was what I have been
looking for.
Waiting for.
Searching for.
At first glance there was nothing special about the ad at
all.
A seemingly innocuous little ad for an equally
innocuous-sounding house.
And yet something about it kept bringing my attention
back to it, and soon it stood out from all the other ads
like a brilliant signal shining out of darkness.
A beacon, reaching out to me, drawing me to it.
I have circled the ad in red, of course, and I
suppose I must admit the possibility that I could
be wrong.
Which is why I circled a few other ads, too, and
though I shall go and look at all the houses, I have a
feeling about this one.
After I've been to the house, and assured myself that it
is, indeed, the place where she lives, I shall paste
the ad into this journal, just as I have the ads for both the
girls' houses.
I could probably paste the ad in now, so strong is
my feeling, but again I must remind myself
to be patient and wait until everything is proven and
everything is right.
Still, things are coming together perfectly-far more perfectly
than I could ever have imagined.
It won't be long now.
I can be patient.
I must be patient.
I will be patient.
But it is hard, and my cravings are so strong. . .
.
Mama.
Lindsay focused on the word that had become her
mantra, silently repeating it over and over again in
the suffocating darkness. Sometimes it helped her slip
off into a restless sleep.
But mostly-as now-it was the only thing that kept hope
alive.
Somehow her mother would find her; would know what had
happened to her; would come to her rescue.
Mama.
She had to come soon, before the man-the
monster
comturned from Shannon to her.
Shannon.
The other girl's name echoed in her mind.
How long had she been here? Where had she come from?
And what had the man done to her?
Lindsay didn't want to think about it, but no
matter how hard she tried, images kept forming in
her mind-terrible images cobbled together from scenes
she'd seen on television and at the movies.
Images of the man looming over Shannon's
emaciated body. In her mind's eye, Lindsay
saw Shannon tied down, her body stripped
naked, the man's fingers running over her skin,
touching her arms and her legs, then moving over the
contours of her body. Lindsay's own skin crawled
as she imagined how Shannon must feel, and as she
imagined his hands caressing Shannon's breasts, then
moving lower until his fingers slipped between her legs,
her own groin began to tingle and she found herself trying
to twist away from the touch that wasn't even happening.
Not, at least, to her.
A faint groan escaped her parched lips-so faint
she wasn't sure she'd made it at all-and now
her thirst finally wiped away the terrible images of
Shannon's torture her mind had conjured up.
She fantasized now that her captor had left the
water bottle on the floor, that somehow she could get
to it, but even as the fantasy lured her, she
knew it was only that: a fantasy.
The man had taken the bottle with him.
There was no water.
No water even to long for, let alone water within her
reach.
Mama . . .
Lindsay closed her eyes, hoping to drift off, but
was suddenly jerked back to full consciousness by the
creaking of hinges and the blinding light from the doorway.
A low moan came from Shannon, the only indication
she'd had in hours that the other girl was still alive.
Then Lindsay heard Shannon's chains jangling,
and a moment later she could see the terrifying figure
clad in black lift her body-as limp as a
broken doll-and take her through the door into the darkness
beyond. Just before he vanished, the figure turned back
to gaze at Lindsay for a moment, and the bloodred
smile painted on his surgical mask leered at
her.
Then he was gone.
Lindsay lay quietly, trying to still her heart.
There was a way out. There had to be! She
was an athlete. Her body was strong-much stronger
than Shannon's. If she could find a way
to loosen her bonds, find a way out of her
prison, she could outrun this man, whoever he was.
For what had to be the millionth time, she tested her
strength against the bonds that held her.
And for the millionth time they held her fast.
Then, too soon, he came back through the door.
He was alone.
Lindsay cringed as he knelt next to her and stroked
her hair. "Drink," he whispered, his lips so
close that she could feel his breath on her cheek.
"Drink, or you might die too soon. ..." He
held the water bottle before her and put the straw between
her lips.
Lindsay sucked the water into her mouth before the meaning
of his words quite registered, swallowing as much as she could,
knowing he would pull the bottle away in only a
few seconds. She tried to drain it, sucking hard
and fast, trying to shut out the sound of his voice and the
touch of his fingers. Too soon-far too soon-a
gurgle from the straw told her the bottle was
empty. It had not been enough-not nearly enough to soothe
her parched tongue, moisten her lips, end the dryness
in her mouth.
Now he was cleaning her the way he had before, and
Lindsay cringed, shutting her eyes tight, as if
blocking out the sight of him could also block
the vile touch of his fingers on her skin.
Mama . . .
she silently cried.
Come find me, Mama.
"Come with me," the black figure with the grotesque
mask said when he was finished wiping her skin.
Lindsay felt the shackles around her wrists
loosened, and for just an instant, hope surged. But a
second later, as she realized she was too weak
even to attempt to flee, that brief flicker of
hope died away.
The fingers of his right hand closed on her arm like the
jaws of a vise and he pulled her up from the
mattress, pinning her easily to the wall with a single
arm. She tried to resist, but the last of her strength
seemed to have drained away and all she could do was force
a scream that emerged as little more than a nearly
inaudible whine.
"Quiet," he commanded. "I've brought you something
new to wear."
With utter incomprehension, she gazed at the scrap
of cloth he was holding in his free hand then realized
that it was a dress.
A dress for a doll.
Using a string he'd run through both arms of the
tiny dress, he tied the garment around her waist.
The skirt of the dress barely covered her groin.
Holding her up as if she were an invalid, he
walked her to the door through which he'd carried Shannon
a few moments ago. If he let go, she knew
she would fall.
And she knew that if she fell, he would simply
drag her along behind him as if she were a broken
doll whose dress was all she now wore.
But he didn't let go. Instead he steered her through
the door, and into a dark, damp, cold tunnel that
reeked of mold and mildew and rot.
Lindsay tried to keep up, tried to keep her
legs moving with him, tried to keep her feet on the
ground, but half the time they seemed to drag on the
floor as he hauled her along.
They came to a set of wooden stairs, and he
surged up them, his viselike fingers still closed on
her wrist in an unbreakable grip. Her legs and
feet banged on the treads as he half dragged her
up the stairs and through a trapdoor, into another
room.
It was here that Lindsay saw Shannon stretched across
a low table, her wrists and ankles taped to its
legs. She was bone thin, her long brown
hair matted into tangled strings. A filthy scrap
of a doll's dress that must once have looked like the one
she herself now wore was all that covered her.
Shannon's eyes stayed closed, and Lindsay
didn't know if she was even conscious.
Her mouth was covered with shiny silver duct tape upon
which the man had painted the same grotesquely leering
red smile that was spread over his own mask.
"See how much she likes it?" the man whispered.
"I'm going to make you like it, too." As Lindsay
gazed at Shannon in mute horror, the man forced
her down onto one of the child-sized chairs that circled
the table.
He bound her wrists together behind her, and her ankles
to the chair legs with the same duct tape he'd used
to bind Shannon to the table. Finally, he put a
wide strip of tape over her mouth.
He pulled a red marker from one of the pockets of his
black raincoat, and Lindsay knew without being
told that soon her mouth would look like Shannon's and
his own.
"It's important for us all to smile at each
other," he said softly as he worked. "It's how we
know we love each other, isn't it?"
When he was finished, he capped his red
marker, then roughly brushed a tear from her cheek.
Crouching down beside her, he looked into her eyes.
"Isn't this fun?" he said, his voice now so cold
it made her shiver. "All of us playing, just like we
used to!"
Then he rose to his full height and stood behind
her. He ran his fingers over her cheek. "So
sweet . . ." His fingers roamed down her neck and
shoulder to her breast. "So pure . . ."
Lindsay wanted to scream, wanted to twist away from
his touch, wanted to lash out at him. But she was bound
helplessly to the chair, and even if she could scream,
there would be no one except Shannon to hear her.
So she did nothing at all. She held
absolutely still, refusing to acknowledge his touch,
refusing to give him the satisfaction of any
reaction at all.
Abruptly, he pulled his hand away.
He gazed at her for a long moment.
And finally he spoke.
"You'll learn," he said softly. "You'll learn the
same way I learned."
He turned away from her then and knelt down close
to Shannon.
And as Lindsay stared in shocked horror,
he began to do to Shannon all the things Lindsay had
only imagined him doing a few minutes before.
She turned away, and an instant later, his hand
slashed across her face. Her mouth filled with the
coppery taste of blood as one of her teeth sank
into her cheek.
"Watch," the man commanded. "How can you learn to love
me if you don't watch?"
Her cheek stinging, her eyes flooding with tears, her
soul gripped in a terror worse than anything
she'd ever known, Lindsay watched in utter silence
as the man went about his "lesson."
Finally finishing with a sigh that seemed more a release
than any kind of ecstasy, he rose back to his
feet and loomed once more above her.
"You see?" he asked, holding her chin and tipping
her face up so she couldn't avoid looking at him.
"We love each other. That's why we're smiling.
Because we all love each other, and we like playing
together." He slit the tape that bound Shannon's
ankles and wrists with a pocketknife, then lifted
her up like a rag doll. With one arm around her
waist, the other holding Shannon's arm around his own
neck, he dragged her to the hatch leading to the stairs.
Lindsay knew that in a few moments he
would be back.
He would be back for her.
Mama,
she silently cried one more time.
Come and find me, Mama. . . .
Neville Cavanaugh put the first of the garden's
lilies in a vase and set it gently on the
breakfast tray. Even though Mr. Shields was still
sleeping in the library, at least he seemed to have
finally regained a little of his appetite. Perhaps if
he rapped on the library door- But before he could
finish the thought, let alone pick up the breakfast
tray to act on it, the kitchen door opened and
Patrick Shields himself walked into the kitchen.
And this morning he wasn't wearing his pajamas and
bathrobe. Rather, he was freshly showered and shaved,
wore a pair of loose- fitting white linen
trousers and a black polo shirt, and was looking
fitter and more chipper than Neville had seen him in
months.
Since the day before Christmas, in fact.
Wherever Patrick had gone two nights ago,
Neville thought, it must have done him a lot more good
than he himself would have thought possible.
"Good morning, Neville," Patrick
said. "Think I'll eat in the conservatory this
morning. It's such a beautiful day."
Neville took the tray to the conservatory, where the
remains of his own breakfast still littered the table.
He set the tray down and then began to tidy up.
Patrick Shields picked up the newspaper that
Neville had taken to reading himself since his
employer had shown little interest in it in months.
Neville set out his employer's breakfast, then
piled his own dishes on the tray and waited for the
paper. Patrick glanced up at him.
"I think I'll just read it, today, thanks." His
eyes went back to the story Neville himself had
been reading half an hour earlier. The story about the
girl who had disappeared, Lindsay Marshall. "Have
you heard anything else about this girl?" he asked.
"No, sir," Neville responded as he dusted
crumbs off the table. "Just what I've read in the
paper."
"Claire knows the girl's mother," his employer
replied. "Said we actually met once at a
fund-raiser. What a horrible thing."
"I can barely imagine what they must be going through,"
Neville murmured.
Again his employer glanced up, his lips
compressing into a hard line. "No," he said. "I
suppose you can't. But I can."
Neville felt himself flush as their eyes met
once again. Then he picked up the tray and left the
room, and Patrick, alone, turned back to the
paper and focused on the story. It had been almost a
week, with no word. The girl's family was
frantic, and understandably so.
Unlike Neville Cavanaugh, Patrick could
more than imagine what they must be going through.
He knew exactly what they were feeling.
And then, as he read the story one more time, he
remembered the words spoken two nights earlier by the
man who had lost his twins.
Find someone else who's hurting as bad as you are,
and try to give them a hand.
Picking up the phone Neville had left on the
table, Patrick dialed information, asked for the number
of the Camden Green police department, then waited
while the connection was made.
Moments later he'd gone through several people before the
person he was seeking finally came on the line, his
voice flat. "Sergeant Grant."
"Sergeant Grant, this is Patrick Shields."
"Mr. Shields," Grant said, his
voice immediately losing its neutral tone. Though he
hadn't actually spoken to Patrick Shields
since they were children, the policeman was as aware of who
Patrick was-and what had happened to his
family-as everybody else in Camden Green.
"It's been a while. How are you holding up?"
"I'm getting along," Patrick replied.
"Thank you for asking. But I'm not calling about myself.
I'm wondering about the Marshall girl. Has there
been any progress on the case?" He heard the
sergeant hesitate. "I'm thinking I'd like to try
to
do something for her parents," he explained. When
Grant still made no reply, Patrick told
him, "I think I know how they must be feeling."
Another silence, and now Patrick wondered if
maybe he shouldn't have called. "I guess
maybe-was he began, then forced himself to go on. "I
thought perhaps if I posted a reward ..." His voice
trailed off, and once again he wondered if he'd
made a mistake, if he should just keep to himself after
all.
Then Andrew Grant responded. "You never know,"
he said. "Sometimes rewards bring out new leads.
That's very generous of you."
"Then consider it done," Patrick said. "Do you
think ten thousand would help?"
"It would sure get me calling," Grant
replied. "You'll have to run that by the family.
They're the ones who'll have to decide. But if they go
along with it, it's fine with me." Now it was
Patrick who was silent. "Is there a problem with
that?" Grant asked when the silence went on too
long.
"I-Well, I think I'd prefer the source
to remain anonymous. So if you wouldn't mind, perhaps
you could inform the family?"
"I understand," Grant said. "Of course. I'll
get back to you."
Patrick clicked off the phone, set it down on
the table, and took a
blueberry muffin from the basket Neville had
left. As he broke it open and spread butter on
its steaming halves, he looked out the window toward the
Sound. It was, indeed, a beautiful day.
in the kitchen, Neville Cavanaugh quietly
set the extension phone back in its cradle.
When will I learn? When will I ever learn?
When I'm patient-when I'm in control-things
happen exactly as they are supposed
to happen.
Even magic happens.
Things fall into place seemingly without any effort
on my part at all.
But when I'm impulsive-and today I was
impulsive-disasters happen.
I barely escaped one this afternoon, all because I was
both impatient and impulsive, which is the worst
combination.
The odd thing is, I'm still not entirely sure how it
happened. I found myself in the neighborhood of the
house I saw in the newspaper, but I have no
memory of going there. No conscious memory, at
any rate, though I suppose if someone were to dig
deep enough into my psyche-well, never mind!
The point is, I would never have gone there without the
proper preparation, without the proper planning, without
thinking the entire event through.
And yet, when I found myself in the general vicinity,
I was seized with a
sudden desire to see the house right then. I couldn't
wait until the time was right.
Then, to compound my error, I threw caution to the wind
and parked across the street from the house, though at least
I had the sense to park two doors down.
It should have been harmless, of course. All I
wanted to do was take a quick look.
Get a general impression.
Find out if the feeling that came over me when I
found the advertisement was genuine.
I must have been insane.
Worse, I was stupid-totally stupid.
The house, though, was perfect. Small and tidy,
with a lovely border of flowers along the walk.
But it was the aura I felt most strongly. It was
almost a visible thing, enveloping the house with a
wonderful feeling of love and tenderness, though I also
sensed a mild undertone of sadness-perhaps even of
tragedy.
Instinctively, I liked the people who lived there, and
deep in my soul I knew that someone who lived there
had a role to play for me. Yes, there was a reason
the house spoke to me even from that tiny ad in the
newspaper, and when I was actually there, gazing at
it, it spoke even louder, more clearly, calling out
to me.
I should have left then.
I didn't.
And then the first thing happened: a small truck coming
down the street swerved away from me and the
driver blasted his horn as if it were my fault that
he almost hit me, when it was obvious he hadn't
been paying attention to where he was going. He missed
me-by perhaps a fraction of an inch!-then slammed on
his brakes and backed up until his windows were even
with mine. Then he proceeded to glare at me, again as
if it were somehow my fault! Without thinking, I slid
down in my seat in an automatic attempt
to avoid being seen, but of course to him I looked like
a coward, and he took a good, long look at me.
A moment later he stomped on the gas and his tires
screeched as he raced around the corner.
I should have left then and there and crossed this house-and
its occupants-off my list of prospects, but before
I could even start my own car, another car pulled
up directly in front of the house.
First, a young girl-an absolutely adorable
child-got out of the car. Tiny and sweet, perhaps five
years old, wearing a little pink dress with matching
bands around her ponytails. She ran up the walk
and up the steps to the front door and waited.
Then her mother got out of the car, and I knew! I had
not been wrong. Tall and lithe, with an easy
grace, I knew in an instant that my instincts had
once again proved flawless.
The mother said her good-byes to the driver of the car,
closed the door, and started toward the front door
of the house. Then, in a second stroke of bad
luck, she stopped to pull a weed from her
beautifully tended flower bed.
When she did, she must have felt the intensity of my
gaze, for she turned her head and looked directly
at me.
Her eyes are brown-dark, dark brown-just as they have
to be.
There was no way I could avert my gaze, and our
eyes met. For a moment I felt a perfect
connection with her, but then she straightened up and
hurried her daughter into the house.
And turned to look at me one more time before following
her daughter inside.
I stayed where I was for another seventy-seven
seconds, knowing it was better to act as if I were
waiting for someone than to drive immediately away. But
when I finally started the car and pulled slowly away
from the curb, I saw the curtain in the house move.
I know she watched me leave.
This is not good. This is not good at all.
Everywhere she looked, Ellen Fine saw
stuff.
Nothing valuable. Nothing she even wanted. In
fact, she couldn't remember where it had all come from.
But there it was, the accumulation of five wears
in this tiny house, now piled on the floor in a mound
that seemed to be getting bigger instead of smaller.
She'd already filled three garbage bags with junk
that was being consigned to the dump, and nearly a dozen
boxes had been filled with Emily's toys,
shelves of books, and stacks of file folders.
For a moment she almost wished she'd married Emily's
father-at least then she would have had someone to help her
sift through everything and make the hundreds of tiny
decisions about what to keep and what to throw away. Of
course, if she'd married Danny, this little
cottage would have been far too small for the three of
them. And in the end, she was sure, Danny would have
wound up taking off with Brenda Lansky anyway,
and nothing would have been any different than it was right
now.
Danny-along with Brenda-had vanished, and with them had
gone the monthly support checks for Emily. Which
made perfect sense when Ellen thought about it; after
all, Danny certainly couldn't be expected
to support his daughter and his girlfriend, too, could
he? So now she was moving back
to Missouri, back in with her mom and dad, because she
simply could no longer afford Long Island.
Not even this tiny little cottage in Smithton, which
wasn't even half as nice as Camden Green, just
a couple of miles farther out Route 25A.
Today was Goodwill and garbage day, and Saturday would
be estate sale day. That was a laugh, thinking of this
tiny house as any kind of an "estate."
What wasn't a laugh was that she was having second
thoughts about the "estate" sale, which would be a "selling
off everything I have left in the world" sale, with all
kinds of people tramping through her house, making her
ridiculous offers for what little furniture she had.
And she would take the offers, because she couldn't afford
to ship anything back to Missouri, where her parents
already had a houseful of furniture. But the truth
was, it wasn't the loss or her furniture that was
bothering her. Instead, it was the idea of all those
strangers tramping through the house. And even that wouldn't
have
bothered her until this morning, when someone had been
sitting in a car across the street and down the block,
watching Emily and her.
She felt the eyes on her as soon as Maria
Williams dropped her off, and for a
second she'd almost asked Maria to stay. But then
she'd decided she was being silly, that whoever was in the
car probably wasn't watching her at all.
So she'd said nothing.
And felt the eyes tracking her right up to the front
door of her house.
She'd pretended to pull a weed and looked at the
man in the car, and for an instant their eyes met and she
felt a cold terror go through her. She'd turned
away and gone into the house, and in about a minute he
drove away, leaving her still shaken from that brief
moment when their eyes had met.
Her first instinct had been to call the police, but
even as the thought occurred to her, she dismissed it.
What was she going to say? That there had been a man in
a car who looked at her? She'd sound like a loony
tune. Besides, she couldn't even remember what the
man looked like. Of course, he'd been in his car,
but the weird thing was, even though she'd looked
directly at his face, she couldn't recall a
single thing about it. Whether his cheeks were fat or
sunken, or his lips thin and his nose thick, or
vice versa.
In fact, she couldn't even remember the color of the
car, let alone the make, model, or
year.
So much for calling the cops.
After that, she'd tried to dismiss the whole incident from
her mind, but that had been no more possible than
remembering what the guy had looked like, especially
since that cold feeling of terror she'd felt when
their eyes met was still with her.
What had he wanted?
And what if he came back?
What if he came to her estate sale and walked
right into her house?
She told herself she was being silly, that absolutely
nothing had
happened or was going to happen. But no matter how
long she argued with herself, she couldn't shake the
creepy feeling she had. Maybe she should just cancel
the estate sale and let the open house happen on
Saturday and Sunday with all her ratty
furniture still there. Then she and Emily could
simply pack whatever they wanted into her little
Honda and drive back to "I told you so" land,
and the heck with the furniture. Maybe the agent would be
able to sell the house for enough to give her a new start,
and she wasn't going to get that much for the furniture
anyway.
She picked up a worn, floppy-eared rabbit with a
yellow ribbon around its neck and a yellow bow sewed
to one of its ears. Emily hadn't touched this rabbit
in a year or more. She tossed it into the Goodwill
box and picked up the next item for evaluation. A
music box. She turned the key, trying
to remember where it came from, but no music came out.
Broken.
Garbage.
Emily came down from her bedroom with an armful of
books. "These, Mom."
Ellen took the picture books from her daughter.
"Oh, honey, this is too many books to take
to Grammy's. Besides, these are too young for you-why
don't we give them to some little kids who don't
read as well as you do?"
"No," Emily said. "I want them." Then she
picked the rabbit out of the Goodwill box and hugged it
to her chest.
Ellen sighed. If Emily had never seen the
rabbit, it would never have been an issue, but now it
would be. "Emily, honey, everything that we take
has to fit into our car. We'll get new stuff in
Missouri. Better stuff."
"I need Mr. Spanky," Emily said,
hugging the rabbit.
"Honey-was
"Daddy
gave him to me."
Ellen gently put the books into the Goodwill box
and let Emily keep the rabbit. Since Danny
had vanished, he had become a god in
Emily's eyes, and even though she was sure a time
would come when Emily would see him for exactly what
he was, that time was not yet at hand. For now, she was
not going to interfere with her daughter's idea about her
perfect father.
"Okay, honey, if Daddy gave him to you, you can
keep him, but the books have to go."
Emily turned without a word and carried the rabbit
back up to her room, climbing the stairs exactly
the way she'd climbed the front steps earlier.
The memory of the man in the car-blessedly absent for the
few moments she'd been talking to Emily-leaped
back into the forefront of her mind, and she suddenly
knew that it hadn't just been herself the man in the car had
been watching.
It had been Emily, too.
And with that realization, all thoughts of the estate sale
vanished.
After the open house, they would come back just long enough
to pack their bags, and then she and Emily would be
gone.
Gone from Smithton, and gone from the memories of
Danny and what might have been but hadn't, and gone from
this house. And gone from the man in the car.
I'm going to die.
I'm
not
going to die,
Lindsay silently insisted to herself. But even as she
uttered the mute denial, the terrible, hypnotic
chant rang in her head again.
I'm going to die . . . I'm going to die . . .
Lindsay had lost all track of time; she no
longer had any idea how long she'd been held in
the dank confines of her prison or in the strange
child's room, let alone whether it was day or night.
All she knew was that the man who had taken her from
her home was crazy.
He was crazy, and he was going to kill her just like he
was killing Shannon.
She was back in the surreal little child's room, the
windows papered over, the room illuminated by candles
set on every flat surface she could see.
She was bound to one of the undersized chairs with duct
tape, and it was all she could do to keep breathing through
her nose, slowly and steadily, to keep from gagging on
the cotton her
captor had stuffed into her mouth before placing duct
tape over her lips. So hard was it even to breathe that
she'd been unable to struggle when he brought her again
through the tunnel from the dank chamber where she and
Shannon lay on damp mattresses during the
hours when their captor didn't want to "play"
with them.
But now they were back, taped to their chairs, with those
hideous parodies of smiles painted on the tape
over their mouths, while the man who tortured them
moved around the room like a figure in a nightmare from
which Lindsay couldn't awaken.
There was a teakettle boiling on the little stove-a
stove only half the size of the one at home. She
had assumed it was a toy, until she saw a
flame emerge from one of the gas burners, and though at
first she had no idea what the man had in mind, it
became clear as he started laying out a miniature
tea set on the tiny table that stood between her and
Shannon. The table itself had been covered with a stained
and tattered tablecloth that must have been
beautiful when the linen, with its meticulously
hand-embroidered pattern, was clean and new. Now,
though, it only added a final macabre touch to the
scene.
Though she sat perfectly still, Lindsay's eyes
followed every move the man made as he placed a
cup and saucer, along with a tiny silver spoon,
exactly in the center of each place at the table.
What would happen when he poured the tea? Was he
going to at least take the tape from her lips-and the
cotton from her mouth- so she could drink?
If he did, she knew exactly what she would do.
She would scream. She would scream louder than she
had ever screamed in her life, hoping that somewhere
outside the playroom, someone would hear her.
Meanwhile, it was all she could do not to choke on the
batting in her mouth.
Across the table from her, Shannon's head lolled on
her chest, her eyes closed.
Had she finally died?
No. Lindsay could see a slight movement in the
other girl's chest as she breathed. So she no longer
had enough energy to hold her head up.
Then the man was looming over the table. "Good morning,
my ladies," he said in a strange, almost
singsong voice. "How nice of you to come to tea."
In his hand he held the steaming kettle.
Was it morning? It looked like night, but how could she
be sure with the candles burning and the windows covered up?
"Aren't we going to have fun today?" the man intoned.
"All here together?" He poured the boiling water into the
tiny teacups that sat in front of the girls. In the
center of the table, the empty sugar bowl and creamer
matched the chipped and cracked china set. "Don't
I set a lovely table?" He put the kettle
back onto the little stove, then squatted down to perch
on the tiny chair between Shannon and Lindsay. He
picked up his cup-his pinky held carefully
straight- and brought it up to his mask.
He pretended to sip.
"Mmmmm. That
is
good. An orange pekoe-my favorite in the
morning." He pretended to sip again, and Lindsay
saw his eyes flash from Shannon to her, then back
to Shannon.
"What's the matter?" he demanded. "Isn't the
tea to your liking?" His voice began to rise like that
of a petulant child. "Why aren't you drinking it? This
is a tea party!
My
tea party! You have to do what I want you to do."
Once again his eyes darted from one girl to the other.
"Isn't that right?" he demanded. "Isn't that the way
it works? Isn't that the way it always was?"
Though she was terrified by the tone of his voice,
Lindsay saw an opportunity to be rid of the
tape over her lips and the cotton in her mouth, if
only for a moment or two. She forced herself to nod at
the man, looked at him with what she hoped were
beseeching eyes.
But he wasn't watching her; he'd turned
to Shannon. "Drink your
tea," he ordered her, but Shannon seemed beyond
even hearing. The man's voice rose querulously.
"I'm not having a good time," he said. "Perhaps I shall
have to discipline you."
He rose from his chair, went to Shannon, and picked
up her cup of hot water. Then he lifted her
head by clutching her hair and tried to pour the scalding
water into her mouth. It dribbled down off the tape and
ran-red with the ink from her grotesquely painted
smile- onto her chest.
As the scalding water hit her skin, Shannon's
body convulsed and her eyes snapped open.
A muted moan penetrated the cotton in her mouth
as she tried to scream, but the tape over her lips
all but silenced it. "Drink your tea," the man
demanded. "Drink it!" Abruptly, he shoved
Shannon, and her chair went over backward. "And
you," he said wheeling around to glower at Lindsay.
"I thought better of you-I thought you had manners!"
He came toward her, moving slowly, and
Lindsay's heart started to hammer. She couldn't
get enough air through her nostrils, and for a moment thought she
was going to pass out.
"Drink your tea," he demanded.
There was nothing she could do but nod eagerly, doing her
best to communicate that she would.
She would if she
could.
"You will play with me!" the man cried. "You will play
whatever I want to play. Don't you understand? You have
to
play with me
Suddenly, he was behind her, cutting through the tape around
her wrists and ankles, andwitha terrible clarity, she
knew what he was about to do.
Then, exactly as she had foreseen it, it happened.
He hauled her to her feet and threw her
onto the little table. She felt shards of china cut
into her as she landed on the tea set, and the sugar bowl
and creamer shattered beneath her weight.
As he loomed over her, she saw her chance. While
he fumbled with his pants, she brought her foot up,
smashing it directly into his crotch with a kick so
hard its strength surprised even her.
She saw the shock and pain in the man's eyes as he
doubled over and fell to the floor, writhing and
groaning.
Instantly, Lindsay rolled off the table,
scrambled to her feet, and raced to the chamber's tiny
door.
Too late, she saw the hasp and padlock.
As he struggled to get back to his feet, she
darted to the trapdoor, stumbled down the stairs, and
plunged through the darkness of the tunnel until she
came to the room where he kept them when he wasn't
toying with them in the playroom.
