seen.
She gasped. Her son was pointing to a man at the edge of the woods—only a few feet away from the far side of the house. He wore sunglasses, an oversized army camouflage jacket, and a matching hat. She couldn’t quite see his face. He was creeping toward the sunroom window.
“Is Allen wearing a disguise?” Mattie asked.
For a moment, Susan couldn’t move. She sat there, paralyzed.
“HELLO!” Mattie yelled cheerfully. He waved his Woody doll at the man. “HELLO, ALLEN!”
The stranger in the camouflage fatigues spun around and faced them.
Susan jumped up and grabbed Mattie. Her sudden movement made the boat rock. “That’s not Allen,” she said, panic-stricken. Susan could barely keep her balance as the boat teetered from side to side. Bracing herself, she grabbed on to the edge of the boat with one hand and held on to Mattie with the other. “C’mon, sweetie, let’s get down below. Hurry!”
As she guided Mattie to the steps down to the cabin, Susan glanced back at the man by their rental house. Threading through the trees at the edge of the forest, he made his way toward them.
Mattie hesitated at the top of the cabin steps. So Susan scooped him up under her arm and scurried down the steps to the cabin. Setting him down on the settee, she turned and pulled shut the cabin door. She locked it with the dead bolt. The boat was still swaying from side to side.
Any minute now, Susan expected to hear the thunder of footsteps on the old, dilapidated dock. Unsteadily, she hurried toward the storage closet—and the drawer where she’d locked up the flare gun.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Mattie was asking.
“It’s okay, honey—everything’s okay!” she tried to assure him, though her voice was shrill. All the while, Susan tried to get the correct key to unlock the drawer. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. At last, she got the drawer open. She took out the flare gun and several cartridges. Shoving the cartridges in her pocket, she tried to figure out how the gun worked. She tugged at the handle, and the barrel, and then yanked at both ends simultaneously. To her utter astonishment, the gun bent in two. She could see the chamber—and the cartridge snug inside it. Snapping it shut, she went to the long, narrow, horizontal window by the operating panel, and she glanced out at the dock. She didn’t see the man out there. But her view was limited, and for all she knew, he could be hovering near the boat—just out of her line of vision.
“Mommy?”
Susan turned toward her son. “Sweetie, I need you to wait in here.” She led him into the berth at the front of the boat. “I want you to hide in here until I tell you to come out. Do you understand? I—I want to see how good you are at hide-and-seek. Now, I’m going to shut the door. Okay?”
Wide-eyed, Mattie clutched Woody to his chest and gazed up at her. He nodded.
She closed the door and then hurried to the window again. She saw the man retreating. He ducked behind the bushes near the house’s back porch.
Susan wished she could see his face, but he moved so fast, he was just a blur. It might have been the man who had followed her from Mount Vernon yesterday, but she couldn’t be sure.
The boat still swayed a bit. Susan turned to the operating panel, set the flare gun on the desk, then pulled out the keyboard drawer, and clicked on the e-mail icon again. “How are you doing in there, Mattie?” she called, focusing on the monitor.
“Can I come out yet?” he replied—in a slightly frightened tone.
“Not just yet, honey,” she said, typing furiously.
Dear Chris,
THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! My little boy and I are trapped on boat docked off backyard. Some man is lurking around our house—22 Birch. No phone. Please call Cullen Police for me. Don’t know if man is armed. Tell police to hurry. Thank you.
Susan Blanchette (Allen Meeker’s fiancee)
She hit the
She pulled up Google.com and typed: Cullen, Washington, police emergency. But the closest she got to that was a CONTACT US option for the police department on a
Standing, she grabbed the flare gun and peered out the narrow window again. She didn’t see anyone, but she was convinced he was still out there. She kept hoping to hear that
She wondered if there was any connection between Allen’s disappearance and this strange man now lurking around their rental house. It was strange that they were both happening at the same time.
Suddenly, the boat tipped toward one side, and she heard a scraping against the hull. Had the man just climbed aboard? Susan clutched the gun tighter. She glanced out the window once more, and then up at the cabin door. The boat rocked—and the vessel grazed against something a second time. She realized it must have been a wave. The craft was bumping against one of the dock pilings.
The gun poised, Susan stood at the bottom of the cabin steps until the boat steadied itself again.
“Mommy?” Mattie whined from the other side of the bedroom door. “I want to come out now!”
“In a minute, honey!” she called back. “You’re doing really well so far. I—I’m so proud of you!”
She spotted a pair of binoculars with a strap, dangling from a hook by the operating panel. Grabbing them, she hung the binoculars around her neck and moved up the steps. The flare gun ready in one hand, she unlocked the cabin door’s dead bolt. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open and stuck her head out the opening. They seemed to be alone on the boat. Yet she couldn’t stop shaking as she climbed up on deck. She nervously glanced around and then put the binoculars up to her eyes. She gazed out toward the house and the forest around it. She kept waiting to catch that creepy man in her sights, but there was no sign of him.
Her heart was still racing as she returned below. She couldn’t stay aboard this claustrophobic vessel any longer—with her poor, scared son locked in the V-berth. Their best bet was making a run for the car, then driving into town—or at least to the grocery store so she could call the police from the pay phone. She only hoped once they got to the car, the tires would be okay.
Turning off the boat’s main power switch, she called to Mattie, “You can come out now, sweetie.”
“’Kay,” he replied.
She moved to the door and heard the lock jiggling. On the other side, he seemed to be tugging and tugging at the door, but to no avail. She realized he must have locked himself in.
“Sweetheart, can you—”
The lock clicked, and the door finally opened.
Susan swept Mattie into her arms. “C’mon, we’re going for a ride,” she announced. She carried him up the steps to the deck.
Eyeing the house and grounds, Susan set down Mattie and the flare gun so she could lock up the cabin. “You’re my lookout, honey,” she said nervously. She tried to find the right key for the lock. “You need to tell me if you see that—that
With his Woody doll tucked under his arm, Mattie nodded and gazed over toward the woods.
Susan finally got the cabin door locked. She grabbed the flare gun and then picked up Mattie. The vessel started to rock again as she carried him onto the dock. Even off the boat, her legs still felt unsteady and wobbly. She set Mattie down again.
She wouldn’t be able to fit him into the car’s child safety seat while he was wearing the bulky vest, so she took it off. Then she shed hers as well. “Okay, piggyback,” she said, turning her back to him and squatting down.
“Yippee!” Mattie cried. His arms went around her neck, and he jumped on her back. “Gimme up!”
Leaving the life vests on the dock, Susan hurried up toward the house, Mattie bouncing against her back the whole time. She had the flare gun ready. As she came closer to the driveway, she could see only the front of her car. But the tires looked all right. She was already digging into her pocket for the keys.
By the time she reached the car, Susan was out of breath. Her throat had dried up, too, and sweat glistened
