her state of near panic. I shouldn’t expect her to pick her words carefully under the circumstances.
But really, who would say “Who cares?” about something like this?
“I think it’s gone,” I said.
“You think it’s gone? That’s not good enough.” She was in the kitchen with me now, and though she was obviously still frightened, there was a spark of anger in her eyes, too. “After all the effort that thing made to get in here, you are not just going to open the door for it.”
I was reaching for the dead bolt, and Piper grabbed my hand to stop me. Bob didn’t appreciate her tone or the gesture, and he turned his snarl her way.
“Let go of me,” I said in as calm a voice as I could manage. “Bob’s temper is on a hair trigger right now. This is my house, and I’m going to check on Mrs. Pinter. I have to open the door to do that.”
Reluctantly, Piper let go, and when she saw I was not going to listen to her she retreated to the living room, leaving me to face whatever was out there, alone. Bob was still tense and agitated, but nothing like he had been before.
My hands were shaking as I twisted the doorknob and cracked the door open. It was still pitch black outside, and I didn’t dare open the door any wider without the flashlight, so I held it in my left hand, the gun in my right, as I used my foot to nudge the door open. Bob gave a soft whimper but didn’t seem inclined to dash off into the night. I ordered him to stay, just for good measure.
And then I stepped through the door and saw what had happened while Piper and I had cowered in the house.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mrs. Pinter was definitely not okay.
The first thing I saw when I shined my flashlight onto our patio was a spatter of red droplets on the flagstones. I gulped in trepidation as I let the light play over the entire area. I’m not a blood spatter expert, but it wasn’t hard to tell that the blood on our patio floor had come from a source around the back corner of the house. And my flashlight couldn’t reach that far unless I actually stepped outside.
I hesitated on the threshold. I did not want to see where that blood had come from. I did not want to step out from the relative safety of my house. But just because there was blood didn’t mean Mrs. Pinter was dead, and I had to make sure she wasn’t lying there desperately in need of help.
With a deep, shaking breath, I let the back door close behind me, training my flashlight beam on the surrounding walls and above, making sure our stalker wasn’t just waiting for fresh meat to present itself. I saw nothing that didn’t belong, nor did I see any sign of movement. Also, Bob was still quiet.
“It’s gone, Becket,” I told myself under my breath, but that didn’t make me feel much better. Not with the blood on the patio or the sea of darkness that lay beyond.
I would have liked to hold the gun in both hands. It was heavy, and the grip was uncomfortably big for my hands. But I needed the flashlight, and I kept assuring myself that there was nothing to shoot.
I picked my way over the flagstones, avoiding the droplets of blood. A part of me couldn’t help worrying that I was disturbing a crime scene, hearing my dad’s voice yelling at the TV when some dumb cop show got it all wrong. I think that part of me was just trying to talk me into going back inside without investigating.
The darkness pressing in all around me was oppressive, and there was no traffic noise to help ground me in reality. Nothing but the occasional distant wail of a siren, nowhere near close enough to help.
Moving at the speed of about an inch per minute, I made my way to the corner at the end of our patio. The spray of blood droplets was denser here, and I could now smell its faintly metallic stink. My stomach turned over. I was pretty sure it took a lot of blood to make it smell that strongly.
Finally I forced myself around the corner, my breath coming short and steaming in front of my face, my light darting around the courtyard, trying to see everywhere at once.
Mrs. Pinter lay in