Midnight

could ring the front doorbell, distract anyone inside, while you went in the back."
    "I don't want to have to worry about you."
    "I can take care of myself."
    "Yeah, I believe you can," he said.
    "Well?"
    "But I work alone."
    "You seem to do everything alone."
    He smiled thinly. "Are we going to get into another arguments about whether life is a tea party or hell on earth?"
    "That wasn't an argument we had. It was a discussion."
    "Well, anyway, I've shifted to undercover assignments for the ve very reason that I can pretty much work alone. I don't want a partner any more, Tessa, because I don't want to see any more of them die."
    She knew he was referring not only to the other agents who had been killed in the line of duty with him but also to his late wife.
    "Stay with the girl," he said. "Take care of her if anything happens. She's like you, after all."
    "What?"
    "She's one of those who knows how to love life. How to deeply love it, no matter what happens. It's a rare and precious talent."
    "You know too," she said.
    "No. I've never known."
    "Dammit, everyone is born with a love of life. You still have it, Sam. You've just lost touch with it, but you can find it again."
    "Take care of her," he said, turning away and descending the porch steps into the rain.
    "You better come back, damn you. You promised to tell me what you saw at the other end of that tunnel, on the Other Side. You just better come back."
    Sam departed through silver rain and thin patches of gray fog.
    As she watched him go, Tessa realized that even if he never told her about the Other Side, she wanted him to come back for many other reasons both complex and surprising.

24
    The Coltrane house was two doors south of the Talbot place, on Conquistador. Two stories. Weathered cedar siding. A covered patio instead of a rear porch.
    Moving quickly along the back of the house, where rain drizzled off the patio cover with a sound exactly like crackling fire, Sam peered through sliding glass doors into a gloomy family room and then through French windows into an unlighted kitchen. When he reached the kitchen door, he withdrew his revolver from the holster under his leather jacket and held it down at his side, against his thigh.
    He could have walked around front and rung the bell, which Might have seemed less suspicious to the people inside. But that would mean going out to the street, where he was more likely to be seen not only by neighbors but by the men Chrissie said were patrolling the town.
    He knocked on the door, four quick raps. When no one responded, he knocked again, louder, and then a third time, louder still. If anyone was home, the knock would have been answered.
    Harley and Sue Coltrane must be at New Wave, where they worked.
    The door was locked. He hoped it had no dead bolt.
    Though he had left his other tools at Harry's, he had brought a thin, flexible metal loid. Television dramas had popularized the notion that any credit card made a convenient and unincriminating loid, but those plastic rectangles too often got wedged in the crack or snapped before the latch bolt was slipped. He preferred time-proven tools. He worked the loid between door and frame, below the lock, and slid it up, applying pressure when he met resistance. The lock popped. He tried the door and there was no dead bolt; it opened with a soft creak.
    He stepped inside and quietly closed the door, making sure that the lock did not engage. If he had to get out fast, he did not want to fumble with a latch.
    The kitchen was illuminated only by the dismal light of the rain-darkened day that barely penetrated the windows. Evidently the vinyl flooring, wall-covering, and tile were of the palest hues for in that dimness everything seemed to be one shade of green or another.
    He stood for almost a minute, listening intently.
    A kitchen clock ticked.
    Rain drummed on the patio cover.
    His soaked hair was pasted to his forehead. He pushed it aside, out of his eyes.
    When he moved, his wet shoes squished.
    He went directly to the phone, which was mounted on the wall above a corner secretary. When he picked it up, he got no dial tone, but the line was not dead, either. It was filled with strange sounds clicking, low beeping, soft oscillations—all of which blended into mournful and alien music, an electro threnody.
    The back of Sam's neck went cold.
    Carefully, silently, he returned the handset to its cradle.
    He wondered what sounds could be heard on a telephone that was being used