CHAPTER

9

YOU’RE SURE?” WADE ASKED AGAIN THREE HOURS LATER.

“Completely,” she replied, thinking ahead to a whole lovely evening of solitude.

That hadn’t been her plan, but time alone was rare enough that she would take it when she could get it. And now with Steven Garner Jr. already on his way to the lockup thirty miles south in the county seat of Machias, she could enjoy it.

Right now it was five in the afternoon, late enough for a wine cooler but still light outside even though the fog loomed ominously, a thick gray curtain halfway out on the bay.

“Really, I’ll be fine.” She sipped a cool mouthful, let it roll luxuriously around before swallowing.

Wade hiked his duffel bag higher up onto his shoulder. The tugboat was scheduled to leave the fish pier in fifteen minutes.

“All right, then.” He said it reluctantly. He wasn’t blind to the possible pleasures of home, either. But duty called, and so did that hefty bonus.

“I’ll be back in two days.” The ship he was assigned to idled hundreds of miles due east, burning up fuel and man-hours in international waters on the far side of Nova Scotia.

Not allowed to enter Canada with the iffy crew member on board, it was also at the moment not welcome stateside. But the paperwork was in process so it would be by the time he got there.

“Great,” she said, still giddy with relief at the news that her stalker had been grabbed. Or rather, had turned himself in, for reasons she couldn’t fathom.

“Bob Arnold says Garner just walked into the cop shop, slapped his ID on the counter, and said he’d been hassling me and did they want to arrest him,” she repeated wonderingly.

So Bob had, mostly to get the guy out of Bob’s hair—and Jake’s, too—for a couple of days. Later, Bob had told her, they could work on proving or disproving Jake’s still-active suspicion that Garner had already committed one murder here in Eastport.

But for now they had trespassing, terrorizing, and telephone harassment: the three T’s, according to Bob’s account of all the paperwork he’d filled out so as to speed the guy on his way.

“We get his prints, a cheek swab, coupla more things, maybe, we’ll know if he had contact with the Sea Street victim,” Bob had said confidently.

Not that he knew for sure Garner would give permission for those. He didn’t know why Garner had surrendered himself, either, and once he’d done so, Garner himself had zipped his lip and was refusing to talk to anyone but a lawyer.

Which, because he had no money and it was a holiday weekend, would take time to arrange. But it would happen, Bob promised.

Jake sighed deeply, feeling the day’s tension lift. “You be careful out there,” she told Wade.

He ruffled her hair, then drew her in and kissed her. “Yeah. You too. See you soon.”

Then he was gone, and the old house felt suddenly huge and empty around her. But none of that, she scolded herself briskly, and turned to the dogs, who cared nothing for who was at home and who wasn’t as long as someone was in charge of kibble.

Prill danced around the kitchen while Monday sat patiently, a doggy smile on her sweet old face. “There,” Jake said, pouring the food out for them, and when they had finished she leashed them up for a walk.

But she’d barely gotten around the block with them when the fog finished descending, turning the night damp and chilly. And Monday didn’t like going too far on those old legs, especially after sundown, when her cataract-clouded eyes couldn’t see far in the darkness. So they turned for home, and once inside, Jake went around switching lights on and making sure doors were locked.

You dope, she scolded herself again as she did so. What, are you going to be afraid of the dark now, too?

But the answer was no, especially once she’d started on a second wine cooler, this one considerably less diluted with fruit juice than the first. Still, even under its influence she didn’t feel nearly as good as she’d hoped, partly because the fog had brought true darkness on so much sooner than she’d expected.

And partly because Steven Garner’s grudge against her still loomed in her thoughts, even though he was safely behind bars. Through the kitchen windows, she watched the lights in the other houses dwindle to tiny sparks, then get snuffed out as billows of fog rolled in over the island.

Soon her own house felt like an outpost, nothing visible outside but the drifting mist coalescing now and then to drizzle. On the plus side, by now Bella and her dad would be settling into their room at the hotel in St. Andrews, while Sam was ensconced cozily somewhere with his new girlfriend, too, no doubt.

So no one would be driving. And Wade’s tugboat wasn’t even a minor worry, equipped as it was with the latest in navigation gear and able to find its way through anything short of hardened concrete, especially with Wade himself at the helm.

Which he surely was; it was a harbor-pilotish quirk of his that if he was on a boat, he was steering it. Reassured on the topic of everyone else’s safety and now confident of her own, she pulled the window shades, snapped on another kitchen light, and put on the radio, tuning it to the Eastport high school station.

A reggae tune lilted into the room, not one she knew; it was one of her favorite things about Tiger Radio, as it was called, that she heard things on it that were (a) music she’d never heard before while also being (b) music she wanted to hear again.

Soon her favorite I’m-all-alone meal was ready: deviled ham and hot baked beans on toast, with a whole steamed artichoke for the vegetable. A real glass of wine, no fruit juice included, accompanied it, and by the time she’d finished it she felt much better, indeed.

Just because somebody said you did something, that doesn’t mean you’re guilty, Ellie had insisted to her that afternoon, and now with the food and wine in her the admonition sounded halfway convincing.

But it had never been about what Garner thought, anyway, had it? Instead it was her own memory niggling at her, and always had been. She ran hot water on her plate, rinsed the few pieces of silverware she’d used, and wrung out the dishcloth. When she had finished and hung up the dish towel, in the lamplight the kitchen looked nearly as whistle-clean as Bella would’ve gotten it.

Nearly. She stood indecisively a moment. Then with a sigh she dampened the dishcloth again and began wiping countertops.

• • •

BY SEVEN, SHE’D POLISHED ALL THE APPLIANCES, INCLUDING the metal pans underneath the stove burners, mopped the floor, and cleaned out the refrigerator. The kitchen smelled sweetly of Ajax, fresh coffee, and newly laundered throw rugs.

“You know,” she told the dogs, who sat listening politely as they always did to humans who were in the throes of losing their marbles, “Bella’s right. This cleaning business is very calming.”

Like old house repair. Which reminded her, there was a loose wire in the light switch of the chandelier in the front parlor, and just barely enough evening light still coming in through the hall windows so she could probably fix it.

“Wait here,” she told the canines, and went to the cellar to fetch the stepladder. She’d already been down there once to put the handgun and the ammo back in the lockbox; Ellie could pop in anytime, and she might have Lee with her.

And it was just good practice. After she hauled the ladder upstairs, she remembered that if she was going to work on a light switch, it would be a good idea to turn off the power to it first, so she went back downstairs again and did that. The dogs’ heads were swiveling back and forth as if they were watching a tennis match, and her legs were tired from all the stair climbing.

But never mind; she was on a mission, so from the toolbox she took a pair of screwdrivers—a big one for the switch cover and a tiny one for the set screws holding the wires inside—and got to work, first removing the switch cover, then loosening both strands of the electrical wire itself.

By now it was getting really dark out; she hadn’t banked on those extra trips to the cellar. So it was harder than she’d planned, seeing which wire was which: the copper one versus the silver one. And it made a big difference how you attached them.

Copper wire to copper screw, silver to silver; she wasn’t entirely certain what the problem would be if you did it backwards, only that it was sure to make your house burn down in the middle of the night.

And, of course, with the power to this part of the house off, she couldn’t turn on a light.… With a mild oath, she turned and promptly bumped painfully into the stepladder, which she’d brought not to work on the wires but to replace two burnt-out bulbs in the chandelier.

Rubbing her bruised elbow and uttering another oath, this one much less mild, she proceeded to Wade’s workshop for a small flashlight; this she mounted to one of Sam’s ball caps with duct tape before putting the cap on.

By now the two dogs were practically rolling on their sides with helpless laughter, which they diplomatically disguised as yawning and pacing around the back door impatiently. It was, Jake realized with a prickle of anxiety, already past eight.

The dark gray sky outside the front hall windows would soon be pitch black, and on top of that it was nearly time for the animals’ final evening walk. Also, somehow she’d already lost one of the screws from the switch-cover plate.

There was, she thought—not, alas, for the first time—a fine line between the kind of home repair that tranquilized you and the kind that drove you shrieking out into the night. But she had to go out anyway—the dogs had quit pacing and were leaning against the back door with their legs crossed, pleadingly.

So: Collars. Leashes. “Out,” she told them, and they pranced happily ahead of her, even Monday, who lately had to sometimes be helped down the porch steps, her arthritis had gotten so bad.

Out on the sidewalk, after a disoriented moment of wondering where that bright glow was coming from, she took off the cap and pried the flashlight from the duct tape, then switched it off and stuck it in her pocket. On a night like this, so foggy that the light’s beam just bounced back from the water particles hanging in the air, visibility was actually better without it.

After that, despite the murk, it was lovely outside. Pale yellow coronas radiated from the streetlights, and from windows in the houses all around, white-gold squares fell onto the dark lawns. Turning back, she saw her own big old white house looming in the mist like some huge ship afloat on a sea of night.

“Wuff,” said Prill, stopping short. The dog’s ears pricked alertly and her stubby tail stood up as she stared ahead.

Monday gazed blindly, but there was nothing wrong with her nose. “Umph,” she muttered, not liking whatever it was, either.

Getting a good grip on both leashes, Jake peered into the mist. As usual, Prill made a fine early-warning system, but she was as likely to warn about a bit of litter blowing in the street as she was about a potential assailant.

And Jake could hardly see at all. The fog was now billowing so thickly, it didn’t even look real—more like special effects.

“Prill,” Jake said, “let’s go.”

There were no potential assailants out here. The dog glanced back at her, then returned to staring holes in the mist, and took a stiff-legged step forward. Then she froze once more.

Monday whined as Jake half turned. “Okay, let’s just go—”

Meeyowrowowyowowl! Something small, black, and very fast came out of the dark yard to her right, straight at her. At the very last instant, it changed course, scrambled up Prill’s back, and leapt from her head high into the air.

Prill spun around and snapped where the thing had been, missing it by a hair. A cat hair, Jake realized, but knowing it didn’t help matters as now the feline dashed the other way.

Monday charged, yanking on her leash; Prill hauled in the opposite direction. Then they reversed, and suddenly both leashes were wrapped around Jake’s legs. She sat down hard while the dogs tried pulling her arms out of their sockets; when that failed, they tried crushing her to death by sitting on her.

Sorrysorrysorry, their heaving sides, lapping tongues, and panting breaths seemed to say very urgently in the darkness. But it was a cat! they emphasized. A cat!cat!cat! It was a—

The animal that had caused all the commotion, of course, was long gone. Probably it was back in the bushes there somewhere, laughing its head off, she thought sourly.

And painfully, Jake moved her arms and legs around, checking for fractures. None were obvious; the palms of her hands and one knee felt hot and sticky, though.

Like the skin had been removed from them, and half of it probably had. Also, her butt felt like somebody had just smacked it with a two-by-four.

“Yes, I know what it was,” she said grouchily, clambering up. And then, “Yowtch.”

Brushing her hands on the sides of her pants made embedded pebbles fall out of the wounded flesh. Also, straightening her right leg out was no barrel of laughs.

“I swear, from now on both you dogs are going to wear—”

Choke collars, she was about to finish, although she would never really have done any such thing to them. Then she noticed Monday hiding behind her leg. Prill stood at military attention.

“Uh, hello?” she said, exasperated, to the animals. “You want to let me in on what it is this time? That you’re going to drag me to my death about? Or should I just lie down and bang my head on the sidewalk here, and save you the trouble of—”

A shape stepped out of the fog. At the sight her voice froze in her throat.

A man, his features blurred by mist and darkness, stood motionless, maybe half a block from her.

The night seemed suddenly very still, the houses so far away she couldn’t have reached any of them in time to—

She opened her mouth to shout. A croak came out. Prill’s low growl was barely audible.

“Hello?” she whispered. Stupid, stupid, why had she not just taken the dogs out to the backyard?

Eastport was so safe at most times of the year, it was a shock when the holiday filled it with strangers. Unpredictable ones, who might …

The shape was gone. She blinked—no one, and both dogs were now sniffing around unconcernedly.

And now that whoever it was had gone, she too felt relief wash over her. And a bit of embarrassment …

Dark and foggy, yes. But, that’s what it was on an Eastport night in midsummer. No big surprise there …

Or anything to get spleeny about, either, she told herself, spleeny being what Eastport natives said when they meant nervous without any good reason.

“Come on,” she commanded, doing an about-face on the sidewalk. A stroll in the other direction, toward the streetlight at the far corner and the much-more-brightly-lit houses around it, suddenly seemed vastly preferable to the wet gloom ahead.

Fifteen minutes later they were back inside, all the doggy chores completed and the porch light switched off. And as it turned out, the break had refreshed her; once she got started again, it took only a few more minutes to finish rewiring the hall switch, and after that, replacing the chandelier bulbs was easy.

Though getting up and down the stepladder wasn’t; her leg twinged, and she’d never been much of a heights specialist. Done at last, she emitted a sigh even deeper than the one she’d let out when the mysterious fog-figure stepped back into the mist.

