Damnation Street

51.

The killer moved.

The girl was only two strides from the door. She was lifting her hand to the knob. He had waited for this. People who are nervous or afraid of something look over their shoulders as they approach a door, but there is a moment when they have to open it, when they have to focus forward and they can't look around. That's the moment you can take them. He knew this. He had done it half a hundred times.

He was out of the car in a second, the 9mm SIG held lightly in his hand. He went up the walk behind her without making a sound. In his excitement, the silicone bodysuit seemed to weigh nothing; the fake flesh seemed to have become his own. He moved easily. He glided through the rain.

Now he was right behind her. She was unaware. It was a fine electric moment. He was alive to everything: the rain on his face, the feel of the gun, the way his movements seemed to flow, inevitable. Then something else: he caught the scent of her. The musky, flowery scent of her on the cool, wet desert air. It was a joy.

She opened the door quickly. With a fearful, jerky motion, she slipped her hand inside and flicked up the light switch. She was about to take one last look behind her.

Before she could, the killer grabbed her.

He slipped his left arm around her throat. He yanked her close against the left side of his chest. That kept his body protected and his gun hand clear.

He was through the door, in the house, in the living room. It was a moment like music. The smell of her hair filled him. His cheek was close to her cheek. Her soft throat was trapped in the crook of his arm. He held her fast and leveled his gun at the armchair, at Weiss.

But Weiss was gone. The chair was empty.

The killer kept moving. He was ready for this. He stepped to the side, carrying Julie with him. He had her almost off the floor. She was choking, clutching at his arm, but too weak to struggle. With a sweep of his gun hand, he covered the kitchen, the bedroom, and the front door-the only places Weiss could've gone.

It all happened in a second, one single second with the girl gasping and the rain pattering and the killer sweeping the room with his gun, waiting for Weiss to come at him.

Then, for the first time, as he turned from one side of the house to the other, he saw the braid rug out of place. He saw the trapdoor in the floor.

A bolt of fear went through him. He hadn't known about the trapdoor. He had missed it when he checked the house earlier. The rug out of place. The trap. Weiss could be down there.

Surprised, he swung to face it, lowered the gun at it.

The moment he did that, he knew Weiss was behind him. Weiss had gone out the kitchen door and come around the house, come back in through the front. Of course he had. He had only needed the man who called himself John Foy to see the trap, to face it for that single instant. He was Weiss-and he had known that's what the killer would do.

The thought went through the killer's mind: swing back around, swing Julie around for a shield, shoot Weiss down as he comes through the door.

But he only had time for the thought. Then Weiss stepped up behind him and drove the butt of a. 38 into the base of his skull.

The man who called himself John Foy crumpled to the floor, unconscious.