WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

behind the wheel while he moved into the passenger’s seat, keeping the muzzle of

the revolver on her the whole time.

“Drive,” he said.

“Where?”

“Back to your place.”

“But—”

“Keep your mouth shut and drive.”

Now she was at the opposite side of the cab from the glove box. To get to it,

she would have to reach in front of him. He would never be that lax.

Determined to keep a rein on her galloping fear, she now found that she had to

rein in despair as well.

She started the truck, drove out of the parking lot, and turned right in the

street.

The windshield wipers thumped nearly as loud as her heart. She wasn’t sure how

much of the oppressive sound was made by the impacting rain and how much of it

was the roar of her own blood in her ears.

Block by block, Nora searched for a cop—although she had no idea what she should

do if she saw one. She never had to figure it out because no cops were anywhere

to be seen.

Until they were out of Carmel and on the Pacific Coast Highway, the blustering

wind not only drove rain against the windshield but also flung bristling bits of

cypress and pine needles from the huge old trees that sheltered the town’s

streets. South along the coast, as they headed into steadily less populated

areas, no trees overhung the road, but the wind off the ocean hit the pickup

full force. Nora frequently felt it pulling at the wheel. And the rain, slashing

straight at them from the sea, seemed to pummel the truck hard enough to leave

dents in the sheet metal.

After at least five minutes of silence, which seemed like an hour, she could no

longer obey his order to keep her mouth shut. “How did you find us?”

“Been watching your place for more than a day,” he said in that cool, quiet

voice that matched his placid face. “When you left this morning, I followed you,

hoping you’d give me an opening.”

“No, I mean, how did you know where we lived?”

He smiled. “Van Dyne.”

“That double-crossing creep.”

“Special circumstances,” he assured her. “The Big Man in San Francisco Owed me a

favor, so he put pressure on Van Dyne.”

“Big man?”

“Tetragna.”

“Who’s he?”

“You don’t know anything, do you?” he said. “Except how to make babies, huh? You

know about that, huh?”

The hard taunting note in his voice was not merely sexually suggestive: it Was

darker, stranger, and more terrifying than that. She was so frightened

of the fierce tension that she sensed in him each time he approached the subject

of sex that she did not dare reply to him.

She turned on the headlights as they encountered thin fog. She kept her

attention on the rain-washed highway, squinting through the smeary windshield.

He said, “You’re very pretty. If I was going to stick it into anyone, I’d stick

it into you.”

Nora bit her lip.

“But even as pretty as you are,” he said, “you’re like all the others, I’ll bet.

If I stuck it into you, then it’d rot and fall off because you’re diseased like

all the others—aren’t you? Yeah. You are. Sex is death. I’m one of the few who

seem to know it, even though proof is everywhere. Sex is death. But you’re very

pretty . .

As she listened to him, her throat got tight. She was having difficulty drawing

a deep breath.

Suddenly his taciturnity was gone. He talked fast, still soft-voiced and

unnervingly calm, considering the crazy things he was saying, but very fast:

“I’m going to be bigger than Tetragna, more important. I’ve got scores of lives

in me. I’ve absorbed energies from more than you’d believe, experienced The

Moment, felt The Snap. It’s my Gift. When Tetragna’s dead and gone, I’ll be

here. When everyone now alive is dead, I’ll be here because I’m immortal.”

She didn’t know what to say. He had come out of nowhere, somehow knowing about

Einstein, and he was a lunatic, and there seemed to be nothing she could do. She

was as angry about the unfairness of it as she was afraid. They had made careful

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *