In the curve of a driveway, a boy is running, dodging, bounding and rebounding, playing a fierce game against himself. He crouches, still his breath and throws… the ball sails through the air to drop perfectly into the hoop, and the boy catches the bounce.The afternoon shadows lengthen, creeping across the driveway, as he runs and shoots, gangly teenage body focused with effort, dribbling the ball across the concrete, popping the ball up. The shadows broaden, blending in to each other…Then a darkness falls that has nothing to do with the lowering sun, a vast, cold emptiness…That reaches for him— Roarke jerked awake as if he’d fallen, and lay in the dark in the motel room bed. In his half-sleep, he still heard the faint, monotonous thud of a basketball, and Stephen Marsden’s face was in his mind, the hollow-eyed, shell-shocked boy.The boy.Thirteen years old. His best friend on the bedroom floor above him, stabbed so many times…The Reaper had watched. Staring at the house, obsessing, fantasizing.