If he’d even been there at all. Maybe he hadn’t. Nerves from the long, worrisome day, the empty house, and then those glasses of wine …

It was, Jake thought, just as likely that a combination of darkness and fog had produced the shape, a breeze had dissolved it, and the dogs had merely been staring after that dratted cat.

Now both animals padded upstairs, Prill big and ungainly but as athletic as a racehorse, her muscles moving powerfully under her glossy coat, and Monday climbing stubbornly, determined to go up, too, despite her age.

As Jake stowed away the stepladder and slotted the tools back into the toolbox on the hall shelf, the low hoot of foghorns drifted through the locked screen door.

The inside door was open because it was summer, but the screen door was locked because she wasn’t a complete fool.… The pleasures of solitude, she was beginning to think, were a tad overrated.

Finally she closed the inside door and locked it, too, and made a cup of chamomile tea to bring with her up to bed. Prill had Wade’s side of the mattress already staked out for herself, lying the long way on it, while Monday stretched across the foot.

But in the bedroom doorway, she paused. It was ten o’clock; plenty of time yet, really, to do at least one more chore. The float in the toilet tank needed replacing, for instance, as did the bottom square of carpet on the stairs up to the third floor, where her father and Bella lived in their own cozy apartment.

The top hinge on the closet door needed tightening, too, and the bottom one needed shimming, to square the door so its bottom edge no longer scraped the old hardwood floor.

Or, she thought wryly as she got into bed—or as far in as the dogs would let her get, anyway—I could just cut a quarter-inch of wood off the door’s bottom, the way everyone else does.

Either way, it wouldn’t take long, and neither would any of the other small tasks that needed doing in an old house: window weather-stripping (in Maine, July was not too soon to begin on winter chores), radiator repainting (likewise), or sanding the old floor in the guest room (not a winter task, but likely to become one if she didn’t get to it soon).

And that was just the start of her chores list. But instead of doing any of them, she decided to relax against the pillows and have a sip of tea, and then rest her eyes only for a moment.

The dogs snored: Prill daintily, Monday adenoidally. Leaning back, feeling how tired she was, she thought she should probably get them both off the bed.

If Wade were here, he would do it. She wondered if he’d gotten to the container ship yet, out on the water. She wondered if Bella and her father were having a good time in St. Andrews, and whether they would come home tomorrow or stay another day.

She thought it was probably a good thing that Sam might’ve found a girlfriend, even if she did live somewhere else; he was lonely, she knew, though he tried putting a good face on it.

She hoped the girl didn’t drink, and thought she would ask Sam about it when the opportunity presented itself. If it did.

And that was the last thing she thought until sometime later, when the crash of breaking glass woke her.

SHE JERKED STRAIGHT UP IN BED, IN THE DARK. AT SOME TIME she must have shut off the light and shooed the dogs onto the floor. Now Prill’s big toenails were already clicking out into the hall, her steps hurrying downstairs.

Jake snapped the light on, her legs swinging out of bed even as she tried blinking away the clammy remnants of a bad dream. Now there was only silence except for Prill’s anxious patrolling from room to room.

But a moment ago … no, she definitely hadn’t dreamed it. She went to the bedroom window, put her face up to the screen, and listened, at the same time trying to remember the exact quality of the sound that had woken her.

Window breaking? Auto glass? Real vandalism was as rare in Eastport as other serious crime, the black-jacketed boys who were a thorn in Bob Arnold’s side lately being the exception.

In the darkness of the hallway, she crept to the small front-of-the-house guest room whose floor she’d been thinking of sanding earlier. From its window, she could see down the street to the water.

Under the mist-shrouded yellow streetlights, the white fog still drifted in billows. But nothing else moved and the lights in the nearby houses were out. Then …

Another crash, followed by the tinkle of glass shards, came from down there somewhere. But this time it was a familiar sound: a bottle breaking.

She tried to remember when she’d heard exactly that sound before, realized it was a memory connected with Sam, and chose not to pursue it. But there was no doubt now what it was. Or that it came from the other end of her house, the driveway side.

Slipping downstairs, she tiptoed through the kitchen with Prill by her side. Silent as a ninja, the dog padded toward the kitchen door leading to Wade’s shop, then through it.

Outside, another bottle smashed. “Go lie down,” Jake told the Doberman, who swerved smoothly at the command and headed back to her bed in the kitchen.

Then Jake went on, thanking her stars that when the chips were down, the dog was so obedient. If Garner were out there, of course it would be a different story. But this was just some beer-bombed neighborhood offspring, probably, whose parents would not be happy if their kid limped home with bite wounds. And she could always call Prill if she needed her.

