realized that she was seeing a reflection like her own and that the
killer in Hatch’s dreams was in their house, leaning around the doorway
to look at her. She repressed an impulse to scream. As soon as he
realized she had seen him, she would lose what little advantage she had,
and he would be all over her, slashing at her, pounding on her,
finishing her off before Hatch even got upstairs. Instead, she sighed
loudly and shook her head as if displeased with what she was getting
down on the drawing paper.
Hatch might already be dead.
She slowly put down her charcoal pencil, letting her fingers rest on it
as if she might decide to pick it up again and go on.
If Hatch wasn’t dead, how else could this bastard have gotten to the
second floor? No. She couldn’t think about Hatch being dead, or she
would be dead herself, and thin Regina. Dear God, Regina.
She reached toward the top drawer of the supply cabinet at her side, and
a shiver went through her as she touched the cold chrome handle.
Reflecting the door behind her, the window showed the killer not just
leaning around the jamb but stepping boldly into the open doorway.
He paused arrogantly to stare at her, evidently relishing the moment.
He was unnaturally quiet. If she had not seen his image 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
one motion, bringing the heavy weapon up, clasping it 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 windowpanee had turned out to be correct. But he was
there, all right, one step inside the door when she drew down on him
with the Browning.
She said, “Don’t move, you son of a bitch.”
Whether he thought he saw weakness in her or whether he just didn’t give
a damn if she shot him or not, he backed out of the doorway an-into the
hall even as she swung toward him and told him not to move.
“Stop, damn it!”
He was gone. Lindsey would have shot him without hesitation, without
moral compunction, but he moved so incredibly fast, like a cat springing
for safety, that all she would have gotten was a piece of the doorjamb.
Shouting for Hatch, she was off the high stool and leaping for the door
even as the last of the killers black shoe, his left foot-vanished out
of the door frame. But she brought herself up short, thinking he might
not have gone anywhere, might be waiting just to the side of the door,
expecting her to come through in a panic, then stepping behind her and
pound her across the back of the head or push her into the stair railing
and over and out and down onto the foyer floor. Regina. She couldn’t
delay. He might be going after Regina. A hesitation of only a second,
then she crashed through her fear and through the open door, all- this
time shouting Hatch’s Looking to her right as she came into the hall,
she saw the guy going for Regina’s door, also open, at the far end. The
room was dark beyond when there ought to have been lights, Regina
studying. She didn’t have time to stop and aim. Almost squeezed the
trigger. Wanted to pump out bullets in the hope that one of them would
nail the bastard. But Regina’s room was so dark, and the girl could be
anywhere. Lindsey was afraid that she would miss the killer and blow
away the girl, bullets flying through the open doorway.
So she held her fire and went after the guy, screaming Regina’s name now
instead of Hatch’s.
He disappeared into the girls room and threw the door shut behind him, a
bell of a slam that shook the house. Lindsey hit that barrier a second