Don’t think, she told herself. It’s just a guy in the road.

But what was a man doing in the road in that downpour, in a ski mask?

“I say keep going. If you want to get punished, I can always spray you with the hose when we get home,” Bob said.

Looking in her rearview mirror, Nina could see no sign of anyone. The rain came down like the sky really was falling, one of those autumn cloudbursts that come from nowhere and leave just as abruptly. The wipers had a hard time maintaining visibility.

They had lost him. “Okay, let’s go.”

When they reached the highway that circles Lake Tahoe, the rain stopped. It was almost six o’clock and wouldn’t be dark for some time yet. “What shall we have for supper?”

“Pancakes.”

“That’s so inappropriate for dinner.”

“You could have a burger. You don’t have to eat pancakes. We’re almost at Zephyr Cove. Are you pulling in or not?”

“Okay, okay.”

The pancake house, an old wooden structure in the trees not far from the yellow beach, housed a motley collection of drenched tourists. Their table, just under a tall window, offered a good westward view as another cloudburst flitted across the lake. They sipped ice water, watching as sheets of rain fell here and there in the distance and evening slipped across the world. The mountains ringing the lake were only a shade or two of darker blue against sky above and water below.

“Uh-oh. Red alert. Look who’s here,” Bob said, pointing toward the window with his menu.

“Who?”

“I think maybe it’s that guy in the woods you soaked.”

“Where?” She felt a clutching in her chest.

Oh, yes. There was a figure a long way away, in the parking lot, near a beat-up white SUV…

“Hey, that’s our Bronco!” Nina cried, sliding off the wooden bench.

“Wait for me!” Bob took the lead as they ran out the front door. Now, even across the lot, they could hear Hitchcock. Part malamute, mostly mutt, he seldom barked, but he was barking now, loudly and continuously. The man had disappeared.

They walked around the Bronco, trying the doors-locked, as they had left them.

“Mom!” Bob yelled. Nina ran around and saw Bob crouched on the ground by the right rear tire, holding something. He held it out and Nina saw that it was an air-valve cap. Bob jumped up and walked cautiously around the truck with her. The air plugs had been opened on all four of their plump, balding snow tires.

Bob twisted the caps back on. The tires looked soft but drivable. Hitchcock leaped against the window.

“Well, at least he didn’t get in the car and steal our crummy radio,” Nina said. There was plenty of open asphalt around them. He seemed to be gone.

“Hitchcock would’ve had to kill him.”

Nina didn’t want to disturb Bob any further. She said, “Let’s get poor Hitchcock out and calm him down, then go back inside and eat. This guy’s not coming back. Man, some people don’t know how to take a little accident with good grace. Can you believe he would follow us just to pull a nasty trick like this…” She took out her keys and began to stick one into the driver’s-side lock, but Bob’s hand swooped out to stop her.

“Mom, wait a second. I have a bad feeling.”

The paranoid professional self kicked in immediately. She clipped her keys to her bag and stepped back. “What’s the matter, Bob?”

“Maybe those caps-you never know. Maybe he wanted to distract us.” Bob apparently found that an adequate explanation.

“From what, exactly?”

But he had finished explaining. “Just wait, okay? Step away a long way from the vehicle.” He said it playfully, but she sensed he was trying to protect her in his own way.

She stepped back, frowning, nervous and unhappy. Black clouds like the ones overhead clumped in her mind.

Methodically, moving with the practiced ease of an experienced Gulf Warrior, or at least like a kid who had played quite a few video combat games in his day, Bob slunk around the car, examining each inch of the exterior, then shimmied underneath.

“What are you doing? Don’t do that.” Nina kept the panic out of her voice with an effort.

“Looking.”

She swallowed, watching Hitchcock hurl himself against the window. “Anything?” she asked when she could stand the suspense no longer.

“Well,” Bob said, “yeah.” He wriggled out from under the car, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her farther away.

“What’s the matter?”

“Come on! I hate to tell you, but it’s bad.”

“A tracker?” she asked. “GPS or something?”

“Worse!”

“What do you mean?”

“Mom, I think it’s an explosive. Call the cops, Mom. You stay right here. I’ll get Hitchcock out…”

“No! No! Stay away from it!” This time Nina did the pulling, and it took some lengthy argument and anguished begging to stop Bob from risking his life to save his pet.

Once she felt she could trust Bob to stay away from the Bronco, she called the police, all the time watching Hitchcock’s liquid eyes, frightened for him and his big wet tongue. Oblivious, just wanting to get with the people he loved, he continued to assault the windows. Nina and Bob walked out of his line of sight so that he would stop.

Within minutes several police cars arrived. Six officers carefully evacuated the restaurant, filing people out one by one, keeping them as far away as possible from the parking lot. People from the restaurant, unable to leave without cars, were joined by a crowd of neighborhood people. Everybody stood bug-eyed behind yellow caution tape, rubbernecking, but still unable to see much.

“Our dog,” Nina said to a policewoman. “Our dog!”

“We’ll try to save him, ma’am.”

Was that supposed to make her feel better, she wondered, succumbing to an anxious gush of tears. Bob, glitter-eyed but too old to cry, patted her on the back.

A bomb squad showed up in a white van. For another hour, they scurried back and forth between the parking lot and van. “What’s going on?” she asked everyone she saw who looked official. “What about our dog?” She imagined him inside, confused by the strangers invading their territory, banging against the window, and although she tried to stop such thoughts, she imagined him dead, in pieces flung all over the parking lot.

In every scenario she had ever seen on TV, the car blew up. In this scenario, the police prodded spectators to move back, back, back. Everyone moved. They all heard the bass boom as the bomb detonated hundreds of yards away on a beach by Lake Tahoe, well away from the parking lot.

They were informed that their vehicle was now “good to go.”

Bob walked up to their car and stuck his hand through an open window so that he could touch Hitchcock. “I guess we won’t be doing any more rooster tails, Mom.”

Back in the restaurant the newly returned, excited patrons plied her with questions, but Nina didn’t know what to say, so she beelined back to their table and tracked down their server. “You saw what happened. Was anyone around here-watching us or anything?”

“There was a guy. He checked out your table after you left. I thought he might be hoping you ran out without your purse or something.” The girl, no more than seventeen, held a steaming platter with at least four plates full of food in one hand.

“What did he look like?”

“About forty. Denim jacket, work boots. Dripping.”

“Was he wearing a ski mask?”

“A floppy hat. Uncool people wear them to golf in, you know? I chased him off.” She eyed the plates she was holding. The food was getting cold.

“Thanks,” Nina said. She pulled a bill out of her wallet and put it in the girl’s free hand.

“Oh, one other thing,” the girl said, tucking the money into a pocket. “He walked funny.”

“How funny? How did he walk?”

“Crooked, like the old guy on the old The Real McCoys show. Remember? Well, that was pretty exaggerated, the way he walked. This guy was bowlegged. Or maybe he just has a bad foot?”