Demon Child

than that, we're going to need all the help we can get.”
        “The police?” Cora asked.
        “Very possibly,” Richard said. “But let me check near the house, first.”
        Harold returned with the rain clothes, which Richard quickly put on. He went to the kitchen, with the rest of them following, and out the back door. As he started down the long lawn, the storm broke with much lightning, much thunder, and sheets of rain that nearly obscured him.
        They watched him as he skirted the copse of pines. He poked in the clumps of milkweed and mountain laurel, rhododendron and snake vine. Now and then, they could hear the wind-drowned wail of his voice as he called the girl's name. When he was satisfied that she was not to be found along the periphery, he entered the shadows there and was lost to sight.
        Lightning struck down and illuminated the lawn. The grass was changed from summer green to a dull gray under that intense glare. The pines threw impossibly long shadows that arced halfway up the lawn, advancing in the instant, gone as the lightning died.
        Should she have gone with Richard? Jenny wondered. Should she have insisted? She did not think it was altogether safe for him to go after the child alone. She remembered the telephone conversation, the talk of drugs and killers. Since so much of this ordeal centered around Freya, wasn't it likely that Richard's schemes also revolved around her? If so, would he harm her to achieve his goals, whatever they were?
        Why hadn't she told the police about his odd behavior these last couple of weeks? Why had she waited until now, when Freya needed all the friends she could get, to even consider such a thing?
        Thunder exploded above the house.
        A terrible thought took form in her mind, an idea so evil and unthinkable that it terrified her, galvanized her to the spot so that she could not have taken a step if the roof had been f ailing in on her.
         What if Richard was responsible for Freya's disappearance? What if his nebulous schemes involved harming the child - and she had already suffered that harm?
        He might be out there in a great show of concern, getting drenched and cutting himself on the thorned blackberry bushes that grew among the trees-and all the while, it would be a show he was putting on for their benefit. Later, he would point to how concerned he had been, to how he had been first to plunge into the woods in search of the lost child.
        She wanted to tell the others, but she didn't dare. She felt, now, more in a house of strangers than at any other point in this visit.
        Time passed interminably slowly. Every minute was an hour. She found herself looking at her watch again and again, every three and four minutes, sure that an eternity had passed, hopeful that it was a reasonable time to expect to see Richard and Freya walking back from the woods. But every time she glanced up from the numerals on the face of that watch, there was no one on the lawn, nothing moving out there but the rain.
        They had been at the kitchen windows and door, straining their eyes, for fifteen minutes, when Walter Hobarth entered the kitchen from the front of the house. It was only shortly after eight o'clock.
        “The gentleman I went to see wasn't home,” he explained as they turned to stare at him, still a little dazed from the events of the last two hours. “I had supper at a restaurant since I had said I was going to. That's a miserable storm!”
        “Freya's missing,” Harold said.
        The rest of them just stared. We look like a bunch of zombies, Jenny thought. And she tried to smile and look more human for him.
        “Missing?”
        “I went to tell the children supper was ready,” Harold explained, “and she was gone.”
        “What time was that?”
        “Twenty after six. I remember it perfectly.”
        “You've checked the house, of course.”
        “Right away,” Cora said. Her voice trembled, and her eyes were watery. “We should have moved before this, Walter. We should have gotten out of this house this morning, like you said. If anything happens to her, it's all my fault. All mine!”
        “Nonsense!” Walter snapped. His tone of voice was so unnaturally sharp and loud for him that he stopped her completely. She looked dazed. “That fault lies entirely with me for not having a solid enough understanding of the child. If I had been on