Now she heard him stumbling behind her, and tore the
tape and cotton from her mouth as she tried to make
herself move faster. But she could hardly see in the
gloom, and if she tripped-
Her thoughts were suddenly cut off by a sharp pain in her
back. She whirled, and there he was, right
behind her, holding a ski pole as if it were a fencing
sword. As Lindsay cowered, he jabbed at her, the
point at the end of the pole jabbing first her leg, then
her stomach. She squealed and tried to turn away,
only to feel the next jab in her side.
He was working his way higher, moving toward her face.
Her face, and her eyes.
"No!" she begged, hunching over, trying to protect
herself.
The point of the pole was dancing around her now, and then
she grabbed the end of it, trying to jerk it away from
him, but he pulled back hard and she lost her
footing.
Crying out in terror and agony, she crumpled to the
floor. A moment later the man had her and was
dragging her toward her mattress.
Then she was lying on her back, gasping and staring up
at the terrible smile painted on the mask.
"I'm angry," he said. "So angry I'm going
to punish you. I don't want to, but I have to."
"Just let us go," Lindsay said. "Please, just
leave us alone."
He gave no sign of even hearing her as he cuffed
her to the wall. Then, as she watched
helplessly-hopelessly-he held her water
hot
tie high above her and let the water slowly pour out
of it onto the floor.
"Bad girl," he said, as if talking to a
recalcitrant puppy. When it was empty, he
tossed the bottle into the corner and disappeared back
into the tunnel.
As she lay panting on the mattress, fighting the
pain in her body and the terror in her soul, Lindsay
heard the terrible words begin to echo in her mind yet
again.
I'm going to die . . . I'm going to die . . .
I'm going to die . . .
And slowly, as the rhythm of the words took over her
mind, Lindsay realized that maybe she no longer
cared.
Maybe death would be better than whatever the man was
planning to do with her next.
For the first time, she began to sob.
Useless,
Dawn D'Angelo thought.
It's all useless. We should all be
out
doing
something! The
problem was, there wasn't anything else
to
do, so she and the rest of Lindsay's friends were gathered in
Sharon Spandler's office, getting everything ready
for the vigil tonight.
A vigil,
Dawn thought.
Like she's dead.
She gazed down at one of the three hundred copies
of Lindsay's junior class picture-three
hundred copies that she'd been pressing one by one
onto buttons to pass out at the vigil tonight-and
struggled not to start crying again. Crying, she reminded
herself, wouldn't do Lindsay any good at all. And
maybe-just maybe-the vigil would attract enough
attention from the TV people so that someone, somewhere, would
recall seeing Lindsay sometime during the last
week.
Taking a deep breath, she carefully placed one
of the miniature pictures facedown onto the
button blank, placed the back piece onto the
picture, then leaned her weight down on the lever that
crimped
the pin together with Lindsay's image protected beneath a
layer of transparent plastic. She
pulled the pin from the machine and assessed her work.
Straight.
Perfectly centered.
Lindsay looked beautiful, her hair long, her
makeup perfect, her face surrounded by dark green
letters that read find Lindsay along with the 800 number
the Marshalls had set up. She added the pin to the
box holding the hundred-odd others she'd already
completed and set up the next one.
The rest of the cheerleaders were gluing Lindsay's
photograph to signs, and as she watched them,
Dawn wondered if they felt as frustrated as she
did that there wasn't something more they could do. Somehow,
all this seemed . . . she searched her mind for the right
word, and finally one came:
useless.
While Lindsay was going through whatever horrible thing
had happened to her, all she and the rest of her friends could
do was make buttons and posters and hold a
candlelight vigil.
Like a vigil was going to find Lindsay!
Tina McCormick sighed, put down her last
poster, and looked at Dawn as if she'd read her
thoughts. "This isn't going to do any good at all, is
it?" she said.
Oddly, hearing her own thoughts spoken out loud
instantly transformed Dawn's frustration into anger.
"Don't be stupid, Tina. Of course it is. The
problem is, we can't do enough!"
"We can only do what we can do," Sharon Spandler
said, setting six boxes of candles on the table between
Tina and Dawn. "At least that's what my
grandma's always saying. Can you start passing these out,
Tina? Consuela says there's already almost a hundred
people in front of the gym."
As Tina left and Dawn began putting together
another pin, Hugh Tarlington, who had taken over
as principal of Camden Green High only last
fall, peered into the room from the doorway. "How are
we doing?"
"We're ready," someone said.
Dawn pressed down on another button.
"Good," Tarlington said. As the rest of the girls
began trooping out the door past the principal, their
arms full of posters, Dawn felt him eyeing her.
He seemed on the verge of saying something before changing
his mind and pulling the door closed. Less than a
minute later, however, it opened again and Sharon
Spandler came in.
For almost a full minute the coach stood
silently watching as Dawn continued to work. Finally,
as the silence threatened to stretch on forever, she
spoke. "Dawn? Aren't you coming?"
Dawn couldn't even bring herself to look up, let
alone go outside and face all those people and all those
candles, knowing that almost everyone secretly thought
Lindsay was dead.
She just couldn't do it. "You go," she said, and as she
spoke, the hot lump of pain in the back of her
throat made her voice break.
You come with me," the coach said quietly. "Come on,
Dawn. We'll do more buttons later."
Dawn was about to shake her head when it occurred to her
that compared to whatever Lindsay was going through, the vigil
was nothing. And it wasn't about her anyway, she
thought, it was about Lindsay, and even though she still
didn't want to go to the vigil- didn't want
to think all the thoughts the candlelit prayer meeting would
raise in her mind-it suddenly didn't matter how
hard it might be for her.
Lindsay needed to know she was there, praying for her, with
everyone else.
She finished the button she was working on, tossed it
into the box, and picked the box up.
She would hand the buttons out herself, and ask
every single person to wear one. Little as it was, at
least it was something.
She stood and walked out of the office and through the
girls" locker room, followed by the coach.
Lindsay's gym locker, like her regular one on the
second floor of the main building, was covered
with notes and hearts and yellow ribbons, and just the
sight of the tributes made Dawn want to cry
all over again.
But she didn't.
Instead, as they passed the decorated locker,
Dawn kissed her fingertips and pressed them to the
cold metal. "We'll find you, Linds," she
said. "We'll find you, and you'll be home soon."
Sharon Spandler put her arm around Dawn's
shoulders and gave her a squeeze.
ara Marshall stared in astonishment at the mass of
cars crowded into the high school parking lot. She'd
expected no more than twenty people-maybe thirty at
most-to show up for the vigil Dawn D'Angelo and
her friends had organized, but the lot was so full, there
were cars blocking other cars, and still more spilling out of the
parking lot onto the front lawn. She was about
to give up and try to find some place on the street
to park her Toyota when she saw someone
waving frantically, beckoning her to drive to the end
of the parking lot closest to the gym. For a moment she
almost backed out into the street anyway, but when she
saw it was the principal, Hugh Tarlington, waving,
she followed his direction to a spot that had been
roped off with a sign that read reserved for Steve and
Kara Marshall. She bit her lip as she pulled
into the spot, wishing once more that Steve was with her.
Indeed, she wasn't sure exactly how she was
going to get through the evening without him.
One minute at a time,
she told herself as her eyes burned with sudden tears.
Just one minute at a time.
She got out of the Toyota, shook the principal's
hand, then let him guide her toward the crowd that had
gathered in front of the school.
Not twenty or thirty. Not even forty or fifty.
No, hundreds of people had shown up. Hundreds or
people,
many of whom she recognized, but even more whom she'd
never seen before.
And all for Lindsay.
She fished in her purse until she found a small
packet of Kleenex, pulled one out and dabbed at
her eyes.
On the steps of the school, all the cheerleaders were
gathered, wearing their uniforms and holding signs that
bore Lindsay's picture-the same picture
Kara had been putting up on walls and lampposts
and windows every day since Lindsay disappeared. "Here
comes Mrs. Marshall," she heard one of them
call, and suddenly everyone turned toward her and
started to applaud as Hugh Tarlington led her up the
steps.
At the top, she turned around and looked out at the
mass of people who had gathered, and at the television
cameras, and at the candles that were already lit, and
suddenly she didn't have the slightest idea what
to say. Or even what to think. Her mouth worked for a
moment, and finally she heard herself utter the only two
words she could possibly speak: "Thank you."
As if sensing her inability to say anything else,
Hugh Tarlington led her back down the steps, and
then the crowd was all around her, everyone reaching out
to her, speaking to her, gently squeezing her hand or
kissing her cheek. Her mind reeled as she moved
through the crowd, recognizing old friends, and neighbors
and acquaintances, and people she hadn't seen in years.
All of Lindsay's friends, along with their parents, and
their teachers, and everyone else from the school.
Even Sergeant Grant was there, wearing khakis and a
golf shirt.
Soon Kara was using the last of her tissues, but the
outpouring of love and support kept flooding over
her, and at last she let her tears flow unchecked.
1 hen Dawn D'Angelo was there, and Kara
gathered the girl into her arms, hugging her close.
"Thank you," she whispered. "You have no idea
what-was Her voice broke as her emotions once more
overwhelmed her, but Dawn obviously knew what
she'd been about to say.
"We'll find her," Lindsay's best friend
whispered, and for a magical moment, Kara believed
her.
Then Claire Sollinger appeared out of the crowd, her
patrician features softened by her concern. She
kissed Kara on the cheek, then held both her
shoulders and looked directly into her eyes. "How
are you holding up?" she asked.
Kara, choking back a sob, managed a weak
smile. "Well enough," she said. Her eyes
swept the crowd. "I'm overwhelmed."
"It's exactly what I expected," Claire
said as she drew a man only a couple of years
older than Kara forward. "I'd like you
to meet my brother, Patrick Shields."
Patrick took Kara's hand and leaned in to gently
kiss her cheek. "I'm so very sorry about what's
happened."
Their eyes met, and Kara could see the pain of his
months of grief deep in Patrick Shields's
dark brown eyes.
Exactly the kind of pain she herself was suffering.
"And I'm so sorry for your loss-was she began, then
fell silent as she realized how hollow the words must
sound to him and how often he'd heard them before.
Patrick gave Kara's hand a gentle squeeze,
and as their eyes met again, she knew she needed to say
no more; what they were going through could never be described
with mere words. But in that brief moment when their eyes
met, Kara felt a glimmer of solace. He
understood exactly what she was feeling.
Suddenly the crowd fell silent, then the principal
began to speak. As he began his litany of thanks,
first for Lindsay's friends, who had organized the
vigil, then for the people who had come, more and more candles were
being lit in the gathering night, until finally their warm
glow seemed to hold the darkness at bay.
"I've also just been told that the reward for any
information leading to Lindsay Marshall's
safe return has been increased to fifteen thousand
dollars."
A murmur passed over the crowd, and Kara looked
around, wondering who had put up the money. But of
course it could have been anyone-maybe even a group
of people. But why remain anonymous, and give her no
one to thank?
Steve should be here.
The thought brought fresh tears to her eyes, but now she
concentrated on the principal's final words,
refusing to let herself break down again. "All of us
here offer our love and support to Kara and Steve
Marshall," Hugh Tarlington said. His eyes moved
over the crowd until he found her. "Kara, please
know that all of us hold Lindsay gently in our
thoughts and hearts and prayers tonight, tomorrow, and every moment
until she comes home. And now, let us take you
home."
As someone began singing "Amazing Grace," the crowd
moved across the lawn toward the street, and as more
voices joined in, Dawn D'Angelo and
Patrick Shields fell in beside Kara. Each of
them linked an arm in one of hers, and the slow march from the
high school to the Marshall home began.
When Steve Marshall had accepted Russ
Doran's invitation for a quick drink after work, he
fully intended to take only a moment at the end of a
hectic day and unwind with a good friend. But the martini
had both cooled and soothed him, and when Russ
ordered another one, Steve figured one more wouldn't
hurt. While they waited for the second round, he
excused himself, went to the men's room, and while at
the urinal, caught sight of himself in the mirror over
the sink.
He didn't just look tired-he looked at least
ten years older than he had a week ago, and in the
space between his eyebrows there were deep creases that
barely vanished even when he stretched the skin with his
fingers.
He didn't need another martini; he needed to go
home.
The problem was, he.didn't want to go home.
Home, in the last week, had become so completely
different from the wondrously happy place he and
Kara and Lindsay had shared since the day Lindsay
had been born that it no longer felt like a place
of refuge at all. Lindsay's absence hung
over it like a suffocating blanket, and every moment he
was in the house reminded him of his terrible impotence in
the face of what had happened.
He should have protected his family-his little girl-and
he had failed.
Failed so utterly, so paralytically, that Kara had
taken charge, focusing like a laser on doing whatever
she thought would bring their baby back.
But Steve had a deep, gnawing feeling about
Lindsay, a feeling so bad that he couldn't even
confide it to his wife.
Instead, he had to keep it inside, where it was not
simply festering, but now consuming him. And he was
certain that if he breathed even a word of his feeling
to Kara-that they were never going to see their daughter
again-she wouldn't simply cry or try to talk him out
of it.
No, she would be furious at his lack of faith, and
call him a traitor, and a bad father, and a terrible
husband.
And deep down inside, he knew she was right.
He
was
a bad father, and he
was
a terrible husband, because no matter how hard he'd
tried to do everything he could for them, to make their lives
as perfect as possible, he'd failed.
He'd failed, and Lindsay was gone, and the part of him
that didn't already feel dead didn't really want
to go on living, either.
Russ Doran knew about Lindsay's disappearance,
of course, and he had let Russ think he was doing
a nice thing by taking him out for a drink and a little
distraction before he went home.
But there it was again: he didn't want to go home. And
that one simple fact left him hating himself.
He returned from the men's room, telling himself
to lay down a couple of bills, take a sip from the
final drink, and go home to Kara, no matter how
painful it might be. Yet by the time he reached the
table, the martini looked so frosty in its fresh
glass that he found himself unable to resist it.
Steve sat down.
Before he knew it, that martini was gone and another was in
its place.
This wasn't good. If he didn't leave now, the
last train would be gone, and there would be no choice but
to spend the night in the apartment by himself.
When Russ Doran ordered still another round,
Steve said nothing, and slowly the alcohol began
to numb him. And then, in the middle of the fifth
martini, Russ pointed up at the
television screen above the bar.
"Look at that," he said softly, then frowned at
Steve. "Shouldn't you be there?"
Steve looked up to see Lindsay's photograph
splashed across the television screen, and a moment
later the camera pulling back to show a great mass of
people, each of them holding a candle, walking slowly
down a street in Camden Green.
Kara.
Dawn D'Angelo.
The cheer leading coach-what was her name? Spandler.
And all his friends and neighbors, plus at least
half the rest of the town.
And he'd completely forgotten that the vigil was tonight.
He stood up so fast he almost tipped over his
stool. He fumbled in his wallet and threw a
couple of twenties down.
"Gotta go, Russ. See you tomorrow."
"Whoa, wait a minute," Russ said, grabbing
onto his wrist. "Are you going to
drive?"
"I've got to get home," Steve said, and gently
but firmly pulled away from Russ's grasp.
Five minutes later he was in the Hertz office
on West Fifty- seventh Street, and
ten minutes after that he was on the road.
Maybe-just maybe-he could get there before it was over.
Kara stood in her kitchen, closed her eyes and
listened to the sounds of talking, laughing, eating, and
drinking.
The sounds of life.
The sounds of normality.
The sounds she hadn't heard since Lindsay
vanished.
And the sounds that Steve should be hearing but wasn't.
A flicker of anger ignited inside her; a
flicker she instantly doused, reminding herself that
Steve was dealing with the situation the only way he could,
that she couldn't help him, and neither, she suspected,
could any of the people who had gathered here tonight. But it still would
have been better for him to be here.
But he wasn't.
She opened her eyes to see the roomful of friends-and people
who until tonight had only been acquaintances-and
suddenly, gratitude replaced the fear that had all
but overwhelmed her; calm replaced the frenetic
anxiety that had gripped her since the moment of
Lindsay's disappearance. If only Steve were with
her. . . .
Steve gripped the steering wheel and hunched
forward in the driver's seat of the tiny rented
Hyundai, his frustration growing by the second. He
needed to get home, and he needed to get home
now.
But traffic wasn't moving.
Someone who must have found his driver's license in a
Cracker Jack box was holding everything up on the
on ramp to the Sagtikos Parkway-maybe he should
have just taken 25A all the way and not even bothered
with the Long Island Expressway. But this time of
night the expressway should have been clear, and he'd
figured-
Who cared what he'd figured?
He pounded the horn, then cut around to the on-ramp
shoulder, right of the lane of stalled traffic. Sure
enough, at the top was an old man afraid to merge
into the lane of northbound traffic.
Steve gunned the little car and darted from the shoulder
into traffic.
But traffic was even worse when the Sagtikos
turned into the Sunken Meadow above Northern State
Parkway. It seemed as if every oversized SUV
on Long Island was trying to get to Camden Green
tonight, and Steve took a fresh grip on the steering
wheel, bore down on the gas pedal, and
swerved into a gap between two huge vehicles, each
occupied only by a driver. One way or another,
he was going to get home to Kara.
What had he been thinking, going out drinking with Russ
while Kara walked in the vigil by herself?
He slipped between two more SUV'S and hit the horn
as he passed yet another one on the right, then veered
back into the left lane and hit the accelerator as
he saw the highway finally open up ahead of him.
Finally free-at least for a minute or two-he
fumbled in his coat pocket until he found his
cell phone and flipped it open. With one hand on the
wheel, he punched the thumb of his other hand on the
speed-dial key for his home number.
Raindrops began to splat on the windshield.
Where was the wiper control?
just as Kara answered, a town car came out of nowhere
and passed Steve on the right, sending a cascade of
mist over his windshield, blinding him for a second.
Where the
hell
were the wipers?
"Hello?" Kara's voice crackled in his ear.
"Kara?"
"Steve?" Though the crackle was
momentarily gone, her voice was now muffled
by voices in the background. "Honey? Where are you?"
"I'm on my way home," he said, raising his
voice against the cacophony of the rain on the roof of the
car and the crackling in the cell connection. Holding the
steering wheel with his knees, he twisted a switch on
one of the stalks protruding from the steering column.
The headlights went out, and Steve swore under his
breath as he tried to switch them back on.
"Honey?" he heard Kara say, her own voice
now rising, too. "I can't hear you. You're breaking
up. Are you driving?"
"I'm on my way home," he said.
The rain turned into a pelting downpour, and every light
beyond the windshield turned into a dazzling blur.
"Steve?"
The last of the alcohol from the martinis he'd consumed
surged into Steve's bloodstream, and along with the
alcohol came a wave of guilt. "Kara, I
missed the vigil," he said, his words slurring.
"I'm sorry, honey, I'm so sorry-was
"Steve? You're breaking up-I can't understand you!"
As a Humvee suddenly loomed out of the darkness
ahead on the right, the phone fell from Steve's hand and
dropped to the floor between the front seats.
Instinctively reaching for it, Steve missed the
beginning of the Humvee's movement into his own lane,
and by the time he looked up again, red lights were
flooding his windshield.
His headlights! He'd never turned them back on!
Jerking the steering wheel and slamming on the brakes,
he felt the
car start to the left out of the oversized car's path, and for
an instant thought he was safe.
And in that instant, the tires lost their grip on the
rain-slicked highway. The car spun out of control,
hit the concrete divider, and flipped into the air.
In a moment of terrible clarity, Steve hoped Kara
wouldn't be able to hear what was coming next.
Then his windshield exploded as the car slammed against
the support columns of an overpass and dropped
to the ground upside down, its roof collapsing.
Steve felt a terrible pain in his spine, and an
instant later was surrounded by a dazzling white
light-
And another instant later, the light, too, was gone.
hen the phone went dead, Kara moved into the laundry
room, away from distraction and noise that only a
moment ago had sounded so good to her and tried to call
Steve back.
She got nothing more than his voice mail.
Maybe he was trying to call her again.
She hung up, waited almost a full minute, and
tried again.
And again she got his voice mail.
Questions churned through her mind. Why was Steve driving
home this late? And what would he be driving,
anyway? He'd taken the train to work.
Maybe he caught a ride with someone else?
She set the cordless phone down on the washing
machine and tried to sort out the pieces of words she'd
heard him speak. She thought he'd been trying
to apologize.
But there was something in his voice, even through the static .
. .
She walked back into the living room but could no
longer concentrate on anything anyone was saying to her;
there were too many questions tumbling inside her head.
What was it he'd been trying to say? Where was he?
Why was he driving?
None of it made any sense. There was something about the
whole situation that wasn't right. . . .
"Kara?" Phyllis D'Angelo's voice
penetrated her thoughts. She and Dawn were putting on
their coats. "I'm sorry, but we've
got to head home."
Kara managed a smile. "Of course. Thank you
so much for coming." She turned to Dawn. "And for everything
else, too."
"We're praying for Lindsay," Dawn said.
"We're praying for all of you," Phyllis echoed.
"I know you are." Kara walked them to the door, and as
if their departure was a signal, everyone else
began to drift out. Within five minutes everyone was
gone except for Patrick Shields and Claire
Sollinger, who remained seated on the living room
sofa, apparently deep in conversation, which meant that
despite her desire to sink down at the kitchen
table with a hot cup of tea and wait for Steve to come
home, she couldn't.
Not as long as Claire and Patrick remained.
As soon as the door closed, though, Claire
looked up and gave her an apologetic smile.
"I think we're overstaying our welcome," she
said, rising to her feet. "Come on, Patrick.
Kara needs some peace and quiet."
A moment later Kara found herself accepting yet one
more hug and one more kiss on the cheek, this time from
Claire Sollinger.
Then Patrick took her hand, and as she
looked into his eyes, suddenly she knew. "It was
you," she whispered.
He frowned in apparent puzzlement, but his sister
smiled knowingly. "I'll meet you outside,"
Claire said, and let herself out.
"You're the one who put up the reward," Kara said.
"What makes you think that?" Patrick asked, but his
expression told her that she was right. The pain of his
own loss was still clear in his face.
"Because you're the only other person in town who
understands. You're the only one in town who could.
You're the only one who would."
"I just want to see Lindsay come home to you," he
said.
"I don't know how to thank you."
"Seeing Lindsay home safe will be plenty of
thanks." Patrick impulsively leaned forward and
put his arms around her. "Helping you helps me,"
he went on. Then he released her, held her at
arm's length and forced a smile. "I'm really quite a
selfish bastard."
"I'll never believe that," Kara replied, but now
she was smiling, too, though her tears were still flowing.
"Claire awaits," Patrick said, and opened the
door.
Claire stood on the front porch. "I just
realized that you don't have your car," she said.
"We'll take you to it."
Kara started to protest, then thought better of it.
Better to get it now than wait for Steve or try
to deal with it in the morning.
Five minutes later Claire dropped both of
them at the high school, where Patrick insisted on
following Kara home in his own car, just to make
sure. She got into her cold Toyota, turned the
heater on full blast, and waited until she saw
the headlights of Patrick's Mercedes go on.
Then she put her car in gear and headed home.
A strange car waited in front of the house.
Had someone left something behind? Or maybe it was
Steve, being dropped off?
As she pulled into the driveway, she saw the shield
painted on the door of the parked car.
Not Steve, and not someone from the vigil.
The police.
They we found Lindsay.
With barely enough patience to put the car in park and turn
off the lights and ignition, Kara opened the door and
met the policeman on the walk. "What is it?"
she demanded. "Have you found her?" By now
Patrick was at her side, taking her elbow as the
policeman walked them up to the door.
"Let's go inside," the officer said in a tone that
instantly told Kara that whatever he had to say, it
wasn't going to be what she wanted to hear.
"Tell me," she said. "Tell me what's
happened."
Once inside, the policeman nodded them to the sofa,
then pulled over a dining room chair and sat facing
them. "This isn't about your daughter, Mrs.
Marshall," he said. "This is about your husband."
Kara's heart skipped a beat. "Steve? What
about him?" She felt Patrick's hand on her
forearm, and unconsciously covered it with her own.
"What's going on?"
"There was an accident," the policeman said. "On
the Sunken Meadow Parkway." Kara felt a
terrible chill fall over her as she realized what the
officer was going to say next, and when he spoke the
words, it sounded like an echo of her own thought. "I'm
so sorry, Mrs. Marshall. A one-car accident.
Your husband was killed instantly. He didn't
suffer."
She sat numbly for a minute-or ten?-or an
hour, or only an instant?-then turned
to Patrick. "I can actually feel the blood
draining from my face," she said, her voice sounding as
surreal to her as the words themselves. "Did that happen
to you, too?" But before Patrick could reply-even before
the terrible reality of what had happened could close
completely in on her-Kara sank into the blessed
oblivion of unconsciousness.
Kara rose slowly through the levels of consciousness,
feeling first dizzy, then nauseated, then
reluctant. When she finally let herself wake up,
she knew she had some terrible, unfinished business-
something too terrible even to remember yet-that she would
have to take care of.
Go back to sleep,
she told herself.
Just don't wake up.
But something was holding her back, something she couldn't quite
put her finger on.
Then she knew.
The scent of Sleepytime tea.
Her favorite.
Slowly, awareness came to her.
She was on the sofa, covered with the quilt her mother had
made. Had she and Steve fallen asleep watching
television?
No.
Then it all began coming back.
Lindsay-the vigil-Patrick Shields-and Steve
. . .
Steve, and the policeman.
Steve.
An ache came alive in her belly, an ache that
threatened to devour her.
Steve.
Steve and Lindsay both.
Oh, God. No! There was no way
-
no way at all
-
that she could survive this! Sleep! Just go back
to sleep, and when you wake up again, everything will be
different. Steve will be alive, and Lindsay will be
home, and it will all turn out to be nothing but a
nightmare!
Kara took a long, deep, slow breath and tried
to clear away the emotions that felt as if they were on
the verge of destroying her mind entirely.
And then she heard it.
Lindsay's voice, as clear as if her daughter was
in the same room.
"Come and find me, Mama. Come and rescue me.
Please. his
Kara's eyes jerked open. She expected to see
Lindsay standing in front of her, but there were just the
remains of the reception.
Lamps were still on in the dawning light and Patrick
Shields was kneeling in front of her, a steaming
cup of tea in his hand.
"She's alive, Patrick," Kara whispered.
He held the cup to her lips, steadying it as she
managed a sip. She set the cup on the coffee
table. "Lindsay's alive."
"I'm sure she is," Patrick said softly,
reaching out to gently brush a stray wisp of hair from
her brow. "I'm sure she is, and I'm sure
we'll find her."
In the silence that followed, both of them were acutely
aware of what neither of them had said since Kara had
awakened. Still, despite their silence, Steve's
death hung over both of them like a shroud.
I'm very good at what I do. Better, probably,
than anyone else. But then again, no one else knows
what I do, and thus it shall remain, precisely because
I'm so good at it.
The open house went well, even though it was
a Saturday. I was perfectly prepared, and
slipped into the house with the same silence and
invisibility as the air of poverty that permeates the
neighborhood. The difference, of course, is that
while I could sense the air of poverty, I'm quite
sure no one sensed me at all.
At least, not the danger inherent in my presence.
The interior of the house was much as I imagined-a
sweet little cottage that had once known love but had
grown shabby and taken on the look that houses do when
no one cares about them anymore. Someone had given
up on the little house-I could feel it immediately.
Perhaps someone had given up on love, something I know
something of.
After all, I have much love to give.
Her bedroom was that of a sweet woman, exactly the
sort I always
dreamed of. A wonderfully feminine paper covered
the walls, and the ceiling was painted a soft peach.
A shade of peach I remember well.
I could sense her-feel her-know her-despite the
fact that most of her life was already packed away in
the stacks of boxes that were piled against the walls.
The kitchen cabinets were almost bare, and what little they
held was the sort of boxed food that people who
live in that kind of neighborhood invariably eat.
A shame, really: nutrition is so important
to healthy brain activity, and perhaps if they ate
better, they would find themselves able to live better.
Regardless.
The poverty of the household did nothing to dampen my
spirits; indeed, it confirmed for me that this woman will
provide the perfect completion of my little tableau.
Knowing that the days until I could make her mine would
be incomplete without something to remember her by, I
slipped a family photograph from the dresser
into my pocket.
And I began to make my plan.
There is a fine line between adventure and recklessness.
Parking in front of this house last week was pure
recklessness, but after I examined the house more
carefully today in the company of a dozen or so other people
(each of the agents more ineffectual and each of their
clients less observant than the ones who went
before) I engaged the host agent in the sort of bland
conversation that no one-no one except me-remembers
five minutes after it has happened. I have no
doubt that the agent will remember no more of what we said
than of what I look like. Still, the encounter gave me
an adrenaline rush, as toying with people who
think they are manipulating me always does.
Having taken his listing sheets, I consistently
nodded as if I were interested in everything he had
to say. When he finally ran out of platitudes and
pitches, I eventually made my way to the
basement, where I discovered a perfect hiding place
behind an old armoire. Indeed, I tested the niche
by hiding myself there for nearly two hours, and listened
to the conversations
214 John Saul
of everyone else who came and went. After the house
grew silent and the host agent had come down to check that
everything was locked- never, of course, bothering even
to glance behind the armoire-I dosed my eyes and
breathed deeply. I stood quietly, my
anticipation under control, and waited.
