Thomas Perry - Runner

She went into the kitchen and stood still for a minute, listening to the sounds of the house and smelling its familiar smells. Then she opened four windows and descended the stairs to the basement to return her remaining sets of identification cards to their hiding place. She returned to the ground floor and did some dusting, then rolled the vacuum cleaner from the front closet and vacuumed the floor. It occurred to her that on one of her next trips here she would have to wash the windows. The exact day didn't matter. There was no rush.

She carried the vacuum cleaner up the stairs to the second-floor landing, and rolled it a few feet toward the far end of the hall before the telephone rang. It made her jump, but then she realized that Carey must have finished his rounds early and guessed where she must be. She stepped into her old room, hurried to the nightstand beside the bed, and lifted the receiver. "Hello?"

"Is this the number where I can reach Jane Whitefield?" It was a man's voice, and she had never heard it before.

"Who's calling?"

"My name is Michael Schneider." The man waited through a moment of Jane's silence, then seemed to panic. "Please, don't hang up. This is urgent. I really need to talk to her, and in an hour it might be too late for me. I know this is the number because I've carried it in my memory for a long time in case I ever needed it, and now I do."

Two more seconds passed while Jane took in a deep breath and then let it out. "This is Jane Whitefield."