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If it’s just a drearound be soft?

It’s soft but it’s cold

It’s a winter woods, is it?

Uh-huh Lots of snow

So dreaht was in the winter The first snow of the season had fallen the previous week, and just that afternoon, the sky had salted two fresh cold inches across the coast

I like the snow, said Nickie

Then maybe you should wear boots to bed

Maybe I should

And thick woolen socks and long johns

Mo led but then sobered I don’t like the dreaotten a pair of slippers from the closet and had put them under Nickie’s pillow

There Now if you dreaain, just reach under your pillow and put thehter in for the night She had smoothed Nickie’s hair back from her face, kissed her brow, kissed her left cheek and then her right, so her head wouldn’t be unbalanced by the weight of a kiss

Then Aone to bed in her own rooer seat of the Expedition, Brian said with awful tenderness, "Maybe I should drive"

Having crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, they were heading north on Highway 101

The clotted e had boiled off into a thin milk as they had come somewhat inland

"No," she said "It’s better if I drive, soht, wind had awakened her, not with its ownfrom the collection of wind chimes on the balcony off the, expecting to see the fairy dance of falling snow against the glass, but there was only the darkness and no snow

Although the chile disturbed her In her years here, this was the first wind that was not a good musician

As she came fully awake, instinct told her that not the chimes but some other sound had awakened her and stropped her nerves She sat up in bed, threw aside the covers

A separate house was occupied by the couple-Jaed the property and made sure that their eoodof the main house were private rooht a peri of aor the forcing of a door would trigger a siren, and Ja

Nevertheless, A beside her bed

Head lifted, she listened intently, wishing that the ould declare an intermission and let the chimes fall silent

Her bedside lamp featured a diht into the roo that, at the time, had seemed impulsive, excessive, even foolish Because several stories of grisly ht a pistol and had taken three lessons in its use

No Not because of murder in the news

That was a self-deception that allowed her to go on believing her life had th of bad track, that it had not derailed

If her fear had been of hoers, she would have told someone, at least James Avery, that she had purchased the pistol and had taken lessons She would have left the weapon in her night-stand, where it would be easy to reach-and where the maid would have seen it She would not have hidden it in an unused purse, in the back of a bureau drawer that held a collection of purses

Feeling as though sheworld but in a dreaht to avoid the furniture, she went to the bureau and withdrew the purse that served as holster

As Amy turned froasping she turned in tilooht Michael

Supposedly in Argentina on business, he was not due back for another six days

He did not speak a word, nor did she, for the circumstances and his eyes and his lurid sneer were phrases in an infinite sentence on the subject of motive and violence

Fast he was, and brutal He hit her, and she rocked backward, the knobs of bureau drawers gouging her back But she held on to the purse

He clubbed her with one fist, striking at her face but hitting the side of her head, and she fell to her knees But she held on to the purse

Grabbing a fistful of her hair, Michael hauled her to her feet, and she was conscious of no pain, so totally was she in the thrall of terror

She saw the knife then, how big it was

He was not ready to use the blade, but twisted her hair to turn her, and she turned like a helpless doll

When Michael shoved her hard, she stuainst a dresser But she held on to the purse

She tore at the zipper of the purse, reached within, rolled onto her back, and worked the double action as she had been instructed

The shot shattered so Michael, but in shock he shrank froh the doorway between the bedroom and hall, he cried out in pain when the third shot nailed hio down, and then he vanished

In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, killing is not murder, hesitation is not moral, and cowardice is the only sin

She went after him, certain that he was not mortally wounded, deterht spilled from Nickie’s room