“Good dog,” Jake called over her shoulder. Prill’s low answering grumble meant she didn’t like it a bit, but she stayed put.

Only then did Jake open the back door and peer out. Sheets of mist swept like ghosts between the maples and the long, thin arms of espaliered fruit trees against the new lattice put in by her father.

The cool, damp air smelled like an ocean wave, saline- and iodine-tinctured. High overhead, the fog thinned swiftly and rags of moonlight trailed through, making the sky dramatic.

Tasting salt on her lips, Jake felt the hairs on her arms prickling sharply as tiny, cold droplets beaded on them. “Who’s out there?”

No answer. She wished she hadn’t put the gun away, and turned to go back inside just as a small shape sailed out of the gloom in a long arc, crashing down onto Wade’s pickup truck. The bottle—a small fruit juice bottle—bounced off the hood.

Probably it had made a dent. “All right, that’s it.”

No creepy prowler was out there. A thrown bottle, that was drunk-and-rowdy material just as she’d thought, the kind of thing some dumb bunny might do after a few too many.

She stomped down the steps onto the driveway gravel. “I’ve called the cops.”

Which she hadn’t, of course, and now she was glad of it, and that the gun wasn’t in her hand, too. Just what she didn’t need, she thought, annoyed, a false alarm so that afterwards Bob Arnold would take her legitimate worries with even more grains of salt.

She strode down the driveway. “So you’d better scram,” she said clearly into the darkness.

Not shouting, though—no sense waking the neighborhood. “I mean it.”

As if it wasn’t enough for some jerk to come suddenly out of the past like some late-night movie monster, lurching up out of a swamp. It wasn’t enough that he’d hassled her in her own yard and sent terrorizing emails, thrown a dead rat into her house and scared her wits out with a target-scrawled photograph of Sam.

No, on top of that—

“I’d better hear you beating it down that street right now,” she growled into the gloom.

—on top of that, here was some other little jerk who had to use the holiday for an excuse to raise hell.

Oh, but she was burned up over it now that she was completely awake. And Wade wouldn’t be happy about that dent, either.

“I mean it,” she finished from the end of the driveway. And that was as far as she’d gotten when the door—her own door, the one into her house—slammed behind her with a loud bang.

And then the porch light went out.

For an instant, she just stood there with her mouth hanging open. Son of a—

The next thing she thought was that she should go next door, or down the street, to any house that she knew definitely had people in it, and pound on the door. Ask them to call Bob, stay there in their house and wait for him—

Anything but go back into her own house, alone, and confront an unknown intruder. But the upstairs window of Wade’s workshop, full of wood and volatile wood-finishing liquids, not to mention boxes of shotgun shells—

—and a phone, the nearest phone is in it—

That window looked out from a rich cornucopia of burnables, accelerants, and explosives.

And right now orange flames were flickering in it.

THE GUY HAD COME UP TO TIM SAWTELLE ON WATER STREET. Tim had never seen the guy before in his life. Quickly the guy struck up a conversation, saying he’d noticed that he and Tim looked quite a bit alike.

Which was true. Not a lot alike, but there was a general resemblance. Once Tim agreed that this was so, the guy made him an offer: five hundred bucks if Tim would turn himself in to the cops, using the ID the guy gave him.

The name on the ID was Steven Garner Jr. The photo on it looked like Tim, too; even a little more so, maybe, just on account of it being a lousy photo. The guy said all he needed was for Tim to spend a couple of nights in jail; when he got out, which the guy swore a few nights was all it would be since after all he wasn’t really Steven Garner, there’d be another five hundred for him.

And to Tim Sawtelle, who (as even he would admit) was not the sharpest pin in the cushion, a thousand dollars was a whole lot of money. So now he sat in the darkness of the backseat of the aging squad car as the deputy Eastport cop drove very fast down Route 1 toward the next town south, which was Machias.

The county jail was there, and the courthouse, too. In the morning, Tim would be arraigned on a charge of trespassing, that being what they’d wanted Steven Garner for, as it turned out.

Not much of a crime, especially on a holiday weekend in Eastport. But the cop he talked to had been very interested, for reasons Tim didn’t understand.

And to tell the truth he didn’t much care about them. He’d come from Bangor to join the fun, not realizing the weather would put a damper on everything and not having anything else to occupy him: no job, no girlfriend.

