tickled his lungs, then filled them until he began to cough. His eyes burned as he drifted. Then he picked up speed until he was falling like a meteor streaking toward the earth.
Through the veil of smoke he saw flames below, and then, as the air rushed past him, he could hear screams.
The wailing began.
“No...”
Adam tried to sit up but was only partially successful. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. The answer that left him momentarily paralyzed was this: he was inside a coffin or a crypt.
“No!” He struggled to lift his arms so he could feel something, anything, around him, but his arms were pinned to his sides. A scream gathered inside him, even as he saw light seeping through an unfamiliar doorway, and heard clinking and shuffling just beyond it.
Just in time, he remembered.
The ice machine near the elevator. A cheap motel on the highway. The only room still vacant when he had arrived after midnight two nights ago. The clerk had given him a discount—but not much—because of a bathroom sink that dripped without remorse and a shower nobody seemed able to fix.
He clamped his lips shut and forced himself to lie flat again until he could untangle the top sheet that bound him. Once he was free, he sat up and rested his head in his hands. In the hallway, whoever had needed ice at 2:00 a.m. rattled a bucket one more time, then slammed the lid on the machine. In a moment Adam could hear footsteps die away, then silence, except for a hum as the machine set out to replenish its supply.
Even the dripping no longer kept him company. He had fixed both the sink and the shower on his first morning, although he hadn’t told the guy at the front desk, who probably would have raised the price of the room.
Now that he was awake he wasn’t surprised that the dream had visited again. In the past year he had fought to get away from the same familiar scene a hundred times or more, although he hadn’t had the full-blown nightmare, this Technicolor, stereo version, for weeks. He had known he wouldn’t be lucky enough to evade it forever, but in the secret recesses of his psyche, that was what he had prayed for.
The one good thing about repetition? From past experience he knew that now he wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours. He could toss and turn and pretend all he wanted to, but deep inside lurked a realistic fear that the dream would return. He could try to sleep, but that stronger part of him would win.
He moved to the edge of the bed and turned on the nightstand lamp. These days he was never without a book. The motels he frequented didn’t always have working televisions, and it was too late to prowl...he tried to remember the name of the city...Asheville. North Carolina.
That was right. That’s where he was.
He rose and rummaged through an overnight duffel to find the paperback he had picked up at the grocery store. From experience he’d learned what he could safely read. Cookbooks. Certain biographies. Philosophy. He’d tried a romance novel one night, but that had kept him awake for different reasons.
He opened his selection and began to read about Abraham Lincoln. Like everybody else who’d been to elementary school, he already knew how the story ended, so he would encounter no unwelcome surprises.
His own story was much more a mystery.
* * *
Jan hadn’t slept well in weeks. Her final nights in Kansas had been filled with dread. She had known she would be leaving in the coming weeks, so in the middle of the night she had gone over plans, looking for a flaw or even a reason to forget them.
The devil you know...
Rex always slept soundly, so night was a time when she didn’t have to worry he might turn on her. Small infractions or imagined slights dissolved into dreams. She could lie next to him and let her mind roam. And roam it had—to all the worst outcomes.
What would happen if he found her as she tried to leave? What would happen if he tracked her to New Hampshire and tried to force her to return? What would happen if she refused? Would he make sure she simply disappeared? Even if her body was found, who would suspect that a church deacon and respected business owner had succumbed to his dark side and traveled that far to kill his wife?
After the escape she hadn’t slept well, either, because she still expected to pay a price down the road. All the years she had spent with him had made such deep wounds she would never be completely free of them.
For a change, tonight she had fallen asleep quickly, a deep, dreamless sleep that her exhausted body had insisted on. The shopping trip had been the final straw. Between the panic attack and the struggle to decide which jeans to buy, she had been so tired she had barely stayed awake during dinner.
Now, though, she was awake. Wide-awake and terrified.
The house was dark. No light showed under her door. By now Jan knew Taylor’s ritual. The younger woman usually went to bed about eleven, and she turned off the lights, everything except a night-light in the kitchen and another in the hallway bathroom. There were few street lamps in the neighborhood, and the one closest to Taylor’s house was shielded by a maple that hadn’t yet dropped its leaves. Only glimmers of light seeped in through the windows.
Clearly Taylor was asleep. If she was up, she would have turned on a light to make her way through the house. But someone else was creeping slowly down the hallway, or at least making his way through the kitchen. Jan heard someone bumping into furniture, not normal footsteps made by somebody comfortable with the layout, but intermittent thumps, a chair knocked into a table, perhaps, a small collision with a counter stool.
She forced herself to sit up and focus. The noise had been loud enough to wake her, but her head was still fogged from sleep. She could think of no other explanation for the noise. A stranger had to be in the house, and she was terrified she knew who it was. Rex had traced her to Taylor’s. No matter how careful they had been, he’d traced her. He was methodically searching for her room.
And when he found her...
Maddie wasn’t home, and she had Vanilla with her. Taylor was home, though, and if Rex found her room first...
She had to get up. She had forgotten to charge the Moving On cell, and there was no regular telephone in her room to call 911, although there was one in the hall. Taylor had decided that Maddie didn’t need a phone in her room, but the girl could take the one in the hallway if she asked for permission. If Jan could just get to it, punch in those three numbers...
Her body was stiff with dread, but she couldn’t lie still and wait for the worst to happen. She swung her legs to the floor and forced herself to stand. She listened. For now, the house was silent, but she wasn’t reassured. The intruder was probably getting his bearings after the last misstep.
She crept soundlessly to her door. The moment she opened it she might be spotted, depending on where the intruder was standing in the kitchen. Her best bet would be to crack the door just wide enough to slip out, then press her body against the wall. She might be harder to spot that way. It might buy her time to make the call.
The house remained quiet. For a moment she reconsidered. Had she dreamed the noise? If she got to the telephone and made the call successfully, would the police arrive to find Taylor embarrassed and she herself ashamed she’d made a fuss for nothing?
Then another subdued crash echoed from the kitchen, and she
