Eclipse Bay

cottage later that evening after sharing dinner with the McCallister family. The meal, with all its noise and chaos, had done wonders to improve her mood, she realized.
    Maybe she could finally do some clearheaded thinking tonight. She needed to put things in perspective. Not that it was easy to gain any sort of real perspective on Rafe Madison. But the good news was that she was no longer feeling as unsettled as she had for the better part of the day. She was a Harte. As Pamela had reminded her, she was supposed to be good at strategic planning and tactics. Hartes did not allow themselves to get tangled up in messy emotions when it came to business. That was a Madison characteristic.
    She had to start concentrating on the business aspects of Dreamscape. She could not allow Rafe to muddy the waters again.
    Something told her that would be easier said than done. Madisons were very good at muddying things, she reflected as she pulled into the driveway in front of the darkened house.
    She switched off the engine, climbed out from behind the wheel, and started toward the front door with a vaguely wistful sensation. She didn’t have a loving husband and a couple of lively kids waiting to greet her, but at least she had Winston.
    Faithful, loyal, lovable Winston.
    She put her key in the lock and waited for the muted sounds of doggy welcome. But there was no muffled scratch of toenails on hardwood, no happy whine.
    The first tingle of unease shot through her. Winston was an alert dog. His hearing was almost preternatural. Surely he had caught the sound of the car in the drive.
    Quickly she unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped into the hall.
    “Winston?”
    There was no response.
    “Winston? Where are you? Here, Winston. Look, I’m sorry about Kitty. I admit that I patted her on the head a couple of times, but that was all, I swear it.”
    Winston did not come trotting around the corner.
    She switched on a light and walked into the kitchen. Most of the water she had left in one of the twin stainless steel bowls on the floor was untouched. The expensive chewing bone had been abandoned under the table.
    Unease turned to concern that was only a little shy of panic. Something was wrong.
    “Winston?”
    She hurried back into the living room and started up the stairs. Perhaps he had gotten himself trapped in a bedroom or a bathroom when a door had accidentally closed. Frantically she tried to think of reasons why an inside door would suddenly swing shut. A draft? But if Winston was locked in an upstairs room, why wasn’t he barking furiously to let her know where he was?
    By the time she reached the top of the stairs, she was running. A single glance down the hall showed her that all of the doors stood wide open.
    She darted from room to room, checking under beds and inside closets. There was no sign of Winston.
    It occurred to her that he must have somehow gotten out of the house on his own and wandered off. It was a very un-Winston-like thing to do, but for all his canine cleverness he was still a dog and dogs were born explorers.
    She went slowly back downstairs and came to a halt once more in the hall, pondering the mystery of how he might have escaped the house. The front door had been locked when she returned. That left the kitchen door and the mudroom door.
    A quick check in the kitchen revealed that that door, too, was still securely locked. With mounting trepidation she walked back out into the hall and turned right. Automatically she switched on lights as she went toward the rear of the house.
    The small mudroom was swathed in darkness. She hit the light switch and glanced quickly around the neat clutter. Rain gear, umbrellas, beach shoes, and a stack of old towels filled most of the space. Two brooms and an aged mop stood in the corner.
    She studied the door. It was closed, but it was unlocked. She could not have forgotten to lock up before she left for Pamela’s earlier in the day, she thought. It simply wasn’t possible. She had lived alone in the city too long to neglect such simple precautions.
    Even if she had left it unlocked, how had Winston gotten it open? He was a brilliant dog, but he had paws, not hands. It was pushing credibility much too far to believe that he had somehow managed to twist the doorknob and open the door. A specially trained dog might have accomplished the feat, but Winston had never been taught to do fancy tricks.
    It was hard to believe that she had left this door not only