"You want me to get started on it tomorrow?" Schultz pushed. "I got nothing else going on."

"No thanks. Maybe Monday. I've gotta run that kind of money by the sheriff first. Thanks again for calling me back." He clicked off.

"Damn," he said, standing by the front window, looking out. The sun was sinking, throwing long shadows over the parking lot below. Two long-haired kids on skateboards asphalt-surfed by. One had to keep a hand on his pants to keep them from falling down.

"What?" Jensen asked.

"I didn't think it would cost so much or take so long to do. How many grilles would you say there are?"

"I don't know. Where's your map?" She stretched out on the couch, threw her arms over her head.

He turned and looked at her. "At the office. You falling asleep?"

"I could use a nap. How much will it cost?"

"Too much. Thousands probably, and that's just for the sensors. I can't imagine how many man hours it would take to install and test them all."

She yawned. "We need another plan."

It was too light.

Its species had evolved through the millennia in almost complete darkness, so the light receptors in its eyes were much larger than the receptors of any living thing on the planet it now inhabited. This served it well in the murky watery depths of the canals and in the star-lit night, but the light from this planet's bright star was a hundred times too bright for its eyes. Any exposure greater than a few minutes risked permanent damage, even blindness.

In addition to being too bright, the planet's bright star emitted far too much solar radiation for the creature's hide. The few seconds it had been exposed to the star's full power while feeding in town had resulted in a mild burn. While it had no experience with longer exposures, it sensed they would be deadly.

As an aquatic creature, it required constant moisture. Brief periods out of water could be tolerated but its hide dehydrated quickly and became vulnerable.

The creature moved from its resting spot and drifted toward the center of the human concentration.

Marilyn Rowel and Jenny Gollup had met when their sons played on the same soccer team. At first their lives were similar, but Jenny's husband had a PhD and was soon pulling down three figures at the state university in Turlock. Marilyn's husband, on the other hand, was a diesel mechanic; fifty thousand was the most he would ever earn in a year. Within four years it was Lexus vs. minivan, salon vs. Clairol home coloring kits, Coach vs. Sears, fine dining vs. Taco Bell drive-through.

Marilyn - kinky black hair, short and round, shy, blotchy skin, sagging breasts - couldn't understand why Jenny - bleached-blonde knockout, surgically enhanced attributes, salon-perfect skin, money to burn - would have anything to do with her, let alone be her friend.

Jenny was on a fitness kick following an incident four months ago when a young heater repairman had refused her advances. The rejection sent her into a week-long depression that she dragged Marilyn into. They feasted on ice cream, chips and dip, gourmet cheeses, and bags of cheeseburgers and French fries. Marilyn packed on five pounds, Jenny not an ounce.

At the end of the week Jenny announced to Marilyn that the repairman had spurned her advances because she was old, her ass had fallen, and her boobs weren't big enough. She made an appointment with her plastic surgeon and traded her old boobs in for new ones: big and bold, round, in your face double-D cups.

Then came expensive face creams, facials, mud packs, mineral wraps to lift her butt, and a personal trainer who came to her house three times a week. She restrained herself from seducing the trainer, thinking she would end up getting billed for the time and she didn't need to pay for sex. The trainer gave her the choice of running twenty minutes a day or walking sixty. She tried running for a week but gave up: her knees ached and her breasts were so big they struck her chin.

She insisted Marilyn accompany her on her sixty-minute walks.

After stretching and gossiping, they would walk six miles along the bank of Lateral No. 6; three miles west to the Diversion Station and three miles back, usually in the morning after everyone had left for school or work.

Today, however, Jenny had been busy all morning breaking in a new pool man, so they were taking their walk in the evening. They power-walked on the canal bank, Marilyn hustling to keep up with Jenny, Jenny sharing the seduction details.

Their relationship was part voyeur, part braggadocio: Marilyn lived a promiscuous life vicariously through Jenny and Jenny could blab to Marilyn, get a rise out of her, without worrying about it getting back to her husband, or anyone else in her social circle. Both women got something they wanted.

"You should have seen the look on his face," Jenny was saying, "when he ripped my blouse open! I thought he was going to explode right then!"

The breath caught in Marilyn's throat and blood rushed to places it wasn't presently needed, away from skeletal muscles. She knew she should be disgusted at Jenny's pornographic descriptions of her sexual encounters, but she had never once asked her friend to stop. Jenny's descriptions of shapes, sizes, sounds, feelings, muscles, and angles were so vivid, created such magnificent mind-pictures that Marilyn felt as if she had been in the room with her friend and the guy-of-the-moment, watching them go at each other.

"Not so fast, Jenny," Marilyn panted. Jenny always picked up the pace when narrating sex.

Marilyn listened as her friend told her story, her heart pounding. Today, in her mind-picture, she was the blond no man could resist. She shivered as the pool man did nasty things to her.

Fifty feet behind them, in the canal, the creature hunted.

Five miles away, in Sandra Jensen's apartment, Daniel Lawless rolled off the couch onto the floor and stared at the ceiling. Her apartment became his private theatre; the ceiling a movie screen only he could see. Showing today: a canal bank somewhere in Modesto. He was walking. Next to him, a voluptuous blonde was talking dirty.

Chapter 11.

Jensen heard Lawless grunt, then watched him fall to the floor. She waited for several seconds, hoping he would sit up and laugh. Big joke.

"Danny!" she shouted at him from the couch, when he didn't get up.

For a split second, she considered grabbing her purse and leaving, get in her car and drive away; maybe visit an old friend in Fresno or spend the weekend in Monterey; get far away from the dreams and visions and grisly bodies; throw off the crushing weight of responsibility to help this man destroy a monster and let him find someone else to hold his hand when he wigged out or fell on the floor.

