Screaming, Vince hammered at the dog with his big fists until it squealed and let go of him. Then it went for his throat, and he just knocked it off in time to prevent it tearing open his windpipe.

His gut still throbbed, but he hitched and stumbled back to the porch, looking for his revolver-and found Cornell instead. Bleeding from his shoulder, Cornell was on the porch, looking down at Vince.

Vince felt a great wild surge of confidence. He knew that he had been right all along, knew that he was invincible, immortal, because he could look straight into the muzzle of the Uzi without fear, without the slightest fear, so he grinned up at Cornell. “Look at me, look! I’m your worst nightmare.”

Cornell said, “Not even close,” and opened fire.

In the kitchen Travis sat in a chair, with Einstein at his side, while Nora dressed his wound. As she worked, she told him what she knew about the man who had forced his way into the truck.

“He was a damn wild card,” Travis said. “No way we could ever have known he was out there.”

"I hope he’s the only wild card.”

Wincing as Nora poured alcohol and iodine into the bullet hole, wincing again as she bound the wound with gauze by passing it under his armpit, he said, “Don’t worry about making a great job of it. The bleeding’s not that bad. No artery’s been hit.”

The bullet had gone through, leaving a hideous exit wound, and he was in considerable pain, but for a while yet he would be able to function. He would have to seek medical attention later, maybe from Jim Keene to avoid the questions that any other doctor would surely insist on having answered. For now, he was only concerned that the wound be bound tight enough to allow him to dispose of the dead man.

Einstein was battered, too. Fortunately, he had not been cut when he smashed through the front window. He did not seem to have any broken bones, but he had taken several hard blows. Not in the best of shape to begin with, he looked bad-muddy and rain-soaked and in pain. He would need to see Jim Keene, too.

Outside, rain was falling harder than ever, pounding on the roof, gurgling noisily through gutters and downspouts. It was slanting across the front porch and through the shattered window, but they did not have time to worry about water damage.

“Thank God for the rain,” Travis said. “No one in the area will have heard the gunfire in this downpour.”

Nora said, “Where will we dump the body?”

“I’m thinking.” And it was hard to think clearly because the pain in his shoulder throbbed up and into his head.

She said, “We could bury him here, in the woods-”

“No. We’d always know he was there. We’d always worry about the body being dug up by wild animals, found by hikers. Better… there’re places along the Coast Highway where we could pull over, wait until there’s no traffic, drag him out of the bed of the truck, and toss him over the side. If we pick a place where the sea comes in right to the base of the slope, it’ll carry him out, move him away, before anyone notices him down there.”

As Nora finished the bandage, Einstein abruptly got up, whined. He sniffed the air. He went to the back door, stood staring at it for a moment, then disappeared into the living room.

“I’m afraid he’s hurt worse than he seems to be,” Nora said, applying a final strip of adhesive tape.

“Maybe,” Travis said. “But maybe not. He’s just been acting peculiar all day, ever since you left this morning. He told me it smelled like a bad day.”

“He was right,” she said.

Einstein returned from the living room at a run and went straight to the pantry, switching on the lights and pumping the pedals that released lettered tiles.

“Maybe he has an idea about disposing of the body,” Nora said.

As Nora gathered up the leftover iodine, alcohol, gauze, and tape, Travis painfully pulled on his shirt and went to the pantry to see what Einstein had to say.

THE OUTSIDER IS HERE.

Travis slammed a new magazine into the butt of the Uzi carbine, put an extra in one pocket, and gave Nora one of the Uzi pistols that was kept in the pantry.

Judging by Einstein’s sense of urgency, they had no time to go through the house, closing and bolting shutters.

The clever scheme to gas The Outsider in the barn had been built upon the certainty that it would approach at night and reconnoiter. Now that it had come in daylight and had reconnoitered while they were distracted by Vince, that plan was useless.

They stood in the kitchen, listening, but nothing could be heard above the relentless roar of the rain.

Einstein was not able to give them a more precise fix on their adversary’s location. His sixth sense was still not working up to par. They were just lucky that he had sensed the beast at all. His morning-long anxiety had evidently not been related to any presentiment about the man who had come home with Nora but had been, even without his knowledge, caused by the approach of The Outsider.

“Upstairs,” Travis said. “Let’s go.”

Down here, the creature could enter by doors or windows, but on the second floor they would at least have only windows to worry about. And maybe they could get shutters closed over some of those.

Nora climbed the stairs with Einstein. Travis brought up the rear, moving backward, keeping the Uzi aimed down at the first floor. The ascent made him dizzy. He was acutely aware that the pain and weakness in his injured shoulder was slowly spreading outward through his entire body like an ink stain through a blotter.

On the second floor, at the head of the stairs, he said, “If we hear it come in, we can back off, wait until it starts to climb toward us, then step forward and catch it by surprise, blow it away.”

She nodded.

. They had to be silent now, give it a chance to creep into the downstairs, give it time to decide they were on the second floor, let it gain confidence, let it approach the stairs with a sense of security.

A strobe-flash of lightning-the first of the storm-pulsed at the window at the end of the hall, and thunder cracked. The sky seemed to have been shattered by the blast, and all the rain stored in the heavens collapsed upon the earth in one tremendous fall.

At the end of the hallway, one of Nora’s canvases flew out of her studio and crashed against the wall.

Nora cried out in surprise, and for an instant all three of them stared stupidly at the painting lying on the hall floor, half thinking that its poltergeist-like flight had been related to the great crash of thunder and the lightning.

A second painting sailed out of her studio, hit the wall, and Travis saw the canvas was shredded.

The Outsider was already in the house.

They were at one end of the short hall. The master bedroom and future nursery were on the left, the bathroom and then Nora’s studio on the right. The thing was just two doors away, in Nora’s studio, demolishing her paintings.

Another canvas flew into the hallway.

Rain-soaked, muddied, battered, still somewhat weak from his battle with distemper, Einstein nevertheless barked viciously, trying to warn off The Outsider.

Holding the Uzi, Travis moved one step down the hall. Nora grabbed his arm. “Let’s not. Let’s get out.”

“No. We’ve got to face it.”

“On our terms,” she said.

“These are the best terms we’re going to get.”

Two more paintings flew out of the studio and clattered down on top of the growing pile of wrecked canvases.

Einstein was no longer barking but growling deep in his throat.

Together, they moved along the hall, toward the open door of Nora’s studio.

Travis’s experience and training told him they ought to split up, spread out, instead of grouping into a single target. But this was not Delta Force. And their enemy was not a mere terrorist. If they spread out, they would lose some of the courage they needed to face the thing. Their very closeness gave them strength.