“And whatshisname, your priest buddy is coming,” finished Tom with a smile. “Right. We'll just have one snifter full. Maybe two. Then I'll carefully drive myself down the hill .to my efficient little efficiency. Good enough?”

“Good enough,” said Kate, feeling the effects of the wine she had already drunk as she stood up. She steadied herself with a casual grip of the table. “I'm drunk,” she said.

Tom touched her back. “You're exhausted, Kat. You've been putting in eightyhour weeks since you got back from Romania. I would have dragged you out of there tonight even if I hadn't had anything to propose.”

She set her hand against his cheek. “You're sweet,” she said.

“Yup,” said Tom, “that's probably why you divorced me.” They walked together to his Land Rover.

Kate had given Tom an access card for the development's security gate and he used it now rather than disturb Julie, who almost certainly was still working on her dissertation. It was only nine P.m., but it was very dark out and the few stars showing through the clouds seemed to gleam with a cold brilliance.

“We missed the Autumn Equinox Celebration this week,” Kate said softly as the Land Rover bounced and jostled down the rutted road. The Equinox Celebration had been one of Tom's madeup holidays, each of which had started as a joke and become something of a real tradition during their years together.

“Not too late to celebrate it,” Tom said. “We just don't try to balance any eggs on end . . . wait a minute.”

He had stopped the Land Rover just as they came around the last bend before the house, and Kate immediately noticed what he had seen: all the lights were out on the housenot just interior lights, but porch light, garage security light, patio light, everything.

“Shit,” whispered Tom.

Kate's heart seemed to skip a beat. “We've had a couple of outages this summer . . .”

Tom inched the Land Rover forward. “Did you notice if the Bedridges' was lit up?”

Kate turned in her seat to look across the meadow toward their nearest neighbor a quarter of a mile away. “I don't think so. But that doesn't mean much . . . they're in Europe.”

The Land Rover's headlights illuminated the dark garage, breezeway, and a bit of the patio as they turned into the slightly inclined driveway. Tom doused the lights and sat there a minute. “The security gate was working,” he said. “I forget, does it have some sort of backup generator?”

“I don't know,” said Kate. Julie should have heard us, she was thinking. She should have come to the door. There was no hint of candlelight inside the front or secondstory windows on this side of the house. Julie works in the study next to my roomJoshua's roomuntil d get home. We wouldn't see the candlelight from here f she stayed with Joshua.

“Stay here,” Tom said at last.

“The hell with that,” said Kate, opening her car door.

Torn muttered something but tugged the keys out. They were three feet from the front door when Julie's terrified voice said, “Stay away! I have a gun!”

“Julie!” cried Kate. “It's us. What's wrong? Open the door!”

The door opened onto blackness and a flashlight beam flicked on, first in Kate's face, then in Tom's. “Quick . . . get in!” Julie said.

Tom slammed and locked the door behind him. Julie was holding Joshua against her while juggling the flashlight in her left hand and the Browning automatic in her right. Tom took the weapon from her as the young woman whispered excitedly, “About twenty minutes ago . . . I was working at the computer . . . all the lights went out . . . I was looking in the dining room for the flashlight and candles when I saw shadows out on the patio . . . heard men whispering . . . .”

“How many men?” Tom asked, his voice very soft. Kate had taken the baby, Julie had flicked off the flashlight, and now the three adults huddled together in the darkened hallway.

Julie was just a silhouette as she shook her head. “I dunno . . . three or four at least. For a minute I thought maybe it was guys from the power company come to fix the electricity . . . and then they started rattling the patio door.” Her voice was ragged. Kate touched her shoulder as Julie paused to take a few deep breaths. “Anyway, I ran in, got Josh and the pistol, and came back out just as the guys were breaking the glass on the patio door. I yelled at them that I had a gun and then they weren't there anymore. I ran around the house making sure all the windows were closed and . . . it's dead, Tom, I tried it right away.”

He had moved to the hall phone. Now he listened a second, nodded, and set it back.

“Anyway,” said Julie, “it was just a minute or two later that I heard the truck and saw the lights out front. It didn't sound like the Cherokee and . . . oh, Jesus, I'm glad to see you guys.”

Holding the pistol at his side and taking the flashlight from Julie, Tom moved from room to room, the two women behind him. He would flash the light for a second, then flick it off. Kate saw the shattered glass on the patio sliding door, but the door was still locked. They moved past the kitchen to the study, beyond the study to the master bedroom.

“Here,” said Tom and handed Kate the Browning. He went into the bedroom closet a minute and came out with the shotgun and the box of shells. Dumping shells into the pocket of his tweed sportscoat, he pumped the shotgun once. “Come on,” he said. “We're getting out of here.”

There were shrubs and boulders along both sides of the driveway and Kate was sure each of them was moving as she watched Tom spring the ten paces to the Land Rover. She saw that the hood was up slightly the same instant that she heard Tom say, “Goddamn it.” He slid behind the wheel anyway but the starter did not even crank. Nor did the lights come on.

He jogged back to them at the doorway, the shotgun at port arms.

“Wait,” said Kate. “Listen.” There was a sound from beyond the kitchen; something had broken or dropped down stairs, on the lower level where Julie's room and the other guest suite were.

“Miata,” whispered Tom and led the way down the hall and into the dark kitchen, toward the breezeway to the garage.

The refrigerator clanked on and Kate jumped a foot and swung the Browning toward it before she recognized the sound. Joshua stirred and began to cry softly. “Shhh,” whispered Kate. “Shhh, baby, it's all right.” They moved down the breezeway in the dim light through the windows along each side, Tom first, then Kate, Julie clinging tightly to Kate's shirt. There was another sound from the house behind them.

Tom kicked open the garage door and extended the shotgun with the flashlight directly above it. Both swung in fast arcs, the flashlight beam illuminated storage shelves, the closed garage door, the open side door, the Miata with its hood up and wires visibly ripped free.

They moved back into the breezeway and crouched there. Tom doused the light.

“Hey,” whispered Julie, her teeth chattering audibly, “it was only a twoseater anyway.” She grasped Kate's hand where it held the baby. “Just kidding.”

“Quiet,” whispered Tom. His voice was soft but steady.

They huddled there near the garage door, below the level of the breezeway windows, staring down the fifteen feet of tiled floor toward the door to the kitchen. They had left the door open a crack. Kate tried to listen but could hear nothing above Joshua's soft whimpering in her ear. She rocked and patted the baby, still feeling Julie's hand on her arm.

There was a movement of black against black, Tom switched on the flashlight, and his shotgun roared an instant before Julie screamed and the baby began wailing.

The white face and long fingers had disappeared from the kitchen doorway a second before Tom's shotgun blast ripped off part of the doorframe. Kate was sure that the face had ducked out of sight in that second. She was also sure that it was the same face she had seen in the baby's room two months earlier.