“Great things always come at great risk,” he said.

She stared at him with those intoxicating eyes, caught off guard by his forward statement.

“Isn’t that right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“So then don’t say we could never be romantically involved. I kissed you once and you sent me to heaven. Didn’t you feel something?”

“When you kissed me?”

“Yes.”

“I was floating for a week.”

“You never told me that.”

She grinned, and if he wasn’t mistaken, now she was embarrassed. “Maybe I wanted you to make the next move. Isn’t that what a knight does for his damsel in distress?”

“I guess I never was a very good knight.”

“You’ve turned into quite a dashing one,” Sam said with a twinkle in her eye. “I think she likes you.”

“Jennifer? She told you that?”

“Woman’s intuition. Remember?”

Sam set down her napkin and stood. “Would you like to dance?”

He glanced around. No one else was dancing, but several colored lights turned slowly on the tiny dance floor. Michael Bolton crooned over the speakers.

“I . . . I’m not sure I know how to—”

“Sure you do. Just like when we were kids. Under the moonlight. Don’t tell me you’ve never danced since then.”

“No, not really.”

She looked at him gently. “Then we definitely should. Will you?”

He smiled and dipped his head. “It would be my pleasure.”

They held each other gently and danced for several long minutes. It wasn’t a sensual dance or even romantic. It was just the right thing to do after ten years of separation.

Slater did not call that night.

14

Sunday

Morning

THE WALL IS DARK BROWN, almost black, and pitted. Slightly damp in spots, leaking an odor of mold and mildew and something else he never has been able to place. A single incandescent bulb glows in the bathroom, casting just enough light into the main basement for Slater to see the darkness of the wall.

These are the things he likes: cold, dark, wetness, mildew, and chocolate sundaes with equal portions of ice cream and fudge. Oh, yes, and he likes fascination. In fact, he likes to be fascinating above everything else, and really, in order to be properly fascinating, he has to dispense with the expected and deliver only what they don’t expect. This is why confused teenage boys pierce their eyelids and tattoo their foreheads, and why girls out to impress them shave their heads. It is all a pathetic, hopeless attempt to be fascinating.

The problem with doing something so senseless as piercing an eyelid is that it reveals your intentions. Here am I, a poor teenage slug who requires your attention. Look at me, see how I resemble a puddle of dog vomit? Won’t you please throw your fingers to your teeth and be wildly fascinated by me?

The pitiful first gropings of the dark man.

But Slater knows what they do not. He knows that the dark man is most fascinating when he moves in complete obscurity. Hidden. Unknown. That’s why he is called the darkman. That’s why he has started in the dark. That’s why he does all of his best work at night. That’s why he loves this basement. Because for all practical purposes, Slater isthe Dark Man.

Someone famous should write a comic book based on him.

Slater stands from his stool. He’s been looking at the pitted wall for over an hour without moving. He finds it fascinating. Darkness is always fascinating. He’s never quite sure what he’s looking at, unlike a piece of white paper, which only grows fascinating if he puts a black pen to it.

It’s light outside—he knows this because of the single crack in the corner. Samantha has taken Kevin and gone into hiding. Which means that after all these months, she’s learned something new.

Slater hums softly and walks toward a small vanity. The secret of being the Dark Man is not looking like a dark man at all. That is why the world looks at stupid little teenagers with rings in their noses as idiots. It’s like walking around school, stripped to the waist in a Charles Atlas pose all day. Please. Too obvious. Too stupid. Too boring.

Now the angel of light routine—those who pile on the white to obscure the Dark Man, like Sunday school teachers and clergy, like priests—not a bad instinct really. But these days, a white collar is no longer the best disguise.

The best disguise is simply obscurity.

Slater sits and tilts the mirror so that it catches enough light from the bathroom to cast his reflection. You see, now there is a Nobody. A strongly built man with blond hair and grayish eyes. A wedding band on his left hand, a closet full of pressed shirts and Dockers and a silver Honda Accord out on the street.

He could walk up to any Betty in the mall and say, “Excuse me, do I look like the Dark Man to you?”

“What on earth are you talking about?” she would say. Because she wouldn’t associate him with a name like Dark Man. She, along with ten thousand other mall flies, would be fooled. Blind. Shrouded by darkness.

That is his secret. He can walk under their noses without the slightest hint of guilt. He is virtually transparent, for the very reason that he is so much like them. They see him every day and don’t know who he is.

Slater frowns at himself and wags his head in mockery. “I like you, Kevin. I love you, Kevin.” Sam can be such a cockroach. He should have killed her when he had the chance, long ago.

Now she’s in the thick of things again, which is good because he can finish the job, once and for all. But her audacity makes him nauseated.

“Let’s run away and play hide-and-seek,” he mocks again. “What do you take me for?”

The fact is, Sam knows more about him than any of the others. True, her little disappearing act will gain them nothing, but at least she’s made a move, which is more than he can say for the rest. She’s trying to flush him out. She might even know that he’s been under their noses all along.

But the Dark Man isn’t that stupid. They can’t hide forever. Kevin will eventually stick his slimy head out of his hole, and when he does, Slater will be there to bite it off.

He leans the mirror against the wall and crosses to the room he’s prepared for his guest. It is slightly larger than a closet, encased in concrete. A steel door. Leather restraints lay on the floor, but he doubts he’ll need them. The game will end here, where it’s been designed to end. The rest of this cat-and-mouse foolishness is only a smoke screen to keep them in the dark, where all good games are played. If the newspapers think they have a hot story now, they are about to be reeducated. The occasional destruction of a car or bus by way of explosion a story hardly makes. What he plans will be worthy of a book.

“I despise you,” he says softly. “I loathe the way you walk and the way you speak. Your heart is vile. I will kill you.”

The anger had worked its way up to a seething through the night. Kevin tossed and turned in a fitful attempt at sleep. Sam’s optimism sat like a light on the horizon of his mind, but as the night wore on, the light grew dim until it faded altogether, obscured by bitterness toward the man who had stomped into his life uninvited.

Furywas a good word for it. Rage. Indignation. They all worked. He relived that night twenty years ago a hundred times. The boy sneering at him as he turned the knife in his hands, threatening to shove the blade through Sam’s chest. The boy’s name was Slater—had to be. How he’d escaped was beyond Kevin. Why he’d waited so long to come after him made no sense either. He should have killed Slater then.

His pillow felt like a wet sponge. His sheets clung to his legs like mildewed leaves. He couldn’t remember a time when he was so upset, so distraught, since the boy had first threatened him so many years ago.