Fear Has a Name: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

back and sit out there?”
    Office DeVry pursed his lips. “You folks need to be all eyes and ears, just as you were today. This might be some sort of stalker or someone with mental issues. Be careful. Keep the doors locked. Don’t hesitate to call us.”
    Maybe there was something else the man saw in the house that he decided he wanted, Pamela thought—like her … or one of the girls.

    The late morning sun flooded the white and yellow kitchen. Officer DeVry was back out on the hot streets of Trenton City, and Rebecca and Faye had just finished lunch and were playing with their felt-board dollies at the dining-room table. Jack took the carafe from the coffeemaker and poured the leftover coffee, now cold, into a tall glass. He set the empty carafe at the sink where Pamela was working, went to the freezer, and dumped a handful of ice into the glass and set it on the counter to chill.
    Pamela finished rinsing the sink, hit the disposal for a few seconds, and dried her hands on a daisy-print towel as she approached him.
    “I want us to get a gun,” she said.
    Jack’s face fell.
    “How else will we defend ourselves if he comes back?”
    Jack’s mouth sealed and his eyes narrowed.
    “We can’t count on a patrol car coming by here once every few days,” she said.
    He still didn’t speak.
    “If you’d have been here, you’d be thinking the same thing. It was so … brazen! This is our home. We need to defend it. It’s against the law for a stranger to break his way in here.”
    Jack took a sip of the iced coffee.
    “I want to learn to shoot,” she continued. “We can go to Amiel’s range, on the square.”
    The slightest smile curled at the corner of his lips.
    “I mean it, Jack! This is not funny. We’ve got to think of the girls. I’m not going to be put in that situation again. We were completely helpless.”
    He set the glass down, folded his arms, and leaned back against the white tile counter. “First of all, I don’t think it’s funny. I’m sorry. I started to smile because when you get an idea, you are like a heat-seeking missile.”
    “Jack, I’m being serious.”
    “Okay.” He lifted his open hands in front of his chest. “First of all, where would we keep it?”
    “I don’t know. In our closet, up high, with the safety on.”
    “If he broke in again, you wouldn’t have time to go upstairs to get it.”
    “Then we’d keep it down here. That’s a better idea anyway. We’d put it up in a cupboard.” She motioned to one with her head. “The girls would never know.”
    Jack exhaled. “You know, they say if you’re going to own a gun, you not only better know how to use it, you better be ready to use it first when you take it in your hand.”
    “I’d use it first,” she practically spit. “Believe me, if that monster set one foot on our property again and I had a gun, I would put—him—down .”
    “I know, I know … I hear you, baby. But they say if an intruder, someone all pumped up on adrenaline and possibly drugs, sees his victim with a gun, someone in that house is more likely to die than in a house where there is no gun. I am thinking about Rebecca and Faye. I just don’t want to add more danger.”
    “I don’t know about the statistics, Jack, I really don’t. All I know is what happened to us—and it should never be allowed to happen to anyone. We were violated! We were lucky to get out. What if I’d been upstairs and the girls were down? What if the girls had been napping? What if I’d been doing laundry? I’ve thought this through a million times.”
    She’d hit a nerve. She could see it in his facial muscles, the flare of his nostrils, the way his teeth clenched ever so briefly.
    “I know.” He nodded. “I have too.” He lifted his arms toward her. “Come here.”
    “No!” She stomped a foot, then thought of the girls and lowered her voice. “I’m not going to let you sweet-talk me out of this. We are getting a gun. Period. I’ll pay for it out of