When Laura looked back at the window, Justice had disappeared.

As if she'd conjured him up, as if her fear had created his image.

Crash!!!

Glass splintered. Shards flew into the room. Spraying in an earsplitting explosion. She threw her hands up to protect her face and saw his arm snake through the broken pane, fingers scrabbling for the back door handle.

"No!"

Grabbing the knife, she flung herself toward the door. The phone rang on and on, but she couldn't stop. She jabbed the sharp blade into the back of Justice's hand, and he snarled in pain.

Oh, God, oh, God! She stabbed his hand for all she was worth, pulling the bloody blade out and slamming it back. She caught the fleshy part beneath his little finger before he yanked it free with a howl of pain and fury. Blood splattered over her, over the floor, into the shimmering glass upon the floor.

She screamed and turned to the phone, flinging herself to the table.

Bam!

Wood splintered in the door.

Grabbing her phone, she hit the CALL button, and ran through the house. She tried to dial, but her hand was slippery with blood, his blood. She lost the cell in her fumbling grasp as she slid around the corner toward the front door.

"God . . . damn . . . damn!" she cried. She couldn't lose the phone, not now!

Crrrraaack!

The back door gave way as she threw herself onto the floor and snatched up the phone again. "My God . . . oh, my God . . ." She scrambled to her feet, heard him tear at the back door as she reached the front. She yanked hard.

It didn't move. Locked tight. "Hell!" Frantically, her heart racing, she turned the lock. Pulled on the knob again.

The door opened, and she flung herself onto the porch.

She ran across the wet boards, only to slip crazily on the wooden steps. Sliding, half falling. Banging her knee, she caught herself on the railing. "Help!" she cried frantically. "Help me!" But she saw no lights shining in neighboring windows, just the sheer darkness of the foggy night. "Oh, God, please!"

"Sisssterrr . . ."

His voice. Not in her head this time. His real voice. Slithery. Cold. Scraping her spine.

She screamed and glanced at her phone.

Her finger touched the green button. Harrison was the last call. The top of her menu list. Wildly, she hit his number, sliding down the last step on legs that were water.

She managed to stay on her feet and ran. Jerkily. Along the gravel path at the bottom of the front stairs. It twisted through overgrown shrubbery ahead, disappearing into the gloom. "Help!" she cried.

Think, Laura, think! Outwit him. Run to a neighbor's!

He was close behind her. His breathing loud and labored.

"Witch!" he rasped. "You called me! You called me!"

Oh, no! He was too close. She ran blindly, her feet slipping, her hands in front of her, one clutching the phone, the other protecting her from the branches and fronds that slapped at her face while berry vines swiped at her ankles. Still she ran. Answer, she thought. For God's sake, Harrison, answer your phone!!!

"I'm here!" Justice taunted. Too close. She was breathing hard, cutting through the brush, heading for the main road.

She felt his breath. Hot. Fetid.

Oh, God, he was barely a step behind her.

She threw herself forward, stumbling.

One huge hand snagged in her hair.

Snapped her head back.

She screamed. The pad of his finger slid down her nape and spine.

She leapt forward, frantic to get away from him. Scorched by his touch. Branded.

Her stomach lurched and the phone jangled in her hand.

Too late!

She hit a button.

"Lorelei?"

Harrison's voice called to her. Tinny. Distant. From the speaker in her phone.

"He's here!" she shrieked and felt the monster's hand clamp over the back of her neck, only to slide away. "Oh, God!" She stumbled over a root or bump or something unseen in the dark. She pitched forward and the ground shifted, gave way. The end of the property. Where it dropped to the highway.

Behind her. Breathing hard. He was right there!

"I will kill you and your filthy incubus!" he roared.

Without a thought to the consequences, Laura leapt from her hands and knees, forward.

Into nothingness.

The phone fell from her fingers.

And she tumbled into darkness.

CHAPTER 28.

"He's here!"

"Where? Where is he? Where are you?" Harrison demanded, jumping to his feet, upending his stool in the process. It clattered to the floor as he yelled into his phone, "Laura! Lorelei! Laura!"

Dead zone. No connection.

He turned and was running for the door in one movement.

"Hey!" Geena called behind him.

"Call a cab! On me!" he yelled over his shoulder and then dropped her from his thoughts in the next moment.

He was at his car in less than seven seconds, yanking open the door. He had no illusions about what Laura meant. The bastard was there. Justice Turnbull had found Laura.

"Damn . . . goddammit . . . damn . . ."

With fumbling fingers he tried to call her. No answer. Tossing his cell phone into the passenger seat, he growled in frustration and fear.

He should have stayed with her. He should have listened to his own inner voice, the one that cautioned him. He should have never left her alone. God, why did he leave her alone? What if something happened to her? What if Justice hurt her . . . or . . . what if he . . . ?

Harrison slammed the door shut on his worries. No time for that. He had to get to her. He had to find her. Save her from the maniac and kill that son of a bitch, send the psycho to kingdom come.

His hands flexed on the wheel.

If that bastard hurt her . . . if he hurt one hair on her head. . .