Elien Fine pulled her sweater across her shoulders
and looked at her watch for at least the millionth
time. Finally, blessedly, it was four o'clock.
The open house was over and at last she and Emily
could go home. Rick Mancuso, whose appearance right
after lunch to set up the open house had served only
to remind Ellen of the strange feeling she had when he
was watching Emily the day he'd taken the listing, would
be long gone, which was fine with her. She'd
almost changed her mind about even listing the house with
him, but when he showed up with his signs precisely
when he said he would, she decided she was just being
paranoid.
The man was a real-estate agent, not a child molester,
and she had to stop seeing monsters lurking inside every
man she ran into.
Still, she'd been glad to escape to the park with
Emily, and for the first half hour it wasn't too
bad. But then the sky began clouding over, and she
started worrying about rain and the fact that she hadn't
brought raincoats.
As it turned out, her worries proved groundless: it
hadn't rained and Emily had a perfectly good time
wearing herself out. Meanwhile, she'd been so busy
watching Emily that she hadn't managed to read even
a single page of the paperback book she brought
along, though the afternoon seemed to stretch on forever.
Now, as she put the bookmark back exactly where
it was when they arrived, she realized this might well be
the last time she and Emily would be in this park.
She put her book into her bag and started toward
Emily, who was playing on the merry-go-round with
several other kids, most of whom appeared to be in the
park in the company only of their fathers. And
most of the fathers seemed to have as little interest in their children as
Emily's father had in her.
But at least they're here,
Ellen chided herself.
At least they didn't just take off and vanish like
- She cut the thought off, not wanting to get bogged
down yet again in her fury toward Danny Golden.
Danny Golden, indeed! Danny
Anything-But-Golden was more like it!
"Emily!" she called, putting Danny out of her
mind once more as she pulled her sweater tight against
the chilly breeze that had suddenly sprung up.
Let go.
Emily leaped off the moving carousel, stumbled
dizzily for a couple of steps, then ran toward her,
flush-faced, excited and giggling. But not even
Emily's happy chatter could lift Ellen's spirits
as they walked home together.
The For Sale sign still stood on the front lawn,
but all the Open House signs were gone, and the house
was as dark and quiet as Ellen had hoped it would be.
Clearly, the agent who had given her the creeps was
gone.
"Go jump in the tub," Ellen said as she unlocked
the front door. "I'll fix us some
dinner."
Emily ran upstairs, and Ellen's eyes roamed
around the living room. Nowhere could she see any
sign that anyone had been here at all. Did that
mean nobody had showed up for the open house? The thought
gave her a sinking feeling, for once she'd made
up her mind
to leave not only the house but the area as well, she
wanted it to sell quickly.
Still, she knew she was going to miss this little house.
She and Emily had been happy here for a long time,
and it was the only home Emily had ever known.
Oh, get over it,
she told herself.
Its too late. We can't afford it, and there will be
plenty of other little houses in the future. And
they'll be a lot more adorable than this one.
Putting the moment of sentimentality firmly behind her,
she went upstairs to change her clothes.
As she took off her jeans and pulled on a pair
of sweatpants, she noticed that the framed photo of
herself with Emily at the top of the Empire State
Building was no longer on her dresser. All the
other photos had already been packed into boxes to be
shipped to her parents' house in Missouri,
but she'd deliberately kept that one in its usual
place, partly so the house wouldn't look quite so ready
to be abandoned, but mostly because it was her favorite and
she liked looking at it every morning when she woke up
and every night before she turned off the light.
"Honey?" she called. Emily padded into the
bedroom, ready for her bath, wearing only her Power
Puff Girls underpants. "Did you borrow the
photograph that was here on my dresser?"
Emily shook her head.
"Okay," Ellen sighed, frowning and deciding the
picture must have fallen behind the dresser. "You
better go turn off the water in the tub. And don't
forget to wash your hair," she added as Emily
trotted off toward the bathroom.
Ellen waited until she heard the water stop
running into the tub before looking behind the dresser.
No photo.
Strange.
She was sure it had been on the dresser this morning.
She even remembered winking at Emily's image
as she rummaged in the top drawer for a clean bra.
And she didn't remember packing it in any of the
boxes. But
maybe she had-she
must
have, since the picture was no longer on the dresser.
Not for the first time, Ellen found herself wishing the move were
already over. But that wasn't quite right-if she was going
to be completely honest with herself, what she really
wished was that it had never started in the first place.
That Danny were still here, and that they were still a family.
Then, from the depths of her memory, her mother's words
came to her.
Not the kind who will ever make a good father.
Thank you for sharing, Mother.
But she'd been right. It wasn't long after Emily
was born that Danny took his leather jacket and his
gym bag and moved in with a girlfriend of whose existence
Ellen had been utterly clueless.
Get over it, Ellen.
Hearing splashing and the squeak of Emily's rubber
ducky, which told her all was well in the bathroom,
she turned her attention to dinner. Putting the missing
picture out of her mind, she headed downstairs to the
kitchen, where almost everything had already been packed
away. But she'd left two glasses, two
plates, two knives, two forks, one small
pan, and her paring knife.
The barest of the bare essentials.
Taking the last two potatoes from the
refrigerator, along with an onion and the carton of
eggs, she decided a meal was possible. Not totally
desirable, perhaps, but possible.
She clicked on the television in the living room
for the news, started to peel the potatoes, and once more
felt her spirits-and her energy-sag as everything in her
life once more began to close in on her.
Single mom.
Moving back in with the parents.
Packing.
Leaving.
Failing.
And now cooking two potatoes, an onion, and some
eggs for dinner. It was too much.
She closed her eyes for a moment, resting her wrists
on the sink.
One day at a time,
she told herself.
One hour at a time, one minute at a time. This,
too, shall pass.
Suddenly, the words emanating from the television
penetrated her thoughts.
"The search continues for Camden Green High
School student Lindsay Marshall," the
newscaster said. Ellen turned to look at the
television, where a photo of a pretty blond
teenager filled the screen. "Lindsay disappeared
almost two weeks ago after an open house
After an open house!
Now that wasn't even safe.
And then the missing picture came back to her.
The picture of Emily!
Ellen rushed out of the kitchen, her heart in her
throat. "Emily? Emily!"
No answer.
She ran through the little living room, dodging boxes,
and started up the stairs.
"Emily!"
And still there was no answer.
The bathroom door slammed hard against the wall as
Ellen burst in, but she was oblivious not only to the
noise, but to the deep gash the doorknob dug into the
plasterboard.
The tub was still filled, the rubber ducky still floating.
But her daughter was gone.
A surge of panic rose in her, and for a moment she
felt totally paralyzed. Then a scream began to form
in her throat, a scream she formed into a word as it
emerged from her lips.
"Emily!"
Nothing.
As the image of the missing picture of her daughter
recurred to her, Ellen wheeled away from the
bathroom door and rushed to her daughter's bedroom.
"Emily, where are you?" she cried, and heard the
tremble in her own voice.
She's hiding,
she told herself.
She's got to be hiding!
But a quick glance in Emily's closet and under her
bed only made her panic grow.
No Emily.
Now her mind was churning with all the things that could have
happened to Emily, and the thought that Danny-the jerk
Danny Golden-had come back to claim his daughter
was the least terrifying. Instead her mind was consumed by the
missing photograph of Emily and the report she'd
seen only minutes ago of a girl disappearing from
home after an open house.
Could some kind of maniac have been hiding in the house?
Or even that creepy agent? Once again she
recalled Rick Mancuso watching Emily a
few days ago.
And she hadn't even checked the house
to make sure everything was all right when she brought
Emily home. Instead she'd taken a quick glance
at the living room, then let Emily take a bath
while she blithely went downstairs to fix supper.
Her fault! Whatever had happened to Emily was
all her fault!
Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Leaving Emily's room, Ellen dashed into her own,
hurling the door open with even more force than she'd
applied to the one in the bathroom. "Emily!" she
yelled. "Please, God, please!
Emily, where are
you?"
And then the closet door opened and Emily burst
out, stark naked.
Stark naked, and giggling. "Surprise!" she said,
a huge grin spreading across her face.
Her terror instantly dissolving into relief, Ellen
dropped to her knees and gathered the little girl into her
arms. "You scared me," she said, barely managing
to muster even the tiniest edge of anger into her voice.
But then the two memories that had set off her
panic came back once more. "Get dressed and
put on your coat," she said.
Emily looked confused. "What?"
"Just do it," Ellen said, trying not to let her own
fear infect her daughter.
"Why?"
"Just do what I say, all right?" Hustling Emily
into her room, she grabbed the first clothes that came
to hand, helped Emily into them,
then stuffed her arms through the sleeves of her little pink
parka. Her own raincoat was still hanging in the coat
closet by the front door.
Picking Emily up, Ellen lurched down the
stairs, seized by the necessity to get out of the house.
To get out right now, until someone could check the house
and make sure it was secure.
She pulled on her raincoat, grabbed her bag from
the hook by the door, then remembered she'd left the
stove on.
With Emily heavy on her hip and her bag in the hand
that wasn't supporting her daughter, she made her
way through the maze of boxes into the kitchen, fumbled a
moment, then managed to turn off the stove. As she
turned, her eyes scanned the room. . . .
The knife she had used on the potatoes was no
longer on the drainboard.
Fresh panic surged through her.
"Come
on,
was she said, whirling and running out of the house, pulling
Emily after her.
After glancing first one way, then the other, she headed
toward Ralph Larson's house next door.
Too late, she noticed that his draperies were
closed and remembered that he was going to visit his
daughter upstate.
She rang his bell anyway, and pounded on the
door.
Sensing her mother's fear, Emily started to cry.
"Shhh"
Ellen said. "It's all right."
"What's wrong?" Emily sobbed. "I was just trying
to fool you, Mommy!"
"It's okay," Ellen said. "Everything's okay."
But her quavering voice gave the lie away.
"It's not." Emily began to sob, clinging heavily
to Ellen's neck. "Mommy, I'm scared!"
"Shhh.
"Ellen tried to smooth Emily's hair, then
jabbed at the bell one last time.
No answer.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Abandoning Ralph Larson's porch,
Ellen cut across his yard to the next house, again
pulling Emily along with her. She didn't know the
couple who lived there, but they had always looked
nice.
Surely they would help.
They would help if they were home.
Praying silently, she pressed their bell.
For just a moment Kara wasn't sure she had the
strength to walk from Claire Sollinger's front
door to Patrick Shields's Mercedes, even
though the car was parked directly in front of the
house, no more than fifty feet away. She was
utterly devoid of energy; both her mind and body
were imbued with the strange sensation of being absolutely
drained. Still, this was at least better than the
depression-the feeling of utter desolation, of
incomprehensible despair-that had all but paralyzed
her for an entire week.
A desolation and despair that had overwhelmed her
inclination to argue when Patrick and Claire insisted
she move into Claire's house until she felt
capable of taking care of herself.
"We'll pick up some of Kara's things and be back
in less than an hour," she heard Patrick
tell Claire. He put a folder of
papers in the backseat, got in, slowly pulled
around the circular drive, and headed for Kara's
house. "I made all the arrangements at
Summers Funeral Home," he said as
Claire's house disappeared from sight. "I chose
a
Jki
mid-range urn-perfectly nice, but not too
expensive-and we can schedule Steve's funeral
whenever you feel up to it." He glanced at her out of the
corner of his eye. "Which right now, I suspect,
feels like exactly never, correct?"
Kara took a deep breath, let it out, and nodded.
Patrick, once again, knew exactly how she was
feeling. "And certainly not until Lindsay comes
home," she said. A sob caught in her throat: just
hearing the words "funeral home" and "urn" made her
eyes burn with tears. But how was it even possible?
It seemed all she'd done in the last week was
cry. Shouldn't she be out of tears by now? She felt
completely dehydrated, and her eyes were swollen and
sore, but still she could see her vision blurring as more
tears welled up from somewhere. "I'll give you a
check when we get home," she said, determined not
to give in to yet another bout of sobbing.
"No rush," Patrick said. "But there are a lot
of other things you're going to have to start thinking about.
Steve's will, his life insurance-was
"Steve's office is full of lawyers," Kara
broke in. "They can do it."
Patrick remained silent the rest of the way back
to her house while Kara stared, unseeing-barely even
thinking-out the window.
When they pulled up in front of the house, it looked
exactly the same as it had a week ago, when
Patrick and Claire had led her out of it. But how
could it look the same? How could anything about it ever
look the same again, when everything about the world it contained
had changed?
But of course that was it-it was only her world that had
changed. The rest of the world had barely even noticed
what had happened to her.
And it all seemed inconceivable.
Patrick set the brake and shut off the engine,
grabbed the folder from the backseat, then came around
to her door and opened it. Taking her hand, he helped
her out of the car, and she stood On
steadily for a moment, wondering if she was going
to fall. Then, in the instant before her knees gave
way, she steadied herself and started toward the
front door.
Patrick took her elbow, then her keys, and
opened the door. Steering her inside, he led her to the
sofa.
The sofa she had neither seen nor sat on since the
night she'd perched on its edge while she heard the
news that her husband was dead. Now she lowered herself
onto it gingerly, as if somehow it might be preparing
to inflict yet another blow on her battered spirit.
Then she sat staring straight ahead.
"I'm going to make tea," Patrick said, moving
a box of tissues to within her reach.
Kara managed a nod, and as Patrick began
rummaging in the kitchen, her eyes were drawn to the
dark green folder he'd left on the coffee table.
Left where she couldn't help but see it.
For almost a full minute she gazed at the gold
letters that were embossed on the front of the blue
folder: summers funeral home.
An odd name for a funeral home. Wouldn't
"Winters" have been more appropriate? And how had
she chosen it? She couldn't remember, just as she
couldn't remember much of the last week.
Maybe she hadn't chosen it at all; maybe it
had been Patrick, or perhaps Claire.
Patrick and Claire.
Two weeks ago Claire had been nothing more than
an acquaintance, really, and Patrick even less
than that: a person she'd been aware of mostly because
of what had happened to him, rather than as Claire's
brother. But Claire had opened her home to her
without a thought, and Patrick had tended to her as if
he were her brother rather than Claire's. Without them,
Kara wasn't sure she could have gotten through this week
at all.
Except for Lindsay.
That was what had kept her going. Clinging to the
hope-no, the
knowledge
comt Lindsay was still alive, and needed her. And when
she finally came home and found out what had happened
to her father-
Kara flinched at the thought, then put it out of her
mind. They would get through it. Together, she and Lindsay
would find a way to rebuild their lives.
When she found Lindsay.
And how was she going to find Lindsay if she kept
sitting numbly letting Patrick and Claire
take care of her?
"Here we go," Patrick said, setting a
steaming cup of chamomile on a coaster in front of
her. He lowered himself next to her on the sofa and
blew on his own cup, but Kara was barely aware of
his presence, her eyes fixed now on Steve's
favorite wing chair.
The chair he would never sit in again.
How was it possible?
Yet, inconceivable as it seemed, it was true.
And suddenly, as the full reality of it all finally
sank in right here in her own house-a house that was so
full of Steve and so full of Lindsay that she could
actually feel their energy-she began to regain some of
her own. Sitting up, Kara reached for the cup,
sipped the tea that was sweetened with exactly the right
amount of honey, and felt her mind begin to shift from
neutral back into gear. "I hardly know where
to start," she murmured, almost unaware she was speaking
out loud. "There's so much to do."
"Let other people handle it for a while," Patrick said
softly.
Kara turned to look at him. "I can't. I have
to start handling things myself." Patrick was about to say
something, but Kara shook her head. "Thank you for
everything you've done, Patrick, you and Claire
both. 1 can't begin to tell you what it's
meant to me."
He took her hand and squeezed it. "Helping you
helps me," he said.
Now Kara nodded, understanding, and knowing what she had
to do. "I'm not going to go back to Claire's tonight,"
she said. "It's time I got back to work. Lindsay
needs me."
"Maybe in a couple of days," Patrick
countered. "But not tonight.
It's too soon. Let's just pack a few things and
head back to Claire's, where you can rest."
Kara felt her energy surge and her resolve
strengthen. "No," she said. "It's time for me to get
on with it. If I don't get back to work on
finding Lindsay, nobody else will. I know the
police think she just ran away, but I know that's not
what happened. She's out there, Patrick, and she's
depending on me, and I have to find her. I
have
to!" She looked up at him, expecting to see
doubt in his eyes, and braced herself for an argument.
But instead he nodded. "If that's the way you want
it, then I'm with you." "You don't have to," Kara
said softly. "You've done far more already than anyone
could have expected."
"But we won't be done until we find
Lindsay."
As they gazed at each other, Kara's mind was already
at work.
lien stared numbly at the badges pinned to the two
policemen's shirts. O'Reilly and Murphy,
like some dumb B-movie they wouldn't even show on
TV anymore. Irish cops, smiling at her and
telling her they were sure everything was all right. But
everything wasn't all right-the picture of Emily was
gone from her house, and so was the knife she'd left
on the kitchen counter when she'd gone up to find
Emily. And now Emily was sitting on the floor
in the Sanchezes' house two doors up, watching
TV under the vigilant eye of Angela
Sanchez, and she was standing in front of her own house
with Ramon Sanchez and two cops named
O'Reilly and Murphy.
"You didn't actually hear anything?" O'Reilly
said as they approached the front door.
"I didn't have to hear anything," she said for what
seemed like the hundredth time. "The knife was there when
I went upstairs and gone when I came back
down." She fixed the officer with a cold stare. "Which
means someone took it, which means someone was in
my house."
"All right," O'Reilly said in a tone that
clearly told Ellen he wasn't buying her
story. "You and Mr. Sanchez stay here, and
Murphy and I will have a look around." Then he
spoke quietly into the microphone attached to his
shoulder. "We're going in."
The door was not locked-indeed, Ellen was surprised
it was even closed, given the way she and Emily had
fled only half an hour earlier. As she and
Ramon waited on the front lawn, O'Reilly
and Murphy took positions flanking the door, then
O'Reilly reached out with a foot and pushed it wide
open.
Again, just like a B-movie. What did they
expect? A blaze of gunfire? For a moment
Ellen thought she was going to laugh out loud. But when they
both disappeared into the house, the urge to laugh
evaporated.
Seconds ticked by.
The seconds turned into minutes.
Twice she saw shadows in the upstairs windows, and
both times her heart skipped a beat before she
realized it was only the policemen, doing their jobs.
And then, after what seemed like an hour but was
less than five minutes, O'Reilly appeared
in the doorway. "You want to come in here, Ms.
Fine?" With Ramon trailing after her, Ellen
crossed the small porch and went into the house.
"How's it look?" O'Reilly asked. "Any
different from earlier?"
Ellen glanced around at the nearly bare room and the
boxes stacked against the wall. How could she know if
anything was any different? If nothing had been
packed, if the house was the way it had been before-
Before.
She put the thought out of her mind. Before didn't
count. Only now, and next week, and next month,
and the rest of her life counted.
"I guess it looks the same," she sighed.
"And there's no one here," O'Reilly assured
her. "Not upstairs, not in the basement, and not here."
"But the knife," Ellen protested. "And the-was
"This knife?" It was the other cop, Murphy, and as
Ellen turned to him and saw what he was holding, she
felt like a complete idiot.
"Where was it?" she breathed. "Where did you find it?"
"On the kitchen floor," Murphy replied.
"In the kick space right under the counter where you were
working. You musta dropped it when you went
upstairs."
Ellen took the knife, examining it carefully, part
of her wanting it to be the right knife, but part of her
hoping it was a different knife and she would be
vindicated. But it was the same knife she'd been
using, and there was no vindication, and she could almost feel
the egg on her face and barely heard what
O'Reilly was saying.
"I've searched the basement, and it's secure.
There's no one there. There's no one in the house at
all."
Ellen sighed. "Okay. I guess I wasted your
time."
"That's what we're here for," O'Reilly assured
her. "If you hadn't called, me and Murphy
probably would've eaten two more doughnuts each, and
neither one of us needs that." Ellen nodded
distractedly, still barely hearing him. How could she have
been so stupid? She'd probably packed the
picture and forgotten about it, and of course she'd just
dropped the knife! Why hadn't she at least
looked for it? "Anyway," O'Reilly went on
as she tuned back in, "I'll write up a
report, and if you have any other problems, you give
us another call, okay?"
Ellen managed a faint "Okay" as she saw them
to the door.
"I'll call Angela and have her bring Emily
home," Ramon Sanchez said as the door closed
behind the two officers.
"You don't have to," Ellen replied, "I'll just
walk down with you. I feel like such an idiot!"
"You did just what you should have done," Ramon told
her. "And you're not going anywhere. I'll wait here
with you, and
Angela will bring Emily. Or you can both stay with
us tonight if you want to."
Ellen shook her head. "You've done enough, and
we'll be fine."
But ten minutes later, when she and Emily were back
in the house, she wondered if she'd made the wrong
decision.
It still didn't feel right.
Emily's piping voice interrupted her thoughts.
"Mommy?"
"Hmmm?" The little girl was still nursing the juice
Mrs. Sanchez had given her, and staring up at her
through wide eyes.
"Will you sleep in my bed with me tonight?"
"C'mere." Ellen dropped onto the sofa
and pulled Emily up onto her lap, wrapping her
arms around her warm, sweet-smelling little girl.
It's going to be all right,
she told herself.
Just a few more days and we'll be out of this house, and out
of this town, and back in Missouri where we belong.
"How about instead of me sleeping in your bed, you
sleep in mine?"
Now Emily was struggling to get loose, and
reluctantly, Ellen let her go. Her daughter
stood in front of her, noisily sucked down the
last of her juice and handed her the empty box.
"I'm hungry," she announced, and Ellen
realized she had forgotten all about dinner.
And now it was far too late to start frying
potatoes. "How about P.b. and I.?" she
asked.
"Yes!" Emily jumped up and down a couple of
times and clapped her hands. "And then I'll sleep
with you tonight so you won't be scared!"
"P.b. and I. it is," Ellen said, standing up and
putting the last of her misgivings out of her mind.
If Emily could get excited about something as
simple as a sandwich, so could she. And if she
didn't stop worrying about every little thing, her
fears would quickly infect Emily, and then they'd both
be quivering masses of exactly the kind of jelly
she was about to spread onto the bread that was waiting in the
kitchen.
As Emily skipped ahead, Ellen followed.
Yet as she began making the sandwiches, she found
herself thinking yet again about the missing picture.
It had been there on the dresser this morning.
She was sure of it.
The front door wouldn't stay closed!
No matter what she did, it kept on opening again.
How many times had she tried, and what was she doing
wrong? Once again she firmly swung the heavy
wood panel closed, and once again heard the lock
click into the keeper.
Maybe this time it would hold.
But even as Ellen started to turn away, the door
swung open yet again.
And she went through the process again, closing it once
more, locking it once more, this time even throwing the dead
bolt.
That was it! Before, she hadn't thrown the dead bolt.
That was all there was to it!
She twisted the heavy latch, felt the bolt shoot
home, and finally relaxed.
But as she turned away, she heard the door creak
open and felt the draft of cold air on her
back.
She turned, and this time didn't look at the door
at all. Instead she
gazed into the darkness that lay outside, a darkness in which
she could feel danger lurking.
A darkness that wanted Emily.
But she wouldn't let it happen! Whatever was out there,
whatever was hidden in the blackness of the night, it
wouldn't take Emily.
Not her little girl!
"No!"
The volume of the single word she'd uttered was enough
to startle her awake, and for a moment she lay still in the
bed, her heart pounding, a clammy sweat covering her
forehead.
Outside, she could hear the wind blowing, but that
wasn't what had awakened her. No, it had been
something else.
A door.
The door that wouldn't stay shut in her dream!
Was that it? Was that what she was listening for? The sound of a
door?
Then she heard it.
A noise. A squeak and a bang. Something loose
in the wind?
Or something downstairs?
Disentangling herself from the sheets, and careful not
to awaken Emily, who was still sound asleep beside her,
Ellen pulled back the blanket.
She felt the cold wood of the floor beneath her bare
feet but ignored the chill as she slipped quietly
out of the bedroom.
She silently pulled the bedroom door closed behind
her.
At the top of the stairs, Ellen paused, listening
again. The wind outside had risen, and now she heard
rain pattering on the roof.
Was that all she'd heard? Wind and rain?
The sound came again, and it wasn't from the roof at
all.
It was from somewhere downstairs.
The kitchen?
She moved down the staircase like a wraith,
slipped through the darkened living room and paused again,
listening.
Reaching through the kitchen door, she turned on the
light.
The peanut butter was still on the counter. The
butter knife- with jelly still on it-was in the sink,
exactly where she'd left it. The paring knife was
also in the sink, the raw potatoes still in the cold
frying pan on the stove. Milk glasses hadn't
even been rinsed; by the time they'd finished their
sandwiches, she'd been too exhausted to deal with
dirty dishes.
Maybe she'd do them now.
She started toward the sink, then froze.
The noise!
It was coming from the basement. But hadn't O'Reilly
or Murphy said that everything was all right down there?
She hesitated, part of her wanting to go back
upstairs, get Emily, and get out of the house again
right now. They could go back to the Sanchezes' and
take Ramon up on his offer.
Except that it was almost two in the morning, and
Ramon would insist they call the police again, and then
she'd look like a fool once more.
Maybe she should just go back to bed.
Thunk!
She jumped at the sound, and now the urge to get
Emily and flee the house was almost irresistible.
She turned and took a half step toward the door
to the living room when she heard it again.
Thunk!
And now she knew what it was! One of the little windows
that opened into the three light wells that were spaced around
the perimeter of the cellar! That was it-that had to be it.
She opened the door to the basement, felt the draft,
and silently cursed O'Reilly and Murphy.
The basement's okay, my ass!
A window was open, and they hadn't even noticed it.
Now she could hear it.
Squeak, bang
-
squeak, bang!
The wind was blowing it open and closed, open and
closed.
She was about to go down and close it, then hesitated.
She had never opened a basement window, not as long as
she'd lived in the house.
Could the cops have opened it?
Why?
Maybe they'd opened it while checking it, and just
forgotten to latch it again.
The stairs were dark. A string hung from the
lightbulb, but when she pulled it, nothing happened.
Damn. Was she going to have to go down there in the dark?
She had no idea where her flashlight
was. Packed away somewhere, probably, along with
every spare lightbulb, which meant she couldn't even
change the burned-out one.
She should just go back to bed and forget it. But there were
boxes in the basement, too, and the last thing she needed
was for rain to come in and ruin them.
Taking a deep breath, she started down the stairs.
The dim shaft of light from the kitchen door
illuminated nothing more than a narrow area at the
bottom of the stairs, and barely lit even that. Still,
it was better than operating in total darkness.
She went down one stair at a time, slowly, almost
lost in her own shadow, careful not to lose her
footing. A broken leg or twisted ankle was
something she needed even less than a bunch of
rain-soaked boxes. She tried to visualize where
everything was on the floor so she wouldn't step on or
trip over something. But no visualization came
to mind-all she could remember was that she'd stacked
boxes everywhere.
The concrete floor was far colder on her bare
feet than the wood floor of the bedroom had been,
but she ignored the chill and followed the sound to the far
corner. Sure enough, barely visible in the faint
light leaking from the top of the stairs, she
saw a window flapping loose.
She closed it and locked the handle down securely.
Then she turned and made her way back through the
maze of
boxes in less than a quarter of the time it had taken
her to get to the window.
She ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time,
and firmly closed the basement door behind her.
And it was over.
The banging was silenced and she could go back to bed.
She took a deep breath, crossed the kitchen and
turned out the light.
Then, in the darkness of the living room, she heard
another sound.
And heard it a second too late.
The arm snaked around her neck from behind, and before she could
make a sound, a hand clamped something over her nose
and mouth.
Something soft, and wet.
Something with a scent that made her want to vomit.
She struggled now, struggled for breath, struggled
to yell for Emily, struggled to run, to kick, to rip
the hands away from her face.
But like hearing the sound itself, it was all too late.
She was already out of breath, and against her own will
she inhaled the fumes deeply into her lungs.
She felt her knees weaken, andwitha last thought of her
baby sleeping so peacefully upstairs in her bed,
Ellen began to drop away into the darkness.
way out!
There
had
to be a way out.
Kara's breath rasped in her throat as she raced
barefoot through the tunnel.
A tunnel so dark she couldn't see its walls.
But she could feel them, feel them surrounding her,
closing in on her. And where was the tunnel's end?
Maybe it had no end! Maybe she was going to race
on forever
through the blackness but never get anywhere. Nor could she
turn around, or even stop, because the man was behind her.
The man in black, who was chasing her. So she had
to keep going, keep going forward, forward through the
tunnel that had no light at its end.
She could only hope-
pray
comt it did end, and that there would be a way out when she
finally got there.
Suddenly-impossibly-the tunnel
narrowed. It was getting smaller, colder. Now she
was running crouched over, her head brushing the ceiling,
her back burning with pain, every muscle in her body
screaming in agony.
