Silent Fall

going now?" Catherine asked, an expectant look in her eyes.
    "We have to find somewhere to stay tonight -- a motel, I guess. We need to figure out their next move," he said as he turned the key in the ignition.
    "Don’t you mean our next move?"
    "I think it’s fairly obvious that they’re in control of this game," he said, hating to admit it.
    "Only it’s not a game." Catherine paused. "We should be dead, Dylan. Why aren’t we?"
    The question had been running around his brain for the last sixty miles. The shooter had played with them, torturing them with anticipation as he decided which window to shoot out next. At any point he could have come in through one of the broken windows and taken them out, but he hadn’t. There was only one reason why.
    "We weren’t supposed to die," Dylan said as he let out the clutch and pulled away from the pumps.
    "Why didn’t anyone come out of their house to investigate the noise? Or call the police?" Catherine asked. "I don’t understand. Didn’t anyone hear the windows breaking? The noise was really loud. The whole house shook."
    "There must have been a silencer on the gun. I never heard a gunshot, just the glass breaking. It might have sounded louder to us because we were inside. The neighbors are also elderly, probably hard of hearing, and who knows if they were even home."
    "I guess," Catherine said doubtfully. "I just can’t believe that we could get shot at in the middle of a residential neighborhood and no one would come to our aid."
    "People don’t like to get involved. As to why we’re not dead, I think the shooter wanted us to know that he could get to us, that he was close by, waiting, watching. It was a show of power, and perhaps also a warning."
    "About what?"
    That was what he didn’t know. If Ravino was behind the attack, what was the purpose of the scare tactics? It wasn’t as if Dylan could stop doing something. He wasn’t continuing to investigate Ravino’s case. Everything he’d come up with, he’d already turned over to the cops. And the trial would continue whether Dylan was dead or alive. Which brought him back to a more personal motive: a desire to see him scared and on the run.
    In some ways he was sorry he’d left the house, but he’d had Catherine to think about, not to mention the fact that he wasn’t egotistical or stupid enough to think he could win against a man with a gun and the advantage of darkness and surprise. He would have to wait for another chance to fight. It would come. This game wasn’t close to being over.
    "I think the shots were meant to keep us guessing," he said aloud. "To knock us off balance, give us something else to think about besides who killed Erica."
    "It worked."
    "Yes, it did." Dylan paused at the light, then turned onto the freeway, heading in the northbound direction.
    It couldn’t hurt to put a few more miles between themselves and the city. He didn’t just have the shooter to worry about, but also the police. Although surely having the windows in his grandmother’s house shot out would work in his favor and would prove that someone was trying to set him up or was at least involved.
    Why hadn’t the person orchestrating the setup realized that? Was it a mistake? Had they finally gotten a break? Or had the plan changed?
    "I wonder how they found us," Catherine mused. "I hate to bring up your father again, but when we left his house, someone was watching us from the window."
    "And we were in my grandmother’s car. If my father saw the car then it wouldn’t take much for him to figure out where I was," Dylan said, finishing her thought. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. As much as he’d prefer to believe it was Ravino or even Blake Howard plotting against him, his father’s name kept cropping back up. Who else would have been able to figure out where they were? "Well, I have to give the old man credit: If this is his work, he’s doing a damn good job. And it would be just like him to want me to suffer before I died."
    "It’s just one theory, Dylan."
    He glanced over at her. "You don’t think it’s him? You just pointed the finger in his direction."
    She shrugged. "I know I did, but it doesn’t feel quite right to me."
    "Then who do you think it is?"
    Catherine thought for a moment. "Someone with a really sick mind. Twisted. Dark. Obsessed."
    "You just described my