Adrenaline surging into every fiber of her starved and ravaged body, Lindsay drew a great breath and screamed.
She screamed for Shannon and for Ellen, for her mother and her father, and for whatever god might be listening somewhere. She screamed and howled with every scrap of energy left in her, and heard the sound crash back at her off the ceiling and the walls.
And then a hand was clamped over her mouth and the scream was silenced.
“No one hears it,” a hard voice whispered. “After a while, no one hears the screams at all.”
A scream ripped through Kara’s mind and she jerked bolt upright in bed before she even came fully awake. For a moment she felt disoriented, but as the vestiges of sleep fell away, her mind began to focus. She was still at Cragmont, still wearing the bathrobe Neville had laid out for her. But she no longer felt welcome — now she felt like an intruder, and it was the house itself that made her feel that way.
It was the house that was giving her nightmares.
Yet she had just been awakened by a scream — a scream she could still recall.
Kara swung her legs off the bed, shoved her feet into her loafers, and went to the bedroom door, listening for a moment before she opened it. Hearing nothing, she cracked the door open.
All was dark and silent, but it wasn’t a comforting darkness or silence.
Rather, it was the kind of silence that told her there was something else — something dangerous — lurking just beyond the range of her senses. Part of her wanted to close the door and go back to bed, but a stronger part told her to find Patrick, to tell him about the scream that had awakened her.
But had it been a scream? Or had it been nothing but a dream? Yet it seemed so real.
She needed to talk.
She needed to talk to Patrick.
Opening the door wider, she turned to the right, walked silently down the corridor to Patrick’s bedroom and knocked softly on the door.
Silence.
She knocked a little louder, and when he still didn’t answer, she hesitated, almost went back to her own room, then changed her mind. Grasping the crystal knob on the door, she twisted it and pushed the heavy door open.
A fire had burned to embers in the fireplace opposite the bed.
A bedside lamp glowed dimly, and the linen in the huge bed had been carefully turned down, just as her own had when Patrick brought her to her room.
But his linens remained untouched. “Patrick?” she whispered, and his name seemed to echo as loudly as if she’d shouted it.
She went to his bathroom door and knocked lightly.
No answer.
She turned the handle and opened the door slowly, but the light was not on and she knew he was not here. Still, she flipped on the light and looked around.
Toiletries laid out, it was as ready for Patrick as the bedroom, and as empty.
The library. Patrick said he’d been sleeping in the library, where only a few hours ago she had sat in front of a fire, sipping a glass of Grand Marnier, the horrors of the world shut out, even if only for a short while. Was that where he’d gone to sleep tonight?
Kara left the bedroom and made her way down the dark hallway, shivering as she passed the closed doors of Patrick’s daughters’ rooms.
Halfway down the stairs, a noise stopped her cold and her heart began to race. But as the big grandfather clock in the foyer began to strike, she realized that the noise had been nothing more than the winding of its gears. Hurrying down the rest of the curving flight of stairs — grateful that whatever noise she might make would be covered by the striking of the clock — she paused on the bottom step until it finished chiming four.
As the last deep note faded away and a cloak of silence fell once more over the house, almost muffling even the ticking of the ancient clock, Kara darted across the foyer and rapped on the great double doors that led to the library. “Patrick?” she called softly, and once more her voice seemed to fill the silent house with its echoes. “Patrick, it’s Kara!”
When there was no answer, she knocked again, then a third time.
Why wouldn’t he wake up?
Was he ill?
Still no response.
Had something happened to him?
Turning away from the library doors, she peered up into the vastness of the foyer. In the near-blackness of the night, it looked even bigger than it was, and everything about it — the dark mahogany paneling, the shadowy corners beneath the soaring stairs, even the heavy draperies that nearly covered the French doors leading to the terrace — had taken on a sense of hidden danger.
But even her silent words couldn’t quell the panic rising inside her.
Wanting, needing to get outside, she pushed away from the library doors and moved toward the French doors at the back of the foyer. Pushing one of the heavy draperies away, she fumbled with the lock until it finally snapped open, then stepped out onto the terrace and took a deep breath of the fresh ocean air. The panic that had seized her a moment ago began to loosen its grip. But only for a second.
She pulled the French door closed behind her and started along the terrace toward the library, thinking she might be able to get in through the French doors. A moment later she was trying the handle of the first of three sets of doors. It was locked, but through the heavy draperies drawn across the inside of the doors, she could see a faint light within the room.
Someone was inside.
“Patrick?” she called, pressing close to the door, pitching her voice loud enough so it would penetrate not only the glass, but the curtains as well. When there was no response, she rapped on the glass and called louder. “Patrick, wake up. Let me in!”
Still no answer.
She banged harder. Where else could he be? He had to be inside! He had to be!
Should she call for Neville? But just the thought of the man’s strange presence made her abandon that idea. She moved to the next set of French doors, with no more success, and then on to the last set.
All of them were locked. She was about to start banging on the glass again when her eyes fell on a small wrought-iron plant stand that stood just beyond the last set of doors. She hesitated, but only for a moment. She picked it up and swung it against the small pane of glass next to the lock on the French door.
The pane shattered, a few shards falling to the terrace but most of the glass dropping to the hardwood floor inside the library, the sound muffled by the drapery.
Knocking away some sharp fragments stuck in the frame of the broken window, Kara slipped her hand through and unlocked the door, then opened it and pushed aside the draperies.
The room was dark except for a dim green-glass-shaded lamp on the desk.
Hesitantly, as if the house itself were somehow a threat to her, she stepped into the library, immediately feeling it close in around her. When she spoke, her voice had dropped back to a whisper. “Patrick?”
Her eyes found the sofa in the dim light. The cashmere throw that had kept her warm only a few hours ago was now folded neatly and lay atop it.
An ember dropped from the grate in the fireplace, sending up a shower of sparks, and Kara jumped at the sound.
But there was no sign of Patrick.
The desk lamp illuminated only a small fraction of the enormous room, and she edged around the back of the sofa toward the light switch. When she flipped it and the overhead chandelier went on, she found herself looking at
