The driver had no time. There was nothing he could do.

The eighteen-wheeler barreled right into Joan Hart, tossing her twenty feet into the air like a gaffed fish. She was dead before she hit the ground.

The Peterbilt screeched to a halt a hundred yards down the road.

The silence that followed would have been complete but for the low idling of the truck's engines and the single loud shriek of the raven as it circled higher and higher above, until it seemed to melt away into the distance, into the darkening autumnal sky.

Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

Few places in the United States are more beautiful than the lake region of Wisconsin, and of all the lakes there many people think that the most beautiful is Lake Geneva. It is perfectly situated: close enough to Chicago to be a winter sports center for the wealthy inhabitants of that city, and yet not so close so as to suffer from overcrowding on a holiday weekend.

'Lakeside,' the Thorns' winter vacation home on Lake Geneva, was a big, rambling, natural-wood place styled like a hunting lodge but with all the modern conveniences great wealth makes possible, including such futuristic embellishments as a helicopter pad and a closed-circuit television system. Like many wealthy men with young children, Richard Thorn was forced to worry about kidnappers, although the TV equipment had not been installed until the Patty Hearst abduction.

Lakeside also had one of the most sophisticated telephone systems to be found anywhere in the United States on nongovernment property. Although he could, of course, refuse any call he did not wish to take, except those from the President or the Secretary of State, it was necessary that Thorn, like most powerful men, be always available.

The Thorns and some of their friends and business acquaintances—the groups were, in most instances, interchangeable, since, with the diversification of Thorn Industries, there was almost no one with whom Thorn could not do business—had gathered at the lodge on Lake Geneva on this particular weekend for the Thorn boys' thirteenth birthday. The Thorns enjoyed giving parties, especially when they celebrated family birthdays and major holidays.

Although Damien's birthday was actually in June—June sixth, to be exact—ever since he had come to live with his cousin in America, his birthday had been celebrated on the same day as Mark's. Most people assumed this was merely for convenience's sake. Only Richard remembered that his late brother, Robert, in his final madness had attached some strange, arcane significance to that date, and had tried to kill Damien because of it.

***

The night before the party, Mark and Damien sat playing backgammon in the living room. As usual, Damien was ahead, although Mark seemed to be winning this particular game.