The transmitted image on the monitor flickered, rolled, but Rasmussen
did not get out of Ackroyd’s chair. In fact he slumped back, as if
exhausted. He yawned and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“He seems to be resting, gathering his energy,” Bobby said
“Let’s have another tune while we wait for him to move.”
“Good idea.” He gave the CD player the start-up cue “Begin music”-and
was rewarded with Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.”
On the monitor, Rasmussen rose from the chair in Ackroyd’s dimly lighted
office. He yawned again, stretched, and crossed the room to the big
windows that looked down on Michaelson Drive, the street on which Bobby
was parked.
If Bobby had slipped forward, out of the rear of the van and into the
driver’s compartment, he probably would have been able to see Rasmussen
standing up there at the second-floor window, silhouetted by the glow of
Ackroyd’s desk lamp, staring out at the night.
He stayed where he was, however, satisfied with the view on the screen.
Miller’s band was playing the famous “In the Mood” riff, again and
again, gradually fading away, almost disappearing entirely but… now
blasting back at full power to repeat the entire cycle.
In Ackroyd’s office, Rasmussen finally turned from the window and looked
up at the security camera that was mounted on the wall near the ceiling.
He seemed to be staring straight at Bobby, as if aware of being watched.
He moved a few steps closer to the camera, smiling.
Bobby said, “Music stop,” and the Miller band instantly fell silent.
To Julie, he said, “Something strange here
“Trouble?”
Rasmussen stopped just under the security camera, still grinning up at
it. From the pocket of his uniform shirt, he withdrew a folded sheet of
typing paper, which he opened and held toward the lens. A message had
been printed in bold black letters: GOODBYE, ASS HOLE.
“Trouble for sure,” Bobby said.
“How bad?”
“I don’t know.”
An instant later he did know: Automatic weapons fire shattered the
night-he could hear the clatter even with his earphones on-and
armor-piercing slugs tore through the walls of the van.
Julie evidently picked up the gunfire through her headset.
“Bobby, no!”
“Get the hell out of there, babe! Run!”
Even as he spoke, Bobby tore free of the headset and dived off his
chair, lying as flat against the floorboards as he could.
FRANK Pollard sprinted from street to street from alley to alley,
sometimes cutting across the lawns of the dark houses. In one back yard
a large black dog with yellow eyes barked and snapped at him all the way
to the board fence briefly snaring one leg of his pants as he clambered
over the barrier. His heart was pounding painfully, and his throat was
hot and raw because he was sucking in great drafts of the cold dry air
through his open mouth. His legs ached. The flight bag pulled on his
right arm, and with the lunging step that he took, pain throbbed in his
wrist and shoulder socket. But he did not pause and did not glance
back, because he felt as if something monstrous was at his heels, a
creature that never required rest and that would turn him into stone
with its gaze if he dared set eyes upon it.
In time he crossed an avenue, devoid of traffic at that late hour, and
hurried along the entrance walk to another apartment complex. He went
through a gate into another court yard this one centered by an empty
swimming pool with a crack and canted apron.
The place was lightless, but Frank’s vision had adapted to the night,
and he could see well enough to avoid falling in the drained pool. He
was searching for shelter. Perhaps there was a communal laundry room
where he could hide.
He had discovered something else about himself as he fled his unknown
pursuer: He was thirty or forty pounds over weight and out of shape. He
desperately needed to catch his breath-and think.
As he was hurrying past the doors of the ground-floor unit he realized
that a couple of them were standing open, sagging on ruined hinges. Then