he said, "I can leave everything behind."

  "The house, everything in it, my career, yours--"

  "None of that's what really matters."

  "A new life, new names . . . What future will the girls have?"

  "The best we can give them. There were never any guarantees.

  There never are in this life."

  She raised her head from his shoulder and looked into his eyes.

  "Can I really handle it when he shows up here?"

  "Of course you can."

  "I'm just a family counselor specializing in the behavioral problems of

  children, parent-child relations. I'm not the heroine of an adventure

  story."

  "And I'm just a mystery novelist. But we can do it."

  "I'm scared."

  "So am I."

  "But if I'm so scared now, where am I going to find the courage to pick

  up a shotgun and defend my kids from something . . .

  something like this?"

  "Imagine you are the heroine of an adventure story."

  "If only it were that easy."

  "In some ways . . . maybe it is," he said. "You know I'm not much for

  Freudian explanations. More often than not, I think we decide to be

  what we are. You're a living example, after what you went through as a

  kid."

  She closed her eyes. "Somehow, it's easier to imagine myself as a

  family counselor than as Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone."

  "When we first met," he said, "you couldn't imagine yourself as a wife

  and mother, either. A family was nothing but a prison to you, prison

  and torture chamber. You never wanted to be part of a family again."

  She opened her eyes. "You taught me how."

  "I didn't teach you anything. I only showed you how to imagine a good

  family, a healthy family. Once you were able to imagine it, you could

  learn to believe in the possibility. From there on, you taught

  yourself."

  She said, "So life's a form of fiction, huh?"

  "Every life's a story. We make it up as we go along."

  "Okay. I'll try to be Kathleen Turner."

  "Even better."

  "What?"

  "Sigourney Weaver."

  She smiled. "Wish I had one of those big damned futuristic guns like

  she got to use when she played Ripley."

  "Come on, we better go see if our sentries are still at their post."

  In the living room, he relieved the girls of their duty at the only

  undraped window and suggested they heat some water to make mugs of hot

  chocolate. The cabin was always stocked with basic canned goods,

  including a tin of cocoa-flavored milk powder. The electric heaters

  still hadn't taken the chill off the air, so they could all use a little

  internal warming. Besides, making hot chocolate was such a normal task

  that it might defuse some of the tension and calm their nerves.

  He looked through the window, across the screened porch, past the back

  end of the BMW. So many trees stood between the cabin and the county

  road that the hundred-yard-long driveway was pooled with deep shadows,

  but he could still see that no one was approaching either in a vehicle

  or on foot.

  Marty was reasonably confident that The Other would come at them

  directly rather than from behind the cabin. For one thing, their

  property backed up to the hundred acres of church land downhill and to a

  larger parcel uphill, which made an indirect approach relatively arduous

  and time-consuming.

  Judging by his past behavior, The Other always favored head long action

  and blunt approaches. He seemed to lack the knack or patience for

  strategy. He was a doer more than a thinker, which almost ensured a

  furious--rather than sneak--attack.

  That trait might be the enemy's fatal weakness. It was a hope worth

  nurturing, anyway.

  Snow fell. The shadows deepened.

  From the motel room, Spicer called the surveillance van for an update.

  He let the phone ring a dozen times, hung up, and tried again, but still

  the call went unanswered.

  "Something's happened," he said. "They wouldn't have left the van."

  "Maybe something's wrong with their phone," Oslett suggested.

  "It's ringing."

  "Maybe not on their end."

  Spicer tried again with no different result. "Come on," he said,

  grabbing his leather flight jacket and heading for the door.

  "You're not going over there?" Oslett said. "Aren't you still worried

  about blowing their cover?"

  "It's already been blown. Something's wrong.

  Clocker had pulled on his tweed coat over his clashing orange cashmere

  sweater. He didn't bother to put on his hat because he had never

  bothered to take it off. Tucking the Star Trek paperback in a pocket,

  he also headed for the door.

  Following them with the black briefcase, Oslett said, "But what could've

  gone wrong? Everything was moving along so smoothly again."

  Already, the storm had put down half an inch of snow. The flakes were

  fine and comparatively dry now, and the streets white.

  Evergreen boughs had begun to acquire Christmasy trimmings.

  Spicer drove the Explorer, and in a few minutes they reached the street

  where Stillwater's parents lived. He pointed out the house when they

  were still half a block from it.

