Children of the Storm by Dean Koontz Page B

situation, she was amused at that thought. She moved, seemed to be all right, sat up.
        That was a mistake. Her head began to throb as if there were a tiny man inside beating at her skull with a sledgehammer. A fierce pain arced over both eyebrows, and it seemed the lasting sort. Also, her throat felt swollen and raw, and she wondered if she would be able to swallow a long, cold glass of water. That drink was what she desired more than anything else on earth.
        She touched the sides of her neck, carefully, gently. It was swollen, but the pain was not so terrible, more of a tenderness, like a sprained ankle or pulled muscle.
        She got slowly to her feet, like an invalid doubting the effect of some new miracle drug, reached out and stopped the world from spinning around and around like a top. When it settled down, and she managed to keep her balance about as easily as a girl on a tightrope might, she turned toward Seawatch, blinked at the pale light in its windows and, with a small sigh, began the long walk across the north lawn.
        It was good to be alive. She didn't know how she has escaped the man in the arbor, why he hadn't given chase and found her, but she did know it was perfectly wonderful to be alive. She hoped she could stay that way a while longer.

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    ELEVEN
        
        “You didn't see anything?”
        “Nothing at all, Rudolph.”
        “Not even a glimpse of his face?”
        “No.”
        “Think.”
        “I have thought.”
        “When you grappled with him, what could you tell about his hair? Bald? Short? Long?”
        “I didn't notice.”
        “Might he have had a mustache?”
        “I don't think so.”
        “How do you know, Sonya? In your struggles, did you touch this man's face? Did you feel that he was clean shaven?”
        “No.”
        “Then you can't really be sure about the mustache. And he might even have had a beard.”
        “He might have.”
        “How large a man was he?”
        “He seemed huge.”
        She shuddered at the memory.
        Rudolph squinted at her, as if he were ready to strike her with one of his hammy fists. Instead, he struck the top of the kitchen table, and he said, “I didn't ask you how the man seemed. I asked you how he was. Was he a large man-or was he small? Was he fat? Thin? Or merely average?”
        “He wasn't fat or thin,” she said. “Neither extreme. But he was quite strong, muscular.”
        Her voice was a thin, strained hissing, like air escaping from a pressurized spraycan. Each word pained her, made her mouth run dry and her tight throat constrict even further.
        “How tall?”
        “I don't know.”
        He grimaced.
        “Well, I don't,” she said.
        He said, “No taller than you?”
        “Taller than me, yes.”
        “See, you do know!”
        She said nothing.
        He said, “Taller than me?”
        She looked at him as he stood-six feet four inches or better. “Not so tall as you,” she said.
        “Around six feet?”
        “Maybe.”
        “Think. You can't be sure?”
        “No.”
        “For God's sake, Rudolph!” Bill Peterson snapped.
        The bodyguard looked at him, waiting patiently for the rest of his outburst.
        Peterson said, “The girl has had an absolutely horrible experience. You can see that she's in pain, and she's still frightened. On top of all that, she's tired. Yet you continue to act as if what she has to tell you is vital to-”
        “ It is vital,” Saine said. His voice was firm, cold, final, and he nodded his burly head in the manner of a wise man who, having spoken, expects no expressions of doubt or contradiction.
        “I'm okay,” Sonya told Peterson. She tried to smile at him, though that expression caused her a twinge of pain beneath the chin, and she reached out to squeeze his hand.
        “Six feet tall, then,” Saine said, musing over what