“Pleeeease, please.” She sounded like a mouse. Kevin took another step. Then another, gun wavering before him.

“I don’t want to die,” the voice wept. “Please, please, I’ll do anything.”

“Balinda?” Kevin’s voice cracked. The sounds stopped. A thick silence settled.

Kevin struggled to breathe. Slater had left Balinda here for him to find. He wanted Kevin to save his mommy, because that’s what little boys do for their mommies. He had deserted her, and now he would rescue her to make up for the horrible sin. Kevin’s world started to spin.

“Kevin?” The voice whimpered. “Kevin?”

“Mommy?”

Something scraped the concrete behind him. He whirled, gun extended.

A man stepped out of the dark shadows, sneering. Blond hair. No shirt. Beige slacks. White tennis shoes. No shirt. A tattoo of a heart over his left breast with the word Momstenciled in black. He held a large silver gun at his side. No shirt. His naked torso struck Kevin as obscene. Slater, in the flesh.

“Hello, Kevin,” Slater said. “I’m so glad you found us.” He edged to his right.

Kevin followed him with the gun, finger tightening. Do it! Shoot. Pull the trigger.

“I wouldn’t shoot just yet, Kevin. Not until I tell you how you can save Mommy. Because I swear if you kill me now, she’s dead meat. Do you want Mommy to be dead meat?” Slater grinned and moved around slowly, gun still at his side. “Well, yes, I suppose you might want Mommy to be dead meat. That would be understandable.”

A fist thumped into the door. “Kevin! Help me!” Balinda’s muffled voice cried.

“Shut up, witch!” Slater yelled, face flushed red. He caught himself and smiled. “Tell her it isn’t real, Kevin. That the darkness isn’t really dark. Tell her that if she’s a good girl, you’ll let her out. Isn’t that what she told you?”

“How do you know me?” Kevin asked, voice cracking.

“You don’t recognize me?” Slater exposed his forehead with his left hand. “I had the tattoo removed.”

He was the boy, but Kevin already knew that. “But . . . how do you know about Balinda? What are you doing?”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Slater edged closer to the door Balinda was thumping on. “Four days of crystal-clear clues and you still are as stupid as you look. Do you know how long I’ve waited for this? Hmm? Planned for this. It’s brilliant. Even if you think you know, you don’t. Nobody will know. Ever. That’s the beauty of it.”

Slater giggled. His face twitched.

“Drop the gun,” Kevin said. He had to know what Slater meant. He wanted to shoot the man. He wanted to send a piece of lead through his forehead, but he wanted to know what Slater was saying.

“Drop the gun.”

Slater reached for the doorknob, twisted it, pushed the door open. Balinda sat on the floor, hands bound behind her back, foot against the door. Slater calmly pointed his pistol at her white, stricken face.

“Sorry, Kevin,” Slater said. “Toss me the peashooter, or I shoot Mommy.”

What? Kevin felt his face flush with heat. He could still shoot and Slater would be dead before he could kill Balinda.

“Drop it!” Slater said. “I’ve got this trigger milled down to a hair. You shoot me and my finger twitches and she’s dead.”

Balinda started to cry. “Kevin . . . honey . . .”

“Now! Now, now, now!”

Kevin lowered the gun slowly.

“I know how fond you are of it, but when I say drop, I really do mean drop. Now!”

Kevin dropped the gun and stepped back, panicked.

Slater slammed the door shut on Balinda, stepped forward, and scooped up the gun. “Good boy. Mommy will be proud of you.” He shoved Kevin’s gun into his own belt, walked toward the door to the stairwell, and shut it.

“There.”

Balinda’s feet thumped the door again. “Kevin? Pleeeease . . .”

“Ahhhhh!” Slater screamed and ran at the door. He kicked it hard enough to put a dent in the steel. “Shut up! One more peep and I’ll staple your mouth shut!”

Slater stood back, panting. Balinda quieted.

“Don’t you hate these women who don’t know how to keep their yappers shut?” Slater turned around. “Now, where were we?”

A strange resolve settled over Kevin. He was going to die down here after all. He really had nothing to lose. The twisted boy had grown up into a pathetic monster. Slater would kill both him and Balinda without a fleeting thought of remorse.

“You’re sick,” Kevin said.

“Now there’s a novel thought. Actually, you’re the sick one. That’s what they suspect now and, believe me, by the time I’m done here, they won’t have any reason to think differently.” “You’re wrong. You’ve already proved your insanity. You’ve torn this city to shreds and now you’ve kidnapped an innocent—”

“Innocent? Hardly, but that’s not the point. The point is, youkidnapped her.” Slater grinned wide.

“You’re not making sense.”

“Of course not. I’m not making any sense to you because you’re not thinking. You and I both know that I did all those nasty things. That Slater called Kevin, and Slater blew up the bus, and Slater is holding the old witch in a cement box. Problem is, they think that Kevin is Slater. And if they don’t yet, they will soon enough. Kevin is Slater because Kevin is crazy.” Grin. “That’s the plan, puke.” Kevin stared, mind numb. “That’s . . . that’s not possible.”

“Actually, it is. Which is why it’ll work. You don’t think I’d go for something implausible, do you?”

“How could I be you?”

“Multiple Personality Disorder. MPD. You’re me without even knowing that you are me.”

Kevin shook his head. “You’re actually stupid enough to think that Jennifer—”

“Sam believes it.” Slater walked over to the desk and touched a black box that looked like an answering machine. He’d lowered the pistol to his side, and Kevin wondered if he could rush him before he had a chance to lift it and shoot.

“She found the cell phone I used in your pocket—that alone’s enough for most juries. But they’ll find more. The recordings, for instance. They’ll show that my voice is really your voice, manipulated to sound like a terrible killer named Slater.” Slater feigned horror and shivered. “Oooo . . . chilling, don’t you think?”

“There are a thousand holes! You’ll never get away with it.”

“There are no holes!” Slater snapped. Then he grinned again. “And I already amgetting away with it.”

He picked up a picture. It was a photograph of Sam, taken at a distance with a telephoto lens. “She’s really quite beautiful,” he said, lost in the image for a moment. He reached up and ripped down a large black sheet that hung on the wall. Behind it, fifty or sixty pictures had been affixed to the concrete.

They were all of Samantha.

Kevin blinked and took a step forward. Slater’s gun came up. “Stay back.”

Pictures of Sam on the street, New York, Sacramento, through a window, in her bedroom . . . Heat spread down Kevin’s neck.

“What are you doing?”

“I wanted to kill her once.” Slater slowly faced Kevin, eyes sagging. “But you know that. You wanted her, so you tried to kill me instead.”

Slater’s lips began to quiver and his breathing came in short quick drags. “Well, now I amgoing to kill her. And I’m going to show the world who you really are, because you’re no better than I am. You’re the pretty boy down the street she loves to play with. But does that make you better? No!” He screamed the last word and Kevin jumped.

“Hang out with me for a while and we’ll see how sweet you are.” He leaned forward and tapped Kevin’s chest with the gun barrel. “Deep down inside you’re no different than I am. If you’d met me before you met Samantha, we’d both have been at her window, licking the glass. I know that, because I was just like you once.”

“That’s what this is about?” Kevin demanded. “A jealous schoolboy come back to butcher the boy across the street? You’re pathetic!”