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When reality clicked into place once again, Hatch was already slaainst the bedroom door The brace on the other side fell away The door shuddered open He went inside, slapping the ith one hand until he found the light switch In the sudden glare, he stepped over the fallen desk chair and swung the Browning right, then left The room was deserted, which he already knew from his vision
At the openhe looked out at the collapsed trellis and tangled vines on the lawn below There was no sign of the ina
"Shit!" Hatch hurried back across the rooh the door, into the hall, toward the head of the stairs "You take the front, I’ll take the back, he’s got her, stop hio" She didn’t resist, picked up at once on what he was saying, and flen the steps with his, can’t worry about hitting Regina, he’s getting away!"
In the foyer Lindsey reached the front door even as Hatch was co toward the short hallway
He dashed into the fa out the back s of the house as he ran past thehted, but he didn’t see anyone out there
He tore open the door between the kitchen and the garage, stepped through, switched on the lights He raced across the three stalls, behind the cars, to the exterior door at the far end even before the last of the fluorescent tubes had stopped flickering and coed the dead-bolt lock, stepped out into the narrow side yard, and glanced to his right No killer No Regina The front of the house lay in that direction, the street,theirs from the other side That was part of the territory Lindsey already was covering
His heart knocked so hard, it seeet it all the way in
She’s only ten, only ten
He turned left and ran along the side of the house, around the corner of the garage, into the backyard, where the fallen trellis and tru God, please
Afraid of stepping on a nail and disabling hi the peri recklessly into the shrubbery, probing behind the tall eugenias
No one was in the backyard
He reached the side of the property farthest froe, almost slipped and fell as he skidded around the corner, but kept his balance He thrust the Browning out in front of hi the ay between the house and the fence No one there, either
He’d heard nothing frounfire, whichno better luck than he was If the killer had not gone that way, the only other thing he could have done was scale the fence on one side or another, escaping into so away froh fence that encircled the backyard, separating it fro yards of the houses to the east, west, and south Developers and Realtors called it a fence in southern California, although it was actually a wall, concrete blocks reinforced with steel and covered with stucco, capped with bricks, painted to uarantors of privacy at swihbors, hbors--and le barrier and vanish from one part of the maze into another
Hatch was on an emotional alk across a chasm of despair, his balance sustained only by the hope that the killer couldn’t ina in his arms or over his shoulder He looked east, west, south, frozen by indecision
Finally he started toward the back wall, which was on their southern flank He halted, gasping and bending forward, when the lasses was re-established
Again Hatch saw through the other ht seeht He was in a car, behind the steering wheel, leaning across the console to adjust the unconscious girl in the passenger seat as if she were a ether in her lap, and she was held in place by the safety harness After arranging her auburn hair to cover the scarf that crossed the back of her head, he pushed her against the door, so she slumped with her face turned away fro cars would not be able to see the gag in herIndeed she was so pale and still, he suddenly wondered if she was dead No point in taking her to his hideaway if she was already dead Might as well open the door and push her out, duainst her cheek Her skin onderfully sertips to her throat, he detected her heartbeat in a carotid artery, thuly She was so alive, even more vital than she had see around her head He had never before rateful to all the powers of Hell for giving her to hi deep within and clasping that strong young heart as it twitched and thudded into final stillness, all the while staring into her beautiful gray eyes to watch life pass out of her and death enter--
Hatch’s cry of rage, anguish, and terror broke the psychic connection He was in his backyard again, holding his right hand up in front of his face, staring at it in horror, as if Regina’s blood already stained his treers
He turned away fro the east side of the house, toward the front
But for his own hard breathing, all was quiet Evidently sohbors weren’t hoh to bring them outside
The serenity of the community made him want to screa apart, however, he realized the appearance of normality was exactly that--ht be happening behind the walls of some of those houses, horrors equal to the one that had overcoina, perpetrated not by an intruder but by one member of a family upon another The hu monsters, and the beasts the masks of sanity