Others? Had he not stopped it all? Had he not stopped them forever?
He began tearing at the rope that was bound around his waist, his cold fingers clawing at the wet hemp, but he couldn’t even find the knots, let alone untie himself.
He was going down too far, and far too fast. Pressure was building in his ears, a pressure that exploded into a piercing pain, as if an ice pick had been plunged into his head.
He gasped and choked as the dark, cold lake water rushed into his throat.
And now the woman was laughing.
Then, just when he thought it was too late — at the instant when he would have plunged irrevocably into the darkness — he thought he felt the coils around his waist begin to loosen….
Chapter 1
THE HANDS ON the classroom clock were crawling far too slowly toward the weekend. Eric Brewster fidgeted in his seat as Mr. Smallwood reiterated the English assignment, but Eric wasn’t paying much attention. Everybody in class — everybody in school — had spring fever, including the teacher, and Eric was certain that nobody intended to do much homework, any more than Mr. Smallwood expected it would get done. Not tonight, not this weekend, not next week, which was the last week of school before summer vacation.
When the bell rang, Eric was out of his seat, out the door, dodging fast-moving bodies as he made his way to his locker to dump his books. Long summer evenings weren’t made for studying, and he was already thinking about the possibilities when Kent Newell started working the combination to the locker next to his. Which meant that Tad Sparks, the third member of the triad that had formed in kindergarten and was still thriving in the next to last year of high school, wouldn’t be far behind. When any two of them were together, the third was sure to be close by.