Strange Highways

you these past couple years, but maybe you can take some heart in the fact that, for certain people who don't have your strength, life can be harder."
     At ten minutes past eleven that night, two thirds of the way across the yard from the barn to the ruined house, they scraped off another couple of feet from the top of the tunnel and found the three dead rats. They put the bodies side by side on the barn floor, next to the other five that had been shot.
     Ben Parnell came to the truck. "I thought maybe you'd want to see them - that we've got all eight of them, I mean."
     "I would," she said. "Yes. I'll feel safer."
     Meg and Tommy got out of the truck.
     "Yeah," the boy said, "I want to see them. They thought they trapped us, but it was the other way around." He looked at Meg. "As long as we've got each other, we can get out of any scrape, huh?"
     "Bet on it," she said.
     Parnell scooped up the weary boy in his arms to carry him to the barn.
     As the raw wind nipped at Meg, she jammed her hands into her, coat pockets. She was relieved. At least for the moment, not all of the burden was hers.
     Looking over his shoulder, Tommy said, "You and me, Mom."
     "Bet on it," she repeated. And she smiled. She felt as if the door, to a cage, of which she'd been only dimly aware, had opened now, giving them access to a new freedom.

BRUNO

    1

I WAS SLEEPING OFF HALF A BOTTLE OF GOOD SCOTCH AND A BLONDE named Sylvia, who hadn't been so bad herself. But no one can sneak up on me, no matter how bushed I am. You have to be a light sleeper to last long in this business. I heard the thump near the foot of my bed, and I was reaching under the pillow for my Colt .38 in the next instant.
     If I hadn't been out celebrating the successful conclusion of a case, the blinds and drapes wouldn't have been drawn. But I had been, and they were, so I didn't see anything.
     I thought I heard footsteps in the hallway to the living room, but I couldn't be sure. I slid out of bed, stared intently around the room. Brown gloom, no intruder. I padded into the hall, looked both ways. No one.
     In the front room, I distinctly heard the rod of the police-special lock pull out of its floor groove. The door opened, closed, and footsteps pounded in the outside hall, then down the apartment-house steps.
     I ran into the living room and almost into the corridor before I remembered I was in my skivvies. It's not a building where anyone would care - or maybe even notice - a guy in his briefs, but I like to think I have higher standards than some of the weird creeps I call neighbors.
     Turning on the lights, I saw that the police lock had been disengaged. I slid the bolt back in place.
     I carefully searched the apartment from the john to the linen closet. There weren't any bombs or other dirty work, at least as far as I could see. I checked the bedroom twice, since that was where I first heard him, but it was clean.
     I brewed some coffee. The first sip was so bad that I poured half the mug in the sink, wondering if the old plumbing could take it, and then laced what was left with some good brandy. Better. My kind of breakfast.
     So there I stood in my shorts on the cold kitchen floor, warming my gut with liquor and wondering who had broken in and why.
     Then I had a bad thought. When the intruder left, he'd pulled the rod of the special lock out of its nest in the floor. Which meant he'd entered the apartment through a window or that, when he'd first come through the door, he had replaced the police rod. The last idea was stupid. No dude is going to make it hard for himself to get out if the job goes sour.
     I went around checking all the windows. They were locked as always. I even checked the bathroom window, though it has no lock, is barred, and is set in a blank wall eight floors above the street. No one had come in any of the windows.
     I slapped my head a few times, as if I might knock some smarts into myself and figure this out. No smarter, I decided to take a shower and get on with the day.
     It must have been hallucinations. I'd never had what the two-hundred-dollar-an-hour shrinks call postcoital depression. Maybe this was what it was supposed to be like. After all, no one walks into your apartment after achieving the near impossible of silently throwing a police lock, then sneaks