Read Online Hell's Gate by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page A

door exploded in a shower of shavings and sticks which rattled like locusts against the tile.
        The intruder with the magic finger was half a dozen feet beyond. He raised his weapon toward Salsbury's head. The brass gleamed. Then Victor was through the window, dropping onto the porch roof, slipping, falling, rolling painfully toward the edge.
        He dug his fingers into the shingles, lost his hold when a fingernail ripped and sent wiry, burning pain stabbing through his hand. He had visions of falling fifteen feet to the ground, flat on his back on a raised stone in the flagstone walk, his spinal column snapping like a pretzel. He flailed wildly, tried to forget the aching fingernail, and managed to catch onto some of the ill-fitted shingles that offered support. He lay there a second, sucking in and blowing out the cool evening air, blessing the roofer who had not slipped shingle to shingle without a seam. A moment later, he came onto his knees, aware of the folly of staying within view of the bathroom window. He rose, crouched, and went back across the roof, against the wall of the house.
        He listened, heard what was left of the door crash inward across the bathroom floor. Thankful that porches ran almost continually around all sides of this old place, he turned toward the rear of the house and ran lightly along the roof. He came to the end of the side porch, looked at the three-foot gap between this roof and the roof of the rear porch. He would not only have to leap, but leap around a corner. Hesitating, he looked back to the open bathroom window. The intruder's head was stuck out, and he was trying to aim his brass fingertip.
        Salsbury leaped, landed on the next roof and stumbled across it as if he were leaning into a strong wind, waving his arms and trying to keep from falling.
        His balance regained, he walked to the spouting at the edge of the shingles and looked onto the back lawn. It was only fifteen feet, and doubtless iron Victor would have thought nothing of it, but it seemed a mile now. He bit his lip and jumped.
        He hit the dewy grass, rolled onto his side like a skier taking a fall, and came quickly into a crouch. He listened for the sound of the intruder's feet on the roof above, but heard only a curious leaden silence that made him think, for a moment, that all that had just happened was a nightmare. Then, distantly, Intrepid began barking again, still shut in the master bedroom. Poor, noble dog, locked out of the fight. But teeth and claws seemed useless against the stranger with the flat blue eyes. A sense of reality returned to Salsbury. He was on his own.
        Now what?
        If he couldn't fight on a man-to-man basis, the only thing left was to run. He moved slowly around the house, staying with the hedges, trying to be as much like a shadow as possible, which was a bit difficult considering that his feet were bare and gleamed whitely. His pajamas, too, were a dazzling yellow, not exactly the thing for stealthy activities. At the corner, just before he moved around the front of the building, he thought he heard a tiny scraping sound, a shallow, echoless click. He stood very still and alert, trying to pick up something else.
        The night was suddenly cold.
        He thought, suddenly, if he was pretending to be a shadow, maybe the intruder was involved in the same game.
        But none of the other shadows moved-as far as he could tell.
        Five minutes passed without any further disruption of the ethereal silence. Salsbury was reminded of the GT parked on the graveled drive, the spare set of keys taped under the hood where he had put them at the suggestion of the used car salesman. What he would do when he got away from the house, where he would go, when he would return-all of these were questions he did not particularly care about. All he knew was that a tall, blank-faced killer was stalking him, a man not the sort who gives in after an