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Hatch found it difficult to believe that just three days ago the problenificant enough to delay a trial adoption But Honell and Cooper had not been dead then, and supernatural forces seemed only the material of popcorn h dinner he heard a noise in the kitchen A click and scrape Lindsey and Regina were engaged in an intense conversation about whether Nancy Drew, girl detective of countless books, was a "dorkette," which was Regina’s view, or whether she was a sirl for her times but just old-fashioned when you looked at her frorossed in their debate to hear the noise in the kitchen--or there had been no noise, and he had i up froh the swinging door into the large kitchen and looked around suspiciously The only movement in the deserted roo frohetti sauce that stood on a cera thumped softly in the L-shaped family room, which opened off the kitchen He could see part of that room from where he stood but not all of it He stepped silently across the kitchen and through the archway, taking the Browning 9erator as he went

The family rooined that second noise He stood for aaround in bafflement

His skin prickled, and he whirled toward the short hallway that led fro He was alone So why did he feel as if soainst the back of his neck?

He moved cautiously into the hallway until he came to the coat closet The door was closed Directly across the hall was the powder room That door was also shut He felt draard the foyer, and his inclination was to trust his hunch and move on, but he didn’t want to put either of those closed doors at his back

When he jerked open the closet door, he saw at once that no one was in there He felt stupid with the gun thrust out in front of hiers, playing aBetter hope it wasn’t the final reel Soood guy in the end

He checked the powder room, found it also e was still with hilanced at the stairs, but no one was on the roo-roo roo Nancy Drew, he couldn’t see them

He checked the den, which was also off the entrance foyer And the closet in the den And the kneehole space under the desk

Back in the foyer, he tried the front door It was locked, as it should have been

No good If he was this ju to be like in another day or week? Lindsey would have to pry hi coffee each day

Nevertheless, reversing the route he had just taken through the house, he stopped in the falass doors that served the patio and backyard They were locked, with the burglar-foiling bar inserted properly in the floor track

In the kitchen once ain he felt as if spiders were crawling on his scalp

He eased the door open The garage was dark He fu fluorescent tubes dropped a flood of harsh light straight down the width and breadth of the roo out of the ordinary

Stepping over the threshold, he let the door ease shut behind hie roll-up sectional doors on his right, the backs of the two cars on his left The middle stall was empty

His rubber-soled Rockportsthe far side of one of the cars, but no one was sheltering behind either of thee, when he was past the Chevy, he abruptly dropped to the floor and looked under the car He could see all the way across the roo under either vehicle As best as he could tell, considering that the tires provided blind spots, no one appeared to be circling the cars to keep out of his sight

He got up and turned to a regular door in the end wall It served the side yard and had a thuet in that way

Returning to the kitchen door, he stayed to the back of the garage He tried only the two storage cabinets that had tall doors and were large enough to provide a hiding place for a grown man Neither was occupied

He checked thelatch he had repaired earlier in the day It was secure, the bolt seated snugly in the vertically ed in a boy’s ga himself a movie hero

How fast would he have reacted if so in one of those tall cabinets and had flung himself outhen the door opened? Or what if he had dropped to the floor to look under the Chevy, and right there had been the lad he hadn’t been required to learn the answer to either of those unnerving questions But at least, having asked theer felt foolish, because indeed the ht have been there

Sooner or later the bastard would be there Hatch was no less certain than ever about the inevitability of a confrontation Call it a hunch, call it a premonition, call it Christmas turkey if you liked, but he knew that he could trust the s the front of the Mitsubishi, he sahat appeared to be a dent on the hood He stopped, sure that it ht, the shadow of the pull-cord that hung fro trap It was directly over the hood He swatted the dangling cord, but the mark on the car didn’t leap and dance as it would have done if it had been just the cord shadow

Leaning over the grille, he touched the s as his hand He sighed heavily The car was still new, and already it needed a session in the body shop Take a brand new car to the mall, and an hour after it’s out of the showroom, some damn fool would park beside it and slam open his door into yours It never failed

He hadn’t noticed the dent either when he had coun shop or when he’d brought Regina back from school Maybe it wasn’t as visible fro wheel; ht angle It sure see to figure how it could have happened--so on the car--when he saw the footprint It was in a gossae dust on the red paint, the sole and part of the heel of a walking shoe probably notSomeone had stood on or walked across the hood of the Mitsubishi

It must have happened outside St Thoht do, showing off to friends Having allowed too much time for bad traffic, Hatch had arrived at St Tom’s twenty minutes before classes let out Rather than wait in the car, he’d gone for a walk to work off soy Probably, soh school--the footprint was too big to belong to a smaller kid--sneaked out a little ahead of the final bell, and were showing off for each other as they raced away fro over obstacles instead of going around them, as if they’d escaped from a prison with the bloodhounds close on their--

"Hatch?"

Startled out of his train of thought just when it see somewhere, he spun around toward the voice as if it did not sound familiar to him, which of course it did

Lindsey stood in the doorway between the garage and kitchen She looked at the gun in his hand, "

"And?"