Winter Moon. By: Dean R. Koontz

alarming hen- but to no purpose. Maybe there would be no trouble. He

might never again come face-to-face with whatever presence he had been

aware of in the cemetery. One such episode in a lifetime was more

contact with the supernatural than most people ever experienced. Wait

for developments. Hope there were none. But if there were, and if he

obtained concrete proof of danger, then he would have to let her know

that maybe, just maybe, their year of tumult was not yet at an end.

The Micro Uzi had two magazines welded at right angles, giving it a

forty-round capacity. The heft of it was reassuring. More than two

kilos of death waiting to be dispensed. He couldn’t imagine any

enemy–wild creature or man–that the Uzi couldn’t handle. He put the

Korth in the top right-hand desk drawer, toward the back. He closed

the drawer and left the study with the other two weapons. Before

slipping past the living room, Jack waited until he heard Toby

laughing, then glanced around the corner of the archway. The boy was

focused on the TV, Falstaff at his side. Jack hurried to the kitchen

at the end of the hall, where he put the Uzi in the pantry, behind

extra boxes of cornflakes, Cheerios, and shredded wheat that wouldn’t

be opened for at least a week.

Upstairs in the master bedroom, breezy music played behind the closed

door to the adjoining bathroom. Soaking in the tub, Heather had turned

the radio to a goldenoldies station. “Dreamin’ ” by Johnny Burnette

was just winding down. Jack pushed the Mossberg under the bed, far

enough back so she wouldn’t notice it when they made the bed in the

morning but not so far back that he couldn’t get hold of it in a

hurry.

“Poetry in Motion.” Johnny Tillotson. Music from an innocent age.

Jack hadn’t even been born yet when that record had been made. He sat

on the edge of the bed, listening to the music, feeling mildly guilty

about not sharing his fears with Heather. But he just didn’t want to

upset her needlessly.

She’d been through so much. In some ways, his being wounded and

hospitalized had been harder on her than him. because she’d been

required to bear alone the pressures of day-to-day existence while he’d

recuperated. She needed a reprieve from tension. Probably nothing to

worry about, anyway. few sick raccoons. A bold little crow. A

strange experience in a cemetery which was suitably creepy itial for

some television show like Unsolved Mysteries but hadn’t been as

threatening to life and limb as of a hundred things that could happen

in the average police officer’s workday.

Loading and secreting the guns would most likely prove to have been an

overreaction. .. Well, he’d done what a cop should do. Prepared

himself to serve and protect.

On the radio in the bathroom, Bobby Vee was singing

“The Night Has a

Thousand Eyes.”

Beyond the bedroom windows, snow was falling harder than before. The

flakes, previously fluffy and wet, were now small, more numerous, and

dry. The ..wind had accelerated again. Sheer curtains of snow rippkd

and billowed across the black night. After his mom warned him against

allowing Falstaff to sleep on the bed, after good-nigh kisses, after

his dad told him to keep the dog on the floor, after the lights were

turned out–except for the red night-light– after his mom warned him

again about Falstaff, after the hall door was pulled half shut, after

enough time had passed to be sure neither his mom nor his dad was going

to sneak back to check on the retriever, Toby sat up in his alcove bed,

patted the mattress invitingly, and whispered, “Here, Falstaff. Come

on, fella.”

The dog was busily sniffing along the base of the door at the head of

the back stairs. He whined softly, unhappily. “Falstaff,” Toby said,

louder than before.

“Here, boy, come here, hurry.” Falstaff glanced at him, then put his

snout to the doorsill again, snuffling and whimpering at the same

time.

“Come here–we’ll play covered wagon or spaceship or anything you

want,” Toby wheedled. Suddenly getting a whiff of something that

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