WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

Walt’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Listen, research money is always damn tight, and there’s fierce competition for

every major and minor grant, so no one’s going to be able to afford to

experiment with something that has no use. Get me? Now, because I’m involved

here, you know this has to be a matter of national defense, which would mean

Banodyne was squandering Pentagon money to make a carnival freak.”

“The words ‘squander’ and ‘Pentagon’ have sometimes been used in the Same

sentence,” Walt said drily.

“Be real, Walt. It’s one thing for the Pentagon to let some of its contractors

Waste money in the production of a needed weapons system. But it’s altogether

another thing for them to knowingly hand out funds for experiments with no

defense potential. The system is sometimes inefficient, sometimes even corrupt,

but it’s never outright stupid. Anyway, I’ll say it one more time: This

entire conversation is pointless because this has nothing to do with Banodyne.”

Walt stared in at him for a long moment, then sighed. “Jesus, Lem, you’re

good. I know you’ve got to be lying to me, but I half-think you’re telling the

truth.”

“I am telling the truth.”

“You’re good. So tell me . . . what about Weatherby, Yarbeck, and the others?

Got their killer yet?”

“No.” In fact, the man Lem had put in charge of the case had reported that it

appeared as if the Soviets had used a killer outside of their own agencies and

perhaps outside of the political world entirely. The investigation seemed

stymied. But all he said to Walt was, “No.”

Walt started to straighten up and close the car door, then leaned down and in

again. “One more thing. You notice it seems to have a meaningful destination?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“It’s been moving steadily north or north-northwest ever since it broke out of

Banodyne,” Walt said.

“It didn’t break out of Banodyne, damn it.”

“From Banodyne to Holy Jim Canyon, from there to Irvine Park, and from there to

the Keeshan house tonight. Steadily north or north-northwest. I suppose you know

what that might mean, where it might be headed, but of course I daren’t ask you

about it or you’ll heave me straight into prison and let me rot there.”

“I’m telling you the truth about Banodyne.”

“So you say.”

“You’re impossible, Walt.”

“So you say.”

“So everyone says. Now will you let me go home? I’m beat.”

Smiling, Walt closed the door at last.

Lem drove out of the hospital garage to Main Street, then to the freeway,

heading home toward Placentia. He hoped to make it back into bed no later than

dawn.

As he piloted the NSA sedan through streets as empty as midocean sea-lanes, he

thought about The Outsider heading northward. He’d noticed the same thing

himself. And he was convinced that he knew what it was seeking even if he did

not know where, precisely, it was going. From the first, the dog and The

Outsider had possessed a special awareness of each other, an uncanny instinctual

awareness of each other’s moods and activities even when they were not in the

same room. Davis Weatherby had suggested, more than half seriously, that there

was something telepathic about the relationship of those two creatures. Now, The

Outsider was very likely still in tune with the dog and, by some sixth sense,

was following it.

For the dog’s sake, Lem hoped to God that was not the case.

It had been evident in the lab that the dog had always feared The Outsider, and

with good reason. The two were the yin and yang of the Francis Project, the

success and the failure, the good and the bad. As wonderful, right, and

good as the dog was—well, The Outsider was every bit as hideous, wrong, and

evil. And the researchers had seen that The Outsider did not fear the dog but

hated it with a passion that no one had been able to understand. Now that both

were free, The Outsider might single-mindedly pursue the dog, for it had never

wanted anything more than to tear the retriever limb from limb.

Lem realized that, in his anxiety, he had put his foot down too hard on the

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