Out,
she told herself.
Have to get out. . . please get me out. . . ,
The tunnel narrowed still further, and now her shoulders
scraped against its cold walls as she dragged herself
onward.
Then she heard him behind her-close behind her.
"Angel," he whispered, his voice a gentle,
almost seductive breeze that flowed over her like
cool water. "Come to me, my angel. . . ."
"No!" she yelled, but her voice sounded muffled
even as it echoed back to her from the still-narrowing walls.
The cold walls that were pressing against her now.
Moaning almost inaudibly, she forced herself on, but now
her feet felt so heavy she could hardly move them.
But what did it matter? If the tunnel had no
end, she would never get there anyway.
Hope began to fade.
And now she needed water. She needed-
Abruptly, she stopped short, sensing something ahead
of her, blocking her way.
The man? No! He was still behind her.
The darkness began to lift, and in the faintest of gray
light, she saw it.
A door! A huge door, unimaginably large,
made from planks as big as tree trunks, bound
together with thick iron straps.
And a latch! A latch she could touch, that fit
perfectly in her hand.
But a latch that would not open!
Behind her, she felt the man drawing closer,
smelled his fetid breath on the back of her neck.
Her fingers felt numb as she fumbled with the latch.
Panic was threatening to overwhelm her now, and she could
feel the man's hands reaching out to her. In another
second his fingers would close around her throat and
then-
And then she had it!
The door swung open, and beyond it lay a room
filled with light so bright it momentarily dazzled her.
In the center there was an object, something she almost
recognized, but not quite.
She moved closer.
It was a twisted mass of metal from which faint wisps
of smoke were rising.
A car!
That was it-a wrecked car! But-
Something rolled out of the smoldering wreckage, coming
to rest only inches from her bare feet.
A ball?
No, not a ball.
A head.
Steve's head!
She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out.
Then a voice echoed in the vastness of the room. "He
didn't suffer," the policeman said as he leaned
down to pick up Steve's head.
Steve's eyes opened as the policeman raised his
head up so it was even with her own. "Playing house,"
he said. His dead blue lips twisted into a
grimace of a smile, and blood oozed from between his
shattered teeth. "She's playing house."
A scream welled up in Kara's throat and she
opened her mouth to set her anguish free.
And sat straight up in bed.
Utterly disoriented, stunned by the vividness of the
dream, Kara
put her hands to her head in an attempt to still the
dizziness that had seized her. Feeling the lentil
soup she'd had for dinner begin to rise in her gorge,
she hurled herself out of bed, and barely made
it to the bathroom before the soup spewed through her throat
and out her mouth.
She crouched, gasping, next to the toilet, and finally
her head began to clear. The porcelain felt cool
against her burning cheek, and she stayed where she was,
slowly emerging from the shadows of the nightmare. Finally,
when her breathing returned to normal, she stood up,
moved to the sink, and cupped her hands under the faucet.
She rinsed her face, washed out her mouth, then
drank thirstily from her cupped hands. Only when
she was sure the nausea was completely over did she
straighten up and stare at herself in the mirror.
"I'll never survive this," she whispered to her
reflection. But even as she formed the words, the
response rose in her mind:
Why would I want to?
Wrung out, Kara shuffled back to the bedroom. A
late night infomercial was on the television she
hadn't bothered to turn off when she went to bed, and now
it provided just enough background noise to muffle the
echo of the emptiness of the house.
Kara crawled back under the covers, still wearing the
pajamas, the bathrobe, and the thick pair of fuzzy
socks she'd put on before going to bed the first time, but
they did nothing to protect her from the cold
knowledge that Steve would never again reach for her in the night.
He'd never rub her back after getting up to go to the
bathroom.
He'd never pull her close for a cuddle in the
darkness of night, murmuring in her ear.
If she could wrap an insulating quilt around her
bathrobe under the covers, she would have, but there were no more
quilts, so instead she wrapped her arms around her
chest and gave in once more to the terrible agony of her
loneliness, and the fresh crop of tears that came with it.
In the emptiness of the house, the tears were her only
company, and she let herself sob until even that comfort
was exhausted.
When the crying was over, the numbness came back.
But so did the answer to the question that had come into her mind
as she'd gazed into the mirror a few minutes ago,
considering her own survival:
Why would I want to?
Because of Lindsay, of course.
She had to survive for Lindsay.
And Patrick Shields had survived worse.
He had survived, and she would, too.
Clinging to that belief, Kara picked up the remote and
switched off the television.
The silence of the empty house closed around
her, but as she closed her eyes, she knew that tonight,
at least, she would dream no more.
Emily had to go to the bathroom.
She climbed out of bed and walked, half awake, out
the bedroom door and turned left, just like she had a
million times before.
And ran smack into a wall.
By the time she was awake enough to realize what had
happened, she was sprawled on the floor, crying.
"Mommy?" she called. "Mommy!"
No answer.
For the first time in Emily's short life, there was no
answer.
But she didn't really hurt, either. Not enough to make
her cry, anyway. She hiccuped a couple of
times, then rubbed her eyes and gingerly touched her
forehead, where a new bump had grown, right in the
middle. Then she rubbed her bottom where she'd landed
after her forehead had hit the wall.
Her bottom didn't really hurt, either.
And she still needed to go to the bathroom.
She looked around, peering into the darkness, trying
to figure out what had happened. Then she
remembered: she'd gone to sleep in her mother's bed.
So the bathroom was the other way.
She turned around, found the bathroom, and sat on the
toilet until she was sure there was nothing left.
Then she wiped herself carefully, flushed the toilet,
and went back to her mother's bed.
It was empty.
"Mommy?" Emily called, more puzzled than
frightened.
No answer. She climbed back into the bed, found the
warm spot where she'd been sleeping, and snuggled
down.
But where was her mother?
She sat up and called out again, a lot louder this
time.
"Mommy!"
Nothing but the sound of the wind and the rain outside.
"There's nothing to be afraid of," Emily said out
loud, repeating the words her mother had spoken to her so
many times when she'd awakened from a bad dream, or
heard thunder outside, crashing so loudly it shook the
house. Now the sound of her own voice speaking her
mother's words comforted her. "She'll be back in a
minute," she went on. "That's what she always
says, "I'll be back in a minute." his
Then she remembered what had happened earlier, when
her mother had been really scared and they'd gone
to the neighbor's house. But the police came, and
then everything was all right. So now, if she got really
scared and her mom wasn't home, she knew what
she would do. She would go back to the neighbor's
house, and they'd call the police for her.
But not right now, because she wasn't really scared. She
was a big girl, a brave girl, and besides, her mother
would be back in a minute.
The minutes ticked by, each one of them feeling like
forever, and Emily began to feel like she was going to start
to cry if her mom didn't come back to bed pretty
soon. She stuck her thumb in her mouth-something she
never let her mother see her do-and snuggled down right in
the middle of the big bed.
Somehow, it didn't feel quite as lonely there.
Then she decided to tell herself a story, the way her
mother did when she couldn't fall asleep.
"Once upon a time," she whispered to herself, "there was a
brave
little girl. . . ." Her voice trailed off, and
she decided to start over. "Once upon a time . .
." she whispered, but once again her words trailed
off.
A moment later Emily's thumb slipped back
into her mouth, her breathing grew slow and
rhythmic, and her eyes gently closed. . . .
And in her dreams, her mother was cuddling her close, just
the way her mother was supposed to.
In her dreams, everything was perfect. . . .
Rick Mancuso sank the spike of the Open
House sign into the soggy earth at the corner, two
blocks from the Fine house, tamped the mud with his
foot, then stepped back. The sign tilted a
couple of inches but held; good enough for the few hours he
needed. If it fell over by four, so be it.
Satisfied, he checked his watch.
Ten of two, which meant he was running late.
Normally, he liked to be at his open houses at
least half an hour early, just to make certain
everything was in order. And Ellen Fine had a little
girl; kids in a house-even just one-usually meant
the house wouldn't look as good as it should in order
to sell quickly, and since Rick liked quick sales,
he didn't mind spending half an hour putting a
place straight.
Not today-there wouldn't be time, so he'd have to trust that
Ellen Fine had done her job. Giving the sign
one last desultory adjustment, an adjustment that
failed almost as soon as he made it, he slammed
the trunk of his car, then drove the two
blocks to Ellen Fine's house and parked across the
street. Even though it was small- real small-the
house still had good curb appeal, looking more like
the "cottage" he'd described in the ad than he
actually remembered. The grass was nice and green
and looked freshly mowed, and the trees that lined both
sides of the street were almost fully leafed out. There were
even a few daffodils still blooming along the walk.
Nice-very nice: the rain last night had made
everything fresh.
As he crossed the street, he saw Emily
looking out the upstairs window. He waved at her,
but she had already disappeared, leaving only a wisp of
swaying lace to show that she'd been there at all.
Rick punched another Open House sign into the
lawn, picked up his briefcase and the folder of
flyers, and headed up the walk.
Usually clients were so anxious about open houses that
by the time he was on their porches they were at the open
door, waiting. But not this time. He rang the bell.
Nothing.
He pressed the button again, then once more.
Nothing.
No sound from inside at all; no music, no
"I'll be right there" call from the bedroom
or kitchen.
Just silence.
But Emily was there-he'd seen her. Feeling
faintly uneasy, Rick knocked hard on the
door. "Ellen?" he called out. "Ellen, it's
Rick. For the open house?"
And still he heard nothing at all from inside the house.
He tried the door.
Locked. And today was the day she'd promised to have a
key for him so he could put a lockbox on. What
was going on? Ellen Fine hadn't struck him as the
kind of mother who would leave her child alone in the house.
Besides, her car was in the driveway.
The basement! That was it; she was down in the basement
doing laundry-the last thing he needed at an open
house-and she just hadn't heard the bell or his knock
or heard him when he called out.
He walked around the side of the house and tried the
kitchen door.
Unlocked and unlatched.
Standing ajar, in fact.
Rick pushed on the door and it swung wide. He
stuck his head in. "Hello?" No answer.
"Ellen? It's Rick Mancuso."
Now the silence from inside felt eerie. And
then the stories he'd heard, about some agent or
another-always nameless, of course- being shot by a
homeowner who had forgotten about a showing appointment,
came to mind.
Gazing around the kitchen made him even more uneasy.
There were dirty dishes in the sink and uncooked
potatoes in a cold frying pan on the stove. A
carton of eggs sat on the countertop along with a jar
of peanut butter and another of grape jelly.
He didn't think Ellen Fine would have left this
kind of mess in the kitchen, even if no open house
had been planned.
His sense that something was wrong escalating, Rick
stepped into the kitchen, put his briefcase down on
the kitchen table, and walked into the living room.
"Emily?"
For a moment there was no response, but as he was about
to call out again, a small voice drifted down from the
top of the stairs. "You better go away."
"Emily? It's me, Rick. You remember
me-I'm supposed to be here today to meet your
mommy. Is she here?"
He saw pajama legs at the top of the stairs.
Then, one careful step at a time, Emily
appeared, her hair touseled and her thumb
firmly planted in her mouth. Halfway down the
stairs, the little girl sat down, staring at him.
"Hey, Emily-remember me?"
She nodded. Her face was blotchy, and he could
tell she'd been crying. "Is your mommy here?"
She shook her head.
"Where is she?"
She shrugged, then sucked in a long, ragged breath.
"I-I don't know," she finally stammered, and as she
spoke, her voice broke and her eyes filled with
tears.
Jesus Christ, Rick thought. What did she do,
just take off last night? But Ellen Fine hadn't
seemed like that kind of woman.
Not at all.
"I'm going to come up and look, okay?" Emily
nodded, and now the tears overflowed and began to run
down her cheeks. "Hey, hey, hey," Rick
said, flustered. "Don't cry, sweetie." He
moved up the stairs and sat on the step next to her,
and instantly Emily scooted close to him,
climbed into his lap and put her arms around his
neck. Now, with her face buried in his shoulder, her
sobs began in earnest.
Rick froze, with no clue what to do-never
before in his life had a five-year-old girl clung
to him, let alone one sobbing as if her heart was
breaking. "C'mon, honey," he finally said, standing
up and supporting her with one arm. "Let's find your
mommy."
But Ellen was not upstairs, nor was she in the
basement, nor was there any sign of her anywhere
else in the house. Back in the living room,
Rick lowered Emily onto the couch, fished in his
pocket for his handkerchief, and helped her blow her
nose and wipe her eyes. Then he squatted down
in front of her so their heads were on the same
level. "When was the last time you saw your mommy?"
Emily's little face screwed up as she
concentrated. "Bedtime," she finally said. "Mommy was
scared, so I slept with her."
Whatever this was, it wasn't good. "What was she
scared of?" he asked.
"She was scared someone was in the house."
Ellen Fine had been afraid someone was in the
house, and now she was no longer in the house herself.
"I'm going to call the police," Rick said, almost
more to himself than to Emily.
The little girl instantly brightened. "They're nice!"
Rick Mancuso cocked his head. "You
know the police?"
Emily nodded again. "They came last night."
"Because your mommy was scared?"
Emily nodded a third time.
Rick pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911,
and in less than
two minutes had explained exactly what he'd
found when he arrived at Ellen Fine's house ten
minutes earlier.
"An officer will be there in less than ten minutes,"
the impersonal voice of the 911 operator said when
he was finished.
With Emily clinging to him like a burr in a puppy's
fur, Mancuso pulled the Open House sign from
the lawn, then went back inside. He didn't
particularly want to babysit-didn't know how-but
he sure wasn't going anywhere, at least not until
the cops arrived. "Why don't you show me your
room?" he finally asked. It wasn't going to kill
him to play with dolls for a half hour or so, was it?
Besides, there was still the hope-faint though it might be-that
Ellen Fine could still show up, clean the kitchen and
make the beds, and between the two of them they could save the
open house.
Yeah, right.
nightmare. It had to have been a nightmare. But if it
was only a nightmare, why did she feel burning
scrapes on her legs as if she'd been dragged
over the cracked and pitted asphalt of the alley behind
her house?
Why was her nightie still damp from the rain?
And why was the panic that had always before been at its
worst at the moment she woke up from a bad dream not
now falling away? Why, instead, were its tentacles
closing tighter around her with every second that passed as
her mind slowly cleared?
Because it hadn't been a nightmare at all.
As the last vestiges of unconsciousness lifted,
Ellen felt not only the stinging abrasions on her
legs, but the stinging in her feet, the aching in her
joints, and the agony of a headache whose throbbing
threatened to overwhelm her with every beat of her heart.
Her neck hurt.
Her wrists hurt.
Her shoulders hurt.
She tried to move, hoping to ease some of the aching.
Then, from somewhere behind her, a voice whispered:
"She's waking up ... Mommy's waking up!"
Ellen's eyes snapped open to behold a nightmare
even more horrifying than the one from which shed
thought she just awakened. A strangled scream rose in
her throat, but when she opened her mouth to vent it,
nothing happened; instead of filling the chamber around her
with her howl of anguish, she felt like her mouth-her
cheeks, her eardrums, her very head-was about
to explode. As the scream crashed against her taped
lips, her lungs tried to suck in new air
to replace the mass they'd just expelled, and a new
panic seized her.
She couldn't breathe!
She couldn't breathe, and she was suffocating!
Yet another scream rose in her, but she found one
tiny corner of her mind that had not yet given in to the
overwhelming panic.
Nose!
that tiny fragment of her mind commanded her.
Breathe
through your nose!
She caught the second scream as it was rising in her
throat, and forced it back down into the pit of terror
from which it had arisen. Focusing her mind-blanking out the
pain, the burning, the terror, even the images she'd
seen when she opened her eyes-she focused her mind
on a single thing.
Breathing.
Breathing through her nose.
And breathing slowly, so the rhythm could do its part in
staving off the mind-numbing panic.
Almost miraculously, air began to fill her
lungs.
In ... out... in ... out.. .
As the oxygen began to flow through her, Ellen's mind
began to clear and the panic to subside.
Then the memories finally came flooding back.
Real.
It was all real. Waking up ... hearing a noise
. . . going down
stairs . . . checking everything, even the basement.
And thinking it was all right, thinking she'd been wrong,
that there was nothing in the house at all. And then, just as
she was going back upstairs-
Even now she could still taste some kind of drug in her
mouth, smell it in her nostrils. But there hadn't
been quite enough to keep her completely unconscious. So
it had all seemed like a dream. A dream from which she
would awaken. But now she was awake, and the reality was
even worse than the dream that hadn't been a dream
at all.
She struggled against the bonds that held her hands behind
her, struggled against the tape that bound her
ankles to the legs of a chair-a chair far too
small to hold her body.
Across from her sat two girls. One of them she
recognized immediately-the girl from Camden Green who
had vanished after-
An open house! An open house just like the one that had
been held at her home.
The other girl was younger, emaciated, with a grayish
complexion that told Ellen almost as much as the blank
look in her
eyes.
It took Ellen a second or two to realize that
the bright smiles on both the girls' faces were
nothing more than lipstick clumsily drawn onto the
duct tape that covered their mouths, and each of them was
bound to an undersized chair, just as she was.
All three of them were sitting at what looked like a
child's tea table, a table that was already set for tea,
though the crockery was stained and cracked, and the silver
dented and badly tarnished.
A flicker of movement caught her eye, and Ellen
twisted her neck to see another person, a figure
clad all in black except for a white surgical
mask upon which was drawn an even bigger, redder, and more
grotesque smile than those the two
girls wore.
Then, as she turned back to the two girls, she
remembered her own daughter.
Emily! Oh dear God, Emily!
Emily . . . Emily . . . Emily,
Ellen chanted in her head. She had to know if
Emily was all right. Had this-this
monster
taken Emily,
too? But maybe not-maybe he'd left her at
home in bed. Maybe it was just her he wanted, and not
her daughter.
That was it-that had to be it. It wasn't Emily who
had interested him in the picture. It had been her.
She had to believe that. She
needed
to believe that.
Once again her panic subsided and her mind
accepted that none of it was a nightmare, that it was all
real, and that if anyone was going to do anything to help not
only her, but the two girls as well, it would have
to be her.
Which meant she had to assess the situation. Telling
herself once again-forcing herself to believe-that Emily was
at least still safe, she turned her attention
first to the blonde. What was her name? Lindsay! That
was it. Lindsay Mason, or Merrill, or something
that began with an M. The girl looked reasonably
healthy, and when their eyes met, Ellen saw a
burning anger in them. And when Lindsay's eyes
fixed on the figure in black, Ellen could feel
her fury as clearly as if the girl had spoken out
loud.
I'll kill him,
she seemed to be saying.
If I ever get loose, I'll kill him.
But the other girl-the dark-haired, emaciated child with the
dead eyes and gray complexion-seemed not even
conscious of her surroundings anymore, let alone of
what was happening to her.
Ellen's gaze returned to Lindsay again, who
looked back, her eyes pleading now, and once again
Ellen could read their message clearly:
Help us . . . please help us.
Ellen tried to smile, but the tape on her mouth
only tore at the skin of her lips as she moved
them. Nor could she speak. Then, out of her desperation
to communicate with the girl, an idea came.
And Ellen winked.
For a moment she wasn't sure Lindsay
had even seen it, but then the girl's eyes flicked
toward the black-clad figure for a second, then
back to her.
And she winked back.
Ellen felt a surge of hope. She and Lindsay
had communicated,
and they'd done it in front of their captor, right under
his nose. If they could do that, they could find a way
to escape. They just had to work together. Her mind began
racing. The man in black had referred to her as
"Mommy." So if she was the mother, then he must think
of the girls as her children, so it was going to be up to her
to take care of them, just as she had to trust that someone
else's mother would take care of Emily until she
herself got back. And she
would get
back. Somehow she'd stay awake and alert, and in
spite of everything-in spite of the horrible taste in
her mouth, the splitting headache from whatever drug
he'd given her, the horrible pain in every part of her
body-she'd find a way to prevail.
Maniac though he might be-and obviously was-in
the end, he was still a man. And Ellen knew all about
men. Reaching deep into the depths of memory, she
retrieved the scraps of anger she'd
felt toward Danny Golden, every wrong he'd done
her. She examined each of them like jewels, then
piled them together as if they were a hidden treasure that
would renew not only her fury, but her strength as
well.
Then she focused that fury and strength upon their
captor.
He was standing next to the table now, holding a steaming
kettle. As he started slopping scalding water
into the tiny cups, Ellen assessed the
possibilities.
If he expected them to drink, he would have to unbind
at least one of their hands.
And if he did, and the water were still hot enough-
The vision of him screaming in agony as the boiling
water struck his eyes, then recoiling from her to stumble
blindly around the tiny chamber in which they were imprisoned,
seemed to double her strength, and hope surged through
Ellen once more. But then, as he poured water
into Lindsay's cup, he looked over at her and
stopped.
He set the kettle on the table.
"What's this?" he asked.
Ellen could almost feel his eyes fixing on the small
tattoo of a bird that perched high on her
thigh, a souvenir of that first weekend with
Danny, when she'd managed to get tattooed and
knocked up all in the same day.
"Who did that?" the black-clad man demanded.
"Who did it?" He looked at the two girls, and
Lindsay shook her head almost violently.
The other girl made no move at all.
"It shouldn't be there," she heard the man saying.
"Mommy never had anything like that!" His eyes once
again flicked between the two girls who sat bound to the
chairs opposite Ellen. "And someone's going to have
to be punished for this," he added in a voice so soft
and menacing that her skin crawled as if something dark and
cold had touched her soul. "Someone's going to have to be
punished for everything!"
Then the man was rattling around in some kind of drawer
or cabinet behind her. Though she could not see what he
was doing, Lindsay could, and Ellen watched the
girl's eyes for some clue as to what might be
happening.
A moment later, as Lindsay's eyes widened in
an expression of horror, Ellen had to fight for
breath again.
And again she struggled with her bonds, but her legs were
securely taped and her wrists so tightly
bound that her hands were going numb.
"This," the man said. "I can use this, just like-was His
voice broke and he fell silent. Then he
reappeared, holding an ancient, rusting paring
knife. "Yes," he said, his voice trembling as
he gazed at the blade. "I remember this."
Ellen was afraid she was going to faint. But she
couldn't. She had to hold it together, had to deal with
whatever was about to happen.
But when he started to carve her leg with that dull,
rusty blade, the blackness closed in around her
peripheral vision like a swarm of bees.
And no amount of her will could keep it away.
something is wrong.
I can
feel
it, feel it as if it were something physical.
It's the same feeling I used to get when I was a
child, a strange tingling on the back of my neck when
someone was watching me.
Or, more specifically, when one single person was
watching me.
That person never watches me anymore, of
course-I haven't set eyes on her in years-if
she even still exists, it is no longer of
any consequence to me.
And yet the feeling I have been experiencing the last
few days is the same: the hair on the back of my
neck begins to rise, as the hackles of a dog rise
when it senses danger. But there seems to be no
pattern to it. I have experienced it upon first awakening,
and occasionally as I let myself drift into the arms of
Morpheus when my day or night has come to an
end.
Yet perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps it is only in my
head, nothing more than a result of my recent
carelessness.
JU
And I readily admit that I have been careless.
The thing is, I truly believe my carelessness has
been deliberate, for the very risks I have been taking
have made everything I do that much more exciting. So perhaps
it is nothing more than paranoia.
Yet how can I be sure?
But of course the answer is simple: I must be
vigilant.
I must tune my senses to detect the first hint of
any danger whatsoever, and determine its source the
moment I feel it. There will be mistakes, of
course-for now, instead of dealing with what I
can readily control, I find myself forced to deal with
what I have no control over whatsoever.
I do not like that.
I do not like it at all.
Still, what choice do I have? If my instincts are
correct, and I truly am in danger for the first time
since I was a boy, I must defend myself.
It is sad, though, for this should be a time of great
rejoicing. I should be overcome with happiness. I should be
shouting from the rooftops. But instead, this dank cloak
of suspicion hangs over my head and blocks out
the sunlight.
I am unable to enjoy myself, unable to bask in the glow
of my accomplishments.
Perhaps, though, I'm wrong. Perhaps this strange
sensation of an unseen watcher truly
is
merely a function of my recklessness last week.
Perhaps it is me, punishing myself.
Yet how can I know? For some reason, I find I
barely trust my own instincts, though they have never
failed me before. Yet those very instincts are now warning
me of unseen danger.
I feel walls closing in on me. I am a
prisoner of my own foolishness.
I don't know what to do next. Shall I abandon all
and begin again, somewhere else?
I am afraid to do anything.
I am afraid to do nothing.
I am afraid my fear will turn to fury, and then
all control will be lost.
And if control is lost, then everything is lost.
or the first time in her life, Kara wished she was the
kind of person who took naps, but though her body
now felt as exhausted as her mind and her spirit, she
knew that retreating to her bed wasn't going to change
anything. Even if she slept-which she knew she
wouldn't-when she woke up, Lindsay would still be
missing and Steve would still be-
Even in her mind, and in the loneliness of the house, she
still cut her thought short before thinking the word. But not
thinking it wouldn't change anything, any more than a
nap would, so she paused halfway up the stairs,
stood perfectly still, and said it out loud.
"Dead. He's dead, and nothing in the world is going
to change that." The word echoed almost mockingly in the
stairwell, but Kara steeled herself against reacting.
She might feel like crying, but she wasn't going
to. Instead she went back to polishing the already
spotless banister, applying enough force to the
dust cloth to make her wonder if it was possible
to actually dust the finish right off the wood. She
banished that thought, too, and kept polishing until
she came to the top of the stairs.
Across the hall, the door to Lindsay's room stood
open. It was the one room she hadn't touched today, and
now she closed its door, determined that it, at
least, would be unchanged when Lindsay was finally back
home.
The buzzer on the dryer sounded, and Kara
automatically turned back to the stairs, to go down
and fold the last load of laundry. But she
abruptly changed her mind. It was mostly
Steve's things, and they'd just have to wait, at least
until she made up her mind whether to put them in
boxes and take them to Goodwill or fold them up and
put them back in the dresser, even though she knew
it wouldn't bring Steve back.
She pushed open the door to the master suite and stared
at the stripped mattress; the clean sheets were down
in the laundry room,
neatly folded. But if she went down to get them,
she wouldn't be able to ignore Steve's clothes
cooling in the dryer, and then-
And then she'd start crying again, no matter
how many promises she'd made to herself.
Ignoring the unmade bed, she picked up the
remote control and clicked the television on. The
sound came on before the picture.
"comwas discovered alone in her house after her mother
disappeared sometime after ten o'clock last night."
The picture suddenly popped up on the screen, and
Kara gazed at the image of a little girl, no more
than five years old, her eyes wide with fear as
she was carried to a van by an attractive woman
wearing a police uniform. The little girl was crying,
and Kara bit her lip as she watched. The camera
cut away to a cool blonde in a well-tailored
suit who was standing in front of a small house. A
For Sale sign was clearly visible on the front
lawn, and as the reporter spoke, Kara felt her
blood running cold. "According to neighbors, Ellen
Fine became afraid there was someone still in her house
when she and her daughter returned to it after her agent
had held an open house yesterday afternoon."
Kara's heart began to race and she leaned closer
to the set.
"Police searched the premises, but there was no
evidence of an intruder."
No evidence of an intruder.
Just like her own house, after Lindsay disappeared.
Her hand was on the telephone before the broadcast was
over. Andrew Grant's business card, with his home
number written on the back, was on her nightstand.
She took a deep breath, got herself under control,
and dialed. As she waited for the detective
to answer, she stared at the photograph of Ellen
Fine that was now on the screen. She was a pretty
woman who couldn't be more than thirty and looked
vaguely familiar. But before Kara could ruminate
on the woman who'd vanished, the detective
answered the phone.
"Is your television on, Sergeant Grant?" she
asked without
preamble. "Because if it isn't, you'd better turn
it on. Channel 5." There was silence for a moment,
then she heard the detective breathe a single,
quiet word.
"Shit."
Finally, at last, she had his full attention.
Andrew Grant rang Rick Mancuso's
doorbell and hoped to God that Mancuso was going
to have all the right answers to his questions. Not that it
mattered-whatever Mancuso had to say, it was going
to be a long Sunday afternoon. He'd wanted
to put Kara Marshall and her phone call on the
back burner until tomorrow morning when he'd be back
in the office, but there was no way he could; not,
anyway, if he wanted to sleep tonight.
So he'd put in a call to Sean O'Reilly at
the Smithton Police Department, but O'Reilly
was already into the disappearance up to his ears and there was
nothing else for him to do but grab his gun and shield and
head over to Smithton.
In the briefing, flares went off in his head when the
name Rick Mancuso had come up, and he'd laid
out the whole Lindsay Marshall case for
O'Reilly. O'Reilly had shrugged. "I already
talked to him, and I think he's clean. But hey-if
you want to lean on him, there's no way I can stop
you, is there?"
So now he was leaning against the real-estate agent's
doorbell. When Mancuso finally opened the door
and he showed the agent his badge, Mancuso nodded as
if he'd been expecting to see another detective
and opened the door wide, inviting him in.
They sat on stools at a neat kitchen bar. For a
single guy, Grant thought, Mancuso kept a
tidy house. Too tidy? "So here we are again,"
he began, his manner carefully amiable,
at least for now. "Another open house, another
abduction. Any idea why your name keeps coming
up?"
Mancuso shrugged. "It's a pretty small
community. I can't be the
only guy who was in both those houses." Grant said
nothing, but kept his eyes steadily on
Mancuso's, and finally the agent sat up straighten
"What do you want from me? I don't know anything
about it. When I left Ellen Fine's house
yesterday, it was all locked up. I don't even have
a key-she wouldn't give me one. That's why I had
to ring the bell when I went back today." His eyes
narrowed truculently. "I've already told the other
police the same thing a dozen times."
"Did you keep a logbook from yesterday?"
"Of course. And the Smithton cops have it."
Grant's cell phone rang in his pocket. He
fished it out, glanced at the caller ID screen, and
flipped it open.
"Grant?" the caller said. "It's Sean
O'Reilly. Listen, we just found a report that
there was another disappearance after an open house."
"Tell me you're kidding."
"I wish I were. Happened over in
Mill Creek about three weeks ago. A
nineteen-year-old girl named Shannon Butler.
Vanished in the middle of the night. No clues.
She's still gone-listed as a missing person. Looks
like maybe we've got something hinky going on."
"I'll get back to you." Grant closed his phone
and fixed Mancuso with his hardest stare. "You ever work
open houses in Mill Creek?"
Did Mancuso hesitate before he shook his head?
Grant wasn't quite sure. "Too far away," the
agent said.
"Not that far," Grant countered. "You've never showed
property there? Never gone to an open house there?"
Now Mancuso looked less certain. "Hey,
I'm not going to say never-was he began, and Grant
stood up.
"Grab a jacket," he said. "I think we need
to talk down at the station."
The blood drained from Mancuso's face. "Am
I going to need a lawyer here?"
"Did you do something you don't want to tell me
about?"
""No, of course not."
"Then why would you need a lawyer? C'mon."
Grant didn't know what Mancuso had
to do with all of this, but he'd bet all his years as a
cop that if he dug deep enough into Shannon
Butler's file, he'd find Mancuso's name.
Make it stop,
Ellen prayed silently.
Dear God, just make it stop.
But no matter how hard she prayed, the agony in
her leg seemed only to grow worse. When she'd
first seen what the man had done, when she'd first
looked down at the raw, bleeding muscle that lay
exposed where the man-the
monster
comhad cut the small tattoo away from her thigh,
she'd barely believed it could have happened at all.
But as she watched blood ooze from the gaping wound and
felt the pain radiate out from her thigh until it had
spread through her entire body, the truth quickly sank
in. It wasn't a man who had taken her at
all.
It was a maniac.
Which meant she'd have to deal with him as a maniac.
It was that realization, almost even more than the pain where
he'd hacked her skin away, that made her want
to simply give up, to fall back into the
unconsciousness from which she'd awakened only
a few hours ago.
Or was it only a few minutes?
And what did it matter anyway? Feaven if she
fell back into the
blackness, she'd only wake up again to the nightmare
that was not only hers, but that of the two girls as well.
So she'd forced aside the urge to escape back
into unconsciousness, closed her mind to the agony in
her leg, and tried to clear her head.
She was no longer in the room with the table and chairs.
After he'd cut her leg-and after finishing with the hideous
parody of a tea party-he'd carried and dragged her
down a steep flight of stairs, through some kind of
tunnel, and into a cold, dank chamber with bare
mattresses on the floor and manacles chained to the
walls.
A dungeon.
He manacled her wrists, then left her alone, not
even bothering to replace the tape he'd torn from her
lips for the "tea party."
A few minutes later he brought Lindsay in, and
manacled her as well.
He was gone longer after that, and when he returned, he
carried the other girl-holding her almost tenderly-and
when he put her down, she didn't move.
Was she unconscious or-
Ellen didn't allow herself to think it.
The monster-for that's what she now knew he
was-chained the unconscious girl as securely as
he'd chained Lindsay and her.
At last, he'd finished securing the girl, taken
his light up a set of wooden stairs and vanished,
leaving them in absolute, claustrophobic
blackness. Then all the nightmarish fears that Ellen
had ever experienced came roaring back.
Now she found it almost impossible to breathe. Panic
rose inside her as the darkness closed around her,
and for a moment she almost gave in to it, almost began
screaming and thrashing.
Instead she concentrated on slowing her breathing, forcing
herself to relax her body, limb by limb. She
blocked out the blackness, instead visualizing a
perfect day at the beach.
And there, in her mind's eye, she saw Emily,
playing happily in the sand.
The panic surged forth again.
Relax, or you'll hurt yourself. As long as you're
here, there's nothing you can do for her. And it isn't just
Emily, either. Think about Lindsay. If you can't
help Emily, at least you can help
Lindsay and
-
What was the other girl's name? The question itself seemed
to turn the tide against the panic, and finally she began
to think.
She took a deep breath, and the panic further
loosened its grip on her. "Lindsay?" she said,
her whisper sounding to her like a shout in the silent
darkness. When there was no response, she repeated the
single word, more loudly this time.
A moment later there was the sound of chains rattling
somewhere to her right. "How do you know my name?" a faint,
almost lifeless, voice asked.
"I saw your picture on television. My name's
Ellen Fine."
More rattling.
Ellen imagined the girl struggling to sit up. "Your
mom is hunting for you."
"You saw my mom?" A little more life in the voice
now.
"She's been on TV, trying to find you."
There was a silence, then: "H-How long have I been
here?"
Instead of answering the question, Ellen countered with her
own: "Who's the other girl?"
"Shannon," Lindsay whispered.
The name meant nothing to Ellen. "Does he give you
anything to eat or drink?"
"Sometimes. But I don't even know-was Lindsay's
voice caught, and Ellen could hear her choking off a
sob. When she spoke again, her voice was hollow and
she made no attempt to mask her fear. "I
don't even know what time it is, or what day it
is, or anything else. I just-was
Her voice broke again, but this time Ellen was ready.
"It's going to be all right," she said. "We're
going to get out of here-there are three of us and only one
of him. We can do it if we have a plan, and if we
work together."
No response. Then, in the quiet, Ellen could
hear Lindsay crying,
a sound that brought back memories of Emily,
frightened of a nightmare, sobbing in the darkness of her
room.
Only this was not a nightmare.
This was real.
"Listen to me, Lindsay," Ellen said. "It's
going to be all right. We're going to get out of this."
There was a sniffle, then Lindsay uttered a single
word. "How?"
Desperately, Ellen cast her mind back to the
moments after she had awakened to the surreal scene in the
room with the tiny table and chairs and the grotesquely
leering smiles she'd seen on all the faces around
her. And she realized what they had to do.
"We have to give him what he wants."
"But I don't know what he wants," Lindsay
moaned.
"Of course you do," Ellen told her. "Think of the
smiles, Lindsay. And think of what he said. He
called me Mommy, and he kept talking about how
happy we all were. Don't you see? He
wants a happy family. He wants us to be his
family, and he wants us to be happy. So here's
what we're going to do . . ."
Slowly, uncertain if Lindsay had enough energy
left even to understand, let alone follow it, Ellen
began to explain her idea.
Andrew Grant raked his fingers through his hair, tried
to slow the thoughts that were tumbling chaotically through his
mind, then leaned back in his chair and took a deep
breath. There were a million things that had to be done,
but if they weren't done in the right order, everything
could-and undoubtedly would-turn into a disaster.
With the third deep breath, he felt his mind
begin to clear, and he began to assess the situation.
For the moment, the powers-that-be had given him
interjurisdictional authority, which presumably
meant the guys in Smithton would have to cooperate with
him, at least until the FBI guys arrived. And,
for now at least, the guys in Smithton had given
him
everything he'd asked for, though what they had wasn't
much. Still, it was enough that he'd at least be coherent at
the press briefing scheduled for nine o'clock.
According to the big clock on the wall, it was now
8:38.
It was going to be a long night.
First things first.
Seventeen minutes to figure out exactly what he
was going to say, and then . . .
Then it would be a
very
long night.
A couple of patrolmen who had been called in more
for show than because anyone expected them to do anything tonight
were grumbling in a corner, and half a dozen
reporters were already in the lobby, glancing
impatiently at their watches every few seconds as
they waited for the briefing to begin. To Andrew
Grant, they looked like nothing more than a flock of
circling vultures waiting to descend on a
corpse, and if he made one false step, the
corpse they descended upon could be his. Eyeing them
balefully, he decided that maybe the briefing would
start on time and maybe it wouldn't.
The telephones had been ringing steadily since word of
Ellen Fine's disappearance had gotten out that afternoon,
and they hadn't slowed yet. The reporters seemed
to have put two and two together at least as quickly as the
two police departments involved, and into the evening the
local talk radio stations had done their best to whip
the public into a frenzy. It worked: apparently
everyone on Long Island had seen someone who looked
"suspicious" at an open house sometime over the
last year or so.
The talk jockeys had even come up with a name for the
guy: Open House Ozzie. Well, maybe if
it got bad enough, they'd both wind up in one of
Ann Rule's books, and he would become a character
on a TV miniseries.
More likely, he'd get fired for being the obtuse
dunderhead he now felt like. Why couldn't he have at
least listened to Kara Marshall, instead of insisting her
kid had just decided to take off?
The office walls seemed to be closing in on him.
He took his mug to the coffee machine, filled it
with the dregs of the lunchtime coffee, then took the
curse off its bitterness with a double shot of sugar and
powdered cream and slowly made his way back to his
desk. Stirring the sludge in his cup, he
relegated his mistakes to the back of his mind so he
could concentrate on getting it right from here on out.
The first priority, of course, would be to keep anyone
else from vanishing from their own homes after an open
house. He needed to get the word out that three
abductions had taken place after open houses on
Long Island-within fifteen miles of each other, in
fact- in the past month.
And this was Sunday night; for all he knew, another
abduction had taken place today, making it four.
He needed a detail to work on that. O'Reilly and
Murphy could handle it, along with the guys who first
responded to Shannon Butler's disappearance in
Mill Creek.
He scrawled a note on his yellow pad.
The next thing was to find Shannon, Lindsay, and
Ellen. He'd handle that one personally. Rick
Mancuso remained at the top of his list of
probable perps, but primarily because he
didn't have any other names on the list so far.
Mancuso had been cooperative enough, but the guy
didn't have an alibi for any of the nights after the
disappearances had happened.
Which didn't mean nearly as much as the general
public thought it did.
Still, there was no reason to hold him.
And so far, at least, there weren't any bodies, so
it was just possible-and now he knew he was grasping at
straws-that all three victims actually had just
taken off.
And pigs could fly, too.
Taking yet another deep breath, Grant
signaled to one of the guys who'd been called in from
their Sunday dinners. "I want every logbook from every
open house from every agent in a thirty-mile radius.
For the last month or so." The patrolman, who'd
only been with the department for three months, gaped at
him.
"But that'll take all night."
Grant rolled his eyes. "So people won't go to bed.
Too bad. Just do it."
As the patrolman went off to find a phone,
Grant set two more patrolmen to work on the local
agents: faxing, calling, and following up
on everybody who had signed in at the Fine,
Marshall, and Butler open houses. Not, of
course, that this guy would have signed in, but you had to go
through the motions, and who knew? Maybe the guy
wasn't nearly as smart as Grant thought he was.
He sipped his coffee and winced at the nastiness of it
while he prayed to the gods of caffeine that it would
keep him sharp through the night.
Then he turned his attention to his third priority,
dealing with the press while at the same time keeping the
spotlight off himself.
This was going to be a media circus. Once the
FBI arrived, it became their baby, and they
didn't have far to come. They'd be here by morning,
telling him and everybody else what to do. Between now and
then, he would be in the spotlight, and he'd better
look good.
Or, in the best of all possible worlds, find those
girls.
Grant checked his watch. Five minutes left.
He could feel the energy rise in the building as the
briefing room filled up, and in a couple more
minutes he'd be at the podium, his lieutenant
sitting in the audience, observing him.
If he was lucky. If he was unlucky,
the chief himself would have come down to watch.
Shit.
He took a last gulp of the mud in his coffee
cup, grabbed his legal pad, and stood up to go deal
with the press, which until today had never been more than
old Marguerite Gould, who delighted in making
public every minor disturbance Smithton and Camden
Green and every other town on the north shore ever
experienced, even if it was only a dog running
loose in the park. Tonight, Marguerite probably
wouldn't even be able to get a question in edgewise.
Billy Ferguson poked his head around the corner.
"Sarge?"
"I've got a briefing."
"I know," the patrolman said, "but look at this
here." He held out the guest book from the Butler
open house. "Mark Acton-you know, the agent who
held the Marshall open house?"
Grant's attention was instantly riveted on the
kid. "Yeah?"
"He was at the Butler open house."
Goose bumps rose on Grant's arms.
Acton was a real weasel.
"Was he at the Fine open house?"
The patrolman shrugged. "I don't know.
If he was, he didn't sign the book."
Grant's eyes narrowed and his lips tightened into a
hard smile. "Go get him."
"Yes, sir." The young man's face disappeared.
Feeling better now. Grant shrugged into his
jacket, smoothed his hair, and picked up his
yellow pad. Now, at least, he had a real
suspect.
Mark Acton-a guy who had given him a bad
feeling the moment he met him. And if there was one thing
he'd learned over all the years he'd been a
cop, it was this:
Always trust your feelings.
he light woke Ellen. That and a moan from
Shannon, the first sounds she'd heard from the girl.
He was back.
Ellen's heart began to hammer in her chest again.
How long had it been? Minutes? Hours? Not
days, but how could she know, really? Not that it mattered.
The only thing that mattered now was to keep her mind
clear and stick to the plan.
Whatever happened, she had to stick to the plan and
pray that Lindsay had not only understood, but had the
strength and the will to go along with it, too.
Banishing the last tendrils of sleep that
clung to her mind, and
noting the knot of feat forming in her belly, she sat
up on her mattress, tucked her legs beneath her and
leaned on one arm, trying to make herself look as
relaxed as if she were lounging on a picnic
blanket. The wound in her leg shot a stab of pain
through her as she dragged it across the coarse mattress,
but she stifled the scream that rose in her throat as the
light from the trapdoor opening illuminated the man in
silhouette. Then it went dark again for a moment,
until he turned on a beam of light. She
squinted into it as he came down the stairs and moved
toward the dark chamber. As he approached, she
spoke.
"Is that you, honey?" she asked, hoping her voice
didn't sound as artificially bright to him as it did
to her. "How was your day?"
The man stopped in mid-stride and turned to her, his
grotesque mask smiling at her even in the
indirect illumination of his flashlight.
"Did you bring something I can make for dinner? I
haven't had a chance to get to the store, and the girls
are hungry."
The man reached into the darkness, and a moment later the
dungeon was flooded with light from a naked
bulb overhead. Now Ellen could see the madness in
his eyes. "Be quiet," he said, but she thought she
heard a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
"Don't be like that, sweetheart. The children need to be
fed. That's why they haven't been happy the last
few days."
Suddenly the man's eyes were blazing. "Stop that.
Stop that!
You're
ruining everything!"
"Daddy?" Lindsay's voice sounded so tiny,
Ellen almost didn't hear it at all.
The man wheeled around, but instead of unshackling
Lindsay, he went to Shannon, undid her chains,
then picked her up and walked through the door into the
tunnel.
"He didn't tape her mouth," Lindsay
whispered.
"Maybe he doesn't think he has to," Ellen
whispered back. "And maybe he's right-maybe she
can't speak anymore."
A moment later he was back, leaning over
Lindsay.
Ellen heard her whisper something to him, then he
unlocked the shackles from her wrists and
jerked her to her feet. As he guided her toward the
mouth of the tunnel, she made no move to resist.
Was Lindsay going along with her plan, or had her
will finally given out?
When he came back again, Ellen smiled up at
him, but just as she started to say something, he slapped
her hard, then muffled her yelp with a hand clamped
over her mouth, pressing so hard that when she opened it
to sink her teeth into his palm, they sank into her own
lips instead. As the taste of blood filled her
mouth, he pressed a length of duct tape across her
lips. Doing her best not to react against the slap and the
stinging of her cut lip, Ellen forced herself not to resist
as he put a noose around her neck. Only after
he'd tightened it did he loosen her chains. When
she was free, though, he yanked on the rope,
clearly irritated.
Giving no sign that anything extraordinary was
happening, Ellen got to her feet, forced herself
to ignore the agony in her leg, and walked
alongside him through the tunnel.
The two girls sat at the little table, their hands and
legs tied as usual, but for a change they did not have
tape on their mouths.
Lindsay's eyes met Ellen's for an
instant before fixing on their captor. "Don't tie
up Mommy," she said, her voice perfectly
even. "I need her to brush my hair."
Ellen offered a silent prayer of thanks as
Lindsay actually managed to smile while speaking
the last words.
The man gazed first at Lindsay, then at her, and
Ellen felt a tiny flicker of hope. But then he
shook his head, and she knew she hadn't managed
to act as convincingly as Lindsay. "She's not here for
you,"
he said, the softness of his voice somehow increasing its
menace. "She's here for me, like she always should have
been!" He pushed her down hard in the same tiny
chair she'd occupied earlier, taping her legs to those
of the chair. Just as he was finishing, a barely audible
voice drifted across the table, and Ellen's pulse
was suddenly racing.
"I love you, Daddy," Shannon whispered.
The flame of hope that had all but died inside
Ellen a moment ago suddenly brightened. Shannon
wasn't unconscious, and shed heard, and understood,
and was playing along!
But then the man cried, "Don't call me that!"
Crouching low so his face was almost touching
Shannon's, his voice shook with fury. "I'm not
your father! Don't you dare call me 'Daddy"!"
He glowered at Ellen. "Why don't you do what
you're supposed to do? Why don't you ever do it?"
Ellen shrank back as he came around to her,
pulled a red marking pen from his pocket, grabbed her
hair and jerked her head back. She felt the pen
moving over the tape that covered her mouth, and a moment
later he roughly released her hair. "There!
Mommy looks the way she always looks, no
matter what might be happening. Keep smiling,
Mommy! Just keep smiling, and act like everything's just
fine!"
Ellen nodded again, but now he seemed to have lost
interest in her, moving around to Lindsay and gently
stroking her hair. "You want me to brush your
hair?" he whispered. He stroked Lindsay's
head one more time, then ran his fingers down Lindsay's
cheek, and Ellen could see the girl trying not to cringe
as his whisper turned to a snarl. "Or is this what you
want me to do?" His eyes fixed on Ellen once
more. "You never saw, did you? But this time you'll see!
This time I'll make you see!"
Ellen froze, certain that any reaction she might
show would only make things worse.
"She's so beautiful," the man said, his fingers
trailing down her neck and her shoulder. "At least
on the outside."
"Daddy?" Lindsay whispered.
"Don't call me that!"
"I-I'm sorry," Lindsay stammered. "I just
want you to love me as much as I love you."
The man's eyes fairly glittered. "Love?"
he asked, his voice dropping once more to that menacing
whisper. "Is that what you thought? Is that why you always
smiled?"
Lindsay nodded, apparently oblivious to the danger
in his voice. "Don't you want me to love you
now?"
Ellen froze. What was Lindsay saying?
Then Shannon spoke. "Me, too," she said.
Don't,
Ellen silently commanded.
Figure out a way to make him untie me. But
don't do this! Don't!
The man was gazing at the girls through glazed eyes.
"We love you," Lindsay said, her voice taking
on a seductive tone that utterly belied her age.
"Won't you let us show you how much?" Now her
voice dropped to an enticing whisper.
"Please?"
The man produced a knife from his pocket-the same
rusty, bloodstained knife he'd used on
Ellen's leg earlier, and slit the tape on
Shannon's legs and arms. Then he helped her
to her feet.
Though she was so weak she could barely hold her head
up, Shannon reached out toward Lindsay. "Her,
too," she whispered. "We both love you . . .
both of us. . . ."
The man's eyes gleamed. "Yes," he said.
"It's time you showed Mommy how much you love me,
isn't it?" He turned to Lindsay, but before he could
cut the tape that bound her, Ellen saw Shannon's
body tense, and in that instant she knew what
Shannon was going to do.
No,
she silently pleaded, again trying to reach out
to Shannon with her mind, but knowing it was useless.
Wait until Lindsay is loose!
But it was already too late. Before even one of
Lindsay's limbs was free, Shannon mustered
what little strength she still had and struck out at the man,
her foot catching his groin.
He doubled over and fell to his knees, and
now both Lindsay and Ellen were struggling against their
bindings.
Shannon threw herself onto the man and started to pull
his ski mask off, but the surgical mask tied over
it held it just long enough. Enraged by the attack, he
lurched to his feet and slammed his back
into Shannon, crushing her to the wall. Ellen heard
a gasp as air exploded from the girl's lungs.
Shannon's grip loosened and their captor shook
her off, letting her fall to the floor in a broken
heap.
"Your fault," the man rasped, wheeling to glower at
Ellen once more. "See what they did? And they
call it "love." But it's not love! It's not!"
As Lindsay Marshall screamed, his root lashed out
at Shannon, smashing into her ribs. Then, as
Lindsay screamed even louder, he drew his foot
back and struck again, this time crashing his boot
into Shannon's head so hard her neck snapped.
As Shannon lay still on the floor, and Lindsay's
screams gave way to choking sobs, he loomed over
Ellen again, breathing hard, his eyes glinting with
fury. "Your fault," he whispered. "All your
fault." He leaned closer, and terror gripped
her.
Emily, Emily, Emily. Fm going
to die, and I can't even say good-bye to my baby.
"You failed! You!
You didn't do the only thing you were supposed to do!"
He jerked furiously
on the noose around her neck, and she felt her
breath cut off and her eyes bulging.
The light in the room began to fade.
Then, from above her, there was a howl of anguish, and
abruptly the tension on the rope was gone.
"I hate you," the man whispered. "I hate you
all, and I never want to play with you again!"
He vanished down the steps that led to the tunnel.
Ellen coughed through her taped-up mouth, choking, trying
desperately to fill her lungs with air. It took
almost a full minute, breathing heavily through her
nose, until the red globes cleared from her vision
and her panic began to subside. She looked up
then and met Lindsay's eyes across the table.
Neither of them dared look down at Shannon.
What have I done?
Ellen thought.
Dear God, what have I done?
Kara sat immobilized at her desk in the morning
light, a mug of tea going cold next
to her. Spread before her were all her lists of things
to do, of people to call. There were stacks of flyers with
Lindsay's glowing face on them, a file folder
full of life insurance papers, and a fat folder with
unpd bills.
All of it needed her attention. But instead of doing
anything, she just sat there, staring dumbly at the
mess, not even finding the will to pick up her mug of
tea, let alone deal with everything that had to be dealt
with.
But she had to deal with it.
All of it.
The checks had to be written, and the policies had
to be gone through, and the flyers had to be distributed.
She knew that. A thousand people had told her so.
Life had to go on.
She knew that, too.
She picked up a pen and looked at the desk,
trying to decide where to start.
But all she could think of was the dream she'd had last
night.
And it had been a dream. It had to have been a dream.
She dropped the pen in the middle of the desk and put
her face in her hands.
It hadn't been a dream. She'd heard
Lindsay's scream of terror as clearly as if
Lindsay had been in the next room. In fact,
she had shot out of bed, out the bedroom door, and
into Lindsay's room before she was awake enough
to remember that Lindsay was no longer there.
But the scream had been so real. It reverberated in
the walls of the bedroom, and as she listened to it, she'd
known.
Lindsay was alive and she was in trouble. Trouble so
frightening that she was screaming in terror, screaming for her
life, screaming for her mother.
And here she sat, at her desk, with her head in her
hands.
She felt beyond despair-beyond desperation.
Almost-but not quite-beyond hope.
Nobody was going to believe that she'd heard
Lindsay scream in the night. They'd call it a
dream, and a mother's dream was not going to motivate any
law enforcement officer to ramp up the search.
But it hadn't been a dream.
Her first impulse had been to call Patrick.
He would understand. He would be able to help her. But it
was the middle of the night, and Kara knew she had
to learn to stand on her own. Patrick had been a
wonderful help, but he couldn't hold her
hand every minute of every day.
She had to start getting through the days and nights by herself,
starting with this one.
If she took the day one hour at a time, she could
get through it.
She looked at the clock on the desk and set herself
a goal: in the next sixty minutes, she would
write checks for the most urgent bills, shower, get
dressed, and have something to eat.
While she was eating, she would plan the next hour.
Only when those two hours were gone would she plan the
next.
And if she made it successfully through the day, as a
reward she'd call Patrick and report her
progress. Just the thought of his understanding eyes and warm
smile gave her strength.
She picked up the pen, desperately trying
to ignore the echo of Lindsay's scream still
reverberating in her head, and opened her checkbook.
The doorbell rang even before she could look at the
balance.
Her heart caught in her throat.
News! It had to be news!
With her bathrobe flapping about her legs, Kara
ran down the stairs and threw open the
door, certain it would be Sergeant Grant.
Instead, a somber-faced man in a dark suit
stood on the porch with a package; in front of the
house she saw a black Lincoln Town Car. A
chill came over her as she realized what the
package was. She signed the form the man offered
her, took the box, and retreated back into the house.
The chill tightening its grip on her, Kara pulled
off the brown paper wrapping, and the stabbing pain in her
chest took her breath away as her suspicions about
the package were confirmed.
Stamped in red all over the box were the words human
remains.
summers funeral home was printed at the top of the
label.
Steve's ashes.
Dear God.
Kara's knees weakened and she sank to a dining room
chair. In her head, she could hear herself screaming right
along with Lindsay.
On the table in front of her, next to the box, was the
cordless phone.
With a trembling hand, she picked it up and dialed
Patrick.
Good Lord," Patrick Shields breathed
as he gazed at the box that still sat on Kara's dining
room table. "They actually made you sign for it?"
She nodded as a sigh of both exhaustion and relief
escaped her lips. Though it changed nothing, just
having Patrick in the house was making her feel a
little better.
"Unbelievable," Patrick went on, his
eyes-always so warm and comforting before-now darkening with
anger. "I gave them strict instructions. I
don't see how I could have been any clearer. I
told them-was
"It doesn't matter what you told them," Kara
broke in. "And that's not why I called you
anyway. It's just-it's just everything, Patrick!"
Hesitantly at first, but then speaking faster and
faster, until her words were pouring out in a torrent that
reflected every emotion she was feeling, Kara told
him what had happened since he'd brought her back
to the house yesterday. "I just don't think I can do
it," she said when she finally ran out of steam, both
verbally and emotion
ally. "I don't think I can handle any of it.
And the thought of tonight-was Her voice broke as she choked
on the last word, and she shook her head in
helplessness. Patrick gently placed his
hands on her shoulders and looked directly into her
eyes.
"I know exactly how you're feeling," he told
her, now without the tiniest vestige of anger in his
voice or his eyes. "Oh, Lord, do I know. So
the first thing we're going to do is simple. I'm going
to take you back to Claire's."
Kara shook her head again, but this time there was nothing
helpless in the gesture. "Not Claire's," she
replied, a little too quickly. "It's not that she
hasn't been wonderful to me-she has. But-oh, I
don't know. It's like she's handling me with kid
gloves or something. As if she's-was
"Afraid you'll break," Patrick finished for
her, speaking exactly the words she'd been about
to utter. "I know what that's like. I got the same
thing to the point where sometimes I just wanted to smack
her!" His lips compressed into a grim smile. "And
it's not just her, either-it's everyone. But what can you
say? It's not like they don't mean well. It's just
that they don't have any idea what you're going through."
"So what do I do?" Kara asked, barely aware that
she'd spoken out loud.
"Come to my house," Patrick decided, speaking
before he even thought about it. Seeing Kara about
to protest, he held up a hand. "I don't know
why I didn't think of it in the first place," he
said, then grinned. "But of course, I did. I just
didn't suggest it, and I know exactly why I
didn't do that, either. After all, what would people think?
What would the neighbors say? What would Claire
say? Worst of all, what would Neville
Cavanaugh say?"
"Neville? But he's like your butler or something,
isn't he? Why would you care what he says?"
"It's not really so much what he'd say. It's the
way he'd look." Patrick twisted his face
into an exaggerated parody of the expression of an
extremely disapproving servant. "Neville
wouldn't actually
say
anything. He'd
imply.
There would be a distinct chill in the air. You have no
idea what it's like-staff can be far worse than
parents. They have ways of letting you know how much they
disapprove without ever being anything less than
perfectly respectful. Which I'm sure you'll
see in about fifteen minutes. Go get your bag."
"Patrick, I can't!"
"Of course you can. What you can't do is stay here.
Not yet. Not by yourself. Now stop arguing and go get your
bag."
less than fifteen minutes later Patrick
pulled his Mercedes to a stop in front of
Cragmont. Leaving her bag in the trunk of the car,
he led Kara up the steps, pushed the huge oaken
door open, and ushered her the full length of the main
hall and into the library.
