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might be able to sweep a murderous psychopath off his feet. At best, surprising him by jamming the bristles into his face might damage his eyes and startle him off balance.
    The broom wasn’t as comforting as a flamethrower would have been, but it was better than a mop and certainly more threatening than a feather duster.
    Positioning myself by the door to the kitchen, I prepared to take Simon off his feet when he burst into the mud room in search of me. He didn’t burst.
    After what seemed to be enough time to paint the gray walls a more cheerful color, but what was in reality maybe fifteen seconds, I glanced at the door to the garage. Then at the door to the backyard.
    I wondered if Simon Makepeace had already forced Danny out of the house. They might be in the garage, Simon behind the wheel of Dr. Jessup’s car, Danny bound and helpless in the backseat.
    Or maybe they were headed across the yard, toward the gate in the fence. Simon might have a vehicle of his own in the alleyway behind the property.
    I felt inclined, instead, to push through the swinging door and step into the kitchen.
    Only the under-the-cabinet lights were on, illuminating the countertops around the perimeter of the room. Nevertheless, I could see that I was alone.
    Regardless of what I could see, I sensed a presence. Someone could have been crouched, hiding on the farther side of the large center work island.
    Fierce with broom, gripping it like a cudgel, I cautiously circled the room. The gleaming mahogany floor pealed soft squeaks off my rubber-soled shoes.
    When I had rounded three-quarters of the island, I heard the elevator doors roll open behind me.
    I spun around to discover not Simon, but a stranger. He’d been waiting for the elevator, and when I hadn’t been in it, as he had expected, he’d realized that it was a ruse. He’d been quick-witted, hiding in the cab immediately before I entered from the mud room.
    He was sinuous and full of coiled power. His green gaze shone bright with terrible knowledge; these were the eyes of one who knew the many ways out of the Garden. His scaly lips formed the curve of a perfect lie: a smile in which malice tried to pass as friendly intent, in which amusement was in fact dripping venom.
    Before I could think of a serpent metaphor to describe his nose, the snaky bastard struck. He squeezed the trigger of a Taser, firing two darts that, trailing thin wires, pierced my T-shirt and delivered a disabling shock.
    I fell like a high-flying witch suddenly deprived of her magic: hard, and with a useless broom.

CHAPTER 4
    W HEN YOU TAKE MAYBE FIFTY THOUSAND volts from a Taser, some time has to pass before you feel like dancing.
    On the floor, doing a broken-cockroach imitation, twitching violently, robbed of basic motor control, I tried to scream but wheezed instead.
    A flash of pain and then a persistent hot pulse traced every nerve pathway in my body with such authority that I could see them in my mind’s eye as clearly as highways on a road map.
    I cursed my attacker, but the invective issued as a whimper. I sounded like an anxious gerbil.
    He loomed over me, and I expected to be stomped. He was a guy who would enjoy stomping. If he wasn’t wearing hobnail boots, that was only because they were at the cobbler’s shop for the addition of toe spikes.
    My arms flopped, my hands spasmed. I couldn’t cover my face.
    He spoke, but his words meant nothing, sounded like the sputter and crackle of short-circuiting wires.
    When he picked up the broom, I knew from the way he held it that he intended to drive the blunt metal handle into my face repeatedly, until the Elephant Man, compared to me, would look like a
GQ
model.
    He raised that witchy weapon high. Before he slammed it into my face, however, he turned abruptly away, looking toward the front of the house.
    Evidently he heard something that changed his priorities, for he threw the broom aside. He split through the mud room and no doubt left the house by the