He’d figured he might as well just see what was up in the easternmost city, as people around here called it. And boy, had he ever.

In the squad car the plastic perp window between him and the cop was closed, probably because the cop didn’t want to have any conversation, which was fine with Tim. The way the cop drove on the rough, curving road with its bumpy, potholed surface little more than a track where no trees grew, threw him from side to side so hard that if he tried talking, he’d probably just bite his tongue anyway.

At least the cop hadn’t cuffed him behind his back. No reason to—Tim had walked into the police station of his own accord, to surrender. That he’d done it with a false ID was something the cop hadn’t figured out yet, and Tim was starting to think he might be in some trouble over that.

But whatever. He was no angel, he’d been in jail before. There wasn’t much in one that could scare him.

He was tougher than he looked. And it was five hundred in cash, nice new bills. At the jail, he would be obligated to hand the money over, but he’d get it back.

He settled into the cop car’s fraying bench seat. Outside, the night rushed by, dark and foggy and smelling of evergreens and sea salt where it came in the front driver’s-side window. Tim shivered a little in his denim jacket, wishing he had worn more.

Probably he would have to give that up, too, and put on the cotton jail scrubs. Ones with short sleeves, and the blankets in jail were always as thin as a bail bondsman’s smile.

This being the holiday, it could take a couple of days for them to run his prints and cross-check the identity on the Social Security card he’d showed them in the police station.

When they did, they’d find out he wasn’t Steven Garner, and the charade would be over.

He didn’t know what he’d be charged with then; some kind of fraud, maybe. The stranger hadn’t explained that part, only that Tim wouldn’t have done any damage or violence.

So he wouldn’t be in that much trouble. A lot of rigmarole, probably, jail food and stern-faced judges at the hearings and a court-appointed defender, if it all even went that far.

He might have to pretend he was nuts, or maybe he’d just say he’d been drunk. But hey, easy money, Tim thought as the squad car turned in at a red-brick building whose dimly lit sign read WASHINGTON COUNTY JAIL.

The car slowed, came to a stop at a door marked INTAKE. Getting out, the cop pressed a buzzer on the door.

Easy money.

INSIDE THE HOUSE, WITH THE FIRE CRACKLING UPSTAIRS IN Wade’s shop, the first thing Jake heard was both dogs pacing back and forth anxiously on the other side of the closed door between the workshop and the rest of the house.

The door that had been open a few minutes earlier … but the animals were safe for the moment, anyway, she realized in relief. And right upstairs in the shop hung a fire extinguisher, a brand-new, fully loaded one; she’d put it there herself.

Those two facts were the upside of the situation. But (1) when she tried it, the door with the dogs on the other side of it wouldn’t open, so she couldn’t get into that part of the house, and (2) the house itself was on fire, for Pete’s sake.

Or a significant portion of it was. Stumbling up the stairs through the acrid smoke that was thickening fast, she grabbed for the fire extinguisher. Maybe she could still—

Gone. Where the extinguisher had hung on the wall halfway up the stairwell, now just an empty hook mocked her through the smoke while a few feet away, bright fire crackled.

Smother the flames with something, she thought desperately. A mental picture of a pile of horse blankets, salvaged by Wade from the selling-off of a nearby tack shop’s old inventory, rose in her mind. They were in the far corner below the shotgun-shell-reloading station.…

Coughing and wiping tears from her eyes, she reached the top of the stairs, peered through a dense smoke curtain. Except for the fire itself, the shop was pitch dark. Her frantic fumbles at the light switch were ineffective.

And why is that? her mind screamed frantically at her, but she had no time for the question now.

Flashlight, I should’ve brought a …

The dogs were still on the other side of that jammed door—whimpering now, their pacing heightened to scratching at the doorframe. Was the intruder there, too, somehow not getting bitten?

But that wouldn’t have been so difficult. The intruder might’ve fed the animals; even Prill was a sucker for snacks, and Monday’s friendship could be had for the price of a biscuit.

Meanwhile, with each moment that passed, the fire caught more furiously, first nibbling, then loudly munching whatever debris it had gotten started in: a small pile of something, apparently, because the flames weren’t spreading yet. So if she could find the blankets by feel, spread them atop that rising glow …

An arm came out of the choking smoke, caught her around the waist suddenly, and flung her to the floor, hard. A bright light came straight into her eyes, blinding her, then shifted so she could see.…

“Hello, Jacobia.” That voice …

It was him, she knew. But the face was wrong … a shudder of horror went through her at the sight, the features all elongated and flattened. She started up, but he put a foot on her chest and shoved.

