Two years before

Nola Hanson was a typical mother, convinced her daughter Katie was no typical child. And she had typically big dreams for her daughter Katie—Dr. Hanson, Katherine Hanson (Attorney at Law), Governor Hanson, Senator Hanson, even President Hanson. Ever since Hillary, all the doors were open now, weren’t they?

On the other hand, Doctor Hanson did have a real ring to it….

As for eight-year-old Katie, her biggest ambition was doing well at tomorrow night’s softball game.

“You’re sure he’ll be there?” the child asked for the fifth or sixth time.

The girl’s mother was at the stove, stirring chicken noodle soup. Patient with her blond, pigtailed interrogator, Nola said, “Your father’s working late today, so he can be sure not to miss an inning of the game tomorrow.”

Tall for her age, and slender, Katie slipped onto a diner-type stool opposite her mother at the kitchen island, and displayed a big grin made memorable by a missing front tooth, the new one about a quarter of the way in. Mother and daughter shared hair color and the same lively blue eyes. Nola, in her mid-thirties, had kept on a few pounds after giving birth to Katie, but Burl, her husband, not only never complained, he seemed fully in favor of the additional curves.

“I like my women with some meat on the bone,” he’d kidded her.

“Women?” she’d kidded back, one eyebrow arching.

“Woman,” he corrected.

“No problem. I like my men big and stupid.”

This little exchange had become a running joke with them, and seen endless repetition and variation over the years.

Burl was comptroller for Rolette County, having worked his way up from the entry-level accounting position he’d landed out of college. Nola and Burl were alumni of North Dakota State, Bisons through and through—Burl even insisted on owning a green car (the school’s colors were green and gold).

Some good-natured guff had come Nola’s way from her sorority sisters when she’d started dating the accounting major, but when she retorted, “CPAs do it with a long pencil,” the carping had turned to laughter, and maybe envy.

The couple married just after graduation. Burl took the job out here, one interstate exit past the middle of nowhere, and Nola signed on at the Rolla Public Library. At first, their lives were about as boring as Nola’s sorority sisters predicted. Slowly, however, things changed—they both earned promotions, Nola first, rising to head librarian with a speed that dismayed some of her co-workers.

And though she wasn’t exactly overseeing the Library of Congress, the Rolla branch brought its own challenges, and she took pride in having the best public collections of both fiction and non-fiction (for a town Rolla’s size) in the state.

Burl’s rise had been slower, his path blocked by more than a couple geriatric librarians. Still, his progress had been steady, and they always considered themselves both happy and blessed—at least until Katie came along and showed them what happiness was really about. The gifted little girl became the center of their universe, and her accomplishments in school gave Nola and Burl more pride than anything in their respective careers.

Everything was working out even better than Nola could ever have hoped. Both she and Burl came from broken families, and making their house a home was a shared goal. When her female friends would whine over petty arguments with their husbands, Nola (to her slight embarrassment and major pleasure) couldn’t report a single spat. She and Burl were simply on the same page, and Katie had only made life better. Nola made no apologies for her good luck.

Ladling soup into a bowl, Nola asked, “Washed your hands?”

Her daughter leaned toward the waiting bowl on the counter and said, “Smells good….”

“Don’t change the subject. Straight to the bathroom and wash them.”

Defeated, Katie climbed down and trotted off toward the first-floor bathroom.

“Soap too!” Nola called.

If getting Katie to wash up was the biggest dilemma of the day, Nola knew she didn’t have anything to complain about.

A potentially touchy subject had come up earlier—what Katie wanted for her birthday. The girl said she’d settle for nothing less than a little brother or a puppy. Katie didn’t really seem to care which, though Burl would probably be happy to hear that Katie, given a choice, was leaning toward the canine option….

Smiling to herself, setting the bowl of soup on the counter where Katie would sit, Nola was surprised to see the doorknob turning across the kitchen, on the door off the garage.

A glance up at the clock said it was only 6:45, and she didn’t expect Burl for another hour, at least. Which was why she was serving Katie her dinner now.

Pleased to have Burl home, she half turned to the door and said, “You’re early! How was your—”

She stopped mid-sentence, frozen at the sight of a strange man at the threshold of her kitchen. Middle-aged, a little chunky. Tennis shoes, blue jeans, and a blue jacket. Blue baseball cap pulled low almost over his eyes.

Pistol in his right hand.

Though physically petrified, Nola was mentally racing, thoughts streaking through her mind:

Katie was still in the bathroom, good.

Nearest knife in the block on the counter behind her.

Soup hot enough to throw at this intruder and burn him?

What then, the knife?

