Shadowfires. By: Dean R. Koontz

peaceful silence of the Leben estate, as a warm wind scented with star

jasmine blew across the sea-facing hills and through the long veranda,

Ben could almost believe that he had, in fact, been transported back in

time to a more genteel, less hectic age. Only the architecture spoiled

the halcyon illusion.

And Rachael’s pistol.

That spoiled things, too.

She was an extraordinarily easygoing woman, quick to laugh and slow to

anger, too self-confident to be easily frightened. Only a very real and

very serious threat could compel her to arm herself.

Before getting out of the car, she had withdrawn the gun from her purse

and had clicked off the safeties. She warned Ben to be alert and

cautious, though she refused to say exactly what it was that he should

be alert to and cautious of. Her dread was almost palpable, yet she

declined to share her worry and thus relieve her mind, she jealously

guarded her secret as she had done all evening.

He suppressed his impatience with her-not because he had the forbearance

of a saint but simply because he had no choice but to let her proceed

with her revelations at her own pace.

At the door of the house, she fumbled with her keys, trying to find the

lock and keyhole in the gloom. When she had walked out a year ago,

she’d kept her house key because she’d thought she would need to return

later to collect some of her belongings, a task that had become

unnecessary when Eric had everything packed and sent to her along with,

she said, an infuriatingly smug note expressing his certainty that she

would soon realize how foolish she had been and seek reconciliation.

The cold, hard scrape of key metal on lock metal gave rise to an

unfortunate image in Ben’s mind, a pair of murderously sharp and

gleaming knives being stropped against each other.

He noticed a burglar-alarm box with indicator lights by the door, but

the system was evidently not engaged because none of the bulbs on the

panel was lit.

While Rachael continued to poke at the lock with the key, Ben said,

“Maybe he had the locks changed after you moved out.”

“I doubt it. He was so confident that I’d move back in with him sooner

or later. Eric was a very confident man.”

She found the keyhole. The key worked. She opened the door, nervously

reached inside, snapped on the lights in the foyer, and went into the

house with the pistol held out in front of her.

Ben followed, feeling as if the male and female roles had been wrongly

reversed, feeling as if he ought to have the gun, feeling a bit foolish

when you came right down to it.

The house was perfectly still.

“I think we’re alone,” Rachael said.

“Who did you expect – to find?” he asked.

She did not answer.

Although she had just expressed the opinion that they were alone, she

advanced with her pistol ready.

They went slowly from room to room, turning on every light, and each new

revelation of the interior made the house more imposing. The rooms were

large, highceilinged, white-walled, airy, with Mexican-tile floors and

lots of big windows, some had massive fireplaces of either stone or

ceramic tile, a few boasted oak cabinets of superb craftsmanship. A

party for two hundred guests would not have strained the capacity of the

living room and adjacent library.

The furniture was as starkly modern and functional as the rather

forbidding architecture. The upholstered white sofas and chairs were

utterly free of ornamentation.

Coffee tables, end tables, and all the occasional tables were also quite

plain, finished in mirror-bright high-gloss enamel, some black and some

white.

The only color and drama were provided by an eclectic group of

paintings, antiques, and objets d’ art. The bland decor was intended to

serve as an unobtrusive backdrop against which to display those items of

surpassing quality and value, each of which was artfully illuminated by

indirect lighting or tightly focused overhead mini spots.

Over one fireplace was a tile panel of birds by William de Morgan, which

had been done (Rachael said) for Czar Nicholas I. Here, a blazing