At eight in the morning, Roger Nielsen stood before a roomful of agents and read from a clipboard. “They’ve been real busy through the night back in Washington,” he said, and seemed neither impressed nor surprised by the effort. Apparently this had become SOP on cases that got big in the media.

“I want to acquaint all of you with the latest on Lawrence Lipton. The most important development is that he doesn’t seem to have any known connections to the KGB or any Russian mobs. He isn’t Russian. Maybe something will turn up later or maybe he’s just that good at hiding his past. In the fifties, his father moved to Texas from Kentucky to seek his fortune on ‘the prairie.’ He apparently found it under the prairie, in West Texas oil fields.”

Nielsen stopped and looked around the meeting room, going from face to face. “There is one interesting recent development,” he went on. “Among its holdings, Lipton’s Micro-Management owns a company called Safe Environs in Dallas. Safe Environs is a private security firm. Lawrence Lipton has recently put himself under armed guard. I wonder why?

“Is he worried about us or is he scared of somebody else? Maybe like the big bad Wolf?”

Chapter 90

Chapter 90

IF IT WASN’T so incredibly terrifying, it would be mind-boggling. Lizzie Connolly was still among the living. She was keeping herself positive by being somewhere else—anywhere but here in the horrid closet. With this complete madman bursting in two, three, sometimes five times a day.

Mostly she got lost in her memories. Once upon a time, and it seemed so long ago, she had called her girls Merry Berry, Bobbie Doll, names like that. They used to sing “High Hopes” all the time, and songs from Mary Poppins.

They had endless positive-energy thoughts—which Lizzie called “happy thoughts”—and always shared them with one another, and with Brendan, of course.

What else could she remember? What? Anything?

They had so many animals over the years that eventually they gave each one a number.

Chester, a black Lab with a curly tail like a chow, was number 16. The Lab would bark constantly, all day and all night, until Lizzie merely showed him a bottle of Tabasco sauce—his kryptonite. Then he would finally shut up.

Dukie, number 15, was a short-haired orange calico who Lizzie believed had probably been an old Jewish lady in another life and who was always complaining, “Oh no, no, no, no.”

Maximus Kiltimus was number 11; Stubbles was number 31; Kitten Little was number 35.

Memories were all that Lizzie Connolly had—because there could be no present for her. None.

She couldn’t be here in this horror house.

She had to be somewhere else, anywhere else.

Had to be!

Had to be!

Had to be!

Because he was inside her now.