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As he drove, he thought about Katherine The bitch! What was she doing in St Helena? Had she moved back into the house on the cliff? If she had done that, had she also taken over control of the winery again? And would she try to force him to move in with her? Would he have to live with her and obey her as before? All of those questions were of vital ih most of them didn’t make any sense whatsoever and could not be sensibly answered

He are that his ardless of how hard he tried, and that inability frightened him

He wondered if he should pull over at the next rest area and get soain

But then he remembered that Hilary-Katherine was already in St Helena, and the possibility that she was setting a trap for hi than his tehts

He wondered, briefly, whether the house was actually his any longer After all, he was dead (Or half dead) And they had buried hiht they had) Eventually, the estate would be liquidated

As Bruno considered the extent of his losses, he got very angry with Katherine for taking soso little She had killed hi him alone, without himself to touch and talk to, and now she had even moved into his house

He pushed his foot down hard on the accelerator until the speedoistered ninety , Bruno intended to kill hi to stop Bruno fro to St Helena before sunrise

Seven

AFRAID THAT HE would be seen by ht crew at the winery, men who knew him to be dead, Bruno Frye did not drive the van onto the property Instead, he parked almost a h the vineyards, to the house that he had built five years ago

Shining indirectly through ragged tears in the cloud cover, the cold white ht for hi hills were silent The air suely of copper sulphate which had been sprayed during the su that was the fresh, ozone odor of the rain that had stirred up the copper sulphate There was no rain falling now There couldn’t have been much of a storm earlier, just sprinkles, squalls The land was only soft and dahter than it had been half an hour ago Dawn had not yet arrived fro soon

When he reached the clearing, Bruno hunkered down beside a line of shrubbery and studied the shadows around the house The ere dark and blank Nothing moved There was not a sound except the soft, whispery whistle of the wind

Bruno crouched by the shrubs for a fewfor hi, he forced himself to forsake the cover and relative safety of the shrubbery; he got up and walked to the front door

His left hand held a flashlight that wasn’t switched on, and his right hand held a knife He was prepared to lunge and thrust at the slightest movement, but there was no movement other than his own

At the doorstep, he put the flashlight down, fished a key out of his jacket pocket, unlocked the door He picked up the flash, pushed the door open with one foot, snapped on the light that he carried, and went into the house fast and low, the knife held straight out in front of hi in the foyer

Bruno went slowly froloomy, overfurnished rooe display cases

She wasn’t in the house

Perhaps he had gotten back in ti

He stood in the ht still in his hands, both of them directed at the floor He swayed, exhausted, dizzy, confused

It was one of those times when he desperately needed to talk to his with hiet his ain be able to consult with hian to shake He wept

He was alone and frightened and very mixed-up

For forty years, he had posed as an ordinary man, and he had passed for normal with considerable success But he could not do that any reat for him to recover He had no self-confidence Without hiive advice and offer suggestions, he did not have the resources to maintain the charade

But the bitch was in St Helena Soet a grip on hi: He had to find her and kill her He had to get rid of her once and for all

The so off at seven o’clock Thursday et up He ith a start, began to sit up in bed, realized where he was, and eased back down to the pillow He lay on his back, in the dark, staring at the shadowy ceiling, listening to Hilary’s rhythhtrisly drearaves and coffins, a dream that was somber and heavy and dark with death Knives Bullets Blood Wor eyes of corpses Walking dead men who spoke of crocodiles In the dream, Tony’s life had been threatened half a dozen times, but on each occasion, Hilary had stepped between him and the killer, and every ti drea her He loved her He loved her more than he could ever tell her He was an articulate man, and he was not the least bit reluctant to express his emotions, but he simply did not have the words to properly describe the depth and quality of his feeling for her He didn’t think such words existed; all of the ones he kneere crude, leaden, hopelessly inadequate If she were taken froo on, of course--but not easily, not happily, not without a great deal of pain and grief

He stared at the dark ceiling and told hi to worry about It had not been an omen It had not been a prophecy It was only a drea more than a drea blasts It was a cold, lonely, mournful sound that made him pull the covers up to his chin