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listening.
    The refrigerator motor stopped running. A clock ticked softly.
    After a long silence, a brief clattering echoed through the house from another room, startling Vivienne. Then silence again.
    She went to the drawer next to the sink and selected a long, sharp blade from an assortment of knives.
    She didn’t even consider calling the police. If she phoned for them and then ran out of the house, they might not find an intruder when they came. They would think she was just a foolish old woman. Vivienne Neddler refused to give anyone reason to think her a fool.
    Besides, for the past twenty-one years, ever since her Harry died, she had always taken care of herself. She had done a pretty damn good job of it too.
    She stepped out of the kitchen and found the light switch to the right of the doorway. The dining room was deserted.
    In the living room, she clicked on a Stifel lamp. No one was there.
    She was about to head for the den when she noticed something odd about four framed eight-by-ten photographs that were grouped on the wall above the sofa. This display had always contained six pictures, not just four. But the fact that two were missing wasn’t what drew Vivienne’s attention. All four of the remaining photos were swinging back and forth on the picture hooks that held them. No one was near them, yet suddenly two photos began to rattle violently against the wall, and then both flew off their mountings and clattered to the floor behind the beige, brushed-corduroy sofa.
    This was the sound she had heard when she’d been in the kitchen—this clatter.
    “What the hell?”
    The remaining two photographs abruptly flung themselves off the wall. One dropped behind the sofa, and the other tumbled onto it.
    Vivienne blinked in amazement, unable to understand what she had seen. An earthquake? But she hadn’t felt the house move; the windows hadn’t rattled. Any tremor too mild to be felt would also be too mild to tear the photographs from the wall.
    She went to the sofa and picked up the photo that had dropped onto the cushions. She knew it well. She had dusted it many times. It was a portrait of Danny Evans, as were the other five that usually hung around it. In this one, he was ten or eleven years old, a sweet brown-haired boy with dark eyes and a lovely smile.
    Vivienne wondered if there had been a nuclear test; maybe that was what had shaken things up. The Nevada Nuclear Test Site, where underground detonations were conducted several times a year, was less than a hundred miles north of Las Vegas. Whenever the military exploded a high-yield weapon, the tall hotels swayed in Vegas, and every house in town shuddered a little.
    But, no, she was stuck in the past: The Cold War was over, and nuclear tests hadn’t been conducted out in the desert for a long time. Besides, the house hadn’t shuddered just a minute ago; only the photos had been affected.
    Puzzled, frowning thoughtfully, Vivienne put down the knife, pulled one end of the sofa away from the wall, and collected the framed eight-by-tens that were on the floor behind it. There were five photographs in addition to the one that had dropped onto the sofa; two were responsible for the noises that had drawn her into the living room, and the other three were those that she had seen popping off the picture hooks. She put them back where they belonged, then slid the sofa into place.
    A burst of high-pitched electronic noise blared through the house: Aiii-eee . . . aiii-eee . . . aiii-eee . . .
    Vivienne gasped, turned. She was still alone.
    Her first thought was: Burglar alarm .
    But the Evans house didn’t have an alarm system.
    Vivienne winced as the shrill electronic squeal grew louder, a piercing oscillation. The nearby windows and the thick glass top of the coffee table were vibrating. She felt a sympathetic resonance in her teeth and bones.
    She wasn’t able to identify the source of the sound. It seemed to be coming from every corner of the house.
    “What in