She took five deep breaths, letting each one out slowly, and once she believed she was as calm as she was going to get, she slowly raised herself to a standing position and moved to the window. Even though this pane was not as dirty as the others, it was still hard to see through. Katie lightly touched the glass and found much of the dirt was on the outside, so she pulled her right sleeve down below her hand to turn it into a makeshift rag, and made a small, coin-sized clear spot.

She moved her eye right over the opening.

“Whoa,” she thought, hardly believing what she was seeing. But where was Mr. Clifford? She didn’t see him anywhere.

That was when she felt something grab her arm.

“Looking for something?”

Katie turned sharply to her left. She had never known, until that moment, that she could be so frightened that she’d be unable to scream. Her mouth opened and her body shook, but no sound escaped from her lips. She was so frozen by fear she couldn’t even find the strength to try to wrench her arm away from Bruce Clifford’s significant grip.

Mr. Clifford, half his weathered and wrinkled face lit from the dirty light filtering through the garage window, studied her with narrow eyes.

“You’re that girl from across the street,” he said, managing to somehow get the words out while his teeth appeared firmly set together.

Katie nodded, trembling. She thought she was very close to losing bladder control. For an old guy, his grip was vise-like.

“What are you doing here?” the elderly man asked.

Katie struggled to regain the ability to speak. “I—I just—I’m sorry—I—”

“Snooping around. You the one who soaped my windows last Halloween?”

“What? No,” she said.

“Then state your business. What do you want?”

A tear ran down her cheek. “My brother thinks you’re a serial killer,” she blurted.

The old man blinked. “What?”

“He . . . he thinks you’re cutting up bodies in your garage at night.”

Bruce Clifford’s eyes narrowed. This was the moment when Katie was most frightened. A hundred thoughts ran through her head within half a second.

Archie was right. My God, my stupid brother was actually right. And now this man is going to have to kill me, too.

But then Bruce started to laugh.

He released his grip on Katie’s arm and clapped his hands together and laughed some more. “Serial killer,” he said. “I love that.” He shook his head in wonder. “Cutting up bodies. That’s a good one. You know, when I was a kid, I worked in a butcher shop for a while, so I guess I’ve had the necessary training.”