were slick. Every nerve ending was scraped raw with fear.
There it was — a footstep. In the kitchen. An image shot through her mind. The cabinets, the drawers. The knives.
Her breath was coming in tight gasps. She shrank farther from the stairs, her thoughts flying frantically toward escape. Two upstairs bedrooms, plus a bathroom. And screens on all the windows. Could she make it through in time?
From below came more footsteps. The intruder had moved out of the kitchen. He was approaching the stairs.
Miranda fled into the master bedroom. Darkness obscured her path; she collided with a nightstand. A lamp wobbled, fell over. The clatter as it crashed to the floor was all the intruder needed to direct him toward this bedroom.
In panic she dashed to the window. Through the darkness she saw a portion of gently sloping roof. From there it would be a twenty-foot drop to the ground. The sash was already up. Only the screen stood between her and freedom. She shoved at it — and it refused to push free. Only then did she see that the screen had been nailed to the window frame.
Frantic now, she began to kick at the steel mesh, sobbing as each blow met resistance. Again and again she kicked, and each time the wire sagged outward, but held.
A footstep creaked on the stairway.
She aimed a last desperate kick at the mesh.
The window frame splintered, and the whole screen fell away and thudded to the ground. At once she scrambled over the sill and dropped down onto the ledge of roof. There she hesitated, torn between the solid comfort of shingles beneath her feet and the free-fall of escape. She couldn’t see what lay directly below. The rosebushes? She grabbed hold of the roof and lowered her body over the edge. For a few seconds she clung there, steeling herself for the impact.
She let go.
The night air rushed up at her. The fall seemed endless, a hurtling downward through space and darkness.
Her feet slammed into the ground. Instantly her legs buckled, and she fell sprawling to the gravel. For a moment she lay there as the sky whirled overhead like a kaleidoscope of stars. A frantic burst of adrenaline had masked all the sensation of pain. Her legs could be shattered. She wouldn’t have felt it. She knew only that she had to escape, had to run.
She staggered to her feet and began to stumble down the road. She rounded the bend of the driveway—
And was instantly blinded by a pair of headlights leaping at her from the darkness. Instinctively she raised her arms to shield her eyes against the onslaught. She heard the car’s brakes lock, heard gravel fly under the skidding tires. The door swung open.
With a sob of joy she stumbled forward into Chase’s arms. “It’s you,” she cried. “Thank God it’s you.”
“What is it?” he whispered, pulling her close against him. “Miranda, what’s happened?”
She clung to the solid anchor of his chest. “He’s there — in the cottage—”
“Who?”
Suddenly, through the darkness, they both heard it: the slam of the back door, the thrash of running footsteps through the brush.
“Get in the car!” ordered Chase. “Lock the doors!”
“What?”
He gave her a push. “Just do it!”
“Chase!” she yelled.
“I’ll be back!”
Stunned, she watched him melt into the night, heard his footsteps thud away. Her instinct was to follow him, to stay close in case he needed her. But already she’d lost sight of him and could make out nothing but the towering shadows of trees against the starry sky, and beneath them, a darkness so thick it seemed impenetrable.
She climbed into the car, locked the doors and felt instantly useless. While she sat here in safety Chase could be fighting for his life.
She pushed open the door and scrambled out of the car, around to the rear.
In the trunk she found a tire iron. It felt heavy and solid in her grasp. It would even the odds against any opponent. Any unarmed opponent, she was forced to amend.
She turned, faced the forest. It loomed before her, a wall of shadow and formless threat.
Somewhere in that darkness Chase was in danger.
She gripped the tire iron more tightly and started off into the night.
The crash of footsteps through the underbrush alerted Chase that his quarry had shifted direction. Chase veered right, in pursuit of the sound. Branches thrashed his face, bushes clawed at his trousers. The darkness was so dense under the trees that he felt like a blind man stumbling through a landscape of booby traps.
At least his quarry would be just as blind.
The footsteps moved to the left of him. By slivers of starlight filtering through the trees Chase caught a glimpse of movement. That was all he could make out, shadow moving through shadow. Heedless of the branches whipping his face he plunged ahead and found himself snagged in brambles. The shadow zigzagged, flitting in and out of the cover of trees. Chase pulled free of the thicket and resumed his pursuit. He was gaining. He could hear, through the pounding of his heart, the hard breathing of his quarry. The shadow was just ahead, just beyond the next curtain of branches.
Chase mustered a last burst of speed and broke through, into a clearing. There he came to a halt.
His quarry had vanished. There was no movement, no sound, only the whisper of wind through the treetops. A flutter of shadow off to his right made him whirl around. Nothing there. He halted in confusion as he heard the crackle of underbrush to his left. He turned, listening for footsteps, trying to locate his quarry. Was that breathing, somewhere close by? No, the wind….
Again, that crackle of twigs. He moved forward, one step, then another.
Too late he felt the rush of air, the hiss of the branch as it swung its arc toward his head.
The blow pitched him forward. He reached out to cushion the fall, felt the bite of pine needles, the slap of wet leaves as he scraped across the forest floor. He tried to cling to consciousness, to order his body to rise to its feet and face the enemy. It refused to obey. Already he saw the darkness thicken before his eyes. He wanted to curse, to rail in fury at his own helplessness. But all he could manage was a groan.
Pain. The pounding of a jackhammer in his head. Chase ordered it to stop, demanded it stop, but it kept beating away at his brain.
“He’s coming around,” said a voice.
Then another voice, softer, fearful. “Chase? Chase?”
He opened his eyes and saw Miranda gazing down at him. The lamplight shimmered in her tumbled hair, washed like liquid gold across her cheek. Just the sight of her seemed to quiet the aching in his head. He struggled to remember where he was, how he had gotten there. An image of darkness, the shadow of trees, still lingered.
Abruptly he tried to sit up, and caught a spinning view of other people, other faces in the room.
“No,” said Miranda. “Don’t move. Just lie still.”
“Someone — someone out there—”
“He’s gone. We’ve already searched the woods,” said Lorne Tibbetts.
