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strode to the door, checked the hallway, and then crossed the room again to the window to see if there was anyone in the driveway or yard. Finding them clear, he turned back to the boy slumped in the bathroom doorway. He had disheveled brown hair and was dressed in frayed jeans and a sweatshirt. Doug nudged him with his foot but he was out cold.

Squatting down, he reached one arm under the kid's knees and the other beneath the middle of his back. He was heavier than Doug had anticipated, his head lolling backward, his waist sagging between Doug's arms. An odd sensation - that warm, unconscious body pressed up against his chest. Crossing the room, he set him down on the rumpled sheets. He looked peaceful lying there. Unsure what to do, Doug stood over him awhile, experiencing something peculiar, a feeling of sorts. A passing sorrow as he watched the boy breathe.

Chapter 8

Above Nate, a fan spun noiselessly. Pain stretched up his right side from his waist to his shoulder, and his head ached. Looking to his left, he saw a man with his back to him standing at the window dressed in suit pants and shirt. Instantly, his stomach clutched tight, the constriction spreading into his chest and throat, making his heart thud.

He tried sitting up, but dizzy, lay back onto the pillow again.

"So. You mind telling me what you're doing in my house?" the man asked, without turning to face him. His hands jangled keys or change in the pockets of his trousers.

"I ... I was just cutting across the yard - "

"And you wound up in my bedroom?"

"I shouldn't have, it's just - "

"Cutting across the lawn from where?"

"Next door."

He turned back into the room now and looked directly at Nate.

"From that woman's house? You were in there?"

He had shiny black hair cropped short, a wide jaw, and a dimpled chin. He was six-one at least. The muscles of his chest and shoulders, evident beneath the fitted shirt, torqued his upper body forward slightly, like a boxer leaning in to his opponent.

Online, there were plenty of men whose pictures made Nate go dreamy and hard, in a melancholy sort of way. But they were otherworldly.

"I asked you a question," the man said.

"Ms. Graves. She's my tutor."

His eyes narrowed, his lashes bunched at the tips as if wetted, as if he'd just stepped from the shower.

"She sent you over here, didn't she?"

"No. I swear. I was just curious. That's all."

"You do this often? You just wander into people's houses?"

"No."

"You could have been killed. You realize that?"

Nate nodded, holding his breath.

"Are you hurt?"

"I don't think so."

"All right, then. Let's go."

He led Nate along the hallway and down the curved front stairs, which brought them into the hall Nate had passed through less than an hour before. This was it, he figured; he would be told to leave now. But rather than heading for the door, the man kept going into the giant kitchen. From the fridge, he took a bottle of vodka and poured himself a glass. Leaning against the counter, his legs slightly spread, he swirled the clear liquid with a tight little motion of his hand. To each of his gestures there was a precision, a kind of surface tension to the way his body moved. He had a cocksuredness about him that the jocks at school could only hope to emulate. A cool, level stare that announced straightaway he needed nothing.

"I guess I should call the police now," he said.

"You're kidding, right?"

"You live in Finden?"

"Yeah."

"You think this town's just a playground for you? You can just do whatever you want because it's all safe and cozy in the end? You were trespassing. You were breaking the law." The cuff of his shirt sleeve slid back from his wrist as he raised his glass to his mouth.

"I didn't take anything," Nate pleaded.

For a minute or more the man made no reply, all the while staring directly at Nate. There was a perversity in his silence, a gaming of discomfort. Nate could sense it in the air between them. And yet there was something else too, something tantalizing: being looked at this hard, with that edge of threat. Part of Nate wanted to shut his eyes and let himself be watched, but he didn't dare.

"That tutor of yours, she's out of her mind. She thinks she owns this place."

"Yeah. She mentioned that."

"And you say you were just curious. About what?"

"That it was so grand,