He wondered how he'd been so foolish as to put her into danger. By not believing, thinking her "connection" to Turnbull was all in her head. Guilt bored through his soul and panic kept his foot hard on the accelerator as the night, and oncoming cars, rushed by, headlights muted by the fog, their beams arcing through the night to shimmer on the wet ribbon of asphalt that wound through the cliffs to Laura's cottage.

God be with her.

He floored it around a final corner and drove like a maniac. At the access road that led to her drive, he spun off Highway 101, up the hill, and nearly sideswiped a black SUV in the process. Wrenching the steering wheel, Harrison barely slowed down, bumping and blasting forward. Then, shooting into her driveway, he stood on the brakes, skidding on the wet gravel, his tires whining, tiny rocks spraying wildly as he stopped behind her car, the only vehicle in the driveway.

He threw open his door and jumped out, stumbling a little in his haste. Down on one knee. Staggering. Up again, in control, balanced on the balls of his feet.

Ready.

The lights were blasting inside her house. Illuminating both the back steps and front porch. Darkness crouched behind this bright scene. Quickly he glanced around, then, bending down, reached into the gravel drive, his fingers searching for a larger stone. No luck. But then his hand closed over a laurel branch that felt at least an inch in diameter. Good enough.

Crouched low, he swept around his Impala, then checked Laura's car. No one. He couldn't see her in the house, which was now a fishbowl, yellow light shining from every window. Bright, uncurtained, empty rooms. No sign of any life anywhere.

Laura . . . Lorelei . . . ,he thought achingly, fear tearing through him like a brittle cold wind.

Should he go inside? Make his presence known? If Justice was still around, he couldn't have missed his approaching car.

He straightened, listening, the branch clutched in his hand. "Laura!" he said aloud, hearing how sober and serious his tone was. No answer. "Laura!" he yelled louder.

A moan sounded. A mewling sound.

Toward the highway. West.

He turned to it, bent over, scuttling, moving fast. The moan came from somewhere that sounded far away, at the western edge of the property, which faced the highway and, farther out, the ocean. The land at the front of her bungalow sloped slightly downward, then suddenly dropped off. Highway 101 lay about fifteen feet below.

Fingers holding his stick in a death grip, he stole along the gravel path that led from the front door. All his senses were alert. Ready. His muscles flexed, his heart beating a steady, fear-driven beat. If the maniac jumped out at him, the bastard was going to be in for one helluva battle.

"Lorelei," he called softly again, his voice sounding loud in the covering darkness.

The cry that came back to him was of relief. "Harrison?" Her voice was strangled with emotion. "I'm-I'm down here!"

Thank . . . God . . . !

He leapt forward and skidded to a stop at the edge of the short cliff. He could see her form, huddled in the ditch below that ran along the side of the highway. Ten to fifteen feet down. He glanced around quickly. Where was Justice?

"You okay?" he asked, sinking to his knees, grabbing a hanging limb from a shivering laurel, then stepping toward the edge, aware the limb wouldn't hold his weight. At that moment, it snapped and split, but Harrison had only partially given it his weight, and he swung and scrabbled downward into the dirt, half rolling to the ground beside Laura, who was sitting up and quivering.

"Harrison . . . ," she said brokenly. "Harrison."

He pulled her quaking body close. "Lorelei."

"I'm okay," she said through teeth that chattered. "I'm okay."

He didn't believe it for an instant. He kissed her head, squeezed her, fought back his own fear at losing her. He ran his hand down the back of her head, entwining her hair in his fingers, wanting to fuse her to him, feeling her heart beating as the cloaked surf pounded the shore somewhere far below them. "Where is he?" he demanded in a cold voice.

She shook her head. "I don't know. I-I fell and it just went quiet. He was up above and I saw him. I think. It was hard to tell. Too dark and all this fog . . . but I think he looked down at me but couldn't come down, probably for fear of being seen with the headlights from the traffic. I don't know. Anyway, he's gone. I hope . . ." She buried her face in his shoulder. Harrison clutched her as hard as she clutched him, feeling her warmth, the desperation of her grasp.

Harrison glanced back up the short cliff. Justice could still be on the grounds, waiting. Hidden in the shadows.

"Are you hurt?"

"No. Scraped a little. I was scared. I just fell, but it was okay. I heard you on the phone, but I was running and I lost it and . . ." She shuddered.

He squeezed her and whispered into her hair, "Don't move. Stay here. I'm going to check the house-"

"No!" She scrambled to get her legs under her. "I can't stay here. No way. I-I'm going with you!"

"I don't think-"

"And I don't care." She was emphatic, her spine stiffening as he held her.

He sighed. "Anyone ever tell you you're stubborn?"

"You're the first."

"Yeah, right. Okay. C'mon." Clasping her hand, and keeping low against the cliff face, he led her along the ditch until they reached the access road that led east and upward toward her driveway. "You okay?"

"Okay, enough."

Climbing the steep few feet to the top of the ditch together, Harrison held on to her tightly. As one, they crept up the road. He tried to shield her body with his, but in the shadowy, thick night, Turnbull could be hiding anywhere, could leap out from behind the solitary fir tree or the laurel hedge or the car.

Harrison squinted into the darkness. He held on to her fingers with one hand; in the other he still clenched the smooth-barked stick. Approaching her driveway, he spied both their cars and the bright squares of the windows of her bungalow.