I was too scared to think. If I had, I wouldn’t have tried to get inside the house, because the chances were 100 percent this nutcase would follow for tea and a chat. But I scrambled to my knees and grabbed the doorknob. I’m not sure what would have happened next if a dog hadn’t barked on the road in front of the house, a high yapping sound guaranteed to frighten a canary.

Yap or not, the sound startled the intruder. In a neighborhood like this one, dogs are always on leash attached to an owner. And this guy probably didn’t want witnesses. Before I could scream, he turned and fled around the side of the town house and disappeared.

I was so stunned I could only pull myself to my feet and struggle to insert the key. My hand was shaking so badly that getting it in the slot took three tries, but once I succeeded I pushed the door open, looked behind me to be sure the intruder hadn’t returned, and then slipped inside, slamming and locking the door behind me.

Was this maniac going to try to enter another way? He’d been determined to get inside. Against every warning my pounding heart was struggling to send, I went through the great room to make sure he wasn’t trying to break in through the glass doors. The screen door to the outside stood open, but nobody was in sight, and the doors into the house were still locked and undamaged. I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. Then I collapsed to the sofa, where I could continue to watch the back of the house.

“There was a pickup parked a couple of houses down the street.” The deputy and I had decided to hold our rendezvous by the front door. I pointed to the left, and my surly protector, somewhere in his thirties and not quite bald enough to shave his head, duly noted what I’d said in his spiral notebook.

He glanced up. “No truck was there when I arrived.”

“If it belonged to him, he’d have left in a hurry.”

“It could have been anybody.”

I tried to remember details, but I hadn’t registered many. “I think it could have been a workman’s truck.” I thought harder. “I guess I just assumed. You could ask the woman walking her dog. She lives somewhere around here.”

“Color? Make? Identifying features?”

He wasn’t asking about the dog. I tried to picture the pickup. What had I seen? Why hadn’t I seen more? I’m a journalist, and now that observations mattered personally, I only had a few. “Dark, maybe blue or even black. You know, I think there was lettering on the door. Maybe that’s why I assumed a workman was doing something on the house where it was parked.”

“What did the letters say?”

“Sorry, if I’d known what was about to happen, I would have taken notes and photos.”

“Anything else about the man?”

I’d already given him all the details I remembered, a guess about his height and weight, his jeans, and the dark hoodie that had been drawn so tightly around his face I hadn’t seen his hair. I thought I remembered a long nose and the beginning of a beard or stylish stubble, but that was all I could dredge up. Even the intruder’s race was a mystery. His skin was light brown, but this was Florida. He was either tanned or he’d been born that particular hue. I couldn’t guess which.