It was a woman’s nylon stocking pulled over his head, the old-fashioned kind; that, or he’d cut the leg out of a pair of pantyhose. Eyes like holes, and the mouth …

“I could kill you now.” The voice was hollow, as if shouted from the bottom of a deep hole.

“Or I could just tie you up and leave you here. To burn,” he added with lip-smackingly ghastly enjoyment. “Burn to a crisp.”

She tried to roll sideways; he leaned down, touching a cool something to her throat.

Knife, she realized with a fresh burst of fright. It moved against her skin.

“That’s right,” he whispered as flames crackled higher and brighter.

“So many options. And I’ll admit it, I’ve wanted to kill you for so long, it feels strange not to do it.”

He chuckled hideously. “Now that I’ve got the chance.”

In the kitchen, Prill howled pitifully; it was Monday whose bark now sounded fierce, a deep, warning utterance Jake had heard only a few times before from the animal. It was the sound of a dog pushed past its limits in the civilized-behavior department, and Jake would have done a lot to see Monday charging up the shop stairs now.

Maybe she was old, but the black Lab still had a few good teeth in her head, and now she sounded as if she wanted to get some use out of them. Her assailant heard, too.

“Superglue,” he confided cryptically with a repulsive smile as he straightened, holding the very same flashlight that she’d neglected to grab off the hall shelf as she’d gone out.

The stocking over his face turned his every expression into a fright mask. “A little dab’ll do ya,” he sang quaveringly.

Not that his appearance had been any great shakes without a sock over it … Another hard shiver went through her as she recalled first seeing him only a day ago: smirkingly pleased by his own creepiness.

As he was now. But the knife, at least, was no longer at her throat. “If you want a door to stay shut,” he went on in a whisper, “super-glue it.”

“Great tip,” she managed. His foot was on her throat now. “What the freak do you want, Garner?”

Only she didn’t say “freak.” He grinned but didn’t reply.

With his foot still firmly planted on her, he glanced back at the fire, now about the size of a blaze in a small fireplace. It still wasn’t spreading, because he’d piled the flammables in a metal dishpan Wade used sometimes for soaking wood strips to make them pliable.

But sooner or later it would spread, and then it would get to the shelf where Wade stored wood stains, lacquers, and varnishes for restoring old gun stocks on the antique weapons he repaired.

Above that, their shapes clearly outlined in the orange-and-yellow glow from the fire, were more of the liquids he used in gun work: paint thinner and acetone, mason jars half full of the amber fluids, a whole collection of ruined paintbrushes soaking with their bristles aimed down.

Because as he said, the old natural-bristle brushes were better than anything he could buy new. He just had to recondition them. But now …

A furious sob stuck in Jake’s throat: Wade would likely never see anything in here again. Including me …

Mechanized shrieks from somewhere nearby stabbed her ears; they’d been going on for a long time, she realized distantly, only she hadn’t noticed.

A knife at your throat will do that to you.… It was the smoke alarm, piercingly loud, audible not just here in the shop but out in the street, too.…

And that pulsing white light at the shop window wasn’t the fire. It was the fire alarm’s LED lamp, and something else.

Something outside. Headlights, turning into the driveway …

He saw it, too, and under the stocking his awful grin changed abruptly to something much worse: ugly, deeply malicious, and not the least bit sane.

“Bitch,” he grated at her. His face was distorted with rage. But at the same time he looked confused, and distracted just enough so that she might …

She kicked at him, felt her foot connect. Crumpling with a groan, he hurled the fire extinguisher at her, then staggered and half fell down the stairs, stumbling at the bottom.

On the other side of the door, both dogs went wild; a little longer and Prill might chew right through it. Groaning, he made it to his feet, as pounding began on the door leading outside.

Through the stocking she glimpsed fright on his face as he realized he might be trapped. But then he saw the laundry room door, and through it the window.

“Jake!” It was Bob Arnold outside.

“Bob, he’s—” But her attacker had already hurled himself at the old window glass; it shattered outwards as he went through it. By the time she reached the shop door and flung it open, his footsteps were thudding away on the other side of the house.

“Bob,” she gasped, unable to get her breath suddenly.

He seized her shoulder with one hand, peering anxiously into her face. The alarm still howled rhythmically upstairs.

“Are you all right?” he demanded, already thumbing his radio with his other hand. She shook him off, pointed.

