They're Watching (2010) Read Online Free PDF

do.
    Spinning in a full circle, I peered across the other rooftops, the windows, the parked cars in the shopping strip a half block up. I imagined lenses peering back from every shadow. From what I could see, no stalkers or hidden cameras were in evidence, waiting to watch me climb onto the Millers' roof. But I couldn't see very well.
    I needed to find a better vantage to see if the camera was still up there. The apartment balconies across the road would offer only a partial view onto the Millers' roof. As would the nearest two streetlights and a telephone pole. And the roof of the grocery store was too far away. Maybe I could see up there from another position on the ground? I hurried up and down the street, trying different perspectives, getting winded. But the pitch of the Millers' roof was too flat to allow a clear glimpse of the spot from which I'd been filmed. It became apparent that the only unobstructed view would be from our own roof.
    I jogged back to our house, more deliberately now. As I pulled myself onto the low eaves over the garage, the unchecked wind was strong, cutting through my shirt, rising up the cuffs of my jeans. An elm blocked the yellow throw from the nearest streetlight. I tried to minimize the noise of the shingles under my sneakers. Crossing to the slope above the kitchen, I hooked a leg up over the second-story gutter.
    "Hey!" Ariana, in the driveway in sweatpants and a long-sleeved T, hugging herself. "Checking that sagging fence again?" More irritated even than sarcastic.
    I paused midclimb, my leg still up past the gutter. "No. The weather vane's loose. It's been rattling."
    "I hadn't noticed."
    We were almost shouting. The idea of the stalker's camera capturing Ariana--let alone our exchange--made me all the more uneasy. My shoulders tensed, a wolf's hackles rising protectively. "Look, just go inside. You're freezing. I'll be down in a minute."
    "I have to be up early. I'm going to bed. So that should give you plenty of time to come up with a better story." She disappeared under the eaves. A moment later the front door closed, hard.
    The pitch was steep, and I lowered my body, keeping a knee and a forearm in constant contact with the shingles. Scuttling like a crab, I worked my way up and diagonally to the highest peak, near the Millers' house. I eased around our chimney.
    There was no camcorder on the Millers' roof.
    But the view onto the balconies, streetlights, and other rooftops was pristine; this was the best vantage yet to search out hiding places. Houses, neighboring trees, backyards, vehicles, telephone poles--I scrutinized them until my eyes ached.
    Nothing.
    Sagging against the brick, I exhaled with mixed disappointment and relief. I turned to start back. That's when I saw it, glinting in the dim light. Way at the edge of the east-pointing run of roof extending out over my office, raised elegantly on a tripod and looking alertly at me, was a digital camcorder.
    My heart seized. I felt a calm terror, the kind that comes in a nightmare in which horror is mitigated by the suspicion that you're only dreaming. The tripod, a few feet down from the peak, had been adjusted for the slope. The rise of roof behind acted as a windbreak, the trembling weather vane just above attesting to the necessity. Whoever had placed the camera there--aimed not at Don's roof but at where I would come to look at Don's roof--had planned my move for me, had thought through everything I had and come out one step ahead. Across the rutted stretch of dark shingles, the blank lens and I regarded each other, gunslingers on a dusty boomtown street. The wind whirred in my ears, Ennio Morricone on the upsurge.
    My rubber soles gripping the rough surface, I left the safety of the chimney, heading toward where the rooflines met. Getting on all fours, I worked along the spine. My mouth had gone dirt dry. The two-story fall looked higher from up here, and the wind, though hardly gale force, didn't help. As I reached the