"First, let's fix you a drink," he said. "Something
hot, I think, with plenty of brandy in it." But
instead of going to the bar that was sunk into one wall, he
pressed a button on the wall, then lowered himself
into one of the wingback chairs opposite the sofa on which
Kara was perched as her eyes darted around the large
book-lined room. A small smile played around
his lips. "Will you just relax?" he said. "This isn't
some kind of museum, despite the way it looks.
It's where I live. In fact," he went on, his
voice taking on a wry note, "I was sleeping
on that very sofa until the last week or so."
As Kara leaned back, Neville Cavanaugh
appeared at the library door. His eyes fixed
inquiringly on Patrick for a moment, but when he
noticed that his employer was not alone, his
demeanor instantly changed. The temperature in the
room seemed to drop by several degrees, and Kara
pulled a cashmere throw onto her lap.
"A hot Grand Marnier toddy for Mrs.
Marshall, please, Neville. And perhaps just a touch
of brandy with some water for me." As Neville
silently began fixing the drinks, Patrick
turned his attention back to Kara. "I still think I
ought to have a word with Summers," he began, but Kara was
already shaking her head.
"It's not that they did anything so terrible. The thing
is, when the
doorbell rang, I actually thought they'd found
Lindsay." Her eyes began to glisten. "Isn't
that stupid? I actually thought it was Sergeant
Grant coming to tell me they'd found her."
Patrick leaned forward and took her hand. "It
isn't funny-it's perfectly natural. I
don't know how many nights I sat right here in this
room, waiting. Just waiting for someone to come home.
Listening for the door to open and Renee or one of the
kids to call out in the hall." He shifted his
weight in the chair. "Have you been watching the news this
afternoon?"
Something in his voice made Kara's heart
skip a beat. "The news?" she echoed. "No,
I-was
"It appears there was a third girl. Taken a
month ago from Mill Creek."
Kara stared at him. "Open house?"
Patrick nodded as Neville turned away from the
bar and a moment later set a tray with two glasses
on the coffee table. Patrick picked up the steaming
one and handed it to Kara, then took a sip from the other.
"H-Have they found her?" Kara asked, her tone
making her meaning crystal clear.
Patrick shook his head. "But at least the police
can't keep pretending that Lindsay just ran away.
Not with three people gone, and one of them having left a
small child. And now there are two more places to look
for clues. He must have left something behind."
As Neville turned and left the room, Kara
drained half her drink. "I feel like I ought
to call Sergeant Grant."
"There's a phone on the desk," Patrick said, his
eyes on the closed door through which Neville
Cavanaugh had just passed. "Go ahead and use it
if you want. I'll be right back." He followed
Neville into the foyer.
"Neville?" he called, but his servant
had already disappeared into the kitchen wing of the house. When
Patrick caught up with him, he was standing at the
large island in the center of the room, upon which stood a
half-frosted cake. As the kitchen door swung
closed
behind Patrick, Neville turned, his eyes
widening as he saw his employer. Patrick frowned
uncertainly as his own eyes shifted from his servant
to the cake, then back to the man. "I hope that's not
a birthday cake," he said. "Never liked that
stuff."
"For Mrs. McGinn's grandson," Neville
said. "At Beech House," he added as
Patrick's frown deepened. Then: "Is there
something I can do for you, sir?"
"Mrs. Marshall's bag is in the trunk of the
Mercedes. Put it in one of the guest rooms."
Neville's left eyebrow rose a fraction of
an inch. "Here?"
"Where else?" Patrick countered, his gaze fixing
on the servant.
Neville hesitated. "If I may say,
sir-was he began, but Patrick cut him off.
"You may not."
Turning away from Neville's cold
disapproval, Patrick returned to the library and
closed the doors.
ara stifled a yawn as Patrick reached for the Grand
Marnier. As he lifted the bottle and held it
toward her glass, she shook her head. "No,
thanks-no more for me. I don't usually drink
anything except a glass of wine or two, and never
this late."
"One more will help you sleep," Patrick replied,
pouring a generous shot into the snifter that sat next
to her empty dessert plate. It had been hours
since he'd picked her up, hours during which they'd
done little more than sit in front of the fire
Patrick had lit on the hearth in the library,
eating off TV trays when Kara said she didn't
want to leave the warmth of the mahogany paneled
room even for supper. Now, as the last note of the
clock striking ten faded away, he smiled at
her. "You need a good rest. And believe me," he
added wryly, "I know how much this can help, even if
it's nothing more than blunting the pain during the darkest
hours."
"I don't think anything will help," she said. "And
after last night, I'm not even sure 1 want
to sleep." Still, she sipped the liqueur,
then gazed at the flames through the clear amber
liquid. Despite her words, she felt the
alcohol taking the edge off the most painful of her
roiling emotions, and even thought it might be starting
to warm that spot in her soul that had grown so cold these
past two weeks. Or, if not thaw it, at least it
felt as if the freeze were no longer spreading. "This
is
good," she sighed, taking another sip and actually
managing a smile. "I just hope you're not giving
me a brandy habit."
A faintly sardonic smile passed over
Patrick's lips. "There are worse habits."
"I suppose." She set the snifter down and
stretched. "I think it's bedtime for me."
"Neville's set up one of the guest rooms.
I'll show you."
She took his hand and let him help her to her feet,
feeling woozy as she stood. Reading her dizziness,
he steadied her with an arm around her waist. "Are you
all right?"
She nodded, hoping she wasn't too drunk
to negotiate the stairs. But once steadied, she had
no problem following him out of the library, through the
foyer, and up the grand staircase.
Patrick paused at a closed door. "This was my
daughter Chrissie's room," he said. "It's still
hard for me to look inside." He fell silent, his
eyes fixed on the door. "But "hard" is no
excuse for not facing things, is it?" He opened the
door and switched on the light.
Kara gazed into a room that looked for all the world as
if its occupant would be back at any moment; a
pair of shoes were under the desk, obviously kicked
off and forgotten, and a jacket lay on the bed as if
waiting to be hung in its proper place. "How
old was Chrissie?" she asked as the silence grew
uncomfortable.
"Nineteen. Home from Oxford for the holidays."
Kara bit her lip as she saw the suitcase on a
luggage rack and the pile of textbooks on the
desk.
This is how Lindsays room would look in two more
years,
she thought.
Her toys behind her and her future in front of her.
The pain the thought brought must have been clear in her
face, because Patrick took her elbow and drew her
gently away. "You look
absolutely exhausted. Come on." He
clicked off the light and closed the door behind them.
"This was the girls' bath," he said as they passed
another closed door, "and this was Jenna's room."
He touched the door with his fingertips, but instead of
opening it, opened the door across the hall. "I hope
this will be all right for you."
The room was at least twice as big as the master
bedroom in her own house, with two overstuffed chairs
upholstered in flowered chintz flanking a large
fireplace. A fire had been lit, and a robe
laid out on the end of the bed. "This is beautiful,"
Kara said, moving to one of the four large windows.
Moonlight illuminated the lawn that flowed down to the
shore of the Sound, and sparkled on the water. "May
I open a window?"
"Of course."
She lifted the heavy casement and breathed in the fresh
salt air. "Heaven," she sighed as her head
cleared and she began to feel a little better.
"I'm just down the hall if you need anything in the
night," Patrick said. "Don't hesitate.
Really."
"I'll be fine."
His eyes fixed on her for a moment, as if he was
assessing the truth of her words. "Then
I'll say good night," he finally said.
A moment later the door softly closed behind him.
Alone, Kara turned back to the window for another
breath of the sweet, fresh air flowing in from the Sound,
and though the last of the brandy-induced haze lifted,
exhaustion began to close in on her again.
Don't think about it,
she told herself.
For tonight, just don't think about any of it.
Leaving the window wide open, she started toward the
door to the adjoining bathroom, but before she'd taken more
than half a dozen steps there was a soft rapping at
the bedroom door.
"Come in," she called, certain it was Patrick
coming back to tell her something. "I haven't even
started changing yet." When the only response to her
words was another discreet tapping, she went to the
door, opened it, and found Neville Cavanaugh
holding a small tray.
It held a cup of what looked for all the world like the
hot milk her grandmother used to make her when she was a
child.
"To help you sleep," he said, echoing the exact
words her grandmother used to say.
Kara opened the door wide and he set the
tray on her nightstand. "How thoughtful. Thank you."
The servant straightened up and regarded her with a
serious face. "I'm so very sorry about your husband
and daughter." His eyes seemed to bore into her for a
moment, and then, abruptly, he turned away.
"Sleep well," he said. A moment later he had
vanished from the room and closed the door.
Alone again, Kara took off her clothes, put on
the robe that had been left on the bed, and went to the
bathroom. Everything she could possibly need was
laid out on the marble counter that surrounded the sink, right
down to a fresh toothbrush, still in its box. But as
she began to brush her teeth, Neville
Cavanaugh's words kept echoing in her mind.
I'm so very sorry about your husband and daughter.
Perfectly normal words that she must have heard a
hundred times in the last week.
I'm so very sorry about your husband and daughter.
The same words almost everyone she'd seen had spoken
in one form or another.
I'm so very sorry about your husband and daughter.
Then what was it about Neville Cavanaugh's words
that bothered her?
I'm so very sorry about your husband and daughter.
She climbed into bed.
I'm so very sorry about your husband and daughter.
She reached for the cup of warm milk.
I'm so very sorry about your husband and daughter.
She picked up the cup.
I'm so very sorry
-
It wasn't the words at all.
It was the way he'd said them.
Neville Cavanaugh had spoken the right words, but
he hadn't sounded sorry at all. Instead, he'd
simply spoken the words he knew he'd be
expected to say.
Kara raised the cup to her lips.
I'm so very sorry
-
As Neville Cavanaugh's cold voice came
back again, Kara Marshall put the cup back on
the nightstand, untouched.
paralyzed!
She was paralyzed, and she couldn't breathe, and she was
blind!
A wave of panic rose inside Lindsay, and she
instinctively opened her mouth to scream, but instead of
hearing her terror erupt in a howling cry, her mouth
filled with air and her head felt like it was
going to explode.
Then she began to choke.
Now the wave of panic towered higher, and as she
struggled to control the choking and regain her breath, her
gorge began to rise and her mouth was filled with the
bitter taste of bile.
She was going to drown!
She was going to throw up, and choke on her own
vomit, and drown!
The thought triggered a reserve of energy buried deep
inside her, and she made herself swallow, made herself
force the contents of her stomach back down through her
esophagus. But even as the bile
receded from her throat, her body began to tingle from
lack of oxygen.
Why couldn't she breathe?
Tape!
There was tape over her mouth.
She focused her mind, willed herself to banish the
panic, drove away any thought but the need to breathe
and slowly released the air in her mouth through her
nostrils and sucked a fresh breath in through her
nose, down her throat, into her lungs.
The wave of terror that had all but killed her
subsided.
She took a second breath, then a third.
Her mind began to function again.
Not blind,
she told herself. Just in the dark.
And not paralyzed, either.
Just taped to the chair-her arms to its arms, her legs
to its legs. But at least the burning pain she'd
felt earlier-the pain she'd thought she couldn't bear
at all-was gone.
But she had borne the pain, and was still alive, and could
still think, and-
A faint sound, nearly inaudible, slithered into her
consciousness, and for a moment she wondered if she'd
heard it at all. But then she heard it again, and
knew what it was.
The door at the far end of the tunnel was opening.
Approaching footsteps, clearly audible, moving
closer.
Asleep,
Lindsay told herself.
Pretend to be asleep and he'll leave you alone.
Then, out of the darkness, she had what seemed a
vision-no, not a vision, she realized, but a
memory.
Of Shannon, unconscious, sprawled
on the floor.
Sprawled on the floor, and being kicked-kicked
until her neck was broken, and her head slammed
against the wall like a rag doll in the hands of a
furious child.
And if she pretended to be asleep now, it would
happen to her,
too. So she would be awake, and face whatever new
chapter in her torture was about to begin. But her mouth
was so dry her tongue had swollen and felt like a
wad of cotton, and every time she blinked, her eyes
felt as if they were coated with sand.
Maybe, after all, it would be better to die.
He was coming up the stairs now, and once again the
terrible panic to which she had awakened only a few
moments ago threatened to overwhelm her.
No,
she silently cried out to herself.
Be strong. Be stronger than Shannon. Be stronger
than
him!
Again the panic receded, but the cold terror in
Lindsay's soul only tightened its grip as first a
beam of light and then the dark form of her tormentor
rose out of the trapdoor in the floor.
"Good morning," he said, the softness of his voice
carrying a menace that made Lindsay's heart
falter.
Now she saw that he'd brought a large box with him.
"It's a special day," he said as he set it on
the table. "A special day for all of us!" He
ripped the tape from Lindsay's mouth, and she gasped
in pain, but choked off the accompanying cry that might
give her captor satisfaction.
The flashlight went out, and a moment later he began
to light candles, until the chamber was filled with
flickering illumination. As the light grew brighter,
Lindsay saw Shannon's body, still lying on the
floor, her head in a pool of dried blood. A
cry rose in her throat, and she squelched it before
any sound could escape, and turning away from
Shannon, caught sight of Ellen Fine.
Ellen's eyes were fixed on her, boring into her, and
though her mouth was still covered with tape, Lindsay
understood the message Ellen was trying to convey as
clearly as if she'd spoken it aloud.
The plan,
Ellen's eyes were saying.
Don't forget. Give him what he wants, and
wait.
Forcing herself to act against every instinct inside her,
Lindsay twisted her lips into a smile and whispered
a single word through her
in
parched lips. "Please?" The man's eyes fixed
on her, and she managed to utter three more words.
"I'm so thirsty."
"This isn't your party," he said, his voice hard.
"This is my celebration."
Lindsay glanced at Ellen, whose eyes were open and
watching.
When the room was lit by nearly two dozen candles,
the man opened the box and began removing its contents,
carefully placing each object on the tiny table.
A birthday cake, complete with candles.
Party hats, the kind of brightly colored,
foil-covered cones Lindsay and her friends used to have
at all their birthday parties.
Toy horns, and whistles from which paper tongues
extended when you blew them.
And finally, small paper plates, plastic forks,
and napkins that matched the plates.
The man arranged everything on the table, looked at
Ellen, then at Lindsay. In the flickering
candlelight, the grotesquely scrawled
smile on his surgical mask seemed to come
alive, making Lindsay's skin crawl as he
leered at her. "It's my birthday," he said. "So
we're going to have a party!"
He picked up the little hats and put one on, bringing
the elastic band down over both his masks, giving him
the look of a maniacal clown that Lindsay knew
she would see in her nightmares for the rest of her
life.
Wordlessly, he put a hat on her head, then one
on Ellen's, and Lindsay was barely able to control
her urge to twist her head away from his touch.
When the hats were secured to both of them, he lifted
Shannon's limp body from the floor and placed it
in her chair.
She toppled forward, her lifeless face smashing
onto the table.
"Sit up!" he demanded, pulling Shannon's
body straight. But as soon as he let her go, she
fell forward again. Wordlessly, he pulled her up
once again, and this time wrapped a loop of tape around
her chest to keep her upright.
One side of" Shannon's face was flattened from
where it had been pressed against the floor for hours, the
blood that pooled in it giving it the look
of a bruise.
One of her eyes was open, staring blankly at
Lindsay.
Lindsay turned her eyes away as their tormentor
put a party hat on Shannon's head and drew the
elastic under her chin.
"Isn't this fun?" he asked, his voice going
cold as he turned toward her. "Are we all
happy?"
Lindsay forced herself to smile, feeling her lower lip
crack as it stretched, and all she could think of was
water.
But there was no water.
There was nothing but the cake, and the grotesque hats,
and the terrifying figure whose visage was now looming
only a few inches from her eyes.
"You're not smiling," the man whispered as he jerked
her head back by her hair and leaned still closer to her
face. She tried to look away, but he spoke
again, his whispered words lashing at her like tiny whips.
"Look at me!" His voice trembled with fury as
he ripped off a length of duct tape and slapped
it over her mouth, then used an almost ruined red
felt-tip marker to scrawl the smile he'd just
demanded. Then, his anger unassuaged, he
put another length of tape over Lindsay's
eyes, and drew two new ones on the tape,
smearing her smile as he worked so it twisted upward
into a grotesque sneer.
When he was done, she sensed him pulling back,
admiring his handiwork. "Better," he said. "Now you
look happy."
As Lindsay tried to sense what was happening, her
tormentor turned to Ellen. "Are we all
happy?" he asked.
Doing her best not to betray her fear, Ellen
managed a nod.
"Very well, then," the man said. He flicked his
lighter on again and began to light the candles on the
cake. "I hope you brought me presents," he
said. "You know how much little boys like their presents."
When all the candles had been lit, he stood back
and admired the macabre scene. "Good," he
crooned. "Good."
Lindsay, blinded and muted by the tape over her
eyes and mouth,
sat absolutely still, silently praying that by doing
nothing, she might escape her captor's notice,
at least for a moment or two. Then he spoke again,
and she knew her prayers had been in vain.
"Sing," the softly menacing voice demanded. "It's
time to sing!"
Her heart began to race as she thought of what he
might do if she didn't comply. But how could she?
Not with-
A searing pain ripped across the lower part of her
face, and for a moment she thought her lower lip had been
torn away along with the tape. Then the tape across
her eyes was stripped away, too, taking most of
her eyebrows and lashes with it. Despite her
determination to show no fear, a whimper rose in her
throat, but even as it escaped her lips, the man
who loomed above her began singing.
"Hap ... py ... birth . . . day ... to
... you . . ." He enunciated each syllable as
if it were a separate word. "Hap ... py ...
birth-was He cut the song off mid-word, his eyes
flashing as he glowered at Ellen. In a blur of
motion, he reached out and ripped the tape from her mouth
as furiously as he'd torn it from Lindsay's
seconds ago. "Now you can sing. Now we can all
sing." His hand moved, and it was a second or two
before Lindsay realized what he was doing: conducting,
as if he was the choirmaster and she and Ellen Fine the
choir.
She heard Ellen clear her throat, and though
Lindsay wasn't sure she could muster up even a
single sound, she was terrified of what might happen
if she didn't.
"Sing!" the man demanded. "Sing to me!" Suddenly,
he picked up the burning cake and thrust it
into Lindsay's face. "Sing!" he shouted as she
recoiled, the burning candles scorching her brows.
"Sing!" the darkly leering figure demanded again.
"Hap ... py ... birth . . . day ..."
Her cheeks were stinging from the hot wax that had splashed
onto them, but she forced herself to ignore the pain.
"To you," Lindsay picked up, willing her barely
audible voice into unison with Ellen.
The man nodded, then pushed the fiery cake toward
Ellen.
"Louder!"
Lindsay and Ellen struggled to find the strength
to continue. "Happy birthday to you," they sang together.
The man wheeled and thrust the partially crushed cake
at Shannon. As Lindsay watched helplessly,
Shannon's hair sizzled and began to burn,
filling the air with acrid smoke and the stench of burning
hair.
"Sing!" he demanded as Shannon's hair
continued to burn.
Lindsay and Ellen raised their voices higher as the
flames consumed Shannon's hair, but as the
flames died away and they came to the end of the song,
so too did their voices.
"Sing it again!" their torturer demanded. "Louder!"
Despair began to overcome the determination that
until now had made Lindsay's terror almost
bearable. She knew there was nothing she would be able to do
to satisfy this creature who had snatched her from what
should have been the safety of her home, and in the end
she-and Ellen-were going to die. Die here, in the
flickering candlelight, like Shannon had died before
them.
No one was going to come for them; no one was going to save
them.
Lindsay looked at Ellen, but Ellen's eyes
had gone almost as blank as Shannon's.
"Sing!" the man howled. "Louder! Louder!"
Knowing it might well be her last act, Lindsay
sucked in a breath and tried to sing along.
Kara tossed restlessly in the unfamiliar sheets
on the unfamiliar bed and breathed deeply of the
sweet, fresh, but equally unfamiliar ocean air.
Utterly unable to sleep, she opened her
eyes to gaze once more around the perfectly
decorated guest room that looked almost magical in
the moonlight pouring through huge windows that overlooked
the Sound. Given the luxuriousness of the satiny
sheets, and the almost cloudlike support of the bed, she
should have fallen asleep the minute she first snuggled
into the warm cocoon the down comforter provided. But she
hadn't; indeed, rest seemed far away- no more
attainable here than it had been last night at
home. But at least here she was somewhat removed from the
agonizing memories of her own house, and could lie
in the soft warmth of the bed and think about what she might
do next.
But all she could think about were Steve and Lindsay.
Steve, who would never be back, and Lindsay, who-
She cut the thought off, but it was already too late.
Slowly, over the last week, she had come to accept
the reality of Steve's death, but
the thought that Lindsay, too, might already be dead was
far too painful to dwell on, even for a moment.
She closed her eyes and tried to think of her
family's happiest times. All kinds of images
rose out of her memory: summer days frolicking
on the beach, and Christmas shopping in Manhattan,
a day that always ended with dinner at the Sea
Grill at Rockefeller Center, where they would
all watch the skaters twirling on the ice beneath the
great glittering Christmas tree.
The week five years ago when they'd gone
to Orlando and seen every square inch Disney World had
to offer.
And Lindsay's birthday parties, always filled with
dozens of her friends.
Even now Kara could picture those occasions as
clearly as if they'd happened yesterday. She
remembered Lindsay's first birthday, when her
daughter wore a little pink ruffled dress and sat in
her high chair, wide-eyed, a big piece of
angel cake all to herself, while the adults all
sang.
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you . . .
The memory was so vivid she could almost hear it now,
more than fifteen years later.
Happy birthday, dear
-
Suddenly, it seemed she was actually hearing their
voices, and she sat bolt upright in bed, listening.
She turned to the open window.
Nothing but the sound of the surf and a few gulls crying
in the night.
As a chilly breeze wafted over her, she lay
back down and pulled the comforter close around her
body. Of course she hadn't heard anyone singing
"Happy Birthday." It was a trick played on
her by an exhausted mind. If she could just get
to sleep . . .
She closed her eyes and tried to calm her mind.
She breathed slowly and deeply, concentrating on the
freshness of the salt air.
Happy birthday to you
-
The lyrics rose in her mind again, faint, but not so
faint that they didn't sound real.
She got out of bed and went to the window. The wind had
picked up, and she could hear the clatter of rigging from
sailboats bobbing on mooring buoys just offshore
blending with the sighing of the wind through the trees.
Somewhere, a cat yowled in either fear or fury.
And, all but completely masked by the other sounds, she
was certain she could hear what sounded like voices singing.
Could it be? Or was she finally losing her mind?
She stood at the window, trying to sort out the
possibilities. Had her mind actually gone around
the bend, or was it possible that someone-a
neighbor?-was truly having a birthday
party in the middle of the night? Impossible.
She listened again, straining to hear, but now all she
heard was the wind, and the rigging, and the birds.
But she knew all possibility of sleep was gone.
She pulled on the robe Neville Cavanaugh
had left on the bed for her, slipped her feet
into her shoes, opened the door and stepped out into the
silent hallway.
The immense house nearly overwhelmed her with its
massive, solemn presence; the only sound was the
steady ticking of the grandfather clock in the great foyer
below.
Standing there, her eyes were drawn to the door across from
her own.
Jenna's room.
Crossing the broad hallway, she turned the handle
and slipped inside the girl's room, then closed the
door behind her.
When she turned on the light, she saw that it was a
mirror image of Chrissie's room, and not so
different from Lindsay's, except for its generous
proportions.
Kara moved slowly through the room, looking at all
the things a teenage girl values: stuffed
animals, COULD'S, posters of singers.
And books. Like Lindsay, Jenna was a reader.
Kara went to her bookshelf, thinking that if she could
find something to read, it might help her sleep.
She scanned the titles until she came to a
volume at the very end of the shelf that bore no title
at all. She pulled it out and opened it.
A photo fell from the front of the book to the
floor. As she bent to pick it up, she realized
what the book in her hand was.
Jenna Shields's diary.
Straightening up, she stared at the script that covered
the first page. Jenna's hand was even and nice. Kara
flipped quickly through the pages. Jenna had filled
her diary not only with the events of her young life, but
with her dreams as well.
Had Lindsay kept a diary? If she had, she'd
hidden it well enough that neither she nor the police had
been able to find it.
Jenna hadn't hidden hers at all. In fact,
she'd left it right on the bookshelf where anyone could
have found it.
And now Kara had.
She bent down again and picked up the photo, and her
heart chilled.
She must be wrong, she thought. It had to be
a trick of the light. She took the picture over
to Jenna's desk and turned on the study lamp
to see the photograph more clearly.
It was of the entire Shields family: Patrick,
Renee, Jenna, and Chrissie.
And Jenna Shields looked enough like her own daughter
that she and Lindsay could have been twins.
Eyes blurring with tears, Kara looked away,
wiped them with the sleeve of her robe, and thinking she
must have been mistaken, looked once more at the
photograph.
But no. It was almost as if Lindsay herself had somehow
slipped into this photograph of a family that was not her
own.
Instead of putting the photo back in the journal,
Kara slipped it into the pocket of her robe, then
replaced the book on the shelf exactly where she'd
found it, turned out the lights, and stepped out the
door.
Fully awake now, she didn't want to return
to her room, so she slipped as quietly as possible
down the massive staircase, through the marble foyer, and
into the conservatory.
Hoping the alarm system wasn't turned on, she
unlocked the French doors and went out
onto the terrace overlooking the lawn and the Sound.
The grounds were bathed in silvery moonlight, the air
crisp and clean, and the sky ablaze with stars. A
perfect night.
A perfect night that was shattered by a muffled shout.
The shout of a man!
Transfixed, Kara strained her eyes to see into the
darkness, searching for the source of the shout.
Then she heard another sound.
Singing?
It
was
singing.
Once again it sounded like "Happy Birthday."
Unconsciously clutching the lapels of the robe
tightly around her neck, Kara started down the steps
toward the lawn.
hey were going to die.
Shannon was already dead, and now they were going to die,
too, and it was all her fault.
She'd failed!
How could it have happened? When she'd devised the
plan- when she'd explained it so carefully
to Lindsay and Shannon-she was sure it would work.
There were three of them and only one of him, and
even though Shannon had already been half starved
to death, she and Lindsay should have been able to overpower this
man. But they'd failed.
Now, as she watched the surrealistic scene swirling
around her, Ellen Fine realized why it had failed.
Their captor was utterly, completely, insane.
A lunatic, waving his arms in the flickering
candlelight and demanding that all of them-even
Shannon-sing to him.
Sing to him!
How much time had she wasted thinking she was dealing with
someone whose mind was even faintly rational?
And now Shannon was dead, Lindsay was on the verge
of dying, and if she didn't do something soon, she
herself would die, too. And even if they all died, it
still wouldn't be over. Th. . . miscreant, this
lunatic, this
monster,
would only find new victims to torture in their
place.
But he didn't even know that he was torturing them.
He thought he was loving them.
Loving them!
Loving them, as he held them captive in the
darkness, barely feeding them, not allowing them
to slake their thirst. Maybe none of it was real.
Maybe it actually was a nightmare. Maybe this
tiny chamber with its undersized furniture and thick
coating of filth and stale musty air that was now so
smoky her eyes were stinging and running wasn't real
at all.
Maybe it wasn't the man who was insane. Maybe
it was her! Maybe she was hallucinating all this,
hallucinating the candles and the cake and the song that
seemed to go on endlessly and-
One of the candles on the cake flickered as it burned
down to the frosting, and the man abruptly stopped singing.
"Wish time," he said, his voice turning cold as his
eyes fixed on her. "And I'm going to wish for the
same thing I always wished for."
He tilted his head toward the ceiling, and Ellen
realized he was drawing in a deep breath, puffing up
his lungs like a six-year-old boy about to show off at
his own birthday party. Finally, when his lungs were
full, he bent over and blew on the candles, the
ski mask bulging out under the force of his pent-up
breath.
But it wasn't enough-more than half the candles
remained lit.
He blew again, and then a third time, and
finally the last candle sputtered out.
As his eyes moved malevolently from Lindsay
to her, her fury and frustration finally overpowered her
terror.
"Happy birthday!" she screamed, the words rasping
as they erupted from her swollen throat. "Happy
birthday, and go to hell!"
His head snapped up and he glowered at her, rage
burning in his eyes.
"Why don't you just die?" Ellen cried, her
voice trembling. "You're never getting your wish,
so why don't you just die and go to hell!"
The blow came so fast, Ellen had no time to turn
away. His fist slammed into her jaw hard and she
felt it dislocate, the pain so intense she lost her
breath as a fiery red glow of agony enveloped her.
Still taped to the chair, she toppled over and her head
crashed against the floor.
Emily. Oh, Emily.
Only the thought of her daughter kept Ellen from
letting herself slip into the unconsciousness that was the
only thing that could assuage the pain.
Then he was kneeling next to her, and Ellen braced
herself for the next blow. But instead, when he leaned
close, his lips next to her ear, he
whispered, "You're supposed to help me. Why
didn't you help me? That's all I wanted-just for
you to help me. But you didn't help me-you let them
do whatever they wanted, and I had to pretend like I
liked it! So now we all have to pretend. Every one of
us . . ."