“That way … I think it was—”

The fire upstairs crackled. Her legs suddenly buckled out from under her as he summoned help.

He dragged her out, away from the house. Already in the distance, sirens began howling. “Bob …”

He ran for his car, which he’d left running, and reversed out of the driveway in a spray of gravel.

Garner, she thought. But he was supposed to be …

Clambering up, she staggered inside. The dogs hurled their bodies against the still-closed door leading to the kitchen.

But on this side of the door stood a bucket full of water tinctured generously with lemon juice. Bella kept it there for mops that needed emergency sweetening; she hated a sour mop.

Seizing the bucket, Jake ran upstairs. The fire still burned merrily, happy for the moment with its meal of swept-up sawdust, wood shavings, and the bigger sticks and chunks of old scrap wood now beginning to burn in earnest.

But the smoke had found its way to the open screen window a few feet away. So she could breathe now.…

Resisting the temptation to toss the water onto the blaze, Jake forced herself to approach it calmly. Careful, careful … Tipping the heavy bucket, she let the water stream onto the fire.

Hot sizzles of steam erupted, startling her. Too much water and the sparks would fly. Careful …

She tipped it more, flooding the remaining embers. Now a wet, sodden mess covered the floor under the window.

A hissing stink boiled up. She put the bucket down, scanned around in the harsh glow of the fire alarm’s battery-powered LED.

No flicker of flame showed from anywhere, and no smoke wisps rose. The air was thick with haze, but it was mostly steam from the water on the burning wood scraps. Through the window came the howl of a fire truck’s siren approaching.

Gazing around once more, she cursed loudly and creatively at the smoke-smelling disarray that just minutes ago had been Wade’s workshop. Then she grabbed a crowbar from the hook where he kept it, went back downstairs—cursing some more at the broken window in the laundry room—and applied the crowbar to the glued-shut door to the kitchen.

The dogs leapt gratefully at her as sirens screamed out front, red whirling beacons strobing the night. Hastily she shoved both dogs into the back parlor and shut the door on them.

Then, imagining with dismay the dirty boot marks, smudgy handprints, and the many other grimy evidences that Bella would no doubt find to exclaim over when she got home, she went to let a crew of excited firemen into the house.

HUSTLING AS FAST AS HE COULD THROUGH THE DARK STREETS of Eastport, Steven Garner could barely keep from laughing out loud even through his pain. It had all worked so well.…

He hadn’t known she’d be alone, of course, until nearly the last minute. But when he’d watched her husband leave the house with his duffel over his shoulder, then followed him downtown to the dock and waited while he got onto a tugboat, Steven had realized: he was even more home free than he’d expected.

It just went to show that luck really did favor the prepared mind. He hadn’t known how, exactly, he would terrify her, let her know that he could get at her anytime he wanted.…

But he’d known he would, and now simply by taking advantage of the opportunities that had presented themselves, he’d made her understand that he was in charge.

Congratulating himself, he sidled into the dark, overgrown yard of the abandoned house on Washington Street. Pulling the stocking off his head, he wiped at the cold sweat in his hair, the chill fog cooling him after the heat of his exertions.

Probably at the jail the poor sap he’d paid to say he was Steven Garner—complete with a halfway decent resemblance and all the required ID to make such a claim believable—was having a bad night.

But it was what he’d promised to do in return for the money, so he could hardly complain. Of course, there might be a little more to it than he’d expected.…

Half on agreement, half later … Steven felt a smile curl his lips as he patted the other five hundred still in his pocket. Fat chance the guy would ever collect it; by the time he got free and came looking for it, Steven would be long gone.

He shoved his way past the broken door into the old house. Inside, the air smelled of mice and damp.

He pushed the door shut and leaned against it. The sirens in the distance had stopped, but the quiet out there was deceptive; by now they knew he wasn’t in custody, that he was still at large and pursuing his plans.…

That’s me, he thought, unable to supress a chuckle at the memory of how he’d escaped the plump cop simply by doubling back and waiting until the cop had gone. At large and in charge.

Now that they knew, though, he was going to have to be even more careful. Because first they would search the empty houses again, and all the campgrounds and tenting areas on the island, in case he was in any of them.

They’d be visiting fields, beaches, and wooded areas, too, just in case. Now that he’d invaded her home and put his hands on her, anywhere he might be hiding would get a thorough inspection.

But he had anticipated this stage of the operation long ago when he was planning it, so he was ready.