No getting to the phone for 911, too far away.

Duck behind the counter of the island, but what then? Fight or flight?

The presence of Katie in the house made the decision easy.

Nola shouted, “Katie—run!”

Then, snarling, she grabbed the pan of soup—maybe it wasn’t hot enough but it was metal and she could swing at him—and moved toward the intruder and the pistol barked.

Like a hard punch, it knocked Nola back, and she felt her balance slipping. The counter’s edge was right there, but when she reached for it, it seemed to move away and she found herself on the floor, tile cool against her flesh.

To her surprise, there was no pain. She knew she had been shot, from the noise echoing in the airy kitchen to the spreading warmth in her chest, but she couldn’t get over the lack of pain. Everything just felt numb. Something smelled bitter—cordite. Burl was a hunter.

She tried to yell again, for Katie to run, but nothing came. She coughed and realized she was spitting up blood. The man stood over her now, his eyes on her but unconcerned, as if he were looking at spilled milk and not a dying woman.

Nola tried to recognize him, couldn’t, then tried to understand why this stranger had just walked into her house and shot her.

Should have locked the door, a voice in her head said.

Too late now, wasn’t it?

Spilled milk.

Sending thoughts to Katie to run, to hide, to get out of the house, was all she could manage for her daughter—a sad desperate attempt at telepathy. She tried to talk, to ask this man why he had done this thing, but her efforts were only rewarded with more coughing.

She struggled to focus on his face again, but her vision blurred.

Was she about to die? Was Katie about to die? Was the price of her happy life these terrible last agonized moments?

He raised the pistol again, and the last thing she saw was the flash.

Katie’s hands were under the warm water when she heard her mother yell for her to run, but that made no sense—her mommy never wanted her to run in the house….

A moment later, she heard what sounded like one of the M-80s the bigger kids had been shooting off last summer, on the Fourth of July, when both her parents warned her about the dangers of firecrackers. They’d finally relented and let her hold a sparkler that her dad lit.

But this bang had been so loud, she jumped, water from the sink spraying the front of her when she pulled her hands back, making a mess Mommy wouldn’t like.

Katie was scared now. Something was going on in the kitchen, something not normal, something wrong, but she had no idea what. She crept closer to the open door.

A second M-80 exploded in the kitchen, and Katie jumped again, her hand stifling a scream. She tiptoed into the hallway, and looked out to the kitchen, where her mother’s feet were sticking out, on the floor! Rest of her hidden by the kitchen’s large island.

Standing over Mommy was a tall man who seemed to be pointing down, maybe with his hand, maybe with something in his hand; but from here, the man’s body blocked the object and Katie couldn’t see.

But she did see a stranger, and she of course understood that a stranger meant danger, and she grasped now that Mommy yelling for her to run was because this stranger meant danger….

As the man turned slowly in her direction, Katie turned and sprinted down the hall to her bedroom and ducked inside, closing the door as quietly as she could.

Had he seen her?

She looked for a place to hide—there were really only two choices: the closet and under her bed. When they played hide and seek, her mommy always looked in the closet first. Under the bed was her best choice. More than once, Mommy had failed to find her there.

She dropped to her knees, breath coming in ragged gasps now, tears running down her cheeks, though she was barely aware of that; then she shimmied under the bed, and tried not to move.

Quiet as a mouse, that was something her grandma would say. Quiet as a mouse.

She knew of better hiding places in the house, but that would mean trying to get past the stranger, and she knew if he saw her, she was in trouble.

Under the bed would have to do.

The springs her roof now, Katie prayed to God that the man wouldn’t find her, and that her daddy would come home. She hoped her mommy was all right. Mommy was on the floor and maybe the man had hit her. But Mommy would be all right. She had to be! Katie would be all right too, if she just stayed quiet as a mouse. This was as far as her mind could take her.

Daddy, she thought. Please come home…please….

When she heard the bedroom door open, she again clamped a hand over her mouth to keep the fright in. Fear gripped her now; she was shaking, nearly uncontrollably. The door was behind her, to her left. She could hear the man coming in—he was not rushing. It was the same way Daddy checked on her when he thought she was asleep, but wasn’t.

Only this wasn’t Daddy.

The closet was to her right and soon she could see the man’s black shoes under the edge of where the bedspread hung down.

He opened the louvered doors one at a time, and poked around in there, among her toys on the floor and the neat hanging clothes. When he shut the closet up, her breath caught in her throat and maybe, maybe, a tiny sound came out.

She was sure he would look under the bed next, that his stranger’s face would be inches from hers; but he didn’t. Instead, he walked around the bed, circling behind her and crossing the room to her desk and the small table where she kept her snow globe collection.

