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Reflecting the door behind her, the ed the killer not just leaning around the ja boldly into the open doorway He paused arrogantly to stare at her, evidently relishing the e in the glass, she would have had no awareness whatsoever of his presence

She pulled open the drawer, felt the gun under her hand

Behind her, he crossed the threshold

She drew the pistol out of the drawer and swung around on her stool in oneit in both hands, pointing it at him She would not have been entirely surprised if he had not been there, and if her first impression of him only as an apparition in the pane had turned out to be correct But he was there, all right, one step inside the door when she dren on hi

She said, "Don’t ht he saeakness in her or whether he just didn’t give a damn if she shot him or not, he backed out of the doorway and into the hall even as she swung toward hione Lindsey would have shot him without hesitation, without moral coing for safety, that all she would have gotten was a piece of the doorjah stool and leaping for the door even as the last of the killer--a black shoe, his left foot--vanished out of the door fraht not have gone anywhere,her to co and over and out and down onto the foyer floor Regina She couldn’t delay He ina A hesitation of only a second, then she crashed through her fear and through the open door, all this tiht as she caina’s door, also open, at the far end The rooina studying She didn’t have tier Wanted to pump out bullets in the hope that one of theina’s rooirl could be anywhere Lindsey was afraid that she would h the open doorway So she held her fire and went after the guy, screaina’s nairl’s room and threw the door shut behind him, a hell of a slam that shook the house Lindsey hit that barrier a second later, bounced off it Locked She heard Hatch shouting her name--thank God, he was alive, he was alive--but she didn’t stop or turn around to see where he was She stepped back and kicked the door hard, then kicked it again It was only a privacy latch, flioing to kick it again, but the killer spoke to her through the door His voice was raised but not a shout,but cool, no panic in it, no fear, just businesslike and a little loud, terrifyingly smooth and calm: "Get away from the door, or I’ll kill the little bitch"

Just before Lindsey began to shout his nahts off, holding Arts American in both hands A vision hit hi an arc, as if the ripped in his bare hands

He saw Lindsey froh stool in her office, at the drawing board, working on a sketch Then she was not Lindsey any more Suddenly she was another woman, taller, also seen from behind but not on the stool, in an are house She was knitting A bright skein of yarn slowly unraveled fro bowl on the sht of her as " whatsoever like his ht hand, in which he held a knife, immense, already ith blood He approached her chair She was unaware of him As Hatch, he wanted to cry out and warn her But as the user of the knife, through whose eyes he was seeing everything, he wanted only to savage her, tear the life out of her, and thereby complete the task that would free him He stepped to the back of her arh He struck She screaet out of the chair He moved around her, and fro shot in a lide of a bird or bat He pushed her back into the chair, struck She raised her hands to protect herself He struck He struck And now, as if it was all a loop of fil in the doorway, except she wasn’t " at the drawing board in her upstairs studio, reaching to the top drawer of her supply cabinet and pulling it open His gaze rose from her to theHe saw hilasses--and knew she had seen hi up, the ht at his chest--

"Hatch!"

His nah the house, shattered the link He shot up froazine fell out of his hands

"Hatch!"

Reaching out in the darkness, he unerringly found the handgrip of the Browning, and raced out of the den As he crossed the foyer and cli to see as happening, he heard Lindsey stop shouting his nairl, Jesus, please, not the girl Reaching the top of the stairs, he thought for an instant that the sla door was a shot But the sound was too distinct to be unfire, and as he looked back the hall he saw Lindsey bounce off the door to Regina’s room with another crash As he ran to join her, she kicked the door, kicked again, and then she stumbled back fro past her

"No! He said back off or he’ll kill her"

For a couple of seconds, Hatch stared at the door, literally shaking with frustration Then he took hold of the knob, tried to turn it slowly But it was locked, so he put the ainst the base of the knob plate

"Hatch," Lindsey said plaintively, "he’ll kill her"

He thought of the young blonde taking two bullets in the chest, flying backward out of the car onto the freeway, tu And thetheand struggled desperately for her life

He said, "He’ll kill her anyway, turn your face away," and he pulled the trigger

Wood and thin rabbed the brass knob, it came off in his hand, and he threw it aside When he shoved on the door, it creaked inward an inch but no farther The cheap lock had disintegrated But the shank on which the knob had been seated was still bristling froed under the other knob on the inside He pushed on the shank with the palh force to ainst the other side-- upward pressure, thereby holding the shank in place

Hatch gripped the Browning by its barrel and used the butt as a ha it inch by inch back through the door

Just as the shank flew free and clattered to the floor inside, a vivid series of i away the upstairs hall They were all fro up at the side of a house, this house, the wall outside Regina’s bedroole of trumpet-vine runners A hornlike flower in his face Latticework under his hands, splinters digging into his skin Clutching with one hand, searching with the other for a new place to grip, one foot dangling in space, a weight bearing down hard over his shoulder Then a creaking, a splitting sound A sudden sense of perilous looseness in the geo--

Hatch was snapped back to reality by a brief, loud noise fro wood, nails popping loose with tortured screeches, scraping, a crash

Then a neave of psychic i Backward and out into the night Not far, hitting the ground, a brief flash of pain Rolling once on the grass Beside hi the face Regina Eyes closed A scarf tied across her ina!" Lindsey cried