The Door to December

and smiling and strolling in sunshine and having fun, while she was plunging deeper into a bleak, dark, living nightmare.
     She looked at Dan Haldane. A breeze stirred his sandy hair, and sunlight sharpened his pleasant features, rendering him more handsome than he really was. Even disregarding the flattery of the sun and shadow, however, he was good-looking. In other circumstances, she might have been interested in him. The contrast between his brutish size and gentleness lent him a certain mystique. The lost potential of this relationship was one more thing she held against the unknown 'them'.
     'Why were you so eager to reach me?' she asked. 'Why were you calling my place for an hour and a half? It wasn't just to tell me about Rink. You knew I'd be showing up here. You could've waited till then to give me the bad news.'
     He glanced toward the parking lot, where the morgue wagon was pulling away from the crime scene. When he focused on Laura again, his face was lined, his mouth grim, his eyes direct and dark with worry. 'I wanted to tell you to call a private security firm and arrange for an around-the-clock guard at your house, for after you take Melanie home.'
     'A bodyguard?'
     'More or less, yeah.'
     'But if her life's in danger, won't the police department provide protection?'
     He shook his head. 'Not in this case. There's not been any direct threat against her. No phone calls. No notes.'
     'Rink—'
     'We don't know he was here to get Melanie. We only suspect.'
     'Just the same—'
     'If the state and city weren't always going through a budget crisis, if police funding hadn't been cut, if we weren't chronically short of manpower, maybe we could stretch a point and have your house put under surveillance. But given the current situation, I couldn't justify it. And if I arrange the surveillance without my captain's approval, he'll sell my butt to the Alpo people, and I'll wind up in cans of dog food. He and I don't get along so well to begin with. But a security service, professional bodyguards ... that's as good as any protection we could supply you even if we had the men to do it. Can you afford to hire them, just for a few days?'
     'I suppose so. I don't know how much something like that costs, but I'm not poor. If you think it'll be for only a few days—'
     'I have a hunch this one's going to unravel fast. All this killing, all the chances someone's been taking — it indicates they're under a lot of pressure, that there's a time limit of some kind. I haven't the faintest goddamned idea what they've been doing to your kid or why they're so desperate to get their hands on her again, but I sense this situation's like a giant snowball, rolling fast down a mountain, fast as an express train, getting bigger and bigger as it goes. Right now, already, it's real big, gigantic, and it's not far from the bottom of the mountain. When it finally hits, it's going to bust into hundreds of pieces.'
     As a pediatric psychiatrist, Laura was self-confident, never uncertain as to how she should proceed with a new patient. Of course she deliberated before choosing a course of therapy, but once she had decided on her approach, she implemented it without hesitation. She was a successful healer, a mender, a repairman of the psyche, and her success had given her the confidence and authority that generated more success. But now she was lost. She felt small, vulnerable, powerless. That was a feeling that she hadn't known for a few years, not since she had learned to accept Melanie's disappearance.
     She said, 'I ... I don't even know how you ... how a person goes about finding bodyguards.'
     Haldane pulled out his wallet, fished in it, withdrew a card. 'Most of the private investigators you sent after Dylan, years ago, probably also offer bodyguard service. We're not supposed to make recommendations. But I know these guys are good, and their rates are competitive.'
     She took the card, looked at it:
    CALIFORNIA PALADIN, INC.
PRIVATE INVESTIGATION
Personal Security
         A phone number was provided at the bottom.
     Laura tucked the card in her purse. 'Thanks.'
     'Call them before you leave the hospital.'
     'I will.'
     'Have them send a man here. He can follow you home.'
     She felt numb. 'All right.' She turned toward the hospital doors.
     'Wait.'