As Mark watched, the man slowly leveled the gun barrel as if he were about to shoot something farther down the slope. Again he seemed to be listening.

Mark heard nothing but the rush of the wind.

From within the darkness of the woods leapt a great amorphous shadow in what initially appeared to be a singular movement. Immediately it flew into pieces, the parts darting through the trees at the forest edge, each zigzagging around the trunks like formless gray spirits.

Three shots rang out, but, like smoke, the creatures had vanished.

Except for one.

Its antlered head twisted round, and it spiraled to its knees, staggered up on its legs, then pitched forward again. It writhed in the snow, kicking and thrashing its neck side to side as if to shake off what had felled it. Black stains pooled on the snow, and the writhing eventually slowed. It raised its head once more, as if straining to see the moon through the treetops, its mouth open and gasping. Then it collapsed, its mighty struggle giving over to lesser quiverings.

The hunter walked over and put a final bullet into the buck’s head.

Mark spun around in time to see the first man standing stock-still in the distance, staring toward the sound of the shot. He then scurried over the edge of the ridge and ran back down the way he’d come.

7:00 P.M.

Mark hated all-terrain vehicles. Gas-powered models were carbon-monoxide-spewing noise polluters. Battery-operated versions, though quieter, tipped, killed, and paralyzed just as many victims as their noisier cousins. But among hunters, especially the middle-of-the-night kind, they were the transportation of choice this time of year, before the snow got too deep.

Perched on the back of a red, four-wheel-drive minitractor, he said nothing of this to his grizzled driver as they bounced over the nonwooded sections of the valley. Rather he expressed profound gratitude for the ride home, especially given that the old guy had had to make a choice whether to haul Mark or the deer out first.

Mark had won, and got a shot of the man’s whiskey to boot.

He occasionally had to grab his host’s shoulders to keep from falling off. Under a blue-checked hunting jacket he felt muscles hard as tangled ropes despite a face etched with so many wrinkles they were like rings of a tree and gave an age near eighty. That made him from an era in which men took down deer to put food on the family table, not for sport.

When they pulled up to the back fence of Mark’s property, his driver didn’t give a name, and Mark didn’t ask. But the handshake between them felt firm, also from another time, when it would have been only natural for a man to help a stranger.

Mark watched him ride off to fetch his kill. The wind had chased away the storm, and the moon was at its zenith now, its light filling the countryside like clear blue water. Soon his rescuer was but a soundless dot churning a path back up the far slope.

Marked climbed the rickety log fence and headed over the field toward his house. The snow was barely six inches deep, and he had no trouble walking. All he could think off was a hot shower, clean clothes, and something to eat. Then he’d call Dan, and have him get his ass over to Chaz Braden’s place to ask some pointed questions-

His thoughts came to an abrupt halt.

The lights were on in his house.

And against the upstairs curtains he saw the shadow of someone walking about, moving from room to room.

Too incredulous to move, his brain clicked into action.

Braden!

That ambush and chase had been nothing more than a diversion, intended to keep him out of the way so the son of a bitch could search his house again.

“Well no goddamn way,” he muttered, sprinting for the back door.

He reached it in less than a minute, and, finding his key, let himself in as noiselessly as he could.

Sure enough, he could hear the floorboards above his head creaking as the intruder continued to walk back and forth.

He crept out of the kitchen, through the hallway to the stairs, pausing to pick up the baseball bat he’d put back in the front closet. He glanced outside, and to his amazement, saw a dark station wagon parked in his driveway. Bloody nerve, he thought, and, holding his weapon at the ready, crept up the steps.

The creaking seemed to be coming from behind the closed door to his guest bedroom.

Get ready to be welcomed, visitor, he said to himself, reaching the landing and weighing the heft of his weapon. He wanted it to be Chaz. Wanted to terrify the creep, confront him about the shooting, about Kelly, make him blurt out a confession or two.

He crossed the final few feet and, holding the bat in his right hand, slowly turned the brass knob with his left. He took a few slow breaths, preparing himself for battle.

“Freeze, you asshole!” he roared, flinging the door open and leaping into the room, the bat cocked over his shoulder.

A young woman with long black hair whom he’d never seen before clutched a bathrobe around her and let out a bloodcurdling yell the whole county would hear.

Before he could react, she pivoted on one leg and came at his head with a karate kick.

His skull hurt.

And his neck.

“I’m lucky I didn’t kill him,” a woman said.

“I’d say he’s the lucky one,” a man who sounded familiar replied. “Where’d you learn to kick like that?”

“At a karate school in Paris.”

He must have fallen asleep on his couch with no pillow – that would explain the pain – and left the TV on.

“Could you have fractured one of his vertebrae?” the man asked.

He knew that voice. Must be an actor he’d seen before.

“Not without breaking my foot. It feels fine.”

The woman’s voice he didn’t recognize at all.

“Well, I’m glad of that, for both of you.”

Wait a minute. That wasn’t an actor. It was Dan. What would he be doing on a television show?

Before he could open his eyes, someone pried his right lid up, beamed a white light directly into his pupil, and peered at him through the opposite side of an ophthalmoscope. “Stop it.” He moaned, and tried to move away from the glare, still feeling he had a hot coal buried in there. But a burning sheet of pain snapped up the back of his head and stopped him.

Then he remembered what had happened.

“Something has abraded your cornea, Dr. Roper,” the woman said from somewhere beyond the glare, “and I don’t think it was my toenails – wait a minute. Sheriff Evans, can you hand me my medical bag?” She removed the ophthalmoscope, leaving him momentarily blinded, but he could hear her rummaging around for something.

“What the hell’s going on?” he mumbled, unable to make his mouth move properly.

“Hold my light, please, Sheriff,” she ordered, and brought a tiny pair of forceps into view.

“Now wait a second-”

“Don’t move, Doctor.”

Before he could reply the white glare of the scope floodlit his eyeball again, and her fingers pulled the lids even farther apart.

He winced at a slight stinging sensation, then it was over.

“There,” she said, suddenly releasing her grip and allowing him to retreat back into darkness.

The hot coal sensation had vanished. He still felt a slight burning, but found it tolerable.

She studied the tip of the tiny forceps in her hand. “You had a piece of glass stuck superficially in the conjunctival membrane. Luckily it wasn’t embedded in the cornea and came out easy enough. Here, press gently with this,” and she placed a gauze pad over the eye.

“Who are you?”

“Lucy O’Connor. I’m so sorry, but when you leapt into the room like that, I acted on reflex.”

He tried to get up, but another spasm shot up from between his shoulders to the top of his scalp and changed his mind. As he flopped back down, the hard surface made him realize that he was still on the floor. “Lucy who?” he asked between gritted teeth as his neck muscles uncoiled.