Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(28)

Lynn shrugged. “Carrie didn’t want old things around. I guess since she didn’t have a past, she didn’t want to be reminded that Mack did.”

“Everyone has a past” was Allison’s reply, and she was relieved when Lynn changed the subject.

She’s never been comfortable discussing Carrie with anyone but Mack himself. She knows that Ben and Randi didn’t like Carrie, and that Lynn merely tolerated her to keep the peace. But she doesn’t intend to be one of those second wives who badmouth the first, especially since the marriage ended in death and not divorce.

What does it matter now, anyway? Carrie is gone.

So is Jerry Thompson.

It’s time you let this rest, Allison tells herself, stretching.

On that note . . .

It’s time you went to bed.

She closes the laptop, puts it on the coffee table, and immediately thinks better of it. J.J. will be on the move first thing in the morning.

Carrying the laptop over to the built-in shelves beside the fireplace, she wonders if Mack is still awake upstairs. She’d half expected him to resurface—or at least, expected to hear creaking floorboards overhead.

Is it possible he’s asleep?

Please, please, please let him be asleep.

He was in such a foul mood tonight. She knows he’s overtired, but sometimes she feels like she’s dealing with a fourth child—one who can be even more unreasonable than the others at the end of a long day.

She usually opts to give Mack a pass when he’s so obviously exhausted. Considering all that’s gone on this week, he deserved one tonight. But it took every ounce of patience she possessed not to snap right back at him earlier, when they were talking in the sunroom.

Oh well. If he really does get a good night’s sleep, tomorrow will undoubtedly be a better day.

Allison tucks the laptop away on a high shelf, then turns off the table lamp. She feels her way back across the pitch-black room, thinking she should have remembered to turn on a light over by the doorway, or near the foot of the stairs.

She’s rarely the last one up at night. Mack is usually down here when she goes to bed, unless he’s away on a business trip. Though lately, there are times when he’s still at work, and she leaves the lights on and a foil-covered plate in the oven.

Tonight, the dark, quiet house isn’t feeling like quite the safe haven it should be.

Reaching the front hall, Allison spots a human shadow looming just inside the door. A tide of panic sweeps her back to a Manhattan bedroom ten years ago, and a hooded figure is lunging at her with a knife . . .

She cries out and jumps back—then realizes that it’s not a human shadow at all; it’s the coat tree draped with jackets.

Pressing a hand against her pounding heart, she looks up the stairs, expecting someone to come rushing to her aid, having heard her scream.

Not the girls—they’re deep sleepers. But Mack must have heard her . . . unless he, too, is sleeping that soundly.

Or what if . . . ?

The thought is so dreadful she can’t bear to let it in.

Taking the stairs two at a time, she tries to shut out another memory trying to shove its way into her mind.

She was the one who found her mother dead on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night, having overdosed on sleeping pills.

No . . .

No, please . . .

Reaching the master bedroom, she bursts through the door. “Mack?”

No voice reassuringly responds, no one stirs in the darkened room.

She flips on the light and sees her husband huddled in the bed.

“Mack!” She moves toward him.

Still nothing.

Please, no . . .

She leans over, seeing her mother’s lifeless form in her mind’s eye, hearing her own shallow breathing as terror takes over . . .

And then, something else.

Not Mack’s voice . . . but his snoring.

Soft, rhythmic snoring.

For the second time in perhaps a minute, Allison goes limp with relief.

He’s alive. Thank God. Thank God.

Of course he is!

What the heck were you thinking? He’s just asleep!

And there’s no one lurking in the hallway downstairs.

And the man who tried to kill you ten years ago is dead. Okay? Can you relax now? Do you finally understand that you have nothing to worry about?

A smile plays at Allison’s lips as she hurriedly strips off her clothes, pulls on a nightgown, and goes through her bathroom routine.

Yes. Tomorrow is definitely going to be a brighter day, she thinks as she climbs into bed beside her peacefully slumbering husband.

Robbie Masters’s mother is always warning him that hanging around stoned outside the gas station mini-mart in Monticello will get him into trouble, but that shows how much she knows.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

A little while ago, when the car pulled up alongside him and the driver beckoned him over, he figured it was someone who’d taken a wrong exit off the highway and needed directions. That, or someone was looking to score some weed and wanted access to Robbie’s dealer.

Boy, was he wrong.

Robbie is careful not to jostle the insulated blue bag as he carries it toward the guardhouse at the main entrance. Having grown up a mere twenty-minute drive away from Fallsburg, this is the closest he’s ever come to the massive correctional facility—and he hopes it’s the closest he ever has to get.