The Unquiet-CP-6 by John Connolly Page A

with a seashell chain that hung between her breasts, but by then I had opened the door and was backing out of the house before she shot me with a dart and chained me to a wall in her basement.
    “Did you find out anything?” Rebecca Clay asked me when I got back to her house.
    “Not much, apart from the fact that one of your neighbors is in heat.”
    “Lisa?” She smiled for the first time since I’d arrived. “She’s always in heat. She even propositioned me once.”
    “You’re making me feel less special,” I said.
    “I suppose I should have warned you about her, but—” She waved a hand at the broken window.
    “Well, she was the only one who saw anything. She said there was a red car parked outside her house for a while, but the lighting isn’t so good there. She could be mistaken.”
    Rebecca threw the last of the glass in her trash can and put the brush and pan in a closet. She then called a glazier, who promised to be out to her first thing in the morning. I helped her to tape some plastic over the damaged pane and, when all of that was done, she made a pot of coffee and poured each of us a cup. We both stayed standing while we drank.
    “I don’t trust the police to do anything about this,” she said.
    “Can I ask why?”
    “They haven’t been able to do anything about him so far. Why should this time be any different?”
    “This time he busted through a window. That’s criminal damage. It’s escalating. There’s blood, and the blood could be useful to the cops.”
    “How? So they can use it to identify him if he kills me? By then it may be a little late for me. This man isn’t scared of the police. I was thinking about what you told me when we first met, about how this man might have to be forced to leave me alone. I want you to do that. I don’t care how much it costs. I have some money. I can afford to pay you to do it, and whomever else you want to hire to help you. Look at what he did here. He’s not going to go away, not unless someone makes him. I’m afraid for myself, and I’m afraid for Jenna.”
    “Jenna seems like a very self-possessed girl,” I said, hoping to distract her from the subject until she had calmed down.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean that she didn’t seem particularly frightened or shaken by what happened.”
    Rebecca frowned. “I guess she’s always been that way. I’ll talk to her later, though. I don’t want her bottling something up just because she doesn’t want to upset me.”
    “Can I ask where her father is?”
    “Her father’s dead.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “It’s okay. He never had much to do with her anyway, and we weren’t married. But I meant what I said: I want this man stopped, whatever it takes.”
    I didn’t reply. She was angry and frightened. Her hands were still shaking from the shock of the incident. There would be time to talk in the morning. I told her that I’d stay if it made her feel better. She thanked me and made up the sofa bed in her living room.
    “Do you carry a gun?” she asked as she prepared to head up the stairs to her bedroom.
    “Yes.”
    “Good. If he comes back, use it to kill him.”
    “That’ll cost extra.”
    She looked at me and for a moment I could tell that she was wondering if I was serious. Worryingly, I thought that she might even have been willing to pay.

    The glazier arrived shortly after seven to replace the broken pane. He took a look at the sleeper couch, the busted window, and me, and clearly decided that he was entering the aftermath of a domestic dispute.
    “It happens,” he whispered to me conspiratorially. “They throw stuff, but they don’t mean it to hit you, not really. Still, always pays to duck.”
    I thanked him. It was probably good advice in any case. He nodded pleasantly to Rebecca and went about his work.
    When he was done, I followed Rebecca’s Hyundai as she drove Jenna to school, then kept behind her all the way to her office. She worked a stone’s