"Yes." Melantha hesitated. "I—maybe I'd better—I should probably go now."

"You'll do no such thing," Caroline said firmly, standing up and collecting the throw pillows from the couch. "Let me go get a sheet, some blankets, and a pillow and we'll set you up right here."

"Unless you'd rather we take you someplace," Roger suggested. "Do you have any family you could go to?"

Melantha lowered her eyes; and suddenly the relaxed, card-playing twelve-year-old was gone. "No," she said. "Not... no."

"Then it's settled," Caroline said cheerfully, as if she hadn't even noticed the awkward transition.

"Let me get that bedding and find you a toothbrush."

Fifteen minutes later, they had her settled in on the couch. Roger confirmed that the balcony door was locked and that the broomstick was in its groove and drew the curtains. "All safe and sound," he announced as Caroline turned out the lights. "Sleep well."

" 'Night," Melantha said, her voice already fading.

Caroline headed to the bedroom. Roger double-checked the locks on the front door, then followed.

"What do you think?" he asked as he closed the bedroom door behind them.

"She's scared, and she's on the run," Caroline said, pulling her nightshirt from beneath her pillow.

"And I still think it has something to do with her family."

"I think you're right," Roger agreed as he unbuttoned his shirt. "I'm not sure I buy the abuse angle, though. Aside from those bruises on her throat, she seems healthy and well cared-for."

"I suppose," Caroline said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and starting to pull off her shoes. She was tired, Roger could tell, far more tired than she should have been for nine-thirty on a Thursday night. This business with Melantha must really be getting to her. "Speaking of bruises," she added,

"did you notice they're almost gone?"

"Yeah, I did," Roger said. "Fast healer?"

"I don't know," Caroline sighed, pulling on her nightshirt. "So what do we do now?"

"You got me," he admitted. "All I can suggest is that we try the police again in the morning."

"She didn't want to see them last night," Caroline pointed out, making a face as she climbed under the comforter and blankets and hit the chilly sheets. "I doubt she'll want to see them tomorrow, either."

"Then she has to tell us what's going on," Roger said firmly. "She tells us, or she tells the cops."

"Or she does her disappearing act again."

"Maybe by morning she'll trust us a little more," Roger said, climbing into bed beside her. "Pleasant dreams."

"You, too," she said, rolling half over to give him a kiss.

He turned off the bedside light and nestled down under the comforter, shivering against the cold sheets. At least Caroline seemed to have forgiven him for whatever it was he'd done wrong earlier in the evening.

It had been a long twenty-four hours, and he was deathly tired. But perversely, sleep refused to come. He lay quietly beside Caroline, listening to her slow breathing, staring at the edges of the sliding door where the glow of the city seeped in around the light-blocking drapes. Over and over again he played back the incident in the alley, trying to remember every word the man had said, every nuance of his tone or body language, every unusual thing or event that had happened before or after he'd shoved that gun into Roger's hand. But the mystery remained as tangled as ever.

And it was way beyond people like him and Caroline. In the morning, he decided firmly, they would give Melantha one last chance to come clean; and after that it was the cops, whether she liked it or not. And as for her disappearing act, this time he would sit on the girl to make sure she stayed put.

Literally, if it came to that.

And then, from somewhere on the outside wall, he heard a soft thump.

He froze, straining his ears. Had he imagined the sound? Or could it have just been Melantha tossing in her sleep?

The sound came again. Definitely from the outside wall, and definitely near the bedroom door.

Someone was on their balcony.

4

He slid his legs out from under the comforter, a sudden fury burning inside him. So Melantha wasn't even going to wait until morning before pulling her vanishing trick again.

Like hell.

It took only a few seconds to retrieve his workout sweats from the laundry hamper and pull them on.

Easing the bedroom door open, he slipped out.

His bare feet seemed to shrink as they hit the cold hardwood of the hallway. But he didn't care. She was not, repeat not, going to get away with this two nights running. He rounded the corner into the living room—

And came to a sudden stop. The curtains here weren't the same heavy-duty ones as in the bedroom, and enough light was pressing its way through to clearly show Melantha still wrapped in her blankets on the couch.

There was more than enough to show the silhouette of someone on the balcony.

Call 911! was his first reflexive impulse. But an instant later he realized that would be a useless gesture. By the time the cops arrived, the intruder would be long gone. Or would have broken in and murdered all three of them.

And Roger had nothing to defend them with except a few carving knives and a stupid little toy gun.

A toy gun which nevertheless looked very real.

The shadow shifted as the intruder moved stealthily across the balcony. Easing his way back into the kitchen, Roger went to the junk drawer and dug beneath Caroline's latch-hook stuff.

The gun was gone.

For a long moment his fingers scrabbled frantically among the collected odds and ends. It couldn't be gone. He'd put it right here only yesterday.

In the living room, Melantha stirred beneath her blankets, and he grimaced. Of course—the girl had taken it. She'd searched through the drawers after he and Caroline had gone to bed and retrieved it.

He stepped back out of the kitchen. The shadow had disappeared, but he could hear a faint scratching sound. Was the intruder trying to find a way through the doors?

Most of the kitchen knives were down the hall in the bedroom, where he'd taken them while Caroline was hunting up a spare toothbrush. But the one he'd left on the knickknack shelf last night when the cops arrived was still there. Sliding it out from behind the plate, he wrapped it in a firm grip and started across the living room.

The twenty-foot walk seemed to take forever. Reaching the curtains, he crouched down and silently rolled the broomstick up out of the track onto the carpet. Then, straightening up again, he stepped to the other end of the door and slid his hand around the edge of the curtain. Taking a deep breath, he popped the latch, shoved the door to the side, and leaped out onto the balcony, knife at the ready.

There was no one there.

He looked back and forth twice. There was nobody skulking in a corner; no ropes hanging down from above; no grappling hooks on the balcony wall leading up from below. Nothing but Caroline's stupid dwarf orange trees.

But someone had been there. He hadn't dreamed the sound or the moving shadow. He shifted his attention to his left, wondering if someone could have leaped across from the next balcony.

And there, sixty feet away at the far corner of the building, was the silhouetted figure of a man.

Hanging onto the outside wall like a human fly.

Roger stared, a creeping sensation twisting through his stomach. The man wasn't standing on a ladder, his eyes and brain noted mechanically: he was on a section of the wall between balconies, with no place for a ladder to be braced. He wasn't hanging from a rope or trapeze: the roof overhang would have left him dangling a couple of feet out from the wall, and he was instead snugged right up against the stone facing.