Ellen tried to pull away, but when she moved her
head, a stab of pain shot from her broken jaw and a
faint scream escaped her lips. She saw the
duct tape back in the man's hands, and in mute
paralysis watched helplessly as he tore a long
strip from the roll.
As he pressed the tape over her mouth, the pain in
her broken jaw burned through her, the shattered bones
grating on each other. And for the first time since this
nightmare began, Ellen found herself silently
praying for the release of unconsciousness.
Unconsciousness, or even death.
As she lay helpless on the floor, the man rose
to his feet and moved toward Lindsay. Crouching
low, he reached out and gently began to caress her
breast. "Now you're going to know what it was like," he
whispered, and his fingers tightened on Lindsay's
nipple. "Now you're going to feel everything I
felt, and we'll see how you like it!"
As his fingers dug into Lindsay's body, and the agony
in her own threatened to overwhelm her, Ellen Fine
clung to the one thought that could give her the strength
to keep on living.
Emily . .
.
Emily . . . Emily. . .
Nothing,
Kara told herself.
You heard nothing, because there's nothing to hear.
Yet even as she silently repeated the words, the
sounds of the night enveloped her, seemed to close in
on her with every step she took as she left the terrace
steps and moved into the darkness that lay over
Cragmont. The waves lapping on the shore, the
wind sighing and whistling among the trees and in the
eaves of the unfamiliar buildings scattered over the
grounds, all of it seemed to warn her to go back to the
house, whispering that there was nothing here for her to see.
Nothing, at least, that she would want to see.
She glanced nervously back over her shoulder, but the
silhouette of the great house looming against the even
darker blackness of the sky did nothing to reassure
her, and for a moment she almost imagined she could hear the
groaning of whatever vast unseen mechanism
it was that drew the stars across the sky.
But the singing-if singing it had truly been-was gone,
and as
she drew the robe tighter around her against the chill and
darkness of the night, Kara was no longer sure she had
heard it at all.
Off to the left, almost invisible against a backdrop of
hedges, the Shields family mausoleum crouched
in the darkness, and Kara paused to gaze at its
limestone walls.
She shuddered.
Could the sounds she'd heard, which she'd been so certain
were voices singing, possibly have come from inside it?
She remembered, then, what Patrick had told
her about waking up a couple of weeks ago to find
himself inside the mausoleum, cold and shivering in
front of the crypts that held all that was physically
left of his family.
Had he been drawn back there tonight? Could it have been
Patrick she'd heard, keening his grief alone in
the confines of this cold stone structure? Kara
hurried forward and a moment later stood before the wooden
door that was the mausoleum's entrance, its great
panels appearing even larger than the doors of the
house itself.
A heavy lock hung from a hasp, and even without
touching it, Kara knew it was firmly latched.
As she stood on the crypt's cold stone steps, the
night sounds deepened and once more seemed to circle
closer. She stepped away from the mausoleum, but
even when she stood in the middle of the path that led
back to the great open lawn, the first tendrils of
claustrophobia began to crawl around her.
She turned back to gaze at the mausoleum, and a
vision of Steve's ashes-still on the dining room table
in her deserted house-rose before her eyes.
She shuddered again.
Don't be silly. Don't be hysterical.
Nobody is singing out here, and there's no way
Patrick or anybody else is inside the
mausoleum.
She turned around, intending to start back toward the
house, but a small building off to the left caught
her eye.
A building that appeared in the darkness to be an almost
exact miniature of the enormous main house that
stood at the top of the gently sloping lawn.
As she gazed at it, Kara realized what it was.
A children's playhouse.
The playhouse where Chrissie and Jenna
would have played when they were little girls.
Perhaps even where Patrick and Claire had played
when they were children, too.
Kara stepped off the path and started across the grass,
which was glistening with dew in the moonlight. Though the
dampness quickly found its way inside her loafers,
she barely noticed the chill in her feet.
She drew closer.
The playhouse had been boarded up, its door and
windows covered with heavy plywood.
Of course. After the tragedy, Patrick would have
been no more able to bear the sight of the playhouse than
he could his daughters' rooms.
Kara gazed at the building for a while, shivering at
the memories that must lurk in its closed-off
corners. A wind came up then, flapping the robe
that was all that covered her bare legs and jerking her out
of her reverie. Turning away from the playhouse as
she'd turned away from the mausoleum a few
minutes earlier, she resolutely headed back
toward the house.
But just as she was mounting the steps to the terrace and the
conservatory beyond, she heard it.
Muffled, but distinct.
A shout!
The shout of a woman!
Kara whirled, goose bumps rising on her arms,
and then her grandmother's voice echoed in her head:
"Someone's walking on my grave." She
banished the thought as quickly as it came, and strained her
ears, listening.
Nothing.
Nothing but the waves and the wind, whispering in the
darkness. Quickly, she hurried up the steps,
crossed the terrace, and turned the
handle on the door, but before she could push it open, it
was pulled from within.
Neville Cavanaugh stood in the partially open
doorway, fully dressed, gazing down at her, his
eyes cold and suspicious. Flustered, she
blurted out the truth before she even thought about it: "I
heard noises." His expression didn't change,
though he opened the door wider and stepped back so
she could come in. "Like singing," she went on. "I
thought it was . . . Oh, God, it sounds so silly
now, but-was She faltered, but Neville only
raised his eyebrows and waited. "I thought someone was
singing "Happy Birthday" was she finally managed.
"And someone was yelling."
The man's expression seemed to darken.
"From where?"
"Down by the ... by the mausoleum, I think."
After a moment, he closed and secured the door behind
them. "Shore birds," he said. "They make all
manner of queer sounds in the night. And there are
peacocks on the next property. Sometimes it sounds
like babies crying, sometimes like-was He hesitated,
then his lips curved into what Kara assumed was his
idea of a smile. "Sometimes I don't know what
they sound like. And there are stories . . ." This time his
voice faded away, and Kara thought he would go on,
but instead he only shrugged. "Birds and animals
make strange noises in the night. After a while
you stop hearing them at all."
Birds! All it had been was birds. Kara felt
utterly foolish, and hoped the dimness in the
conservatory hid the burning flush in her face.
"Will you be needing anything?" Neville asked her.
Kara shook her head, left the conservatory, and
hurried up the stairs. Back in the guest room,
she closed the door behind her, twisted the key in the
lock, slipped off her wet shoes, then slid under
the covers of the bed, her robe still wrapped tightly
around her. As she lay in the darkness, the servant's
words came back to her.
Birds. . . birds and animals. . . After a
while you stop hearing them at all.
But if he hadn't heard them at all, what was he
doing, Wide-awake, fully dressed, prowling the
house in the middle of the night?
indsay felt herself fading away, drowning in something
she no longer understood. Everything around her had
turned surreal- the candles all had halos,
grotesque shadows whispered to her in unintelligible
words from the dark corners of the ceiling, and sounds
reverberated in her head until they were rendered
meaningless.
Nothing was real.
All she wanted to do was slip into that blissful
unconsciousness where there was no pain, no fear, no
terror, where nightmares were something from which she would
awaken, and when she awoke, her mother and father would be there
to hold her and kiss away her tears.
As the sirens of unconsciousness crooned their song,
she began to let herself slip away, singing with them for a
while. But whatever words she was singing became as
meaningless as the whisperings of the shadows that lurked in the
corners. She heard someone yell, but, too tired,
too depleted, too exhausted even to respond,
she couldn't even raise her head from where it
hung on her chest.
Like Shannon's had . . .
Then the dreams started-the bad dreams-and even though
she knew she was still awake, she couldn't move or
talk or fend off the red-eyed monsters that were growling
at her from the dark.
She twisted against her bonds and tried to rise up
through the layers of sleep, to fight the dreams that
weren't dreams at all, but her strength was finally
gone.
Now the fear itself began to consume her, the fear she'd
been fending off since the moment the nightmare had
begun. Was it the red-eyed monster that was stalking her?
Was there nothing there at all except fear itself? But
if that was all there was, why wouldn't it go
away? She wanted it to go away-she was so tired of
being afraid, she couldn't stand it any longer. She
wanted to face things, to ignore the fear, but she
didn't know how to do that anymore.
The world was made of fear.
Thick, impenetrable, suffocating fear.
Fear that was killing her.
She had to get away from it, had to escape from it.
...
She began closing herself down, drawing
back, away from the fear, away from her body, away
from everything.
And slowly, as she pulled away from the fear, things
changed. Somehow she had escaped her own body, and
now she was looking down, gazing down from somewhere high
above. Far below, she watched as the black-clothed
beast that had imprisoned and tormented her sliced
away the gray tape that held her hands and ankles
to the chair.
She watched as he lifted her body and lay it with
an odd gentleness on the table.
With an almost idle curiosity, she watched him part
her legs.
And then, in an instant, the odd sense of detachment
ended and she was back in her body, and she knew
exactly what was happening, and the terror that had
threatened to utterly destroy her moments before flashed
into fury, a fury that jerked her out of the lassitude
that had held her paralyzed, a fury that filled her
with a keen, razor- edged consciousness and a sudden
influx of strength.
Adrenaline surging into every fiber of her starved and
ravaged body, Lindsay drew a great breath and
screamed.
She screamed for Shannon and for Ellen, for
her mother and her father, and for whatever god might be listening
somewhere. She screamed and howled with every scrap of energy
left in her, and heard the sound crash back at her
off the ceiling and the walls.
And then a hand was clamped over her mouth and the scream
was silenced.
"No one hears it," a hard voice whispered.
"After a while, no one hears the screams at
all."
scream ripped through Kara's mind and she jerked bolt
upright in bed before she even came fully awake.
For a moment she felt disoriented, but as the vestiges
of sleep fell away, her mind began to focus.
She was still at Cragmont, still wearing the bathrobe
Neville had laid out for her. But she no longer
felt welcome-now she felt like an intruder, and it
was the house itself that made her feel that way.
It was the house that was giving her nightmares.
Yet she had just been awakened by a scream-a scream
she could still recall.
Lindsay!
Kara swung her legs off the bed, shoved her feet
into her loafers, and went to the bedroom door, listening
for a moment before she opened it. Hearing nothing, she
cracked the door open.
All was dark and silent, but it wasn't a comforting
darkness or silence.
Rather, it was the kind of silence that told her there was
something else-something dangerous-lurking just beyond the
range of her senses. Part of her wanted to close
the door and go back to bed, but a stronger part told
her to find Patrick, to tell him about the scream that
had awakened her.
But had it been a scream? Or had it been nothing but
a dream? Yet it seemed so real.
So real.
She needed to talk.
She needed to talk to Patrick.
Opening the door wider, she turned to the right, walked
silently down the corridor to Patrick's
bedroom and knocked softly on the door.
Silence.
She knocked a little louder, and when he still didn't
answer, she hesitated, almost went back to her own
room, then changed her mind. Grasping the crystal
knob on the door, she twisted it and pushed the heavy
door open.
A fire had burned to embers in the fireplace
opposite the bed.
A bedside lamp glowed dimly, and the linen
in the huge bed had been carefully turned down, just
as her own had when Patrick brought her to her room.
But his linens remained untouched. "Patrick?" she
whispered, and his name seemed to echo as loudly as if
she'd shouted it.
She went to his bathroom door and knocked
lightly.
No answer.
She turned the handle and opened the door slowly, but
the light was not on and she knew he was not here. Still,
she flipped on the light and looked around.
Toiletries laid out, it was as ready for
Patrick as the bedroom, and as empty.
The library. Patrick said he'd been sleeping in
the library, where only a few hours ago she had
sat in front of a fire, sipping a glass of
Grand Marnier, the horrors of the world shut out, even
if only for a short while. Was that where he'd gone
to sleep tonight?
Kara left the bedroom and made her way down the
dark hallway, shivering as she passed the closed
doors of Patrick's daughters' rooms.
Halfway down the stairs, a noise stopped her
cold and her heart began to race. But as the big
grandfather clock in the foyer began to strike,
she realized that the noise had been nothing more than the
winding of its gears. Hurrying down the rest of the
curving flight of stairs-grateful that whatever
noise she might make would be covered by the striking
of the clock-she paused on the bottom step until
it finished chiming four.
As the last deep note faded away and a cloak of
silence fell once more over the house, almost muffling
even the ticking of the ancient clock, Kara darted
across the foyer and rapped on the great double doors that
led to the library. "Patrick?" she called
softly, and once more her voice seemed to fill the
silent house with its echoes. "Patrick, it's
Kara!"
When there was no answer, she knocked again, then a
third time.
Why wouldn't he wake up?
Was he ill?
"Patrick!"
Still no response.
Had something happened to him?
Turning away from the library doors, she peered up
into the vastness of the foyer. In the near-blackness of the
night, it looked even bigger than it was, and
everything about it-the dark mahogany paneling,
the shadowy corners beneath the soaring stairs, even the
heavy draperies that nearly covered the French
doors leading to the terrace-had taken on a sense of
hidden danger.
Good God,
Kara told herself.
Get a grip!
But even her silent words couldn't quell the panic
rising inside her.
Wanting, needing to get outside, she pushed away from
the library doors and moved toward the French doors
at the back of the foyer. Pushing one of the heavy
draperies away, she fumbled with the lock until it
finally snapped open, then stepped out onto the
terrace and took a deep breath of the fresh ocean
air. The panic that had seized her a moment ago
began to loosen its grip. But only for a second.
She pulled the French door closed behind her and
started along the terrace toward the library, thinking
she might be able to get in through the French doors. A
moment later she was trying the handle of the first of three
sets of doors. It was locked, but through the heavy
draperies drawn across the inside of the doors, she
could see a faint light within the room.
Someone was inside.
"Patrick?" she called, pressing close to the
door, pitching her voice loud enough so it would
penetrate not only the glass, but the curtains as
well. When there was no response, she rapped on
the glass and called louder. "Patrick, wake
up. Let me in!"
Still no answer.
She banged harder. Where else could he be? He
had to be inside! He had to be!
Should she call for Neville? But just the thought of the
man's strange presence made her abandon that
idea. She moved to the next set of French
doors, with no more success, and then on to the last
set.
All of them were locked. She was about to start banging
on the glass again when her eyes fell on a small
wrought-iron plant stand that stood just beyond the last set
of doors. She hesitated, but only for a moment.
She picked it up and swung it against the small
pane of glass next to the lock on the French
door.
The pane shattered, a few shards falling to the
terrace but most of the glass dropping to the hardwood
floor inside the library, the sound muffled by the
drapery.
Knocking away some sharp fragments stuck in the
frame of the broken window, Kara slipped her hand
through and unlocked the door, then opened it and pushed
aside the draperies.
The room was dark except for a dim
green-glass-shaded lamp on the desk.
Hesitantly, as if the house itself were somehow a
threat to her, she stepped into the library, immediately
feeling it close in around her. When she spoke, her
voice had dropped back to a whisper.
"Patrick?"
Her eyes found the sofa in the dim light. The
cashmere throw that had kept her warm only a few
hours ago was now folded neatly and lay atop it.
An ember dropped from the grate in the fireplace,
sending up a shower of sparks, and Kara jumped at the
sound.
But there was no sign of Patrick.
How could he have left a room that was locked from the
inside?
The desk lamp illuminated only a small
fraction of the enormous room, and she edged around the
back of the sofa toward the light
switch. When she flipped and the overhead chandelier
went on, she found herself looking at something
that made no sense at all. The enormous
Oriental carpet that had covered the far third of the
library earlier was folded back, revealing the
hardwood parquet floor.
Curious, Kara moved closer, and just beyond the fold
in the rug, almost hidden in its shadow, she saw something
else.
An open trapdoor.
She stared at it, her mind whirling. Why was there a
trapdoor in the middle of the library floor? Was that
where Patrick had gone?
She took another step toward the yawning hole in the
floor, then stopped. What was she thinking? It was
four in the morning, and Patrick was gone, and she'd
found a trapdoor that led Godaloneknewwhere.
She reached for the telephone on the desk, her hand
shaking as she picked up the receiver. As her finger
hovered over the keypad, she struggled to remember the
number the detective had given her- the number where
he could be reached at home. But now, when she needed
it, not only was it gone, but even his name had vanished
from her mind.
911!
That was it-she'd just dial 911 and someone would come. But
as she stabbed at the first of the three keys that
would summon help, another scream ripped through the
darkness.
And ripped through her heart.
Lindsay!
This time she knew it was no dream.
This time she was sure it was Lindsay, and her blood
ran cold as she realized where the scream had come from.
She heard the scream again, and with it, all the fears and the
panic that had threatened to overwhelm her only moments
ago dropped away. Grabbing a poker that stood by the
fireplace, she stared down the steep flight of
steps that led from the trapdoor into the darkness below.
very instinct she had told Kara to go back, to turn
away from the steps leading down into the dark pit beneath the
library floor. If she just picked up the phone,
someone far stronger than she- someone who would know what
to do-would be here in a few minutes. But Lindsay's
scream was fresh in her mind, and she knew it had
been no dream, no trick of the night or her
imagination.
This time her daughter's scream had been real, and she
was not about to question herself or hesitate. Gripping the
poker tighter, she moved down the steps until she
reached the bottom. Except for the shaft of light from
the library above, the blackness surrounding
her was complete.
A flashlight. Why hadn't she thought to find a
flashlight?
But there was no time to go back now-Lindsay was down
here somewhere, and she had to find her. She stepped out of the
shaft of light and her eyes gradually adapted to the
shadows. She came to a wider area then, the walls
seemingly falling farther away, and strange, almost
surreal images began to emerge out of the darkness.
Thin mattresses on the floor.
A bucket near each of the mattresses.
Scanning the ceiling, Kara saw a lightbulb
hanging a few feet away, groped above her and
found a string. She pulled it, and in the suddenly
blinding light, found herself standing in what appeared to be
a dungeon.
The stench of it filled her nostrils, a wave of
nausea rising in her belly as her eyes took in
the chains and shackles bolted to the concrete walls.
Again, her instincts told her to turn around and flee
back up the stairs, but once again, the memory of
Lindsay's scream checked her panic and pushed her
deeper into the strange chamber.
How was it possible? How could Lindsay be here? This
was Patrick's house-the house she'd come
to for refuge, and protection, and-
And Lindsay was here! She could feel it now, feel
it deep in her soul.
But not in this room, not in this dark dungeon.
Yet not far away, either.
Kara's eyes darted around the chamber, searching for some
way out other than the trapdoor she'd come down, and a
moment later she found it. A small door,
constructed from thick oak, set into the concrete wall
at the far end of the grim room.
Carefully, she picked her way through the litter
strewn over the floor until she got to the door.
It was barely ajar, and she reached out with a trembling
hand to pull it open.
Ahead of her lay a tunnel, barely high enough to stand
up in, just wide enough to let her pass.
In the distance she saw a dim glow, no more than a
faint brightening of the blackness that filled the tunnel.
How far away? Twenty yards? Fifty? A
hundred?
Her hand tightening on the poker so hard her fingers
hurt, she started toward that light.
Where did the tunnel lead? As she moved through the
darkness, feeling her way along one of the rough
walls, she again recalled Patrick
telling her about waking up in the mausoleum with no
memory of having gone there. Was that where the tunnel
led? She tried to gauge not only the distance ahead,
but the direction as well. And then, as the light grew
brighter, she knew.
The playhouse! The miniature copy of
Cragmont itself that stood near the woods between the
house and the mausoleum.
The playhouse whose door and windows were boarded up.
Certain she knew what lay ahead, Kara quickened
her step, and as the light at the end of the tunnel
grew steadily brighter, it began to pulse oddly,
almost as if it were energized by a beating heart.
Lindsay's heart!
"I'm coming," Kara whispered. "I'm coming." She
quickened her pace, but not enough to risk tripping on the
uneven floor of the
tunnel and twisting her ankle. When she was still ten
or fifteen feet from the source of the light ahead,
she heard something and stopped short.
Voices.
She listened, and in the dim light saw what lay
ahead.
Another set of wooden stairs, like the ones that had
led from the library down into darkness and the
dungeon, only this flight led up. Taking a
deep breath, Kara moved slowly and silently to the
foot of the stairs.
Lindsay,
she said silently to herself as she gazed at the open
trapdoor overhead.
That's all you have to think about. Find Lindsay and get
her out of here.
As quietly as a wraith, she mounted the stairs.
What she saw as her eyes cleared the floor was
even more surreal than the dungeon she'd come upon
earlier. A few feet directly ahead of her, a
pair of bare legs were duct-taped to chair legs that
had been fastened to the floor with angle irons.
Above the legs, she saw a table, also bolted to the
floor.
Kara's eyes shifted, and she saw a figure
looming at the end of the table. A figure clad in
black.
Then she rose into the room, and the full reality of it
made her reel. In the pulsing glow of dozens of
candles, two women were tied to miniature chairs.
One of them was gazing at her with eyes so empty,
Kara knew in an instant she was dead, and the other
one's eyes were filled with a terror unlike
anything Kara had ever seen before.
But they were smiling! They were both smiling!
A choking cry emerged from her throat when she saw
Ellen's mouth covered with duct tape, upon which a
grotesquely hideous grin had been drawn.
And then she saw Lindsay.
Her daughter was on top of a table as small as the
chairs around it, and between her legs stood the tall,
black-clad figure, a hideously grinning
surgical mask hiding his face.
A partially crumpled birthday cake-the cake she'd
seen earlier in the kitchen, she realized-sat on a
side table, its candles melted down to blue
blobs. And suddenly she knew.
.
Neville! That was why he'd been skulking around the
darkened house! That was why she'd felt him watching
her! He'd taken her daughter and-
"Lindsay!"
"Her child's name burst from Kara's lips in an
anguished scream.
Lindsay began to struggle on the table,
unintelligible cries bubbling from her lips.
The black-clad figure wheeled around, his hands
rising as he backed away from Lindsay.
Kara raised the poker. "Get away from her," she
said, her voice low, but carrying enough menace that the
figure lurched backward.
"It's not my fault," the man whispered.
"Untie her," Kara demanded, her voice rising.
"Untie them all!"
"It's
her
fault," he whimpered, cowering back against the wall.
He was pointing at the dead girl now.
A blinding fury surging inside her, Kara swung
the poker at the cowering figure. "Untie them!" she
screamed as she brought the poker around, its sharp spur
aimed at his head. But he ducked away, and the spur
intended for the skull of the monster who had taken
Lindsay sank deep into the wall instead, hitting it
with such force that when Kara tried to pull the spur out,
she lost her grip on the poker. Then the man was upon
her, wrapping his arms around her, pinning one of her
arms to her side.
With her free hand, Kara reached up and slashed at his
face with her fingers, trying to sink her nails into his
eyes. But again he twisted his head away at the last
second, and her fingers closed not on skin and flesh,
but on the knitted yarn of his black ski
mask.
She yanked hard, jerking away not only the ski
mask, but the surgical mask as well.
In the strangely pulsing light of the guttering
candles, Kara found herself staring into the face of
Patrick Shields.
It was the house itself that awakened Neville. Even
before he opened his eyes, he knew that all was not
well, that somewhere in the house, something was terribly
wrong.
It was a feeling he'd had more and more often over the last
few months, when he'd listened to the silence, then
risen from his bed to prowl through the house, checking doors
and windows, making certain his employer's realm was
secure. Indeed, he'd already made his patrol
once this night, and found Mrs. Marshall coming in from
the terrace with strange tales of hearing sounds she
couldn't possibly have heard. Of course, he
reassured her that it had been nothing more than shore
birds, sent her back to bed, then finished his tour
of the mansion before returning to his own room and his bed.
He'd slept.
But now he was awake again, and something felt wrong.
Then, before he'd thrown the covers back and reached for
his robe, he heard it.
The sound of breaking glass.
Instantly, his mind began cataloging the
possibilities. Perhaps it was nothing more than Mr.
Shields dropping a brandy snifter after trying
to medicate himself through another sleepless night. Or
perhaps one of the old family photographs that covered
so many of the downstairs walls had fallen from its
mount.
Except it hadn't sounded like either a dropped glass
or a fallen picture.
It sounded like a breaking window.
Slipping into his robe, Neville hurried
silently along the corridor and down the dark
stairway that led from his apartment to the kitchen, still trying
to convince himself that whatever the sound had been, it was
nothing serious.
But even as he moved through the kitchen into the dayrooms,
the house whispered that something evil lay nearby.
Emerging into the vast entry hall, he slowed his step
and listened, but heard nothing but the ancient clock's
eternal ticking; all around him the house was dark and
quiet.
Just as it should be.
Yet still he heard it whispering to him, telling him that
all was not as it seemed. Neville
crossed the hall and slipped into the conservatory, where
only a little while ago he'd met Mrs.
Marshall, but now all was well in that room, too,
and beyond its great glass doors, a lightening sky
signaled the coming of dawn.
And by that light, he could find no broken windowpane
whose shattering might have disturbed his sleep.
Neville Cavanaugh moved silently on.
The library doors were locked, which told him that
Mr. Shields was once again sleeping there instead of
in his room. He raised his hand to rap softly at the
door, then changed his mind: if his employer was
asleep, he didn't want to awaken him, at least
not until he had discovered what was amiss.
He turned away from the library and moved to the
massive,
circular table that stood in the center of the foyer, its
intricately inlaid mosaic surface still half
obscured by the profusion of yellow tulips that Mr.
Shields's sister had picked.
The tulips that were now past their prime, and should have
been thrown away a week ago. Neville stood
quietly, seeing neither the faded tulips nor any
other visible thing, for his mind was focusing on the house
itself. He knew that if he waited
quietly, it would tell him of its ills.
It always had; it always would. He understood its
subtleties- knew every inch of its molding, every scar
in its paneling, even every vein in every slab of its
marble, as well as every pleat in every curtain.
He knew every creak, moaning joint, and settled
beam. As the decades passed, he had kept this
house, and this house had protected him. He thought of
himself and this house as partners; they understood one
another.
And this night, things were not right with the house.
He could feel its ills deep in his soul.
He waited for the impressions to become more
specific, but his impatience clouded any psychic
message he might have gleaned, and finally he strode
to the staircase and mounted the stairs, his slippers
soundless on the marble treads.
The doors to the girls" rooms were closed, as
always.
The guest room door, though, was open, and when he
peered inside, he saw only the empty bed, the
bedding itself in disarray.
So Mrs. Marshall was up and about again, and no doubt
it had been she who broke something. Certain there was
nothing else to be found up here, Neville
quickly went back down the stairs, searched the rest
of the day rooms, and finally stepped out onto the
terrace, using the same door in the conservatory through
which he'd admitted Mrs. Marshall a while ago.
The air was chilly, and Neville clutched at the
lapels of his robe with his fingers as he moved down the
length of the terrace, checking each of the French doors
in turn.
He saw the breech in the last set of doors that
opened into the library. A pane of glass next to the
doorknob had been broken-
smashed in with one of the wrought iron plant stands of which
he had never approved, and for the reason that now
confronted him. The plant stand lay on its side in
front of the door.
So there
bad
been an intruder.
Neville pushed open the damaged door and stepped
into the library, closing it behind him, and as the latch
clicked into place, he knew that here, in this room,
was the source of the distress that had awakened him.
It wasn't merely the pervasiveness of Mr.
Shields's grief or the aroma of Mrs.
Marshall's cheap perfume. No, it was
something far darker, far more disturbing. But what? The
room was vacant and cold, the fireplace barely
sustaining a few faintly glowing coals.
Then he saw that the Oriental rug in front of the
desk was folded back.
Frowning, he approached it, and stared at the gaping
trapdoor.
For a moment all he could do was peer in astonishment at
the hole in the floor, barely able to believe his
eyes. How many times had the carpet been rolled
back over the years? How was it possible that he
hadn't known that a trapdoor was there? As he stared
at it, and saw how perfectly the door would drop
back into the deeply grooved parquetry design
of the floor, he realized that the entire floor had
been designed to disguise this trapdoor; closed, it
would be all but invisible.
But where did it go?
His brow furrowing deeply, Neville Cavanaugh
hurried toward the kitchen in search of a flashlight.
Patrick!"
The voice seemed to come from far away.
It was calling his name, screaming at him:
"Patrick!"
And again, louder:
"Patrick!"
Patrick wanted to answer, but it was as if he was
asleep and couldn't wake up; as if someone were
calling him in a dream, and even though he wanted
to respond, to call back, he couldn't.
He couldn't do anything; couldn't speak, couldn't
move, could barely even breathe. It was as if he was
bound in something, as if spiderwebs were wrapped around
him, webs so fine he couldn't see them, but that
nonetheless held him in their grip.
The voice came again, howling out his name, and
Patrick struggled to free himself from the bonds at
least enough to speak, to let whoever was calling to him know that
he was there. And he
was
there, he knew it. He was not asleep, though he
felt as though he was; not caught up in a
nightmare, though it seemed as if a nightmare was
what it had to be.
The voice screamed his name yet again, and his mind
began to focus. There was light all around him; but not
bright light, not the light from the chandelier in the library
or the lamp by his bedside.
Candlelight.
