He turned and looked her straight in the eye.

"It's a prank, a filthy prank," he said. "Meant to scare us. It's all right. Take the baby to the bedroom. Lock the windows. Lock the door."

She nodded and ran to the back room.

Prime peered out the hallway, up and down the stairs. No one.

His heart was pounding. Casey had walked in five minutes prior and the cat hadn't been there. Now it was. Whoever had done this was nearby, waiting for a reaction. Waiting for him to show himself, to go running into the night in anger or fear.

Whoever.

Prime knew who was out there. Ted Carson, the only animal torturer he knew.

"d.a.m.n it," he whispered.

He glanced down the stairs. Had the door slammed shut between when they had heard the noise and Casey had opened the door? He couldn't remember. Had Carson stayed in the building? Perhaps he was lurking in the dead-end stairwell that led to the attic. Or had he run out the front?

Prime wedged the door open with the coat tree. Then keeping his face toward the door, he backed into the kitchen and reached blindly for the knife block. His fingers closed on the largest blade. The block had been a gift from his parents, good st.u.r.dy steel.

Prime pushed the coat tree out of the way, and exited the apartment. He stood in the hall, over the corpse of the cat, listening. He let the door shut and used his keys to lock the door. If Carson had gone down and out, Prime didn't care. If Carson had gone up, if he was lurking above, then Prime would finish this all now.

He took the steps two at a time in his stocking feet. He flattened himself against the wall, then inched forward until he could see just up the stairs.

Nothing.

Carson had gone the other way.

In the distance he heard the wail of a siren.

Then the padding of feet running away from the front door.

"Bye-bye, Carson," Prime whispered. He unlocked the apartment door, entered, and locked it again behind him.

"I called the police," Casey said. She'd not stayed in the bedroom like he'd said but stood in the kitchen with a second knife from the block.

Prime smiled at her, and she smiled back.

"Good thinking," he said.

John sunk his knife into the block with a thunk and pulled Casey into a tight hug.

CHAPTER 20

John Prime sat in his car outside his lawyer's office, shivering. The rain had soaked Prime as he ran out, leaving his suit shirt clinging to his body. It was over, and he didn't care.

What was he going to do about Carson?

The Rubik people had been so smug about it. They'd waited until halfway through the meeting to spring it.

"We've decided to license the Cube directly through our agents in New York," Lorraine Creifty had said. "We appreciate the... enthusiasm in your marketing plan, but we think a specialist, not a teenager with a high school diploma, can do a better job marketing it."

Prime's reb.u.t.tal had been halfhearted. He had yelled, he had screamed, and he had thrown the prototype against the wall, splintering it into twenty-six smaller cubes.

Not that it mattered. It had been spiraling down the toilet for three months.

Just like Carson.

Prime's mind wouldn't stop coming back to it. The f.u.c.ker had been just outside their door. He had killed an animal. He was a psychopath.

Not that Prime was any different. He'd killed before too. In self-defense. That was different.

Creifty and her team pushed through the door of the law office. Through his fogged and streaked window, he watched them climb into a limousine. What had he been thinking? He was a kid, who's been whisked away from his life. He'd tried to make something of it, but he was nothing, just some farm boy, who'd tried to get rich quick.

What had he been thinking?

He put his car into gear and began the long drive back to Findlay. He didn't have the whole day off; he still had to work second shift at three in the afternoon.

He cast Creifty one last glance. They thought they knew how big it was going to be, but they didn't. He'd seen it. Nothing was going to prepare them for it. He shrugged. Let them have it. He didn't care.

He changed out of his soaked suit in the locker room. The tie was ruined, but the suit could be dry-cleaned. The one-piece shop floor coverall felt better anyway. He was just zipping it up when the locker-room door slammed open.

"Hey, it's the college basketball star! Oh, wait. He knocked up a cheerleader. That's one way to be a star."

Prime glanced once at Carson and his pack of high school buddies, but he didn't say anything. His heart was thudding in his chest, and sweat ran down his side from his pits.

