Relentless

firearms. But I had a covenant with Death to spare others as once I had been spared.
    I assumed Shearman Waxx possessed a gun—as well as a butcher knife, a switchblade, an axe, a chain saw, a power drill with an assortment of bits, and a wood chipper.
    Within reach, I had a couple of pillows and a bedside lamp.
    As far as I could tell, Penny still slept. I saw no value in waking her at once.
    Until Waxx switched on his light and revealed his position, he and I were equally blind. Because I knew the bedroom so much better than he did, the darkness counted slightly to my advantage.
    He had heard me sit up in bed and gasp for breath when I broke out of my dream. But the noises I’d made might as likely have beenthose of a man thrashing at the sheets and turning over in his troubled sleep.
    The first
doom
seemed to me to have been spoken in the lightless aisles of the dream library, and Waxx could not be sure that I heard him say it the second time.
    Letting out a soft groan, then murmuring wordlessly, I pretended to be negotiating a nightmare. Using this anxious muttering as cover, I eased off the bed and, falling silent, crouched beside it.
    Breathing through my open mouth, I made no slightest sound. If I decided to move, I felt confident that my pajamas were too soft to betray me with a rustle.
    Although silent to the intruder’s ears, I was not quiet to my own. My heart knocked like a savage fist upon all the doors of my defenses, chasing out my expectations of civilization and letting in the fear of anarchy and barbaric violence.
    If Waxx made subtle sounds, I was not certain that I could hear them above this inner drumming. The rhythmic pressure waves of hard-pumped blood raised surf sounds in the nautilus turns of my inner ears.
    The longer Waxx waited to speak again, the more I wondered what his game might be. I had no doubt that he had come here to harm us. That he wanted first to terrorize us seemed obvious, as well. But his boldness, the risks he took, and his eerie patience in the dark gave me the impression that his purpose was more complex than the psychotic thrill of torment and murder.
    Before he spoke again, and especially before he switched on a flashlight, I needed to put some distance between myself and the bed. He would expect to find me there, and when he did not, when his light revealed his position but not mine, I might be able to catch him off guard, rushing at him from the side or from behind as he initially regarded the tangle of abandoned sheets.
    Crouched and barefoot, in a slow-motion shamble that required tension in every muscle and that tested balance, I ape-walked toward where I expected to find an armchair. It ought to be just to the right of that point on the wall where the alarm-system keypad should have been softly glowing.
    Shoulders slumped, arms low, I let my fingertips slide lightly, soundlessly across the carpet. If a knee buckled or a muscle cramped, I could steady myself with my hands.
    I feared making a sound less than I dreaded colliding with Waxx in the blackness. My strategy would then be worthless, though I would still surprise him and might be able to overpower him before he shot or stabbed me.
    I am five feet eleven and in acceptable physical condition. But I did not delude myself that his formidable bulk would prove to be flab. He would be difficult to take down.
    In retrospect, I realize that in my desperation, I thought I could plot the scene as if I were writing fiction. Suspense novels are not my genre. Fate had dropped me into a real-life tale of peril, however, and because I lacked tough-guy experience, I had fallen back on imagination and craftsmanship to sculpt this narrative toward a twist that would not leave me dead in an early chapter.
    Blinded, I nevertheless found the armchair where I expected it would be, which gave me hope that I remained the protagonist and had not become a supporting character destined for a bloody end in Part 1.
    Elsewhere in the room, his position impossible to fix from a single word, the critic said quietly, “Hack.”
    He might be describing what he intended to do to me with an axe or cleaver, but I suspected that instead the word was intended as an insult, a judgment of my writing skills.
    Separating the first armchair from another was an art-deco sideboard. The highly lacquered amboina wood felt cool against my fingertips as I aped onward.
    Our sleigh bed stood against the east wall of the room. Logic suggested that Waxx had