Then she knelt by his head, cradling it in her hands so he didn't bang it on something if he started flopping around. She knew she was needed here, in this place, to help this strange man; knew it the morning Hank Weston was found dead in his orchard. Saw it in his eyes.

The eyes are always the key.

Sandra was fourteen when she first realized she could look into a person's eyes and see their soul.

A senior had asked her out. Thrilled that one of the most popular boys at school, a star football player, was interested in her, she told him yes. But when he came to her door to pick her up, she looked into his eyes and saw darkness. Had she been able to look into the future she would've seen what he had planned for the evening, what he and two friends had in mind for her.

She told him she was sick and couldn't go out.

A year later, in college, he beat a co-ed unconscious and raped her. She later died of her injuries and he went to Folsom for twenty-to-thirty.

She knew Lawless was falling in love with her and sensed he needed to love more than be loved. Perhaps it would counterbalance the monster's evil or enhance his extrasensory talents so he could find and kill it. The why wasn't clear. All she knew was she was there for him to love, and that helping him would be the most important thing she ever did.

"Talk to me Danny. What's happening?"

To say Lawless was watching a movie on her ceiling would not be accurate: he was in the movie, inside someone's head, hearing what they heard and seeing what they saw.

It was an unsettling, nauseating experience, far more powerful than the two times he had ridden with the monster.

He saw through the eyes of a woman; he could tell by the way the blonde was talking to her, him; no woman ever talked to a man like that. He also caught glimpses of pale chubby knees and feminine-looking sneakers, no doubt from Payless Shoes. When his host spoke, it sounded hollow, like someone talking into a cheap telephone.

He knew he wasn't actually there, that his body was laying on Jensen's floor, but the experience was so real. All he lacked was the sense of smell.

He watched and waited, wondering why he was there.

He heard a familiar voice: Jensen's.

"Shhhh ... They might hear you," he whispered, hoping his host wouldn't hear.

She didn't seem to, but she did stop and...

Marilyn stopped and shook her head.

Jenny turned and looked at her. "What's wrong, honey?"

Marilyn made a face and continued shaking her head. "I don't know. I thought I felt something."

Jenny frowned and walked in place, not wanting to break her rhythm. Telling her sex stories to Marilyn not only allowed her to relive the experience, it also got her heart rate up more than the exercise alone. And it made her horny. She liked being horny.

"Weren't you listening, honey? Didn't you hear me?" Marilyn's response wasn't what Jenny expected; she should be shocked. "I said I took him into the laundry room and he bent me over the dryer."

"No, I was listening. The dryer? Oh Jenny!"

They resumed their walk-and-tell.

"I don't think she can hear me," Lawless said, no longer whispering.

"Who? Who can't hear you?"

"Some woman, walking with a blonde. I think she felt me, but didn't know what it was."

Jensen didn't know what to say.

"She's chubby, but her friend's not. She's a bombshell."

Now she did. "Focus, Lawless."

"Okay. Right. I gotta be here for a reason." He paused. "The friend's telling her about sex she had with the pool boy, in the laundry room." His face turned red. "She spares no details."

Jensen rolled her eyes. "Where are they?"

"What?"

"Where are they?"

"They're walking on a canal bank."

Then, after a couple of seconds, they said in unison, "Oh shit."

"Can you warn them? Tell them to get away from the canal?"

"I don't know. Do you think I'm here to warn them?" He sounded hopeful. Then, "Please don't let me be here just to watch."

The creature stopped and drifted with the current. It raised its head until its center eye cleared the surface. Even though it was dusk, there was too much light and it blinked the eye against the glare.

There were two prey. It judged the distance, calculating.

Back in the water, it sensed no other prey nearby and quickened its pace.

"I'll bet I could get him to do you, too, Marilyn. Why don't you come over next Friday? We could do him together. You'd like it."

Marilyn shook her head vigorously. "No, no. No thank you, Jenny. You know I couldn't do anything like that."

Jenny knew Marilyn wouldn't, had never, but it was fun to try and talk her into it. She loved how Marilyn's face turned red.

"Oh come on. Just this once. You, me, and the new pool guy."

"No way." Marilyn's heart pounded in her chest as she ran a mind-picture of her, the real her, not the her-in-Jenny's-body her, and the new pool man; she knew he would be repulsed by the sight of her body. The picture vanished.

Jenny laughed as they rounded a bend in the canal. Another two hundred yards and they would turn around and head back.

"Try! Shout or something. See if you can get her attention," Jensen said.

"Okay, okay." Lawless exhaled. "Hey!" he shouted, feeling foolish. "Hey!"

He waited to see if his host showed any sign she'd heard him.

"Nothing. She didn't do anything."

"Try again."

"Hey!" he shouted again, louder. "Get away from the canal! Nothing." He shook his head. "I don't think I'm here to warn them."

"Try something else. What else can you do to get their attention?"

The creature quickened its pace, sensing the time to strike was near. Its sleek body moved through the water, silent, powerful, dark, evil. Hungry.

"You're no fun, Marilyn," Jenny teased. She didn't mean that. Marilyn was a barrel of laughs. She was so easy to shock, with her dull husband and dull life. "You'll never believe what Richard wants to do."

"What?" Marilyn asked, surprised. Jenny rarely talked about her husband. What was exciting about sex with your husband?

"He wants us to start going to church. Can you believe that? What would I do at church?"

"They're just walking and talking. Nothing's happening."

"What are they saying?" Jensen wished she could see, not because she wanted to see, but because it was so frustrating having to pry everything out of him.

"Nothing important. Blondie says her husband wants them to go to church but she doesn't want to. They're just yakking."

Thirty seconds later, "What's happening now?"

"Still nothing. More sex talk from the blonde. This woman needs help, serious help."

Then, a minute later, he said, "Can't be long now ..."