Free Bad Desire by Gary; Devon Page A

coming. Beecham looked back at the swell of headlights and quickly hid in a grove of dwarf fruit trees that served as a property marker. The rain struck his face: a cold drop ran down his cheek and trickled over his lips. He waited among the crooked, dripping branches until the car sped by, its tires throwing up a fine spray. Then he continued on, feeling his stomach beginning to draw inward, a deep quickening of anticipation and tension.
    He came to the corner of the old iron fence and stepped over it. Streetlight painted the front of the house, and a small outside light had been left on above the double front doors. The danger lay in the house’s exposure to the street and he moved quickly across the yard into the shadow of the high eaves. The blowing rain lashed around him.
    Again, he looked at his watch. 11:32. It had taken him nine minutes to get here. He would need less time than that to get back to the car. He immediately walked down along the side of the house and emerged in the woman’s backyard flower garden, neatly laid out with brick walkways and trellises and arbors, all familiar to him now. The rain softened the snap of twigs under his feet.
    Beecham paused to get his bearings. Through the latticework and the vegetation, he saw that a light was on in the kitchen, and that Rachel Buchanan was in there, moving about. Rain dripped from the eaves and rushed down the drainpipes. With the edge of his forefinger, he wiped the trickles of rain from his eyebrows.
    In the next shard of lightning, the entire backyard spread before him. Beecham saw the screened-in back porch and inside that, the back entrance to the house. He headed toward it. A moment later, the scene collapsed into utter darkness except for the lighted kitchen window which seemed, like a photograph, to emerge from negative to reality before his eyes.
    She was baking; Beecham saw the woman lift a large pan from the oven to the counter. No one else was in the room with her. He thought it odd that she was still awake and baking so late at night. But then he couldn’t be bothered with the unexplained whims of an old woman.
    The path was covered with leaves but there was gravel beneath them; he could feel the pebbles biting into the soles of his shoes. All of a sudden, she came to the window. It happened so quickly he could do nothing but stop dead still. She stepped up close to the glass and put her hand above her eyes, peering out into the night.
    What’s she doing? Can she see me?
    He could have shot her then; the storm would’ve swallowed the noise of the gun. If he had brought the .38, he could have fired straight through the window with the absolute certainty of killing her, but he knew a shotgun modified like his LeFever was not reliable or even predictable at more than ten to twelve feet. And yet, even as he deliberated against it, the shotgun swung down into his hands. He broke the breech, dropped the shells into the chambers and snapped the barrels shut.
    The old woman left the kitchen, hurrying toward the dining room in the front of the house.
    Did she see me? Again, thunder cracked; again, the yard was flooded with pale, shimmering light. In the blackness that followed, he reached the screen door, opened it, and crossed to the back door, wiping the bottoms of his shoes on the bristly welcome mat. Wooden tubs and stacks of clay pots were neatly arranged along the wall. He stood, listening.
    Carefully, he grasped the doorknob—it turned without sound, the brass catch drew back, the door opened. Noiselessly, Beecham stepped into the house, pressing the door shut behind him.
    He listened for the woman’s footsteps but all he heard was the noise of the storm outside. He inched forward, cautiously planting his weight, step after slow step, on the worn oak floor. He was in the long central hallway that ran to the front of the house, exactly as he had staged it in his mind. At the end of the corridor stood the double front doors,