Maybe she shouldn’t be looking for a written message.

She groaned and stepped back into the lawn. The panic was growing. Take a breath, Sam. You’re smarter than he is. You have to be. For Kevin’s sake. Play his game; beat him at his own game.

She paced the lawn, uncaring of her exposure now. She wore black slacks and a red blouse, dark colors that wouldn’t easily be seen from the street. Time was running out.

Sam walked to the fence and faced the window. Okay, is there something in the bushes? An arrow? That was stupid movie stuff. She followed the roofline. Did it point anywhere? There were two second-story windows above the one down here, forming a triangle of sorts. An arrow.

Enough with the arrows, Sam! This is something that you couldn’t mistake. Not something cute out of a Nancy Drew mystery. What’s changed here? What is altered to make a statement? What’s altered thatcould make a statement?

The window. The window is painted black, because it’s now a darkroom or something. So really it’s not a window any longer. It’s a dark sheet of glass. No light.

It’s dark down here, Kevin.

Sam let out a small cry and immediately swallowed it. That was it! Nowindow. What used to have light but does no more? What has no window?

Sam ran for the fence and slung herself over it, spilling to the ground on her landing. Was it possible? How could Slater have pulled it off?

She felt for her gun. Okay, think. One hour.If she was right, she didn’t need five minutes, much less sixty, to find Kevin.

“And how is a man or a woman set free from this hideous nature?”

Jennifer asked.

“You kill it. But to kill it you must see it. Thus the light.”

“So just like”—Jennifer snapped her fingers—“that, huh?”

“As it turns out, no. It needs a daily dose of death. Really, the single greatest ally of evil is darkness. That is my point. I don’t care what faith you have or what you say you believe, whether you go to church every Sunday or pray to God five times a day. If you keep the evil nature hidden, like most do, it thrives.”

“And Kevin?”

“Kevin? I don’t know about Kevin. If he is Slater, I suppose you would need to kill Slater the way you kill the old self. But he can’t do it alone. He wouldn’t even know to kill him. Man cannot deal with evil alone.”

Kevin had never shown her the inside of the old shed because he said it was dark inside. Only he hadn’t just said inside, he said downthere. She remembered that now. Nobody used the useless old shack in the corner of the lawn. The old bomb shelter turned toolshed on the edge of the ash heap.

The window that wasn’t really a window had to be Kevin’s window. In Slater’s mind he might have used another riddle: What thinks it’s a window but really isn’t?Opposites. As a boy, Kevin thought he’d escaped his tortuous world through his window, but he hadn’t.

The old toolshed in the corner of Kevin’s lawn was the only place Sam knew of that had a basement of sorts. It was dark down there and it had no windows, and she knew that she knew that she knew that Slater was down in that bomb shelter with Balinda.

Sam held the nine millimeter at her side and ran for the shack, bent over, eyes fixed on its wood siding. The door had always been latched and locked with a big rusted padlock. What if it still was?

She should call Jennifer, but therein lay a dilemma. What could Jennifer do? Swoop in and surround the house? Slater would do the worst. On the other hand, what could Samdo? Waltz in and confiscate all illegally obtained firearms, slap on the handcuffs, and deliver the nasty man to the county jail?

She had to at least verify.

Sam dropped to her knee by the door, breathing heavily, both hands wrapped around her gun. The lock was disengaged.

Just remember, you were born for this, Sam.

She stuck the barrel of her gun under the door and pulled, using the gun sight as a hook. The door creaked open. A dim bulb glowed inside. She pushed the door all the way open and shoved her weapon in, careful to stay behind the cover of the doorjamb. Slowly, the opening door revealed the shapes of shelves and a wheelbarrow. A square on the floor. The trapdoor.

How deep did the shelter go? There had to be stairs.

She stepped in, one foot and then the second. The trapdoor was open, she could see now. She edged over to the dark hole and peered down. Faint light, very faint, from the right. She pulled back. Maybe calling Jennifer would be the wisest course of action. Just Jennifer.

8:15. They still had forty-five minutes. But what if she waited for Jennifer and this wasn’tthe place? That would leave them with less than half an hour to find Slater. No, she had to verify. Verify, verify.

Come on, Sam, you were born for this.

Sam shoved the gun into her waistband, knelt down, gripped the edge of the opening, and then swung one leg into the shaft. She stretched her foot, found a step. She mounted the stairs and then swung back up. The shoes might make too much noise. She took them off and then settled back on the stairs.

Come on, Sam, you were born for this.

There were nine steps; she counted them. Never knew when she might have to run back up full tilt. Knowing when to duck to avoid a head-on with the ceiling and when to turn right to exit the shack could come in handy. She was telling herself this stuff to calm her nerves, because anything in the dread silence was better than facing the certainty that she was walking to her death.

Light came from a crack below a door at the end of a concrete tunnel. The tunnel led to a basement below Kevin’s house! She’d known that some of these old bomb shelters were connected to houses, but she’d never imagined such an elaborate setup beneath Kevin’s house. She’d never even known there wasa basement in his house. Wasn’t there a way to the top floor from the basement? Jennifer had been in the house, but she hadn’t said anything about a basement.

Sam withdrew her gun and tiptoed down the shaft.

“Shut up.” Slater’s voice sounded muffled behind the door. Sam stopped. Verified. She could never mistake that voice. Slater was behind that door. And Kevin?

The door was well insulated; they would never hear her. Sam walked to the door, nine millimeter up by her ear. She reached for the doorknob and slowly applied pressure. She didn’t plan on bursting in, or entering at all, for that matter, but she needed to know a few things. Whether the door was locked, for starters. The knob refused to turn.

She backed up a foot and considered her options. What did Slater expect her to do, knock? She would if she had to, wouldn’t she? There was only one way to save this man, and it was on the other side of that door.

Sam eased down to her belly and pressed her left eye to the crack beneath the door. On the right, white tennis shoes walked slowly toward her. She stilled her breathing.

“Time is most definitely winding down,” Slater said. The feet were his, white tennis shoes she didn’t recognize. “I don’t hear your lover breaking down the door.”

“Sam’s smarter than you,” Kevin said.

The tennis shoes stopped.

Sam jerked her eye to the left, where the voice had come from. She saw his feet, Kevin’s shoes, the tan Reeboks she’d seen by his bed a few hours ago. Two voices, two men.

Sam pulled back. Kevin and Slater weren’t the same person. She’d been wrong!

Sam flattened herself again and peered, breathing too loudly but not caring now. There they were, two sets of feet. One to her right, white, and one to her left, tan. Kevin tapped one foot nervously. Slater was walking away.