Approaching Menace Read Free Page A

left the front passenger seat did not come near like the others.
    Annie screamed. “I gotta go make!”
    “Then hurry. I told you to go before we left,” LauraLee said and strode off behind the child scampering to the house, calling over her shoulder, “See you later, Josie. Come by soon. We haven’t gotten to visit lately.”
    “I will. Bye, Annie.”
    “Bye!” The girl half-ran and half-hopped to the door at their side entrance.
    Hurrying to her, LauraLee passed the tall figure headed in the same direction and unlocked their door. Josie did not recognize the man.
    The motion detector light had come on, and the stranger stopped and turned. He was older than Mr. Allen, with an unusual yellow cast lighting his slim gray beard. Some gray also seemed to mottle his black hair. Along with his tailored suit, he wore a bow tie. Through dark-rimmed glasses, his eyes studied Josie.
    She looked away.
    “How’s your family?” Randall Allen asked.
    “Everyone’s fine.” Josie tilted her head toward the man. “Mr. Allen, is that your new partner?”
    “Babineaux? Yes, he’s coming to dinner.”
    She shivered. “That horrible storm. It made the temperature drop.” She rubbed her arms. “Were you out in it?”
    “Yes, I almost had to pull over, but it didn’t last too long.”
    Lightning bolts crashed in Josie’s mind as clearly as if cameras were flashing. And then that dark void. Colin had been lost inside it.
    “I hate to drive in weather like that,” she said, peering at her house. Lights lit only one window. Colin was alone. “I need to get back. Nice seeing you, Mr. Allen,” she said and rushed back to her brother.
    * * *
    Lightning splintered the sky, making the air surrounding him crackle as he stepped out of his car. Trembling, he smiled. This display intensified his desire for the young woman. Weather like this drew out her fear.
    A few minutes later he stood inside the bamboo paneled office and stared out the window at the storm wrapping itself around the city’s morning skyline like a ravenous python about to devour breakfast. Thunder reverberated above the sound system’s easy listening music. He imagined the thunder rolling through his shoes and up his torso. She was somewhere out there.
    From behind the wide redwood desk smelling of polish sat the doctor who did not want to be called one. Shrink was more like it. The client knew the man at the desk liked that title even less, but he was one.
    Dr. Malcolm Hanover kept that aromatic unlit pipe clamped between his bleached teeth. The thunder’s complaint hushed. Hanover’s sound system made an annoying sputter. The clean straight nails of his fingers continued their tap, tap-tap, tap, tap-tap rhythm on that damn shiny desktop.
    Hanover stared from his red leather chair that creaked when he leaned his lanky body forward or back. Unblinking eyes gazed from beneath thinning hair that must have once been orange. If that hair hadn’t been slicked to the side, Hanover’s round face might not resemble a globe. If Hanover had any insight at all, decided the client, he would interpret his client’s plans and call the police and her.
    The client stirred, warmth spreading while he thought of her. Of what he would do to her. His eyes crinkled with his tight smile. Perspiration wet his armpits. Beyond the busy traffic he watched on Mobile’s main thoroughfare, she was waiting.
    He would let her know his intentions. And then, then he would do what he wanted
    Hanover rapped his fingernails on the desk, making the client’s forehead furrow. Those nail strikes were giving Hanover’s customer an order. Speak up. Give me a glimpse of what is going on inside you.
    No, thought the client. You will continue to see only the shell, a man in a suit, beyond the green plants strewn like a jungle beside your wall. Don’t you know your greenery carries the stench of musty soil?
    You obviously know little.
    The client watched the gray-blanketed afternoon. “Rain’s