Strangers

It makes me… superstitious. All this trouble we're in - it's possible some of us will die. So I don't want you tempting fate. I don't want you saying things like that."
        "Ned, you're about the least superstitious man I know."
        "Yeah, well, I feel different about this. I don't want you saying you're so happy you wouldn't mind dying, nothing like that. Understand? I don't want you even thinking it."
        He slipped his arms around her again, pulling her very tightly against him, needing to feel the throb of life within her. He held her so close that after a while he could no longer detect the strong and regular stroking of her heart, which was only because it had become synchronized with - and lost in - his own beat.
        

        
        In the Salcoe family's Monterey house, Parker Faine was looking primarily for two things, either of which would fulfill his obligation to Dom. First, he hoped to find something to prove they had actually gone to Napa-Sonoma: If he found a brochure for a hotel, he could call and confirm that the Salcoes had checked in safely; or if they went to the wine country regularly, perhaps an address book would contain the telephone number of the place where they stayed. But he half-expected to find the other thing instead: overturned furniture, bloodstains, or other evidence that the Salcoes had been taken against their will.
        Of course, Dom had only asked him to come talk with these people. He would be appalled to know that Parker had gone to these illegal lengths when the Salcoes had been unlocatable. But Parker never did anything by halves, and he was enjoying himself even though his heart had begun to pound and his throat had clutched up a bit.
        Beyond the living room was a library. Beyond that, a small music room contained a piano, music stands, chairs, two clarinet cases, and a ballet exercise bar. Evidently, the twins liked music and dance.
        Parker found nothing amiss on the first floor, so he slowly climbed the stairs, staying in the runner of plush carpet between oak inlays. The light from the first floor reached just to the top step. Above, the second-floor hallway was dark.
        He stopped on the landing.
        Stillness.
        His hands were clammy.
        He did not understand why he was clutching up. Maybe instinct. It might be wise to pay attention to his more primitive senses. But if anyone had wanted to ambush him, there had been plenty of places on the first floor ideal for the purpose, yet the rooms had been deserted.
        He continued upward, and when he reached the second-floor hallway, he finally heard something. It was a cross between a beep-sound and a blip-sound, and it came from rooms on both ends of the hall. For a moment he thought the alarm system was about to go off, after all, but an alarm would have been a thousand times louder than these beep-blips. The sounds came in counterpointed, rhythmic patterns.
        He found a switch at the head of the stairs and snapped on the overhead lights in the hall. Standing motionless once more, he listened for noises other than the curious beep-blips. He heard none. There was something familiar about the sound, but it eluded him.
        His curiosity was greater than his fear. He had always been compelled by a chronic curiosity, with frequent acute attacks of same, and if he had not allowed it to drive him in the past, he'd never have become a successful painter. Curiosity was the heart of creativity. Therefore, he looked both ways along the hall, then turned right and walked cautiously toward one source of the beep-blips.
        At the end of the hallway, there were two distinct sets of beeping sounds, each with a slightly different rhythm, both coming from a dark room where the door was three-quarters shut. Poised to flee, he pushed the door all the way open. Nothing leaped at him out of the darkness. The beeping became louder, but only because the door was out of the way now. He saw that the room was not entirely dark. On the far wall, thin ribbons of pale gray light outlined drapes that were drawn across a very large window or perhaps a pair of balcony doors; the Salcoes' Southern Colonial had lots of balconies. In addition, around the corner from the doorway, out of sight, were two sources of eerie soft green light that did little to dispel the gloom.
        Parker eased forward, clicked the light switch, entered the room, saw the Salcoe twins,