Hideaway

me?”
    “I didn't want to worry you,” he said, knowing how feeble it sounded.
    “We've never hidden anything from each other before. We've always shared everything. Everything.”
    “I'm sorry, Lindsey. I just… it's just that… these last couple months … the nightmares of rotting bodies, violence, fire,… and the last few days, all this weirdness. …”
    “From now on,” she said, “there'll be no secrets.”
    “I only wanted to spare you—”
    “No secrets,” she insisted.
    “Okay. No secrets.”
    “And you're not responsible for what happened to Cooper. Even if there is some kind of link between you and this killer, and even if that's why Cooper became a target, it's not your fault. You didn't know that being angry at Cooper was equivalent to a death sentence. You couldn't have done anything to prevent it.”
    Hatch looked at the heat-seared magazine in her hands, and a shudder of dread passed through him. “But it'll be my fault if I don't try to save Honell.”
    Frowning, she said, “What do you mean?” , “If my anger somehow focused this guy on Cooper, why wouldn't it also focus him on Honell?”
     
    ----
     
    Honell woke to a world of pain. The difference was, this time he was on the receiving end of it—and it was physical rather than emotional pain. His crotch ached from the kick he'd taken. A blow to his throat had left his esophagus feeling like broken glass. His headache was excruciating. His wrists and ankles burned, and at first he could not understand why; then he realized he was tied to the four posts of something, probably his bed, and the ropes were chafing his skin.
    He could not see much, partly because his vision was blurred by tears but also because his contact lenses had been knocked out in the attack. He knew he had been assaulted, but for a moment he could not recall the identity of his assailant.
    Then the young man's face loomed over him, blurred at first like the surface of the moon through an unadjusted telescope. The boy bent closer, closer, and his face came into focus, handsome and pale, framed by thick black hair. He was not smiling in the tradition of movie psychotics, as Honell expected he would be. He was not scowling, either, or even frowning. He was expressionless—except, perhaps, for a subtle hint of that solemn professional curiosity with which an entomologist might study some new mutant variation of a familiar species of insect.
    “I'm sorry for this discourteous treatment, sir, after you were kind enough to welcome me into your home. But I'm rather in a hurry and couldn't take the time to discover what I need to know through ordinary conversation.”
    “Whatever you want,” Honell said placatingly. He was shocked to hear how drastically his mellifluous voice, always a reliable tool for seduction and expressive instrument of scorn, had changed. It was raspy, marked by a wet gurgle, thoroughly disgusting.
    “I would like to know who Lindsey Sparling is,” the young man said dispassionately, “and where I can find her.”
     
    ----
     
    Hatch was surprised to find Honell's number in the telephone book. Of course, the author's name was not as familiar to the average citizen as it had been during his brief glory years, when he had published Miss Culvert and Mrs. Towers. Honell didn't need to be worried about privacy these days; evidently the public gave him more of it than he desired.
    While Hatch called the number, Lindsey paced the length of the bedroom and back. She had made her position clear: she didn't think Honell would interpret Hatch's warning as anything other than a cheap threat.
    Hatch agreed with her. But he had to try.
    He was spared the humiliation and frustration of listening to Honell's reaction, however, because no one answered the phone out there in the far canyons of the desert night. He let it ring twenty times.
    He was about to hang up, when a series of images snapped through his mind with a sound like short-circuiting electrical wires: a disarranged bed quilt; a bleeding, rope-encircled wrist; a pair of frightened, bloodshot, myopic eyes … and in the eyes, the twin reflections of a dark face looming close, distinguished only by a pair of sunglasses.
    Hatch slammed down the phone and backed away from it as if the receiver had turned into a rattlesnake in his hand. “It's happening now.”
     
    ----
     
    The ringing phone fell silent.
    Vassago stared at it, but the ringing did not resume. He returned his attention to the