Phantom Prey

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
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    Copyright © 2008 by John Sandford
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Published simultaneously in Canada
    eISBN : 978-0-399-15500-0

    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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1
    Something wrong here, a cold whisper of evil.
    The house was a modernist relic, glass and stone and redwood, sixty years old and gone creaky; not all haunted houses were Victorian. Sometimes at night, when she was alone, she’d feel a sudden coolness, as though somebody, or some thing , had just slipped by. This was different. She couldn’t pin it down, but it was palpable.
    She thought about stepping back into the garage.
    “Who’s there?” she called. She got nothing back but an echo.
    The house was dark , except for desk lamps in the front room and in the study, which were triggered by photocells at dusk. She could hear the furnace running. Nothing else—but the hair on her forearms and the back of her neck stood upright. Some atavistic sense was picking up a threat.
    She looked to her right. The arming light on the security panel was steady, so the security system had been disarmed. That was decisive. The house should be empty, the security system should be armed.
    She stepped back, moving quickly, around the nose of the Jaguar to the Mercedes. She yanked open the driver’s-side door, reached under the front seat to the storage bin, popped the lid, and lifted out the Ladysmith .38.
    Stood listening again, the gun cool in her hand, and heavy. Couldn’t even hear the furnace, now. The Mercedes’s engine pinged, cooling down. The overhead garage lights were still on and she watched the door to the house. Something wrong, but the house felt empty.
    Her nose twitched. She could smell exhaust from the car, but when she’d stepped through the door to the house, there’d been something else. A subtle stink that shouldn’t have been there. Not sweat, not body odor, not perfume, not flatulence, but something organic. Meat?
    She had her purse over her shoulder, her cell phone right there. Call the police? What would she tell them? That something was not right? That something smelled a little funky? They’d think she was crazy.
    She put her purse on the hood of the Jag, held the gun in front of her, like the handgun instructor had shown her. She was an athlete, and a professional athlete at that: swimming, dance, martial arts, weights, Pilates, yoga. The hard stuff: her body control was nearly perfect. She’d shot the eyes out of the gun-instructor’s bad-guy target.
    He’d been mildly impressed, but only mildly. A cop for most of his life, he’d told her that every shooting he’d ever