WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

“He’s too old for that crap,” Cliff protested.

“Evidently not. He went around the other side, and he’s headed for a phone on

one of the northern public beaches. We’ve got to stop him, and fast.”

Cliff cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted the first names of the four

agents who were positioned on other boats along the docks. His voice carried,

echoing flatly off the water, in spite of the wind. Men came running, and even

as Cliff’s shouts faded away across the harbor, Lem was sprinting for his car in

the parking lot.

The worst happens when you least expect it.

As Travis was rinsing dinner dishes, Nora said, “Look at this.”

He turned and saw that she was standing by Einstein’s food and water dishes. The

water was gone, but half his dinner remained.

She said, “When have you known him to leave a single scrap?”

“Never.” Frowning, Travis wiped his hands on the kitchen towel. “The last few

days . . . I’ve thought maybe he’s coming down with a cold or something, but he

says he feels fine. And today he hasn’t been sneezing or coughing like he was.”

They went into the living room, where the retriever was reading Black Beauty

with the help of his page-turning machine.

They knelt beside him, and he looked up, and Nora said, “Are you sick,

Einstein?”

The retriever barked once, softly: No.

“Are you sure?”

A quick wag of the tail: Yes.

“You didn’t finish your dinner,” Travis said.

The dog yawned elaborately.

Nora said, “Are you telling us you’re a little tired?”

Yes.

“If you were feeling ill,” Travis said, “you’d let us know right away, wouldn’t

you, fur face?”

Yes.

Nora insisted on examining Einstein’s eyes, mouth, and ears for obvious signs

of infection, but at last she said, “Nothing. He seems okay. I guess even

Superdog has a right to be tired once in a while.”

The wind had come up fast. It was chilly, and under its lash the waves rose

higher than they had been all day.

A mass of gooseflesh, Garrison reached the landward end of the north flank of

the harbor’s northern breakwater. He was relieved to depart the hard and

sometimes jagged stones of that rampart for the sandy beach. He was sure he had

scraped and cut both feet; they felt hot, and his left foot stung with each

step, forcing him to limp.

At first he stayed close to the surf, away from the tree-lined park that lay

behind the beach. Over there, where park lamps lit the walkways and where

spotlights dramatically highlighted the palms, he would be more easily seen from

the street. He did not think anyone would be looking for him; he was sure his

trick had worked. However, if anyone was looking for him, he did not want to

call attention to himself.

The gusting wind tore foam off the incoming breakers and flung it in Garrison’s

face, so he felt as if he was continuously running through spiders’ webs. The

stuff stung his eyes, which had finally stopped tearing from his dunk in the

sea, and at last he was forced to move away from the surf line, farther up the

beach, where the softer sand met the lawn but where he was still out of the

lights.

Young people were on the darkish beach, dressed for the chill of the night:

couples on blankets, cuddling; small groups smoking dope, listening to music.

Eight or ten teenage boys were gathered around two all-terrain vehicles with

balloon tires, which were not allowed on the beach during the day and most

likely weren’t allowed at night.. They were drinking beer beside a pit they’d

dug in the sand to bury their bottles if they saw a cop approaching; they were

talking loudly about girls, and indulging in horseplay. No one gave Garrison

more than a glance as he hurried by. In California, health-food-and-exercise

fanatics were as common as street muggers in New York, and if an old man wanted

to take a cold swim and then run on the beach in the dark, he was no more

remarkable or noteworthy than a priest in a church.

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