  Across the street from the Stillwater place, two vehicles were parked at

  the curb. Oslett pegged the red recreational van as the surveillance

  post because of the mirrored side windows in its rear section.

  "What's that florist's van doing here?" Spicer wondered.

  "Delivering flowers," Oslett guessed.

  "Fat chance."

  Spicer pulled past the van and parked the Explorer in front of it.

  "Is this really smart?" Oslett wondered.

  Using the cellular phone, Spicer called the surveillance team one more

  time. They didn't answer.

  "We don't have a choice," Spicer said as he opened his door and got out

  into the snow.

  The three of them walked to the back of the red van.

  On the blacktop between that vehicle and the delivery van, a large

  floral arrangement lay in ruins. The ceramic container was shattered.

  The stems of the flowers and ferns were still embedded in the spongy

  green material that florists used to fix arrangements, so the mild wind

  had not blown any of them away, though they looked as if they had been

  stepped on more than once. The colors of some flowers were masked by

  snow, which meant they hadn't been disturbed in the past thirty to

  forty-five minutes.

  The ruined blossoms and frost-paled ferns had a curious beauty.

  Snap a photo, hang it in an art gallery, title it something like

  "Romance" or

  "Loss," and people would probably stand before it for long

  minutes, musing.

  As Spicer rapped on the back door of the surveillance vehicle, Clocker

  said, "I'll check the delivery van."

  No one answered the knock, so Spicer boldly opened the door and climbed

  inside.

  As he followed, Oslett heard Spicer say softly, "Oh, shit."

  The interior of the van was dark. Little light penetrated the two way

  mirrors that served as windows. Only the scopes and screens of the

  electronic equipment illuminated the sp
ace.

  Oslett took off his sunglasses, saw the dead men, and pulled the rear

  door shut.

  Spicer had taken off his sunglasses too. His eyes were an odd, baleful

  yellow. Or maybe that was just a color they reflected from the scopes

  and gauges.

  "Alfie must've been coming to the Stillwater place, spotted the van,

  recognized it for what it was," Spicer said. "Before he went over

  there, he stopped here, took care of business, so he wouldn't be

  interrupted across the street."

  The electronic gear operated off banks of solar batteries wired to flat

  solar cells on the roof. When surveillance was conducted at night, the

  batteries could be charged in the conventional fashion, if necessary, by

  starting the van's engine for short periods. Even on overcast days,

  however, the cells collected enough sunlight to keep the system

  operative.

  Without the engine running, the interior temperature of the van was

  nonetheless comfortable, if slightly cool. The vehicle was unusually

  well insulated, and the solar cells also operated a small heater.

  Stepping over the corpse on the floor, looking through one of the view

  windows, Oslett said, "If Alfie was drawn to that house, it had to be

  because Martin Stillwater was already there."

  "I guess."

  "Yet this team never saw him go in or out."

  "Evidently not," Spicer agreed.

  "Wouldn't they have let us know if they'd seen Stillwater, his wife, or

  kids?"

  "Absolutely."

  "So . . . is he over there now? Maybe they're all over there, the

  whole family and Alfie."

  Peering through the other window, Spicer added, "And maybe not.

  Somebody left there not long ago. See the tracks in the drive way?"

  A vehicle with wide tires had backed out of the garage that was attached

  to the white clapboard house. It had reversed to the left as it entered

  the street, then had shifted into forward and had driven away to the

  right. The snow had barely begun to fill in the multiple arcs of the

  tracks.

  Clocker opened the rear door, startling them. He climbed inside and

  pulled the door shut after him, with no comment about the bloody ice axe

  on the floor or the two murdered operatives. "Looks like Alfie must've

  stolen the florist's van for cover. The deliveryman's in the back with

  the flowers, dead as the moon."

  In spite of the extended wheelbase that added extra room to the interior

  of the van, the space unoccupied by surveillance equipment and corpses

  was not large enough to accommodate the three of them comfortably.

  Oslett felt claustrophobic.

  Spicer pulled the seated dead man out of the swivel chair in which he'd

  died. The corpse tumbled to the floor. Spicer checked the chair for

  blood before sitting down and turning to the array of monitors and

  switches, with which he appeared to be familiar.