"How are those pom-poms, Rayburn? They still jiggly?"

Prime didn't reply. There were six of them, and it was just him, late for third shift by five minutes and the last one in the locker room.

"Nothing to say? I didn't think so."

Carson turned away, and that drew a spike of white hate from Prime's heart.

"Carson!" Prime said. He turned. "I found something of yours last night at my apartment."

An odd look pa.s.sed across Carson's face.

"A cat," Prime said. "Thought it was yours, since that's the only kind of p.u.s.s.y you can get."

His friends laughed weakly, glancing at Carson, who glared.

"Keep laughing, Rayburn."

Prime felt a moment of coldness as Carson walked off. He'd faced the bully down, but there was no joy in it. Things he'd have found satisfaction with were dull.

He pulled on his safety shoes and walked out to the shop floor.

Casey was sitting at the table, Abby bouncing on her knee, still awake, when he got home at midnight.

Her hair was disheveled, she wore a sloppy T-shirt that read: "Cheerleader," and there were dark circles under her eyes. Still his breath caught as he saw her. Pa.s.sion combined with respect, and longing, and feelings he wasn't sure of filled him.

"What?" she said. "What's wrong?"

"I-I love you," he said simply. He'd never been sure what that meant.

Casey smiled and it was a sight that stopped him in the doorway.

"Yeah, well, I love you too," she said. "Even if you feel trapped."

"I was wrong about that, Casey," Prime said. "I was so wrong."

"You got that right," she said.

He leaned in and kissed her. Abby grabbed at his collar with chubby hands.

"How did the meeting in Toledo go?"

"Worst possible outcome," he said.

"I'm sorry, John. Maybe if I'd given you more free time yesterday..."

"Wouldn't have mattered. They'd already made up their minds," Prime said. "We don't need them."

"I'm-"

There was a scratching at the door, perhaps a pen digging into the wood.

"d.a.m.n it, Carson," Prime said.

"Carson-?" Casey started.

Prime threw open the door, and there was Ted Carson, something metallic in his hand.

"Listen, John-"

Prime reached for whatever was in Carson's fist-a knife, a gun, a weapon. Carson jerked back, but Prime had his wrist. Only the meaty hand was sweaty and Carson pulled free. Teetering on the step to their landing, he grasped out for some hold. Prime's hand refused to move, refused to grab Carson's collar or his other hand. He was within reach, but Prime let Carson flail. In slow motion, Carson wheeled his arms and crashed down the stairs.

"What'd you do?"

He could have- "Did you push him?" Casey asked.

Carson lay unmoving at the bottom of the steps. Casey took them two at a time and knelt next to him. She reached tentatively toward his neck. Prime watched as she felt for a pulse.

"Don't touch him!" he cried.

She turned on him.

"What have you done? What have you done?"

"What do you mean? He was here to hurt us? It was self-defense. He fell!"

"He's not armed!" Casey whispered shrilly. "And now he's dead."

"Dead?" Prime shuddered. Dead?

"You killed a man. You killed Ted Carson, and now the police are going to take you away."

"No." Prime scrambled backward until he was up against the table and chairs.

"What am I going to do when you're gone?"

"He had a knife, didn't he?" Though as Prime said it, he wasn't sure. Carson had used it to dig at the door. He'd had it in his hand.

Prime scrambled up. Where was the knife?

There was nothing on their landing. There was nothing next to Carson's body. Prime descended, and stepped over the body. Was it on the stairs? Was it under the body?

He saw it, then, a glitter of metal under Carson's leg.

Prime rolled the body over. It was Carson's car keys.

Prime's heart thudded. He stood there, desperate, angry, helpless. It was over. He'd ruined it all.

He stared wild-eyed at Casey.

He took a step for the stairs.

"Stop."

He looked at Casey. She was staring at him with hard eyes.

"Turn around. Grab him under the pits and drag him inside the apartment."

"What?"