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.Occasionally, a car grumbled past, tires spitting up snow.A few houses down, a kid came outdoors with a golden Retriever, and child and dog tumbled through the snow until a woman yelled at them to come back inside.Two hours later, no one had emerged from the house.It was another freezing day, however, and old folks tended to stay indoors in such weather, their brittle bones unable to withstand the low temperatures.He pulled his hat low over his head.He already had a knife clipped inside his jacket.He climbed out of the Chevy and crunched through the slush.A white delivery van rumbled down the road, and he waited for it to pass before he crossed the street.He trudged toward the house.Thick, hard snow carpeted the walkway.Someone needed to get out here and shovel.She probably paid a neighborhood kid to do the dirty work, and hadn’t gotten around to it yet for the most recent snowfall.It gave him an idea.A short set of concrete steps, caked with ice, led to the front door.A half-full bag of salt stood nearby, next to an aluminum snow shovel.He reached inside the bag and got a handful of salt.He tossed the granules across the steps.Then he picked up the shovel.Returning to the end of the walkway, he began to scrape snow and ice off the pavement, tossing it aside into the yard.When he had gotten deep into his work and had cleared off half the path, the front door finally creaked open.Back turned to the house, he continued to shovel, as if he were only a good neighbor concerned about the snow piling up on an elderly lady’s property.But he slowly worked his way backward along the path, drawing closer to the doorway.“Excuse me?” she said.Her voice retained some of the authority of the elementary school teacher she’d been before her retirement.“Excuse me, sir?”He kept his back to her, kept shoveling, kept inching backward.He heard the door creak open wider.“Excuse me, sir,” she said.“I appreciate your shoveling off my walkway, but do I know you?”Only a couple of feet from the porch, he spun around.Aunt Betty stood in the doorway, bifocals perched on the edge of her nose.She wore a white sweatshirt and matching pants and held a coffee mug.When she saw his face, the cup slipped out of her fingers and shattered on the porch steps.“I’m a little offended, Aunt Betty,” he said.“How could you ever forget me?”“Dexter.” Terror had knocked her breathless.“Long time no see, bitch,” he said, and slammed the shovel blade against her head.Chapter 11At Belle Coiffure, Rachel was cutting a client’s hair when a sharp pain burst in her head, as if she’d been bludgeoned.Her client was a regal, forty-something black woman named Maxine.Maxine was a principal at a high school in College Park, and she had a standing weekly appointment with Rachel to get her hair washed and styled, or trimmed.Rachel had been Maxine’s stylist for over a year, and they had developed an easy, though superficial, camaraderie.That afternoon, they were discussing holiday plans—or rather, Maxine was discussing her plans for the holidays.Rachel kept her own business private, an ingrained habit, but she listened closely and asked good questions.Although Rachel’s listening skills made her a client favorite, she had difficulty following Maxine’s stated worries about planning Christmas dinner for her extended family.Rachel was consumed by her own troubles: worry about her ever-growing number of lies to Joshua, natural worry about her pregnancy.Most of all, worry about him—the man from her past whom she refused to think of by name, as if doing so would conjure him out of the atmosphere like an evil spirit.Surfing the Web late last night, she’d confirmed his recent release from prison in Illinois.It didn’t require psychic talent to predict that he would be looking for her.He blamed her, after all, for his incarceration.Although she’d heard that some people who went to prison learned forgiveness, he did not possess a heart that had the capacity for such an emotion.Actually, she was convinced that he didn’t possess a heart at all.He was as cold and soulless as an android in a sci-fi movie: a machine that mimicked humanity, but didn’t hold genuine feelings for anyone.Except to hurt them.“—and I was hoping you could give me your recipe before I leave today,” Maxine said.“Recipe?” Rachel lowered her scissors.She’d missed Maxine’s last few sentences.“Recipe for what?”There was a wall-length mirror in front of them.Maxine frowned at Rachel’s reflection in the glass.“For your pound cake, girl.Of course.”“Right.” Rachel laughed.“Sure, I can—“Then the pain hit.Like a mallet cracking against her skull.Rachel gasped
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