Relentless

concentration with which he chased an idea through the labyrinth of his mind, his eyes bright with the excitement of discovery.
    Not until now had I found his contemplative disjunction from his surroundings to be disturbing. The atmosphere in the bedroom was ominous, and the hairs on the nape of my neck were raised by a power less ordinary than static electricity.
    “Something’s happening,” I pressed. “Something what?”
    He said, “Interesting.”
    On top of the highboy, Lassie wagged her tail. Her reliable canine instinct for menace seemed to detect nothing troubling in the moment.
    I was probably reacting to Shearman Waxx’s assault on us and to the fear of his return, not to Milo.
    “Listen,” I said, “we’re going on a little trip.”
    “Trip,” Milo said.
    “We want to get out of here by seven-thirty.”
    Milo said, “Thirty.”
    “We’ll have something quick for breakfast, cereal and toast, then you’ll shower in the master bath because your mom will be in our bedroom packing, and she wants you to stay close to her.”
    Milo intently studied the screen.
    “Hey, Spooky, did you hear what I said?”
    “Cereal, toast, stay close to Mom.”
    “I’m going to feed Lassie and toilet her. You come to the kitchen.”
    “Cereal, toast, gimme a minute.”
    On top of the highboy, Lassie looked eager but trepidatious.
    “It’s too far for her to jump,” I said.
    “Too far,” Milo agreed, still enraptured by the computer.
    “How do I get her down?”
    “However.”
    From the linen closet across the hall, I fetched a step stool. I stood on it and lifted the dog off the highboy.
    She licked my chin gratefully, and then she jumped from my arms to the floor.
    Downstairs, I needed about a minute to find the measuring cup, open her feed can, scoop up the kibble, and put it in her bowl—and she needed even less time to eat.
    In the backyard, while she attended to both parts of her toilet, I swept the darkness with a flashlight beam, half expecting to find Shearman Waxx lurking behind a tree.
    When the dog was finished, I used the flashlight to locate the poop, double-bag it, and drop it in one of the trash cans beside the garage.
    As always, she watched me complete this task as if I were the most mystifying creature she had ever seen—and quite possibly mad.
    “If you were the
real
Lassie,” I said, “you’d be smart enough to bag your own poop.”
    I washed my hands at the kitchen sink, and as I dried them, Milo arrived. While I made and buttered the toast, he poured two bowls of cereal.
    Although I would have preferred shredded wheat instead of Franken Berry in chocolate milk, I decided to think of this as a bonding experience.
    Until Milo sat to eat, I had not noticed that he had brought his Game Boy.
    “No games at the table,” I reminded him.
    “I’m not playing games, Dad.”
    “What else can you do with a Game Boy?”
    “Something.”
    “Let me see.”
    He turned the device toward me. Equations, like those on his computer, streamed across the small screen.
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “Stuff,” he said, holding the Game Boy in one hand and eating with the other.
    “What is it? What’s it mean?”
    He said, “We’ll see.”
    I suppose if Mozart’s father was an ignoramus about music, the little genius would have found it frustrating to try to discuss his compositions with the old man—but still would have loved him.
    When Milo and Lassie were safely upstairs in the master suite with Penny, I went to my study.
    I almost dropped the pleated shades at all three windows. But dawn had come, and I doubted that Waxx would still be lingering.
    I switched on my computer and checked my e-mail without freezing up the keyboard, without damaging the mouse, and without destroying the Internet. Because I spend so much of my life writing, a computer is one machine with which I’ve grown comfortable.
    As I was responding to an e-mail from my British editor, the phone rang. Line 3. Caller ID told me only UNKNOWN , but I took the call anyway: “This is Cubby.”
    A man whose voice I did not recognize said, “Cullen Greenwich?”
    “Yes, speaking.”
    The caller sounded anxious, harried: “A lot of people think I’m dead, but I’m not.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “So many others are dead. Most days, I wish I were with them.”
    “Who is this?”
    “John Clitherow.”
    I had never met the man or spoken with him on the phone, but I had corresponded with him, exchanging perhaps a dozen