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sound was a throaty chorus of frogs. Then behind her on Blackthorne’s lot something creaked. She caught her breath, heard small thud-dings, raspy panting. A metallic clank, the rattle of a lock.
    And then she knew, knew with absolute certainty, what was coming. Someone had opened Blackthorne’s gate. Even while she stumbled to her feet, she could hear claws raking the ground. She screamed a panicky “Help!” her voice lost in the oaks and the cypress, and looked toward her distant car. No way could she reach it. No way could she reach Sylvania’s door, either, even if it were unlocked. The house loomed tall and silent. At the same instant the Dobermans leapt through the gate, she scrambled toward the boat house, then spotted the padlock rusted on its side door. In front of her lay the black waters of the lake.
    Frantic, she glanced over one shoulder. Both dogs were loping toward her, their strides long and confident, their teeth flashes of white. Kicking off her pumps, she flung the camera on the ground and dashed, gasping, toward the water’s edge. Again she heard herself call out, but she was not conscious of making those strange, high sounds. If she turned around, if she tried to go back, the dogs would fall upon her.
    “Oh, God!” she thought when she felt the cold wetness over her feet. Would they follow? She’d never been around attack dogs. Her feet slipped and she caught herself, one hand plunging under the surface to steady herself. The muck of the lake bottom rose over her ankles. Groaning, she pulled free, threw herself forward, dragged one foot after another.
    Behind her the Dobermans had paused at the water’s edge. One whined and trotted back and forth, undecided. The other, bolder, tried the water daintily with both paws, then waded out a little, stretching his neck, baying. In a nightmare corner of Brandy’s brain lurked the sound she had heard the night before——an alligator’s grunt.
    Like a thunderbolt it came to her. She was re–enacting Eva Stone’s walk——only not deliberately, not with dignity, but with a frenzied desire to live. The news story had mentioned a drop off, but where? Behind her the second Doberman had now lunged into the water and was striking out toward her, his neck and head extended, ears flat. She lurched on.
    Suddenly near the boat house she felt the water tremble. Something large was moving toward her, something churning under the surface. Her mind exploded with the paralyzing image of a huge ‘gator. Her heart gave a giant leap, and her foot stepped into nothing.
    She forgot every rule about saving herself. Floundering blindly, she tangled her arms in weeds, strangled on a mouthful of fetid water, was dragged down by wet clothes, and went under.
    ***
    She was only half conscious when she felt herself lifted, water swirling around her, felt her lungs fill with air, felt her head forced into a collar, and then the cool night on her face. Hands pulled her through an opening above the lake and she found herself lying on her back on a hard, vibrating surface, eyes shut, head to one side, water dribbling from her lips——cold and wet and sick at her stomach.
    Shivering, she opened one eye and looked into a canopy of stars. Next to her a thin band of light fell across a man’s sodden tennis shoe. Mack, she thought groggily and murmured his name. He came, after all, hauled her to safety. But there wasn’t a deck this broad in his speed boat. She opened the other eye, stared up at the base of a console and a captain’s chair.
    “Better?” A man knelt beside her and gently removed the life jacket. Brandy could not hear an engine, yet the craft was steadily moving. His next words answered her question. “Glad I got a trolling motor. Gets me in closer and quieter. We’re pulling out now.”
    The churning in the water——the blades of an electric motor? A face came into focus——a wet lock of dark hair, sharp cheekbones, a damp mustache. When she looked into the