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hallway.
    The door had opened a moment before. Someone
had given the dark room a brief scan. Clarissa had squeezed her
eyes shut, her body rigid with apprehension, waiting for the rough
hands that would pull her from the meager hiding place. The door
had closed as quickly as it was opened and Clarissa dared a sigh of
relief. She could not lay there much longer. She had to move, to
get out of the house and off the grounds, away from
Morgan.
    She could not push the vision of his fury from
her mind and her every nerve recoiled involuntarily at the
nightmarish memory. He meant to kill her. She had read it in every
line of his face as he stared up at her from the pool deck. How she
had managed to move from the bedroom to her hiding place under the
guest bed was little more than a dim blur. She had heard Marco and
Alex enter the french doors downstairs and she willed her feet
forward. That was all her panic-ridden mind would allow her to
remember. That and the door opening to the guest room, the awful
moment waiting for discovery, then the silence.
    She listened to the muted sounds of the night,
breathing in the dust and lint in small audible gasps. Morgan kept
at least a half dozen armed guards in and around the estate at all
times. They were mostly invisible to the regular household staff or
visiting guests, but they were always there, watching from the
shadows or continually scanning the monitors in the security office
in Marco's cottage. She knew they would be searching the grounds
and the thin veil of her reserves began to crumble when she
realized that escape would be almost impossible. She barely stifled
a sob.
    Clarissa's instincts screamed at her to move
and, like a hunted animal, she had no mind but to obey. She slid
out from under the bed, wiped the tears that fell freely down her
cheeks, eased open the door, and peered into the glaring, lighted
hallway. She could hear them moving below, and quickly and
soundlessly shut the door. Even as she searched for an escape, she
heard footsteps on the stairs and muffled voices. Almost without
thinking, she pulled over a small vanity chair and wedged it under
the doorknob. The knob began to turn as she backed away.
    "Where is she?" Morgan's level voice sent a
renewed chill through her.
    "Not in the master bedroom," Marco replied
from the other side of the door. "She could have gotten down the
stairs before we got into the house."
    "Search the first floor again," Wolfe
instructed. "All the doors are locked. If she's still in the house
we have her."
    "Dalton and Santos are searching the front
grounds," said Marco. "I've got Markel on the gate and Amato
searching the tool sheds, any place that she could
hide."
    "Who's on the monitors?"
    "Rogers. He's secured the gates and charged
the perimeter. She can't leave the grounds."
    "How did she get back in the house in the
first place?" Wolfe snapped.
    "Everything was secured, Mister Wolfe, I don't
see how..."
    "That was your job," Wolfe said angrily, "to
see that the house was secure tonight. Especially tonight. Find out
how she got back in and fix it so it doesn't happen
again."
    "Yes, Mister Wolfe," Clarissa heard Marco
reply.
    "When you find her, dispose of her body with
Byron's. Then get rid of her personal things."
    "Yes, sir."
    With a shaking hand, Clarissa wiped a sweaty
lock of blond hair out of her eyes. She felt a prickling of her
scalp and an icy contraction of her skin as she heard Marco's quiet
footsteps retreat downstairs to follows Morgan's orders. She could
not hear Wolfe and that unnerved her. Was he there just beyond the
door or had he moved on to continue the search in another room?
Clarissa stared for a long moment at the chair under the doorknob.
She felt trapped and the small room seemed to close in upon her,
yet she could not will her hand to reach out and open the door. She
closed her eyes to hold back the tears and Clarissa saw again
Morgan's face distorted with evil animosity. Byron's futile
pleadings for his life