Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(81)

His short, dark hair is tousled from the sweatshirt he’d hastily pulled over his head, and she’s sure her own hair must be completely disheveled. She didn’t bother to comb it, just splashed cold water on her face, grabbed her toothbrush and scrubbed the taste of vomit from her mouth. Then she threw on the closest thing at hand—a pair of jeans from the laundry bag, and the starched white dress shirt Mack had worn to the wake earlier, then apparently tossed on the floor beside the bed.

The police car disappears around a distant corner, heading in the general direction of her house.

She looks at Ben. “You don’t think . . .”

“I’m sure he’s fine. Anyway, you said he’s been sleepwalking lately, so maybe . . .”

Yes, she did say that, sharing just enough information with Ben about Mack’s nocturnal activities—but not too much. She didn’t tell him about the Dormipram, or about . . .

The knife.

Why can’t she stop thinking about it?

He was going to cut an apple that night, just as she’d watched him do hundreds, thousands of times before.

Pushing the unsettling memory from her mind, she tells Ben, “If he drove in his sleep, though”—and it looks as though he may have, given that his keys and the BMW were missing—“that would be so dangerous.”

“Maybe he didn’t do it in his sleep. Maybe he was wide awake when he left.”

“But why would he have gone? And why wouldn’t he have told me?”

“I don’t—” Ben breaks off at the sound of another screaming police car approaching in the distance.

They’re both silent, listening as the sirens grow closer before the whirling red lights overtake them. Ben pulls off to the curb to let the cruiser pass, and Allison rolls down her window to gulp fresh air.

“Hang in there.” Ben is back on the road and driving faster than the speed limit now. “It’s going to be okay.”

She says nothing, praying that all those police cars aren’t headed for Orchard Terrace.

But when they reach it, the block is dark and quiet, and Allison lets out the breath she’d been holding. Thank God.

“He’s here!” she tells Ben a moment later, spotting Mack’s car beyond the hedgerow, parked in their own driveway.

Ben, too, exhales in relief.

They pull into the driveway and she jumps out of the car, making a beeline for the house. But she stops short at the front door, realizing she doesn’t have her keys.

That wouldn’t matter anyway, she remembers, spotting the alarm company sticker affixed to the front door.

The new system is keyless—Mack thought it would be safer not to have them floating around, so easily stolen and duplicated—and she doesn’t remember the code she’s supposed to punch into the panel.

Mack had called her from the house to give it to her after it had been installed, and though she dutifully scribbled it down, she didn’t bother to memorize it. As far as she was concerned, that was a moot point. They weren’t ever going to move back in.

Now, though, she’s not so sure about that. Now, she longs to open the door and step into the safe haven this house was supposed to be.

“I can’t get in,” she tells Ben, and presses the doorbell a couple of times. She knocks, too, then pounds, seized by a growing sense of urgency.

When at last the door opens, Mack is standing there.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, surprised, and she’s relieved that he sounds—and looks—like his normal self. Not the least bit zombielike; he’s clearly wide awake.

“What are you doing here?” Ben returns, as a grateful Allison grabs on to her husband and gives him a quick, fierce hug.

“I got a call on my cell from the alarm monitoring service. They said there had been a security breach and that I was supposed to meet the police here. I’ve been waiting, but they haven’t shown up yet.”

“That happens sometimes with these systems,” Ben tells him. “I guess the cops got busy with something else.”

Remembering the squad cars that rushed past a few minutes ago, Allison realizes that the sirens are still wailing eerily in the night. Something bad is going on out there—but thankfully, it has nothing to do with Mack.

“Did you check out the house?” Ben asks Mack.

“I did. Everything seems fine.”

Allison asks, in horror, “Are you crazy? You went into the house by yourself after . . . after what happened?”

Mack shrugs. “It wasn’t a big deal. Probably just an electronic malfunction. It’s always happening with the neighbors’ alarms, remember?”

“I remember.”

I remember a lot of things. I remember that there’s a homicidal maniac out there somewhere.

“But you didn’t know it was safe inside when you got here,” she points out. “Someone could have been waiting to jump you.”

“Things are different now, Allie,” he says patiently. “No one is going to get into this house ever again without the alarm code. And you and I are the only two people in the world who know what it is—so don’t worry.”

She just shakes her head at him, terrified at the thought of what might have been.

“Mack, listen,” Ben says, “did you call Nate Jennings a little while ago and tell him you needed a ride?”