18 Children of the Storm by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz [Koontz, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Horror
Goodreads: 3336177
Publisher: Lancer Books
Published: 1972-12-31T06:00:00+00:00

“Kenneth Blenwell said it.”

“Oh?”

“He respects you quite a bit. I don't remember his exact words, but he implied that he liked you, and that the feeling is mutual.”

“It is,” Saine admitted. “He's a very level-headed man, a good man.”

“Who wants to kill the parrots.”

Saine looked perplexed. He said, “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it says.”

“Kill the parrots?” He frowned.

She said, “And maybe kill the ch—kill some-thing else, too.”

“Us, huh?” Alex asked.

“Not you,” Sonya said.

She didn't want to frighten them. The longer they could face the situation as if it were one big game, the better. She knew what it was like to be young and helpless and terrified of death, and she didn't want them to experience the nightmares that she had known as a child.

“Sure, us,” Alex said. “Who else?”

“Eat your pancakes,” Saine said.

“I'm almost done.”

“Almost isn't good enough.”

“Eat your pancakes, dummy,” Tina told her brother. “They're good for you.”

“So we're isolated,” she said to the bodyguard.

“Quite effectively.”

She tried not to let a tremor show in her voice, but it was there anyway. “Joe will probably call, sooner or later, to see if everything's all right here.

When he can't get through to us, he'll know some-thing's happened. He'll call Guadeloupe—”

“He'll think it's the storm,” Saine interrupted.

“Storm?”

He looked surprised. “You didn't see the sky?”

“I didn't open my drapes this morning.”

“Come here,” he said.

He rose and went to the window, pulled aside the drapes and showed her the muddied sky.

Brown-purple clouds, ugly and massive, so low they seemed within her grasp, scudded quickly northwestward, thick and heavy with water. The sea, in the glimpse she had of it far down the beach, looked high and angry, with a great deal of froth.

“There's a hurricane moving this way, a center that formed up two days ago but only reached hur-ricane proportions last night. It's the seventh of the season—they're calling it Greta—but it's the only one that's formed up near Distingue, so far.”

“You mean we're in its path?”

“Probably not,” he said.

“You don't know for sure?”

“Not yet. It's headed directly this way, but it's a hundred and twenty miles out, and it'll probably veer considerably before it reaches us. We won't get the hurricane itself, just the unpleasant fringe effects—lots of wind and rain. How bad that gets depends on how soon Greta veers. The closer she gets before making a directional switch, the worse we'll get pounded.”

“Should we go to Guadeloupe, to a larger island?” she asked.

“Maybe. But we can't. The boats are useless, remember.”

She said nothing. She could not think of any-thing to say.

Saine let the drapes fall back into place, and he turned away from the window. Quietly, so that the children wouldn't hear him, he said, “Has a good night's sleep refreshed your memory any?”

“How so?”

“Have you recalled anything more about the man who tried to kill you in the garden?”

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