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Page 134
anyone but residents ever comes up. There aren't many thefts since burglars can't make an easy getaway. The neighbors get terribly peeved when something . . . unusual happens here." His voice oozed irony.
Abby glanced at him, but his face was blank. She asked softly, "What happened, Mike?"
He did not answer, but she suddenly felt the depth of his emotionsdespair, anguish, loneliness. She closed her eyes, trying to captureand understandhis thoughts, but as usual her special powers were not to be controlled. She was suddenly filled with a certainty, though, of the necessity of learning what he had meant.
For only then did she realize that her unrelieved tension, her trembling, were not merely a result of the chill temperature or her nervousness about Mike's reaction.
The incident at the elevator had not been the only danger; her premonition had returned.
At the top the road ended, and Abby wondered if they were going to drive into the blue, cloudless sky. Stopping before a forbidding wrought-iron gate, Mike pushed a button on the flap he had lowered in the desert when the sun beat against his face. Abby was delighted that he lived behind a locked gate; the tall fence might keep the threat she sensed at bay.
Mike's house charmed Abby. High on a rise, it looked like paintings she had seen of Spanish haciendas: arched adobe walls, ornate red roof, decorative tile about the large windows, even a bell tower. Huge and sprawling, it had two sto-

 
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