Wanted! Read Free Page A

manual transmission.
    It was much harder to get out from under the car than it had been to get under it.
    She was filthy.
    She felt sick.
    She was terrified.
    The house seemed perfectly normal, in spite of what she had been hearing. Nothing had been touched that Alice could see. The computer was off. Nothing was out of place.
    She was the only thing out of place. Her hair and skirt and hands and face—she was disgusting.
    She had to take a shower. She had to cleanse herself, not just from the filth of the car and the garage floor, but also the filth of that voice, that trespass, that terrible presence.
    If she washed away the grit and the oil, she could wash away those awful words, the nightmare vision they had put in her eyes.
    She bolted the front door to make sure they couldn’t come back in. She should have had it bolted before. Dad would be annoyed with her. The rule was, If you’re home, put on the deadbolt.
    Of course, Dad might be annoyed already, because she hadn’t driven to the ice cream place. Well, she would. As soon as she was clean. Maybe she should call him right now. But what number should she call? His office, or the one on Caller ID, the one she hadn’t recognized?
    Dad’s bathroom was behind his closet. Alice never used Dad’s bathroom. She used the main bathroom, which faced the tiny center hall. She ripped off the dress and threw it in a bundle between the toilet and the door. She turned the water on high and leaped in and scoured herself, shampooing her hair twice, and all the time feeling full of electricity, little charged particles of horror and fear. What if the intruder got back in somehow while she was in the shower? What if—what if he—
    She choked this back and just got clean.
    She turbaned her wet hair with one towel, and togaed herself with another and ran into the bedroom for more clothes.
    She dressed with amazing speed, like a crazed movie scene, whipping from one thing to another, and in the mirror she could not even tell whether she was dressed, but she felt dressed, she was pretty sure of it, and she ran back to the garage and pressed the door opener and leaped into the Corvette. It was good Dad had automatic. She remembered how he had agonized over that. Real Vette drivers shifted gears. Dad got bored shifting.
    Alice shoved the key in and started the engine and inside the closed space it roared like the opening of a race. Alice’s heart was doing the same. Her whole body was revving.
    Alice put the Vette in reverse and took her foot off the brake and let it choose its own speed to back up. When she was out of the short driveway, and fully in the cul-de-sac, she swung the wheel much too hard—and the wrong way. She’d turned the car toward the dead end, not the exit. Alice lifted her foot in humiliation and was stranded in the tiny sunlit road.
    She did not have enough breath to drive. Who would have thought driving took so much oxygen? Gasping, Alice reentered the little driveway, centered herself, and turned the wheel inside out. When she was sure she was pointed right, she gave the Vette way too much gas and hit the curb with her back tires as she shot backward.
    She pressed the remote and the garage door closed slowly back down, and she found Drive, and started forward with a terrifying roar. She could hardly even see over the hood. She had to arch her back and shoulders and even then she had only a partial view of the road in front of her.
    She saw somebody on the sidewalk and thought— it’s him! —
    She was so terrified she gunned the engine again, exploding out of the condominium complex. Luckily there was no traffic because she just barreled out and turned left and was off, racing, the Corvette a low red monster going for the jugular.

Chapter 2
    A LICE WAS TOO SMALL for the driver’s seat. Her father’s legs were much longer. Alice could barely reach the brakes and the accelerator. She had to extend her legs and ankles like a new, badly balanced