foyer. The uncanny feeling was still with him but not as strong as
before. The foyer was deserted. He glanced at the stairs, but no one
was on them.
He looked in the living room. No one. He could see a corner of the
dining-room table through the archway at the end of the living room.
Although he could hear Lindsey and Regina still discussing 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 jumpy already, what in the name of God was he
going to be like in another day or week? Lindsey would have to pry him
off the ceding just to give him his morning coffee each day.
Nevertheless, reversing the route he had just taken through the house,
he stopped in the family room to try the sliding glass 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 more, he tried the door to the garage. It was and
unlocked, again he felt as if spiders were crawling on his scalp.
He eased the door open. The garage was dark. He fumbled for the
switch, clicked the lights on. Banks of big fluorescent tubes dropped a
flood of harsh light straight down the width and breadth of the room,
virtually eliminating shadows, revealing nothing out of the ordinary.
Stepping over the threshold, he let the door ease shut behind him.
He cautiously walked- the length of the room with the large roll-up
sectional doors on his right, the backs of the two cars on his left.
The middle stall was empty.
His rubber-soled Rockports made no sound. He expected to surprise
someone crouched along the far side of one of the cars, but no one was
sheltering behind either of them. At the end of the garage, when he was
past the Chevy, he abruptly dropped to the floor and looked under the
car. He could see all the way 11 across the room, beneath the
Mitsubishi, as well. No one was hiding 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 thumb-turn dead-bolt lock, which was engaged. No
one could get 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 the window latch he had repaired earlier in the day. It was
secure, the bolt seated snugly in the vertically mounted hasp.
Again, he felt foolish. Like a grown man engaged in a boy’s game,
fancying himself a movie hero.
How fast would he have reacted if someone had been hiding in one of
those tall cabinets and had flung himself outward when the door opened?
Or what if he had dropped to the floor to look under the Chevy, and
right there had been the man in black, face-to-face with him, inches
away?
He was glad he hadn’t been required to learn the answer to either of
those unnerving questions. But at least, having asked them, he no
longer felt foolish, because indeed the man in black might have been
there.
Sooner or later the bastard would be there. Hatch was no less 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 small warning voice within him.
As he was passing the front of the Mitsubishi, he saw what a- to be a
dent on the hood. He stopped, sure that it must be a trick of light,