Quicksilver

by Dean Koontz

Sparky was silent for a long moment, and then he revealed that the Rainkings were not your typical family next door. “When I didn’t let those bad boys in, they started shouting through a bullhorn. They were rude. They threatened to break down the door if we didn’t disarm and come out. It would have been fun to watch them try. The front and back doors had a quarter-inch plate of steel sandwiched between layers of wood, and they were set in a steel frame with high and low deadbolts two inches long. So unless those fancy-dressed fascists could get a motorized battering ram, they were going to be a long time knocking it down. They might have been able to shoot out a window, but that would’ve taken a while, because the bulletproof glass would withstand everything but high-caliber armor-piercing rounds, not the kind of ammo in their sidearms. While they were jabbering their threats, Bridget and I went to the cellar, into the walk-in wine cooler, cycled open the secret door, and vamoosed into the escape tunnel.” I thought my amazement gland had been previously squeezed dry for at least a week, but I was wrong. “Wow. If the Dirty Harry Clean Now delivery van hadn’t been in the alley behind the diner, I’d be locked up in a prison for the criminally unique. I got through on luck. But you had bulletproof glass, a secret door, and an escape tunnel. Are you survivalists or something?” “No, no, no. Nothing silly like that,” Bridget said. “We stay as real as a stick in the eye. But Grand...