When he stopped before the table, his feet still in view under the bedspread hem, she felt something that wasn’t fear—something that, had she been older, might have been described as a sense of violation.

Her snow globe collection was her most cherished possession, and the stranger was looking at them, maybe even handling them. She felt her face redden but made herself stay silent, knowing that his finding her, and touching her, could be far worse than him touching her toys.

Please, Daddy, please come home, she prayed.

Then the stranger’s feet turned again—was he walking out of the room? Without finding her? A hopeful wave washed over her, but still she stayed quiet as a mouse. Then couldn’t see his feet, couldn’t hear him, didn’t know where he was….

Cold dry hands grabbed her ankles, and yanked.

The scream, the pure animal cry that escaped from her, seemed to echo off the walls, and engulf her whole world. She grabbed at the carpeting, but the nap gave her nothing to hold onto and anyway he was too strong, dragging her.

“Mommy!”

Once he had her out, he took her by the arm and brought her to a standing position, but the sudden force caused her to stumble and fall. He bent down close, his face a blank mask, his eyes staring right through her.

As he pulled her to her feet again, not roughly, not gently, Katie wondered if it was possible that this man wasn’t a human at all. Adults didn’t look at kids the same way they did other adults, but they did have life in their eyes, and this stranger did not.

As he swept her to her feet, Katie thrashed and kicked, but the stranger was too strong.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

Her throat burned, the tears streaming now, her breath uneven as she tried to fight and scream at the same time, the shrill sound of her cries hurting her own ears.

Then the stranger dragged her into the kitchen and set her on the floor, almost gingerly, next to her mother.

Katie saw two little holes in her mother’s chest, Mommy, with blood on her mouth, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, her eyes without life, like the stranger’s.

“Mommy!” Katie shrieked one last time, and she tried to shake her mother back to life, to no avail.

Katie looked up at the stranger, who was pointing something at her now—a gun. The ones her daddy had were bigger, but this was like the ones on TV. It looked like a big black squirt gun.

Beyond the gun, the man’s face remained blank as he aimed.

Katie’s eyes widened and her tears stopped and even her fear fled. Then she said something. She didn’t know why she said it, but she said it: “Now I lay me down to sleep….”

A flash filled her vision, and she fell backward into darkness. Her last thought—would Mommy be waiting for her, in Heaven?—ended when her head touched the floor.

It was all the Messenger could do to get out to the truck before he broke down. He was weeping as he drove away from the house where his most recent message had just been delivered.

“Got too close,” he whispered. “Got too close.”

In town, he made sure he was obeying the speed limit as he slowly scanned the darkening business district for a parking lot.

Finally, he saw a city park, down a block on a side street, which he turned onto, coming around on the far side, near a ball diamond.

No one was around.

He locked the pistol in the glove compartment, and got out of the truck. He’d walked only a few steps when he felt the bile rising in his throat. He had only a second to check for passersby before the vomiting doubled him over.

This had been bad. This had been the worst one.

The only thing that allowed him to carry out his missions was knowing that those who received his messages were just the delivery system—symbols, not people. That had gone blooey at the Hanson house. The little girl had nearly touched the inside part of him. Nearly? No, she had touched him.

He stood, wiping his mouth, and shook his head. It could never be like this again. He would have to be sharper, smarter. He couldn’t risk this sort of thing again. He might not be able to do what had to be done.

The little girl’s hysterical screaming rang in his ears, and he felt more coming up. He bent over just in time as he retched again.

Wasn’t supposed to be like this. All his work, all the time he had put in, couldn’t all be undone this easily, could it? That screaming little girl…

He looked up and down the quiet street. Nothing moved. Silence, blessed silence in this park. A block over, a dog barked. Somewhere he heard the revving of a car motor in a garage, someone obviously working on it.

His life had been like this once. Blessedly silent, boring even, until they ruined it….

He couldn’t stop delivering messages until someone made it better, until someone heard his pleas for help.

If it took delivering a hundred more messages to make the world pay attention, so be it. But he could not have another one like tonight. No more like tonight.

He was good at this, he knew that. Efficient. Not cruel. But tonight he had found out he still needed to improve, to become even more efficient.

As he climbed back into the truck, his stomach settled. On the long drive home he would lay the groundwork for the next message. He would redouble his efforts to know everything about the recipients beforehand. When he delivered the next message, and the one after that and the one after that, he would be more detached, more untouchable.

Tonight could never happen again.

The snow and the rain did not stop the postman on his appointed rounds, right? Or dogs or even screaming little girls.