Last Light (Novella) by Dean Koontz Page B

show
Twin Peaks.
    Wagner was the closest to being right, but it wasn’t ideal.
    Rainer had begun to think he would have to write his own music. He had never written music before, but he was sure he could do it.
    When the sunset had diminished to a thin red wound along the horizon, he got out of the Mercedes.
    He walked without haste to the Watkins house and the pleasures that the night held for him.
    As before, he wore his stylish and practical khaki coat with cargo pockets.
    Makani and her guy had probably figured out by what route he had previously entered the house. It didn’t matter if they were waiting for him.
    He was unstoppable.
    Nevertheless, this time he went directly to the front door.
    It would have been amusing to ring the bell, but he did not.
    A deadbolt. The LockAid released the pin tumblers in less than half a minute.
    With a pistol in hand, he entered the foyer fast, in a half crouch, but no one waited to greet him.
    Since he was invisible to them, he didn’t expect to be fired upon. Just in case, he was wearing a bulletproof Kevlar vest under his coat, a custom model to which had been added short sleeves.
    The house was quiet.
    A few lamps were lit, dialed low.
    In the family room, through the French doors, he saw the dark patio, the dark yard, and the lighted gazebo toward the end of the property.
    Makani and her guy were sitting in the gazebo. Downlighted.
    “What game is this?” he wondered aloud.
    Makani lifted a bottle to her mouth. Maybe a beer bottle.
    Not-Ollie lifted a bottle to his mouth, too.
    Who were they trying to kid? After he had kicked their ass in Round Two, less than twenty-four hours earlier, they weren’t lying back, relaxed, and getting juiced.
    It looked like a trap of some kind.
    Now and then, other people had tried to set a trap for him. Idiots, all of them.
    If he opened a patio door and stepped outside, they wouldn’t see him, but they might see the door open.
    So he’d go out by way of the side garage door.
    He hesitated, watching them.
    The gazebo was near the gate in the glass-panel fence. A gate on a bluff meant there must be stairs leading down to the shore.
    Maybe they expected him to come at them from the beach.
    Maybe they figured that at the first sound of him on those stairs, they’d step through the gate and shoot down on him.
    Did they think he was a loser?
    Rainer wasn’t a loser.
    They
were the losers.
    Maybe they thought he wouldn’t attack them if they were in the open, under the gazebo lights, visible to neighbors if anyone in a second-floor room or sitting on an upper deck of the flanking houses happened to look this way.
    Stupid.
    He could simply push out his mojo to affect the neighbors as well. They’d never see him or hear the targets’ screams any more than the other diners in Sharkin’, the previous day, had seen him throw beer in Makani’s face or heard him curse her out.
    And his pistol was fitted with a silencer. It would make only a soft, sensuous sucking sound when he shot not-Ollie in the head.
    Rainer was ready to be done with that guy. Eager to get started with Makani.
    He left the family room, followed the main hall to the laundry room, crossed the garage, and opened the side door.
    The moon hung too low to brighten the narrow walkway between the residence and the property wall.
    Rainer moved toward the back of the property.
    * * *
    Snout between two balusters, facing the house, Bob became agitated. He growled low in his throat, whimpered, growled again, and turned to look at Makani and Pogo.
    “Our guest has arrived,” Pogo said.
    Makani said, “I’m going to be sick.”
    “You’re not going to be sick. You might wind up dead, but you won’t embarrass yourself.”
    “I think maybe you’re right. Which amazes me.”
    When the last light had faded from the sky, they had turned their chairs away from the view, angled them more toward the house.
    Earlier, they had turned off the landscape-lighting timer. The yard lay in deep