Relentless by Dean Koontz Page A

lines of complex mathematical equations chasing one another so fast from left to right that I could make no sense of them.
    In truth, I would not have been able to understand them at any speed. I’m grateful that Penny is willing to balance the checkbook and review bank statements every month.
    The screen went blank, and Milo at once typed in a series of approximately thirty numbers and symbols that, as far as I was concerned, might as well have been ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. When he finished typing, his entry remained on the monitor for a moment, but then blinked off. Once more, tiers of equations streamed across the computer without any further input from him.
    “What’s happening?” I asked.
    Milo said, “Something.”
    “Something what?”
    “Yeah.”
    When my son was at his most mystifying, when he turned so far inward that he seemed almost autistic in his detachment, I had always before been intrigued, enchanted by the single-minded concentration with which he chased an idea through the labyrinth of his mind, his eyes bright with the excitement of discovery.
    Not until now had I found his contemplative disjunction from his surroundings to be disturbing. The atmosphere in the bedroom was ominous, and the hairs on the nape of my neck were raised by a power less ordinary than static electricity.
    “Something’s happening,” I pressed. “Something what?”
    He said, “Interesting.”
    On top of the highboy, Lassie wagged her tail. Her reliable canine instinct for menace seemed to detect nothing troubling in the moment.
    I was probably reacting to Shearman Waxx’s assault on us and to the fear of his return, not to Milo.
    “Listen,” I said, “we’re going on a little trip.”
    “Trip,” Milo said.
    “We want to get out of here by seven-thirty.”
    Milo said, “Thirty.”
    “We’ll have something quick for breakfast, cereal and toast, then you’ll shower in the master bath because your mom will be in our bedroom packing, and she wants you to stay close to her.”
    Milo intently studied the screen.
    “Hey, Spooky, did you hear what I said?”
    “Cereal, toast, stay close to Mom.”
    “I’m going to feed Lassie and toilet her. You come to the kitchen.”
    “Cereal, toast, gimme a minute.”
    On top of the highboy, Lassie looked eager but trepidatious.
    “It’s too far for her to jump,” I said.
    “Too far,” Milo agreed, still enraptured by the computer.
    “How do I get her down?”
    “However.”
    From the linen closet across the hall, I fetched a step stool. I stood on it and lifted the dog off the highboy.
    She licked my chin gratefully, and then she jumped from my arms to the floor.
    Downstairs, I needed about a minute to find the measuring cup, open her feed can, scoop up the kibble, and put it in her bowl—and she needed even less time to eat.
    In the backyard, while she attended to both parts of her toilet, I swept the darkness with a flashlight beam, half expecting to find Shearman Waxx lurking behind a tree.
    When the dog was finished, I used the flashlight to locate the poop, double-bag it, and drop it in one of the trash cans beside the garage.
    As always, she watched me complete this task as if I were the most mystifying creature she had ever seen—and quite possibly mad.
    “If you were the
real
Lassie,” I said, “you’d be smart enough to bag your own poop.”
    I washed my hands at the kitchen sink, and as I dried them, Milo arrived. While I made and buttered the toast, he poured two bowls of cereal.
    Although I would have preferred shredded wheat instead of Franken Berry in chocolate milk, I decided to think of this as a bonding experience.
    Until Milo sat to eat, I had not noticed that he had brought his Game Boy.
    “No games at the table,” I reminded him.
    “I’m not playing games, Dad.”
    “What else can you do with a Game Boy?”
    “Something.”
    “Let me see.”
    He turned the device toward me. Equations, like those on his computer, streamed across