Page 62 of Puzzle for Two

It was hard to imagine Ben breaking into his home, but Ben might have been offended when he realized Zach had changed the hiding place for his keys. If Ben had taken Mr. B., at least Mr. B. was safe. Ben loved the cat and would never harm him, however irked he was with Zach.

Zach peered into the darkness, listening.

Was that—

A very faint sound…like a feline wail?

He stared across the small yard to the side of the garage where he stored his Mustang.

He wasn’t imagining it, right?

Scrambling out through the window, Zach landed in the soggy grass, and squelched his way to the back door of the garage. He tried the handle, and the door opened with a creak of hinges. That was wrong. The garage was always kept locked, but he could hear Mr. B. yowling, and the need to rescue the cat was paramount in his brain.

He stepped inside, managing not to fall over a stack of oldNational Geographicmagazines. Rain shushed against the roof, rustling the magazines and dispersing the musty garage smells of oil and old cardboard. Anemic moonlight bounced off the Mustang’s hood, but everything else remained wrapped in deep shadow.

“Hey, Mr. B. Where are you?”

Meow.

The cat appeared out of the gloom to wind around his shins. Mr. B. meowed loudly, plaintively.

Thank God for small miracles. Zach stooped to pick up the cat, and just missed getting slammed in the head as something hard and solid swung over him.

Mr. B. yowled in terror, springing out of Zach’s hold and vanishing once more into the darkness. Zach ducked away, crashing into the old headboard he’d bought at a yard sale with vague intentions of refinishing it one day. His glasses went flying. He half turned and got a blurry glimpse of a scene right out of a slasher movie: a tall, shiny-black faceless form with fuzzy long blond hair and a black half-mask.

Whatever he had been thinking—and he hadn’t been thinking much beyond the probability his TV had been stolen—it wasn’t this.

The figure brought the bat down again, and Zach, hemmed in by the Mustang, the headboard, and an assortment of cardboard boxes, barely managed to scuttle away. He groped for his glasses but couldn’t find them.

“What are you doing? What do you want?” he cried. Which were legit questions given that none of this made sense. Why would a burglar lure him out to the garage? Why would a burglar—car thief?—attack him at all? Why not just take the car and flee?

His assailant swung the bat again, and Zach heard it crunch into the box next to his head. If that bat connected with his skull, it would be all over.

He scrabbled clumsily backward on his palms and soles, trying to kick boxes—anything he could—into the path of the figure in black following him with swift and terrifying deliberation. It felt like hours, but could only have been seconds, before he reached the front of the small building.

Zach scrambled up, smashed the button for the automatic door opener, and the garage door rumbled into life. The door began to rise.

Slowly.

As in just about slow motion.

Come on. Come on.

With little more than a foot of clearance, Zach dived beneath the rising door and rolled away. The tall figure followed, dropping down to duck under the door, and Zach went on the offense. He grabbed for the bat, wrestling with his attacker. The other’s long, pale hair whipped against Zach’s face, and then the intruder head-butted Zach.

The pain was paralyzing. For an alarming second or two Zach felt himself go completely offline—or whatever the human equivalent was to having your cord yanked out of the electrical outlet.

He stumbled back, ears ringing, and landed on his tailbone. For a few vital seconds, he saw stars. Through the whirl of lights, he saw the long-haired figure raise the bat again—only to be stopped by outraged shouts from across the street.

The intruder hurled the bat away and took off running down the sidewalk.

Zach started to rise, but sank back as pain lanced through his knee where he’d landed on it.

Jesus Christ. What just happened?

He couldn’t seem to take it in.

His neighbors—and their dog, which they’d been out walking—ran across the street and joined him.

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