That's what it was: candlelight. Glowing
all around him, bathing the room in a warm, golden
glow.
Now the room itself came into a strange kind of
focus. A small room, with small furniture.
The playhouse! That's where he was-the playhouse
halfway down the lawn, where Claire and her friends-
Claire!
Was that who was calling him? He looked around, trying
to see if his sister was there, but he couldn't quite see out
of his own eyes. Something seemed to be blocking his
vision.
"Oh back to sleep!"
a new voice whispered, and this time Patrick
recognized it right away: it was his own voice. But
how could it be, since he hadn't spoken and wasn't
asleep? The voice inside him spoke
again:
"Go on. Go back to sleep. You want to go back
to sleep. I know you want to go back to sleep, and so
do you. So do it. Do what you want to do, and then I will
do what we want to do, just like I always have. his
As the voice whispered to him, Patrick felt himself
starting to relax, to obey it and drift into the dark and
gentle quiet of sleep.
But then he heard the other voice calling
to him again. Not Claire's voice, but a familiar
voice, a voice he knew.
A voice he liked.
"Patrick! Patrick, what are you doing?"
Kara!
Kara Marshall! That's who it was. And he was
holding her, his arms wrapped so tightly around her,
he was hurting her. But what was she doing in the
playhouse? No one ever went into the playhouse
anymore, not since he'd boarded it up. Even his
daughters had never been allowed in the playhouse.
But now Kara was here and-
"She doesn't belong,"
the other voice-the voice inside him-said.
"She shouldn't be here, and neither should you. Go back
to sleep and let
me do what we want to do. Go back to sleep, and
I will make everything all right. And no one will ever
tell. his
Tell? Tell what? He shoved Kara aside and
twisted his head as she crumpled to the floor. Then,
for an instant, it seemed that the hand covering his eyes
fell away, and he saw the girl sprawled out on
the table, lying on her back, staring up at him with
terrified eyes.
Why?
Why was she afraid of him?
Then he saw the girl in the chair, the girl whose
head was lolling over, the girl who wasn't moving
at all.
And another one.
A young woman, who looked familiar. She was bound
to one of the little chairs-the chairs Claire and her friends
had sat in when they were children.
When they were children, and they'd brought him in here, and-
The vision of what had happened here so many years ago
began to take shape in his mind, and he wanted
to turn away, to disappear back into the cradling arms
of unconsciousness, where the terrible memories of the
past could do him no harm.
"That's right,"
the voice in his head urged him.
"Go to sleep, Patrick. Let me deal with it.
I dealt with it then, and I've dealt with it all our
life and I will deal with it now. And you won't be any
part of it. Not any part of it at all!"
As the voice whispered to him, and Patrick felt the
bliss of unconsciousness wrap him in its comforting
darkness, he was barely aware of yanking from the wall
the heavy iron poker that Kara Marshall
had swung at him a moment earlier.
ara could hear Patrick's voice, but the words made
no sense. Who was he talking to? Since he'd
let her tumble to the floor, he hadn't looked at
her. Now, with the poker gripped in his right hand, he was
gazing around the room as if he didn't know where he
was.
And when he spoke, the words didn't make any
sense. Deal with what? What was he talking about?
Then she saw something in his eyes change, and it was as
if she was looking at a completely different
person. This wasn't the Patrick Shields she
knew. This wasn't the man who had been at her
side so much of the last two weeks, lending her the
strength to cope with everything that had happened to her. His
features were the same, but this wasn't Patrick.
It couldn't be!
"Patrick!" she screamed again. "Patrick, for
God's sake, help us! Help me!"
The face looming above her winced as if something had
struck it, and then she saw something different in the
eyes again.
She saw Patrick. . . .
Kara's voice pulled him back again from the brink
of the blissful oblivion of
unconsciousness, Patrick saw the macabre
scene around him in terrible clarity, but this time he shut
out the dark whisperings inside his head and let the
images-and the memories they called up-speak for
themselves.
The memories he'd buried so deep and for so long that
he'd forgotten they were there suddenly leaped up at
him, dancing and weaving in the flickering candlelight in
a dark ballet he wished he could turn away from but
knew he could not.
In his mind, he went back to the last birthday party
he could remember being held in this playhouse.
He'd been six, and his real birthday party-the one his
mother held for him-had ended hours ago. He'd been
in his room when Claire came to tell him she had
a special present for him-a present she and her
best friend had in the playhouse.
He'd followed her eagerly, wondering what the
present was, and when they were in the playhouse, there were
candles burning.
Just like now.
And Claire's friend had been lying on the table.
Just like Lindsay Marshall was lying on the table now.
"We're going to play house," Claire explained
as she locked the door with the key, then put
the key in her pocket. "Only we're going
to play it the way real grown-ups play it."
He hadn't understood at first, but then, when Claire
started taking his clothes off, he began to understand.
Then Claire started touching him, and so did her friend,
and then-
He didn't want to remember any more of it,
didn't want to remember all the things they'd done
to him, the way they'd tied him to the table so he couldn't
fight back, or even move. It wasn't just his
arms and legs they'd tied. No. They'd tied thick
twine in places they shouldn't have touched him, and then
pulled it tight.
So tight he could still feel the agony in his groin.
But they hadn't stopped even then.
They'd put things in him, too-a broom handle and
pop bottles and-
He wanted to shut it out, but he couldn't. As the
terrible memories of what had happened in the
playhouse so many years ago-not only on his
birthday, but so many times afterward-began to unwind in his
mind, Patrick felt his sanity beginning to unwind
as well. And now the voice was whispering in his mind
again, telling him things he didn't want to hear. But
he could no more stop listening to it than he could
stop remembering everything that had happened now that the
memories had returned.
"We liked it,"
the voice whispered.
"Didn't we like it?"
"No!" Patrick howled. "It was wrong! It was
all wrong!"
"But we didn't stop!"
"She made me," Patrick whimpered, cowering
back from the kaleidoscope of images and
memories that were not only all around him, but
exploding in his mind as well. "Claire made
me! She and-was
"We liked it!"
the voice screamed.
"We loved it!"
"It was wrong!" Patrick howled. "Mommy should
have-was
his
"Mommy'didn't care," the
voice snarled.
"Look at her
-
she's sitting right there, but she's not doing anything, is
she? She's just smiling and being happy"."
The voice was right! The woman bound to the chair, who
looked almost exactly like his mother when he'd been a
little boy, was just watching silently, smiling at what
was happening.
But she wasn't smiling, not really! The smile was just
painted onto the tape that covered her mouth.
"Kill her,"
the voice in his head commanded.
"She wouldn't help
you then, so kill her. Kill her now!"
Patrick's fingers tightened on something in his hand, and
he looked down curiously at the poker he was
gripping.
Where had it come from?
"Patrick! Why are you doing this?"
He looked down at the woman on the floor.
What was she doing here? Her face seemed vaguely
familiar, but in the confusion whirling in his mind, he
couldn't quite place her. Was she a friend of his parents?
Or had Claire brought her?
But it didn't matter who she was-if she was a friend
of Claire's, she was going to do the same terrible
things to him that Claire and Susanna did, and even
if she didn't, she would know.
She would know all the terrible things that had
happened.
He raised the poker high.
"Patrick, listen to me!" the woman on the floor
shouted. "It's Kara!"
Kara . . . Kara . . . Kara.
The name echoed through Patrick's mind and seemed
to bounce off the walls of the tiny playhouse.
Suddenly he felt as if he were suffocating. The
ceiling was way too low, and there wasn't enough air, and
there were too many candles, too much fire.
Too much fire, like-
Now a new memory burst out of his subconscious.
Last Christmas, in the house in Vermont, the
house that had burned.
And now, in the flickering glow of the candlelit
playhouse, he could see it all. His
girls-Jenna and Chrissie. In their rooms, lying
in their beds, deep in sleep. He'd stood at their
doors watching them in the moonlight as they slept.
"We had to do it,"
the voice whispered in his head.
"'They were
going to tell on us. They were going to tell their mother
what we were doing to them
- his
"Not us
his
Patrick bellowed as the full memory of what
he'd done to his daughters exploded in his mind.
"You!
It was
you!"
"I am you!"
the voice taunted.
"I've always been you, doing all the things you wanted
to do but were too afraid to do! You're a coward,
Patrick! You've always been a coward!"
And finally all the confusion in his mind cleared away,
and the playhouse seemed to fade around him. He was
back in Vermont, watching as his house and his
family were consumed by flames.
Flames from the fire he himself had set.
Flames that had been smoldering inside him ever
since he was a boy, and Claire had brought him
here, and his nightmare had begun.
His perfect nightmare.
A nightmare so perfect he'd shut it out
completely, even while he'd lived it.
All because of-
"We have to kill them,"
the voice commanded him.
"If we don't, they're going to tell, just like
Jenna and Chrissie were going to tell! We have to,
Patrick! Do it!"
Patrick raised the poker high, its spur hovering
over the head of the woman on the floor.
"Kill her!" the,
voice howled.
And the poker started its downward arc . . .
atrick!" Kara tried to scuttle away, but there was
no place to go-she was already pressed against the wall.
But as the poker
moved toward her, she lunged away, and it slammed
into the playhouse's miniature sideboard instead of
her head. As the sideboard shattered, the candles it
had supported flew across the room, hot wax
spattering everywhere. Patrick raised the poker and
swung again, but again Kara ducked away, lurching
against the table. More candles crashed to the floor, and now
the thick paper covering the windows caught fire, and
as the flames began to spread, Patrick paused in
his flailing, staring mutely at the growing blaze.
Then his eyes shifted to Kara. His lips were working, but
the confusion of words that had been pouring from his lips
stopped.
"I loved them," he whispered, his eyes still on
Kara. "Believe me. I loved them." Then, as the
flames seemed to reach toward him, Patrick
Shields vanished through the trapdoor in the
playhouse floor.
Lindsay screamed in terror, Kara tore at the
tape that bound Ellen to the chair, ripping at it with
her fingernails until finally one foot came
free. Then she went to work on one of her daughter's
wrists, until finally Lindsay was able to jerk her
hand loose, roll onto her side and, with her free
hand, tear away the tape that bound the other hand. Kara
dropped down to the floor to untape the woman's
legs.
"I'll do that," Lindsay yelled, jerking her other
hand free and ripping the tape from her wrist. "Put
out the fire!"
But the fire was now engulfing the tiny chamber.
atrick shambled through the tunnel, the poker still
clutched in his hand, the memories of everything he'd
done threatening to overwhelm him with every step, to push him
over into an insanity from which he knew he would never
recover.
Nor even want to recover.
But not yet . . . not yet.
Not quite yet.
The tunnel seemed to go on forever, but then he came
to the door at the other end, and found himself gazing at
Neville Cavanaugh.
For a moment the two men stared at each other
blankly, then Neville reflexively stepped
back. "Mr. Shields, what are you-was he began.
Then he heard screams echo through the tunnel and saw
the yellowish glow of fire piercing the blackness at
the far end. "Dear God, what have you done!" he
cried as the shouts echoing in the tunnel grew louder.
Seeing the insanity in his employer's eyes, he
took another step back.
"Not me!" Patrick howled. Blindly, he raised
the poker and slashed it down, sinking its iron spur
deep into Neville Cavanaugh's skull. "Not
me," he said again, his voice breaking. "It was never
me."
Stepping over Neville's body, he lurched across
the concrete floor of the basement and staggered up the
stairs, into the library, then out through the open door to the
terrace.
For a moment he stood perfectly still, gazing out over
the broad lawn that swept down to the water. Off to the
left he could barely make out the shape of the
mausoleum, which was almost hidden by the smoke curling out
from the playhouse.
He dropped the bloody poker on the flagstones,
and the last details of the nightmare he'd suppressed
for so long came starkly into focus.
It hadn't been a nightmare at all.
It had all been real, and now he remembered.
He remembered everything.
He looked one last time at the playhouse, where
flames were leaking out around the plywood he'd long
ago nailed over the windows.
Then he turned away.
There was one last thing he had to do.
The tires of the Mercedes-Benz shrieked in protest
as Patrick hurled the big car through the curves of the
winding roads that would take him to his destination. The
only car he met along the way pulled off to the
side long before he tore past it, and he was barely
aware of the driver's blast of a protesting horn. As
he negotiated one turn after another, some small
part of his mind guided him along the route as the rest
of his consciousness tried to cope with the memories that were
still boiling up from his subconscious. His rage and his
horror at all the things that had happened kept
growing, building upon themselves, until not
only his mind, but his whole body, felt as if it
might explode.
By the time he slewed the car into the long driveway that
led to Claire's house, tears were streaming down his
face and his throat hurt from the howls of anguish and
fury that had filled the car during the short drive.
The car lost traction on the gravel drive as he
slammed on the brakes, spun around, and came to a
stop with its rear end
laying waste to more than half of the rose garden that had
been Claire's pride and joy for more than a
decade.
Giving the horn three long blasts, then adding two
more to be certain Claire would wake up if she was
asleep, he got out of the car. Leaving its lights
on, the engine running, and the driver's door open,
he took the steps to the broad porch of the big shingled
cottage in two quick strides and a moment later was
punching at the doorbell, then pounding on the door.
After what seemed an eternity but couldn't have been more
than a few seconds, he stepped back and
bellowed his sister's name. "Wake up, God damn
you!" he shouted into the faint light of a false dawn.
"Get down here and open the door!"
He was about to resume his pounding when the porch
light flashed on. Then the door opened and his sister
appeared, clutching her robe close around her
neck.
"Patrick?" she said, appearing confused.
"Patrick, what's wrong? My God, do you know
what time it is?"
Instead of answering, he shoved through the door, catching
Claire off balance and making no move to catch her
before she tumbled to the floor. He towered over her, his
face scarlet with rage, his eyes glazed, his body
quivering.
"Patrick," Claire gasped, instinctively
trying to pull herself away from him before she got up.
"What are you-was
His right foot lashed out, catching her just below her left
breast. "I killed them!" he roared. "I killed
them myself!"
As the pain from the kick slashed through her, Claire
scrambled away and got to her feet. "What are you
talking about?" she gasped, pressing her hand against her
chest and bending over against the pain.
"Renee!" Patrick howled. "And Jenna, and
Chrissie, and that girl, and-was His voice broke,
he choked on his own sob, but then he went on.
"How many others?" he demanded. "How
many?"
Claire stared at him, trying to fathom what he was
talking about. Then the light from the chandelier caught his
eyes and she saw the insanity that gripped him.
Shifting her gaze away, she scanned the
foyer, searching for something-anything-with which to defend herself.
There was nothing.
"Patrick, calm down," she said, backing away
as he moved toward her. "Tell me what-was
"You
know
what!" he roared. "How could you do it? I was a little
boy! What kind of monster are you? I was only
six! That very day, I turned six, and you and-was His
voice broke and he reached toward her.
Claire's eyes narrowed as it finally became
clear, and she took another backward step.
"Patrick, slow down. All that was years ago
and-was
But Patrick didn't want to slow down. He
wanted to hurt Claire the way she'd hurt him.
He moved closer, close enough to see the fear in her
eyes.
The fear and something else.
Guilt. It was in her eyes, and the knowledge that she
knew exactly why he was here further fueled his
rage.
Claire turned then and ran, darting up the stairs,
her bathrobe streaming behind her.
Patrick bolted after her, stumbling on the
staircase, then regaining his balance and charging up
again.
Claire got to the master bedroom and tried to close
the door, but he was right behind her and shoved his way into the
room. She backed up again; the fear in her eyes
had turned to abject terror.
"It was only a game," she said, searching for something
that might mollify her brother. "We were just playing
a game! We were children-was
"It wasn't a game," he said, his eyes bleak and
his voice harsh. "It was sex, Claire. It was
sex and torture! You tortured a little boy,
Claire. A little boy who was your own brother!"
Once again Claire's eyes darted around the room,
this time searching for a means of escape. But there was no
escape, not without getting past Patrick, and he was
too big, and too strong.
Far bigger and stronger than he'd been back then,
all those years ago, in the playhouse.
And now he was furious, too.
Turn it back,
she told herself.
Make him think it was his fault.
"You wanted to do it," she hissed. "You liked it,
Patrick. You loved it! And you were lucky Father
never found out-if I'd told him you raped me,
he'd have killed you!"
Ignoring her words, he moved closer.
Claire turned, scrambled across the bed, and fumbled
with the nightstand drawer. "Get away from me,
Patrick," she said, trying to keep her terror out
of her voice. "I'm warning you-was
But it was already too late. Lunging at the bed, he
threw himself on top of her, then twisted her around so
she was lying on her back, his legs straddling her, his
weight pinning her to the mattress. She kicked and
struggled as she kept reaching for the drawer in the
nightstand, but it was useless.
As she struggled even harder, Patrick saw the
desperation in her face, and it somewhat eased his pain
to see that now she would feel what all the others had
felt, all the others who had suffered because of what
she'd done to him. He could feel the blood pumping
through her arteries under his hands now, feel her heart
pounding and her chest heaving. His hands moved
to her neck and his fingers closed around her throat.
She was still thrashing beneath him, her face turning red,
her eyes bulging. Then her lungs began to spasm
as she struggled for air, and he could feel her larynx
and esophagus collapsing under the pressure of his
fingers.
No more was he the little boy molested by his big sister
and her laughing friend.
No more was he stripped naked, bound to a table, and
forced to submit his body to his sister's desire.
"No more!" he screamed, releasing the last of the
pent-up fury and outrage that had split him in two
so many years ago.
Claire's face had turned from red to purple, and
her struggles had
lessened, yet still he squeezed. And then, finally,
she stopped strugg
lin
go. Her
arteries no longer throbbed, her chest no longer
heaved.
And still he squeezed.
He squeezed until his hands ached as much as his
heart, until his own lungs began to heave with
sobs.
He squeezed until tears fell from his eyes into the
dead, wide-open orbs of his sister's.
They trickled into her mouth and onto her cheeks and
through her hair.
His tears.
The tears he'd held back, just as he'd held the
memories at bay.
Finally, his tears as spent as his rage, Patrick
rolled off Claire's still body. For a few
minutes he lay on the bed next to his sister, then
wiped away the last of his tears.
It was time to finish it, finally and forever.
Opening the drawer he hadn't let Claire reach,
he took out the small pistol she'd bought after
Phillip Sollinger had left her ten years ago.
He gazed at the gun for almost a full minute.
Oh God, I'm so sorry,
he said silently to himself as he put the gun to his
temple.
As his finger began to squeeze the trigger, one last
memory rose in his mind.
The journal.
The journal written by that other person, the secret
person who had hidden inside him all those long
years while he himself was hiding from the past.
The journal that was locked in the bottom drawer of the
desk in the library.
The journal that, perhaps, would explain it all.
His finger tightening once more, Patrick Shields
pulled the trigger.
Andrew Grant was only vaguely aware of the
brightening dawn outside the window of the small apartment
he'd called home since his wife had thrown him out
five years ago-not because of another woman in his
life or another man in hers, but because of the kind of
behavior he was indulging in right now. Not only was the
small dining room table covered with copies of every
report, note, and photograph that might be even
peripherally relevant to the open house cases, but so
also was the couch, the coffee table, and every other flat
surface. All night, he had been sifting through
them, moving relentlessly from one report to another,
prowling through the mass of interviews, observations, and
speculations like a hungry tiger sniffing for prey it
knows is there but can't quite pin down. But he was close,
though it was his gut telling him he was almost there rather than
his brain.
An invisible person.
That was what it boiled down to. Someone who could
blend into
even a small crowd so perfectly that even people who
remembered he was there couldn't quite recall what he
looked like. That let out all the real-estate agents
he'd talked to, and all the clients they'd brought
with them. And all the couples who had gone through the
houses, too. And all the singles who'd signed
in-whoever he was looking for wouldn't have signed the
agents" books at all. But at all three of the
open houses he was now investigating, at least one
person-and at the Marshalls', three people-had
remembered someone being in the house at the same time
they were, though they couldn't recall anything about him.
"One of those guys you just don't notice, you know?"
someone had said. "Like a waiter when you're at a
restaurant. You know he's there, but you don't even
look at him."
A waiter . . .
What the hell did
that
mean?
His gut told him it meant
something,
but
what?
As he reached for the mug of cold coffee
he'd left on the windowsill, the police scanner
in the kitchen, which had been droning intermittently
all night with reports of domestic violence and
drunken driving, suddenly came to life with a
report of a fire. But it wasn't the fire itself that
caught Grant's attention-it was the location: 35
Flinders Beach Road.
The coffee mug instantly forgotten, Grant went
to the dining room table and picked up one of the
twenty-odd reports he himself had made on this
case over the last two weeks, this one in reference
to the reward that had been offered for information about
Lindsay Marshall. He stared at the name and
address of the donor: Patrick Shields, 35
Flinders Beach Road.
Now Grant's mind was racing. This wasn't the first
fire Patrick Shields had been involved in.
Just last Christmas the man's skiing cabin in
Vermont had burned, killing his wife and both his
daughters.
That fire had been deemed accidental, but now, as the
address of tonight's fire was repeated on the scanner.
Grant's skin crawled. One fire might be
accidental. But not two.
He picked up his jacket from the chair by the
door, and in less than a minute was driving out of the
building's garage, his mind racing.
Two girls and a woman had died in the fire in
Vermont, and now two girls and a woman were
missing.
And Patrick Shields's house was once more
burning.
But Patrick Shields? It made no sense-almost
everything about Shields was memorable: he was
good-looking, and always expensively dressed in the
kind of clothes whose quality even he could spot
instantly. And not just spot, either-actually notice,
and wish he could afford.
But it wasn't just that. At least until his wife and
children died, Shields had always possessed the kind of
self-confidence that only old money brings, which again
always commanded attention.
Nothing like a waiter at all. The notion of
Patrick Shields serving anyone-
Suddenly, the last piece of the puzzle clicked
into place for Grant.
Serving . . .
servant.
The word exploded in his mind like a bomb, and he
switched on the siren and the flashing light of the
bubble gum machine on top of the car and hit the
accelerator.
Neville Cavanaugh.
A man who had spent most of his life being
invisible!
Ten minutes later, Grant swerved into the
driveway of Patrick Shields's estate and
skidded to a stop amidst two Camden Green
police cruisers, an ambulance, and two fire
trucks. But the house, looming high against the dawning
sky, showed no signs of fire.
Getting out of the car and following the hoses the two
fire crews were pulling around the end of the house,
Grant stopped short when he saw the source of the
flames. It wasn't the house burning, but a far
smaller structure, no larger than a child's
playhouse. And even at a glance, he was certain that
neither the structure nor anyone who might be inside
was going to survive. Already, smoke and flames were
pouring up through a gaping hole in the roof, and as the
fire
men turned on their hoses, the entire roof
collapsed. He saw the firefighters flinch as a
storm of sparks and flames shot toward the sky, the
fire feasting on the oxygen that flooded through
the structure's fatal wound.
As they began to douse the blaze, Grant looked
around for Patrick Shields, but saw neither the
estate's owner nor Neville Cavanaugh. Was it
possible that somehow
both
of them were inside the disintegrating playhouse?
Grant broke into a run as he started up the lawn
toward the house. He'd come to the steps to the terrace
that ran along the rear of the house when a set of
French doors burst open and Kara Marshall
stumbled out, pulling someone behind her. A moment later
a third figure appeared, followed by a stream of
smoke. All of them were choking and coughing.
Grant yelled back over his shoulder for blankets
as he raced up the steps, and as the walls of the
playhouse tumbled into the inferno that the fire hoses
were just beginning to defeat, policemen and EMT'S
began swarming toward the house.
Lindsay Marshall collapsed into Grant's arms
just as he reached her, and he gently lowered her onto
the terrace. While a policeman covered her with a
blanket and an EMT began checking her for
injuries, Grant recognized Ellen Fine,
shivering in the morning light, wrapped in a
blanket as another of the EMT'S tended to her.
He turned to Kara Marshall then, who was crouched
close to her daughter, clutching Lindsay's hand and
gently soothing the girl's forehead. "It's all
right," Grant heard her whispering. "You're safe.
It's all right."
ara clung to Lindsay's hand even as the attendants
gently eased the girl onto a stretcher and carried
her to the ambulance. There, they wrapped her up in
yet another blanket and strapped her to the gurney.
Another crew was doing the same thing with Ellen
Fine. Kara stayed with her daughter, her fingers
constantly caressing
Lindsay's hair, her face, her thickly
blanketed shoulder. "It's okay," she kept
saying, as much to herself as to her daughter. "It's
over."
"I just want to go home," Lindsay whispered.
"Soon, sweetheart." Kara smoothed a strand of
hair back from Lindsay's forehead. "Very soon."
As the attendants began to slide the gurney into the
ambulance, she felt a hand on her shoulder and
turned to see Andrew Grant standing behind her. As their
eyes met, he took a clean handkerchief from his
pocket and offered it to her. Kara took it,
wiped the soot and sweat from her brow, then blew her
nose. She crumpled the handkerchief and was about to get
into the ambulance with Lindsay when Grant spoke
to her.
"It was Cavanaugh, wasn't it?" he asked.
Kara paused, then turned to face him, shaking her
head.
Grant frowned, looking puzzled. "Shields?"
For a long moment Kara said nothing, her mind filled
not only with the confusion of getting Lindsay and Ellen
out of the playhouse and into the tunnel before the roof fell
in on them, but on the madness that had culminated in the
fire. Finally, she nodded. "He-He killed
Neville Cavanaugh, too, I think. And
another girl-her name was Shannon."
"Shannon Butler," Grant breathed, but Kara
barely heard him.
"I know it was Patrick," she went on. "But it was
someone else, too. Someone not at all like
Patrick Shields." She fell silent for a
moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was
hollow: "I don't know what happened. Isn't that
strange? I was there, and I really don't know what
happened, and I don't think I'll ever know. All
I do know is that whatever it was, it's
over."
One of the EMT'S shut the door, then Kara
scrambled in the other door, and a moment later the
ambulance pulled away. As Grant stood
watching, another ambulance pulled to a stop, to take
Ellen Fine to the hospital, and then all that was
left was the smoldering wreckage of the playhouse.
Feeling more tired than he'd ever felt before,
Grant turned away,
Kara Marshall's words still fresh in his mind. Later
today he'd go through the house, searching for the answer to the
question she hadn't quite asked, the answer that Kara herself
obviously thought he'd never find: what exactly
had happened?
Maybe she was right-maybe he never would find out.
Then, as he was starting toward the car, his cell phone
came alive and he listened as an impersonal
voice told him what had just been found at
Claire Sollinger's house, not far away. Sighing
deeply, he started the engine. Kara Marshall, it
turned out, had been absolutely right about one thing.
All of it, now, was truly over.
About the Author
Perfect Nightmare is John
Saul's thirty-second novel. His first
novel,
Suffer the Children,
published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy
seller. His other bestselling suspense novels
include
Black Creek Crossing, Midnight Voices,
The Manhattan Hunt Club, Nightshade, The
Right Hand of Evil, The Presence, Black
Lightning, Guardian,
and
The Homing.
He is also the author of the
New York Times
bestselling serial thriller
The Blackstone Chronicles,
initially published in six installments but now
available in one complete volume. Saul
divides his time between Seattle, Washington, and
Hawaii. Join John Saul's fan club at
www.johnsaul.com.
About the Type
This book was set in Garamond, a typeface
originally designed by the Parisian typecutter
Claude Garamond (1480-1561). This version of
Garamond was modeled on a 1592
specimen sheet from the Egenolff-Bemer foundry, which
was produced from types assumed to have been brought
to Frankfurt by the punchcutter Jacques
Sabon.
Claude Garamond's distinguished romans and
italics first appeared in
Opera Ciceronis
in 1543-44. The Garamond types are clear,
open, and elegant.
U.s.a. $25.95
Canada $35.95
If you open your house to strangers, who knows who
might come in. And what they might be after. Or
whom.
Now, ponder the unthinkable and surrender to your darkest
dread, as sinister storyteller extraordinaire
John Saul weaves a heart-stopping tale of
lurking terror and twisted intent.
Every parent's nightmare becomes reality for Kara
Marshall when her daughter, Lindsay, vanishes from
her bedroom during the night. The police suspect
that the girl is just another moody teenage
runaway, angry over leaving behind her school and
friends because her family is moving. But Lindsay's
recent eerie claim-that someone invaded her
room when the house was opened to prospective
buyers-drives Kara to fear the worst: a nameless,
faceless stalker has walked the halls of her home
in search of more than a place to live.
Patrick Shields recognizes Kara's pain-and
carries plenty of his own since he lost his wife and
two children in a devastating house fire. But more than
grief draws Patrick and Kara together. He,
too, senses the hand of a malevolent stranger in this
tragedy. And as more people go missing from houses up for
sale, Patrick's suspicion, like Kara's,
blooms into horrified certainty.
Someone is trolling this peaceful community-
undetected and undeterred-harvesting victims for a
purpose no sane mind can fathom. Someone Kara
and Patrick, alone and desperate, are determined
to unmask. Someone who is even now watching,
plotting, keeping a demented diary of unspeakable
deeds . . . and waiting until the time is ripe for
another fateful visit.