As he hurried around the side of the house, at least twenty shrieking crows cascaded from the roof as though the building had expelled them. They swooped low over David and arced off toward the Monterey pines, like a scrolling line of ciphers in a coded message.

Proceeding along the driveway, David glanced back a few times, but he never saw a face or figure at any of the windows.

In his SUV once more, he sat thinking about what he’d found in the Rock Point house. As ordinary as most of the rooms had been at the time he explored them, in retrospect the place seemed almost as weird as Richard Mathers had portrayed it. The silence had been uncanny, surely the result of something more than mere construction techniques. The condition of the garage, the lightless basement, the subtle electronic hum rising from below, along with the slow bass throbbing like the heart of some leviathan—all that now creped the skin on the nape of his neck.

His mind’s eye kept returning to the collection of photographs in Maddison’s bedroom, which seemed to suggest that she must be obsessed with him. God knows, he was obsessed with her, and any man might be flattered to find himself the object of such a woman’s adulation. But over the years, David had endured the obsession of two disturbed fans of his books, one young man and a young woman, and in each case serious security issues had required the hiring of private investigators and bodyguards for the duration of the threat. In spite of Maddison’s fantasy of being an assassin, David found it impossible to fear her, for she was the very image of the lost woman whom he had loved so long and passionately. On the other hand, the existence of that collection of photographs seemed proof enough that she’d schemed to meet him last Wednesday evening in the restaurant.

He started the engine, put the car in gear, and pulled out onto the highway, heading south toward home.

Never before had he been so emotionally conflicted. He didn’t know what to do next. As he brooded without profit on what course he ought to take, he finally decided he had no choice but to follow Maddison’s lead. She was the author of this play. Sooner than later, she’d say something or do something that would give him direction and lead him closer to the cloistered heart of the mystery.

| 44 |

He had outrun the leading edge of the southbound clouds, and the beetling vehicles on the freeways cast racing shadows stranger than themselves as sunlight slanted through the afternoon, the rays seeming to distort as much as illuminate.

David’s hands-free phone rang as he crossed into Los Angeles, and he activated it with a voice command.

Calista Carlino said, “Sweetheart, I hope I’m not interrupting anything. If I’m interrupting something, call me back whenever.”