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butt across the kitchen floor. Katharine only realized her intended destination as Lisa grabbed the handle on the cutlery drawer and pulled it open. The soft slide of the roller mechanism sounded loud as thunder to Katharine’s ears, and her heart pounded in answer as she shot a terrified glance at the door. The clinking of the cutlery as Lisa reached inside the drawer made her jump and brought her gaze flying back. A second later, Lisa’s hand, which was still lost in the depths of the drawer, reappeared, triumphantly clutching a serrated steak knife. She sliced down with it, sawing with fierce sweeps through the duct tape binding her ankles.
    “You wanna give me a hand with this?” the first bad guy called out. Katharine almost swallowed her tongue as she glanced around again: nothing.
    “Thought I’d go ahead and take care of the ladies,” his partner answered. Katharine’s breathing suspended. She looked wildly back at Lisa in time to see her pull the tape off her ankles. “Get that out of the way.”
    Oh my God. He’s coming to kill us. Right now.
    From the sound of his voice, he was close. Way close. Steps away.
    Panic broke over Katharine in an icy wave. Her whole body was suddenly bathed in a rush of cold sweat. Her heart kicked into triple time. Her stomach went into freefall. Her eyes locked with Lisa’s, then widened in horror as Lisa stood up and she realized that Lisa was free—but she was not.
    She could hear his footsteps, hear him coming toward them. . . .
    Knife in hand, Lisa scrambled toward her, bent over her, sliced savagely at the tape around her ankles.
    “We got plenty of time for that.” The first bad guy sounded impatient. “Come here and help me with this first.”
    The footsteps paused for what seemed an interminable amount of time, then resumed in a changed direction.
    Phew. Katharine felt as if she might collapse from relief.
    The knife went through the tape around her ankles like it was tissue paper.
    As the grip of the tape eased, Katharine frantically tried to pull her ankles apart, and suddenly she was free, too.
    “Let’s go,” Lisa whispered. She grabbed Katharine’s upper arm just above the elbow, propelling her to her feet, hacking at the tape around Katharine’s wrists at the same time. The tape split, and Katharine tore her wrists lose from their sticky confinement. Coming upright so fast made her head feel as if it would explode. A knifelike pain from where she had been kicked shot through her side, making her fear that she had at least one cracked rib. Pins and needles attacked her blood-deprived arms as they moved. Sucking in air, she tried to run and discovered a terrible truth: Her legs did not want to work. Dizzy and weak, battling a sudden attack of nausea, Katharine forced herself into motion anyway, her legs heavy and her feet clumsy as she lurched crouching after Lisa, who was already darting away toward the far side of the kitchen. A small laundry room was located there, and in that laundry room was the back door.
    Moonlight slanted through the not-quite-shut blinds on the two small double-hung windows behind the washer and dryer. The yellow glow of a streetlight in the alley beyond the small backyard and row of detached garages shone through the glass set into the top half of the door, making it fairly easy for them to see where they were going even though the laundry room light was off. Set into the wall just a few feet from the back door was the calculator-sized panel for the security system. The tiny light on it gleamed green, Katharine saw as she reached the door of the shadowy room seconds behind Lisa. Her thinking was slightly fuzzy, she knew, but that seemed to indicate that the system still worked. So why hadn’t the alarm sounded when the intruders had broken in? Had she forgotten to turn it on? Or had they somehow known the code? Then she realized that it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the panic button at the bottom of the control panel