Free Live Bait by P. J. Tracy Page A

behind her eyes. Why couldn’t that damned cat just come in? . . .
    ‘PUFF, COME HERE! ’
    And at last, Puff did. He trotted up to his mistress as if he’d just noticed her presence for the first time, tail flagging in a cheerful greeting. Rose scooped him up into her arms, cooing admonishments as giddy tears of relief splashed onto his fur. Once she retreated into the safety of her bright, cozy kitchen, her silly tears dried and she poured a dish of cream for him, a glass of sherry for herself.
    The phone rang as she was settling into a sofa almost as old and lumpy as she was. It was her son-in-law – not the brightest fellow on the planet, and a lousy dentist, she’d always thought – but he was a good husband to her Lorrel, and Rose supposed a mother couldn’t ask for much more.
    ‘Hello, Richard. Yes, I’m fine. I suppose Lorrel is working late again? Of course I remember tomorrow night, I haven’t lost my mind yet, Richard. Five o’clock. Kiss the girls for me and tell them I can’t wait to see them. I baked cookies.’
    Rose smiled as she hung up the phone, and was still smiling as she clicked on the TV, coaxed Puff onto her lap, and started to doze. Her granddaughters were home from college, and tomorrow night they would all go out for dinner.
    Rose woke up much later, disoriented and aching from her arduous day of gardening. Puff had deserted her lap, but she could feel his fur tickling the back of her neck. He’d retreated to his favorite perch on the back of the couch, where he liked to sit and look out the window. She reached behind to pat him, but her hand froze in midair.
    Puff was growling.
    She groped for the remote and eventually found the mute button. ‘What’s wrong, kitty?’ After a few moments of silence, she heard a faint rustling coming from behind her, outside in the bushes.
    Juncos in the arborvitae, that’s all it is, she told herself. At night the little birds sheltered in the soft evergreen, making fluttery noises as they hopped from branch to branch.
    But this wasn’t a fluttery noise, exactly. It sounded . . . bigger.
    Someone is out there.
    Rose felt it in those good senses people never pay attention to until it’s too late: the little hairs standing up on the back of her neck, the goose bumps rising on the loose, checkered skin of her old arms, and when the low rumble of Puff’s growl jumped in pitch, she knew . . .
    . . . Someone is out there, on the other side of the glass, looking in at me.
    She turned her head slowly, slowly, and then she saw a pair of eyes hanging there in the dark just outside the window, staring in at her.
    There was a brief moment when her body reacted the way it was supposed to – when her heart leaped and started to hammer, when the blood rushed from her brain to her legs in an ancient preparation for flight, leaving her face cold and clammy. But it was over almost as soon as it began, and Rose simply turned her eyes back to the muted television screen and sat there quietly, waiting to wake up from this very bad dream.
    It isn’t a dream.
    The rustling stopped and a few minutes later, when she’d finally summoned the courage to turn around again, there was nobody at her window.
    She didn’t breathe until her lungs screamed for air, and by then, she was feeling a little silly, because it probably had been just a dream. The mind always played tricks on you in that twilight netherworld between sleep and wakefulness; especially old minds.
    And then the front door rattled in its frame and Rose started shaking so badly, she feared her old bones might shatter like glass.
    Call the police.
    She reached for the phone on the table beside her, but her hand wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, no, not at all, and there was nothing she could do but watch helplessly as the useless appendage spasmed and flailed and twitched and knocked the phone to the floor.
    The noise at the front door finally stopped, but the silence was much worse,