  Uncomfortably aware of Clocker looming over him, Oslett said, "Is it

  possible there was a phone call to the house that these guys never got a

  chance to report to us before Alfie wasted them?"

  Spicer said, "That's what I'm going to find out."

  As Spicer's fingers flew over the programming keyboard, brightly colored

  graphs and other displays popped onto the half dozen video monitors.

  Contriving, in those tight quarters, to ram his elbow into Clocker's

  gut, Oslett turned again to the first of the side-by-side view windows.

  He watched the house across the street.

  Clocker stooped to look out the other window. Oslett figured the

  Trekker was pretending to be at a starship portal, squinting through

  foot-thick glass at an alien world.

  A couple of cars passed. A pickup truck. A black dog ran along $

  the sidewalk, with snow on his paws, he looked as if he was wearing four

  white socks. The Stillwater house stood silent, serene.

  "Got it," Spicer said, taking off a set of headphones he had put on when

  Oslett had been staring out the window.

  What he had, as it turned out, was a telephone call monitored, traced,

  and recorded by the automated equipment perhaps as long as thirty

  minutes after Alfie killed the surveillance team. In fact, Alfie had

  been in the Stillwater house when the call came through and had answered

  it after seven rings. Spicer played it back on a speaker instead of

  through headphones, so the three of them could listen at the same time.

  "The first voice you hear is the caller," Spicer said, "because the man

  who picks up the receiver in the Stillwater house doesn't initially say

  anything."

  "Hello? Mom? Dad?"

  "How did you win them over?"

  Stopping the tape, Spicer said, "That second voice is the receiving

  phone and it's Alfie."

  "They both sound like Alfie."

  "The other one's Stillwater. Alfie also speaks next."

  "Why would they love you more than me?"

  "Don't touch them, you son of a bitch. Don't you lay one finger on

  them. "They betrayed meN "I want to talk to my mother and father

  "MY

  mother and father

  "Put them on the phone." "So you can tell them more

  lies?"

  They listened to the entire conversation. It was over-the-top creepy

  because it sounded as if one man was talking to himself, a radically

  split personality. Worse, their bad boy was obviously not just a

  renegade but flat-out psychotic.

  When the tape ended, Oslett said, "So Stillwater never stopped at his

  parents' house."

  "Evidently not."

  "Then how did Alfie find it? And why did he go there? Why was he

  interested in Stillwater's parents, not just Stillwater himself?"

  Spicer shrugged. "Maybe you'll get a chance to ask the boy if you

  manage to recover him."

  Oslett didn't like having so many unanswered questions. It made him

  feel as if he wasn't in control.

  He glanced out the window at the house and at the tire tracks in the

  snow-covered driveway. "Alfie's probably not over there any more."

  "Went after Stillwater," Spicer agreed.

  "Where was that call placed?"

  "Cellular phone."

  Oslett said, "We can still trace that, can't we?"

  Pointing to three lines of numbers on a display terminal, Spicer said,

  "We've got a satellite triangulation."

  "That's meaningless to me, just numbers."

  "This computer can plot it on a map. To within a hundred feet of the

  signal source."

  "How long will that take?"

  "Five minutes tops," Spicer said.

  "Good. You work on it. We'll check the house."

  Oslett stepped out of the red van with Clocker close behind.

  As they crossed the street through the snow, Oslett didn't care if a

  dozen nosy neighbors were at their windows. The situation was already

  blown wide open and couldn't be salvaged. He, Clocker, and Spicer would

  clear out, with their dead, in less than ten minutes, and after that no

  one would ever be able to prove they'd been there.

  They walked boldly onto the elder Stillwaters' porch. Oslett rang the

  bell. No one answered. He rang it again and tried the door, which

  proved to be unl
ocked. From across the street it would appear as if Jim

  or Alice Stillwater had opened up and invited them inside.

  In the foyer, Clocker closed the front door behind them and drew his

  Colt .357 Magnum from his shoulder holster. They stood for a few

  seconds, listening to the silent house.

  "Be at peace, Alfie," Oslett said, even though he doubted that their bad

  boy was still hanging around the premises. When there was no ritual

  response to that command, he repeated the four words louder than before.

  Silence prevailed.

  Cautiously they moved deeper into the house--and found the dead couple

  in the first room they checked. Stillwater's parents.

  Each of them somewhat resembled the writer--and Alfie, too, of course.