Chapter One

Peter Keegan was already on edge, of course, and anxious to get inside. But even so, he should have noticed that it wasn't only the garage door opener that wasn't working.

    He punched the button half a dozen times, then gave up and pulled around to the front of the house. He'd have to park on the street, which he hadn't done since the night he moved in, two years ago. The next morning he'd found the window smashed and his new sophisticated sound system, an unexpected gift from his students when he'd left teaching, torn out of the dashboard. He'd never replaced it. He'd sold his car, in fact, taking cabs mostly now, or borrowing one of the other guys' cars on occasion, like tonight.

    Not quite midnight now, with the bright lights of Old Town—that stretch of North Wells Street with its odd mix of chic restaurants and dingy bars, upscale shops and pornographic bookstores—just a few short blocks away. But here, where he lived, the street was dark and deserted, and even the tall lights at each end of the block seemed strangely dim and distant. He stood beside the car, shivering, struggling with the buttons of his rain coat. The cold March wind came and went in fierce gusts, rising suddenly in high, mournful howls, and then—just as abruptly—falling silent. At least the rain had stopped. He looked both ways. There was no one in sight.

    But that was only an illusion. He knew the man was there, not far away. He'd always been there, since the day the phone calls began. Now, though unseen, that presence was as palpable as the gnawing in his stomach that hadn't really