Free Shadowfires by Dean Koontz Page B

exercising power over others than he was in learning Swahili.
    To him, money was primarily a time machine that would eventually allow him to do a lot of traveling back through the years to a more appealing age—the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, which held so much interest for him. Thus far, he had worked long hours with a few days off. But he intended to build the company into one of the top real-estate powerhouses in Orange County within the next five years, then sell out and take a capital gain large enough to support him comfortably for most—if not the rest—of his life. Thereafter, he could devote himself almost entirely to swing music, old movies, the hard-boiled detective fiction he loved, and his miniature trains.
    Although the Great Depression extended through more than a third of the period to which Ben was attracted, it seemed to him like a far better time than the present. During the twenties, thirties, and forties, there had been no terrorists, no end-of-the-world atomic threat, no street crime to speak of, no frustrating fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, no polyester or lite beer. Television, the moron box that is the curse of modern life, was not a major social force by the end of the forties. Currently, the world seemed a cesspool of easy sex, pornography, illiterate fiction, witless and graceless music. The second, third, and fourth decades of the century were so fresh and innocent by comparison with the present that Ben’s nostalgia sometimes deepened into a melancholy longing, into a profound desire to have been born before his own time.
    Now, as the respectful crickets offered trilling songs to the otherwise peaceful silence of the Leben estate, as a warm wind scented with star jasmine blew across the sea-facing hills and through the long veranda, Ben could almost believe that he had, in fact, been transported back in time to a more genteel, less hectic age. Only the architecture spoiled the halcyon illusion.
    And Rachael’s pistol.
    That spoiled things, too.
    She was an extraordinarily easygoing woman, quick to laugh and slow to anger, too self-confident to be easily frightened. Only a very real and very serious threat could compel her to arm herself.
    Before getting out of the car, she had withdrawn the gun from her purse and had clicked off the safeties. She warned Ben to be alert and cautious, though she refused to say exactly what it was that he should be alert to and cautious of. Her dread was almost palpable, yet she declined to share her worry and thus relieve her mind; she jealously guarded her secret as she had done all evening.
    He suppressed his impatience with her—not because he had the forbearance of a saint but simply because he had no choice but to let her proceed with her revelations at her own pace.
    At the door of the house, she fumbled with her keys, trying to find the lock and keyhole in the gloom. When she had walked out a year ago, she’d kept her house key because she’d thought she would need to return later to collect some of her belongings, a task that had become unnecessary when Eric had everything packed and sent to her along with, she said, an infuriatingly smug note expressing his certainty that she would soon realize how foolish she had been and seek reconciliation.
    The cold, hard scrape of key metal on lock metal gave rise to an unfortunate image in Ben’s mind: a pair of murderously sharp and gleaming knives being stropped against each other.
    He noticed a burglar-alarm box with indicator lights by the door, but the system was evidently not engaged because none of the bulbs on the panel was lit.
    While Rachael continued to poke at the lock with the key, Ben said, “Maybe he had the locks changed after you moved out.”
    “I doubt it. He was so confident that I’d move back in with him sooner or later. Eric was a very confident man.”
    She found the keyhole. The key worked. She opened the door, nervously reached inside, snapped on the lights in the foyer, and