Hideaway

the side window. People in passing cars would not be able to see the gag in her mouth. She appeared to be sleeping. Indeed she was so pale and still, he suddenly wondered if she was dead. No point in taking her to his hideaway if she was already dead. Might as well open the door and push her out, dump the little bitch right there. He put his hand against her cheek. Her skin was wonderfully smooth but seemed cool. Pressing his fingertips to her throat, he detected her heartbeat in a carotid artery, thumping strongly, so strongly. She was so alive, even more vital than she had seemed in the vision with the butterfly flitting around her head. He had never before made an acquisition of such value, and he was grateful to all the powers of Hell for giving her to him. He thrilled at the prospect of reaching deep within and clasping that strong young heart as it twitched and thudded into final stillness, all the while staring into her beautiful gray eyes to watch life pass out of her and death enter—
    Hatch's cry of rage, anguish, and terror broke the psychic connection. He was in his backyard again, holding his right hand up in front of his face, staring at it in horror, as if Regina's blood already stained his trembling fingers.
    He turned away from the back fence, and sprinted along the east side of the house, toward the front.
    But for his own hard breathing, all was quiet. Evidently some of the neighbors weren't home. Others hadn't heard anything, or at least not enough to bring them outside.
    The serenity of the community made him want to scream with frustration. Even as his own world was falling apart, however, he realized the appearance of normality was exactly that—merely an appearance, not a reality. God knew what might be happening behind the walls of some of those houses, horrors equal to the one that had overcome him and Lindsey and Regina, perpetrated not by an intruder but by one member of a family upon another. The human species possessed a knack for creating monsters, and the beasts themselves often had a talent for hiding away behind convincing masks of sanity.
    When Hatch reached the front lawn, Lindsey was nowhere to be seen. He hurried to the walkway, through the open door—and discovered her in the den, where she was standing beside the desk, making a phone call.
    “You find her?” she asked.
    “No. What're you doing?”
    “Calling the police.”
    Taking the receiver out of her hand, dropping it onto the phone, he said, “By the time they get here, listen to our story, and start to do something, he'll be gone, he'll have Regina so far away they'll never find her—until they stumble across her body someday.”
    “But we need help—”
    Snatching the shotgun off the desk and pushing it into her hands, he said, “We're going to follow the bastard. He's got her in a car. A Honda, I think.”
    “You have a license number?”
    “No.”
    “Did you see if—”
    “I didn't actually see anything,” he said, jerking open the desk drawer, plucking out the box of 12-gauge ammunition, handing that to her as well, desperately aware of the seconds ticking away. “I'm connecting with him, it flickers in and out, but I think the link is good enough, strong enough.” He pulled his ring of keys from the desk lock, in which he had left them dangling when he had taken the magazine from the drawer. “We can stay on his ass if we don't let him get too far ahead of us.” Hurrying into the foyer, he said, “But we have to move.”
    “Hatch, wait!”
    He stopped and swiveled to face her as she followed him out of the den.
    She said, “You go, follow them if you think you can, and I'll stay here to talk to the cops, get them started—”
    Shaking his head, he said, “No. I need you to drive. These … these visions are like being punched, I sort of black out, I'm disoriented while it's happening. There's no way I won't run the car right off the damn road. Put the shotgun and the shells in the Mitsubishi.” Climbing the stairs two at a time, he shouted back to her: “And get flashlights.”
    “Why?”
    “I don't know, but we'll need them.”
    He was lying. He had been somewhat surprised to hear himself ask for flashlights, but he knew his subconscious was driving him at the moment, and he had a hunch why flashlights were going to be essential. In his nightmares over the past couple of months, he had often moved through cavernous rooms and a maze of concrete corridors that were somehow revealed in