“Here,” Trevor said after the light flickered on. He hurried past a slightly ajar door to another, closed door at the end of the hall. He twisted the knob. It didn’t move. “Zach,” he said.
From behind the door, Libby heard the other boy’s response: “Yeah?” He was older than Trevor from the sounds of it, maybe ten or eleven. It was hard to tell through the fear in the kid’s voice.
“They’re here,” Trevor said. “We’re rescued.”
The child, Zach, said, “Who? The police?”
Trevor looked at Libby, confusion in his face. “Are there policemen coming?”
Libby wanted to say yes, a whole S.W.A.T. team was on the way—Trevor was so sure he was saved—but she couldn’t lie, couldn’t get either boy’s hopes up.
“Maybe eventually,” she said. “But hopefully we’ll be long gone by the time they get here.” She looked at the locked doorknob and then at the hammer in her hand. “Stand back,” she told Trevor.
He did. Libby raised the hammer over her head and swung it down as hard as she could. The doorknob clanged like a muffled cymbal and dropped to the floor below. She looked at it, a little shocked. She’d been prepared to beat the crap out of the thing, swing the hammer until nothing remained of the knob but dust. She supposed your luck couldn’t be all bad all the time.
Her hammer hand throbbed. She shook it the way you do a body part that’s fallen asleep and said to the boy on the other side of the door, “Try opening it.”
The door rattled but didn’t budge. Trevor looked up at her worriedly.
“Okay,” she said. “Stand back.” She waited for a second. “Are you back?”
“Uh huh,” said Zach, his voice muffled and trembling.
The inner workings of the doorknob seemed so strange, intricate. She wondered if she could use the second tool to tear them apart, but she didn’t really know how to use the thing and didn’t have time to learn.
She swung the hammer.
It clanged off the door, and a thump came from inside the room.
“The doorknob fell off,” said Zach, sounding distant, as if he were in another dimension and not simply on the other side of the room.
“Stay back.” Libby swung again, and metal screeched. Another swing. The sound this time was a pop, the sort of cracking that came from an especially stubborn knuckle.
Her hand felt like a fireball attached to her wrist, but she swung again anyway, not caring if she damaged her hand permanently, not thinking website design might be a little tricky with only a left paw and a mangled claw. The door popped open, and Trevor clapped.
A slender, brown-haired boy caked in dirt and blood came tentatively into the hallway. He looked first at Libby, then at Trevor. “You did it,” he said to her son.
Trevor nodded.
Zach broke out into a huge smile, and the two boys high-fived.
“Let’s—” Something wet touched her on the back of her knee. She screamed and spun around with the hammer.
The dog whined and backed away just in time to avoid losing the front half of his snout. The hammer whizzed by with what couldn’t have been more than two inches to spare, and the movement almost sent Libby sprawling to the floor.
“No!” Trevor ran to the dog and wrapped his hands around its neck in much the same way he’d hugged her only minutes before. It was a beautiful animal, if a little grimy. The dog shifted and licked Trevor’s face. Trevor said, “You almost killed him.”
Libby’s hammer hand sagged, and she took a deep breath. “Sorry, buddy,” she said, addressing both Trevor and the dog. She turned to the second boy and stared into his wide eyes, wondered how long it took for a kid to get over the kinds of things he must have been through.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.” She hurried down the hall swinging the tools at her side, the three evacuees trailing behind.
Mike thought of Peter Pan fighting Captain Hook. His short chisel poked out in front of him, a makeshift dagger no match for the other man’s wicked sword. The kidnapper made a long, arcing swing that Mike sidestepped narrowly. He tried triggering the drill, which he’d managed to hold on to, and jamming it into the guy’s side, but he wasn’t quick enough.
They’d descended the porch steps and now circled around each other in the gently sloping front yard. The swordsman stumbled forward a few steps before spinning back into the fray. He grinned. His naked, hairy chest flexed rhythmically, like his whole torso was a giant, beating heart. A short black line, which Mike guessed would have been red or at least reddish in the light, marked the place where the boy had cut into him earlier that night. Mike was glad to see it. It proved the man wasn’t invincible.
Seeming to read his mind, the kidnapper said, “I cut you once tonight already.”
As if Mike might have forgotten. Searing pain throbbed in his hip with every step he took. He held the chisel out in front of him and moved a little to the left, wincing but not wanting to stay still and provide the lunatic an easy target.
He thought of Libby saying the guy might have a crossbow, thought about the way he’d immediately dismissed the idea. There hadn’t been a crossbow, but now here Mike stood facing a ninja’s sword. If that didn’t beat all.
The kidnapper thrusted the weapon out in front of him and charged. Mike managed to get himself out of the way again. He swung his chisel almost reflexively, and it clanged against the broad side of the blade.
The man cut to his right and circled back to his original position. He looked from Mike’s face to his feet, and his smile faded.
“You,” he said. “No. I don’t…I killed you.”
Mike eyed him suspiciously, wondering if this was some kind of ploy, a trick meant to divert his attention so the psycho could run him through. He stood his ground, finger on the drill’s trigger, opposite hand wrapped around the chisel.
The kidnapper looked back into Mike’s face and said, “I should have known.”
Mike kept moving, shuffled his feet
When the kidnapper came at him this time, he did so with a low, grunting wail. The man held the sword in both hands and had it pulled back over his shoulder. Mike didn’t sidestep this time but moved forward instead, the cordless drill whirring in front of him and the chisel swinging up from his side and aimed at the man’s face.
The drill hit the kidnapper’s midsection, digging into his abdomen. The chisel bounced harmlessly off his shoulder. The sword hit Mike in much the same place the chisel had hit the other man, only it was sharp and far from harmless.
Mike’s arm went suddenly numb, and the drill died and fell to the ground between the two men’s feet. Mike dropped the chisel, too, and reached up for his shoulder. The kidnapper took a step back and hefted the sword, which dripped fresh blood.
“I can’t let you do it again,” the man said.
Mike dropped to his knees, groaning, trying to make sense of the man’s words, unable to think anything except that his arm was killing him but that the man with the sword would probably kill him faster. He tried to steady himself, ended up on his rump in the dust. His blood poured out of the wound in his shoulder, cold somehow. The stuff running over his fingers might have been ice water instead of blood.
“You should have just let us be this time, old man,” said the kidnapper. He pulled back the sword.
Mike could do nothing but sit and groan and watch the blade advance.
Inside the living room, Libby watched through a dusty window, squinting.
At first, she didn’t believe what she was seeing, thought the thing in the kidnapper’s hands must have only
Mike’s scream was the worst thing she’d ever heard in her life, a sound she was sure she’d remember until
