Teri stared at the man's face a moment longer, trying to read past the cold, unforgiving expression, then her gaze set upon the gun again. Everything seemed perfectly clear to her in that instant. The fingers of her right hand brushed across the lock button on the door knob, then quietly depressed it as far as it would go.

"If you'll just give me a-" She took a step back, as if to invite them in, then swung the door closed and made a break for the living room.

Behind her, she could hear the man's voice suddenly rise into a scream. "Don't do this, Mrs. Knight! Open the door!"

There was no way of knowing how long it would hold them. Maybe a couple of seconds, or maybe a little longer if the door had fully latched and it wasn't one of those flimsy hollow core things that seemed to find their way into most of the tract homes of the '60s. She had never thought about that before, and the thought was lost by the time she made it to the living room, where the boy was sitting up on the couch with wide eyes and a look of bewilderment on his face.

"What's going on?"

"You have any other friends from the hospital? Anyone you didn't tell me about?" At her back, she heard the thud of a shoulder being thrown against the door. It was followed closely by the sound of glass shattering against the tile floor just inside the front entryway. She heard it, clearly, sharply, and did her best to sweep it out of her mind as one frightening realization struck home with a vengeance: they had broken out the small rectangular window adjacent to the door. In no more than a second or two they were going to be inside the house.

"Come on! We need to get out of here!"

The boy froze, a mix of surprise and confusion etched like a mask into his features.

"Let's go!" Teri screamed. She grabbed him by the shirt sleeve, forcefully, and the boy tumbled off the edge of the couch, onto the floor. He landed hard on his side, his shirt balled up in her fist. The confusion on his face turned to fear, and she realized distantly that she might have hurt him.

"Sorry." She grabbed him under the armpits and pulled him to his feet, lifting what felt like his full weight until he was able to brace himself against the arm of the couch. In the same motion, he swept up his walking cane, and they were both on their way into the family room, Teri with one hand in the small of his back, pushing.

"Who was it at the-"

"I don't know."

Behind them, the lock on the front door popped, and half-a-beat later, the door slammed into the wall, sending an explosion reverberating down the hall. Whoever they were, they were in the house now.

"Out the back!" Teri said. She pushed him toward the sliding glass door, where the curtains were drawn. The room was bathed in evening shadows. A grayish cast blocked out a rectangular area of the floor. The corners were black charcoal. The boy sank heavily into the corner, breathing hard, already exhausted.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

She swept the curtains aside with one hand, and grappled blindly with the lock as she glanced over her shoulder. "Come on, come on!" The locked clicked into place and she gave the handle a tug. The door swung back several inches, and ...and there was a man standing on the other side.

He was a big man, someone who she instantly decided must have spent a great deal of his time sitting at the counter of a coffee shop, downing doughnuts and endless cups of coffee with cream and sugar. His cheeks were a doughy, Pillsbury fill and the rough landscape of his nose was coursed with bright purple veins that had made their mark a long time ago. It was an alcoholic's face, Teri thought in that brief moment.

She managed to hold the door in place, him on the outside, her on the inside, neither of them giving an inch. It wasn't easy, though. Not for either of them. She could already see the strain showing on the man's face, which had turned a bright, sun-burnt red.

He shifted his weight and the opening expanded. Teri braced her foot against the aluminum frame, locked her knee, and managed to take some of the pressure off her arms. In return, the man somehow managed to curl his fingertips around the edge of the door's sash. He anchored his weight, and she could feel him ease up slightly, preparing for one final push. If it came to that, there was no doubt in her mind that she would be the loser.

A twinge ran through her left knee, and she could feel it start to weaken.

The boy stepped in behind her, still breathing hard.

"I want you upstairs," Teri grunted.

"In a minute," he said. He jammed the walking end of the cane into the corner of the aluminum frame, stood on the other end and tried to force it down into the track. For a moment, it looked as if it might actually work. Then just as suddenly, the handle end slipped and the cane came shooting out, away from the sliding glass door, like a Louisville Slugger that had slipped out of the hands of a batter. It clattered against the linoleum floor and rolled into the legs of a nearby chair.

"Push with me," she said, every muscle straining.

The boy moved in directly behind her, his foot braced against the corner, both hands on the edge of the door. Between the two of them, they were able to mount a surge, and before she even realized what was happening, the sliding glass door tore free from her grip and rode the track the full six or seven inches, before slamming full-force into the forward stop.

Glass shattered.

An ice storm of splinters came raining down all around them. Teri crouched and covered her head, defending herself against some of the fallout while her bare arms took the brunt of the sharp edges.

The door slowly rolled back in its track and came to a stop.

On the other side, his eyes white and distended, the man let out a horrible scream. He had gotten his fingers in there, between the door and the stop, and he hadn't been able to get them out. He staggered back, holding his hand in front of his face as if he couldn't quite believe what had happened. Three of the fingers had been badly mangled. One was broken at the second knuckle and appeared as if it were hanging by a thin thread of flesh. If he didn't get help and get it soon, he was going to risk losing one of those fingers.

Teri found some momentary satisfaction in that thought.

"Now upstairs!" she said.

The boy grabbed his cane off the floor, and she found herself tugging at him again, trying to keep him moving in front of her as they made their way out of the family room and into the kitchen. The house had been built in the mid-sixties. It was one of those tract homes that had seemed to sprout up out of nowhere overnight, sitting just outside the city limits in a little suburban neighborhood where everything was vanilla-flavored and cookie-cutter perfect. At this end of the house, they had the garage in front of them or the stairs that were a straight line to the office that Michael had added over the garage not long after Gabe had been born.

Teri went instinctively for the stairway.

She pushed the boy ahead of her through the kitchen archway, past the oak pantry on their left. For years she had tried to get Michael to round off the corners of the small cabinet, having barked her shins on it more times than she cared to admit. This time, though, her shins weren't the offering. It was her left elbow, which caught the corner smack-dab across her funny bone. Teri grabbed at the tingling sensation and immediately fell back a step or two.

The boy disappeared up the stairs ahead of her.

Teri wasn't so lucky. Just as she was reaching for the handrail, someone grabbed her from behind. In one swift motion, she found herself turned around, staring into the face of the man with the scar over his left eye. He had gotten a fistful of her blouse, and he had raised her up off her feet to the tips of her toes.

"Settle down, Mrs. Knight."

He spun her backward against the pantry. She hit her head hard and slumped to the floor, her legs rubbery beneath her. The pantry door swung lazily open. A gray-black shadow seeped into the outer edges of her vision and Teri closed her eyes, feeling slightly disoriented.

The man motioned toward the stairway. "Get the boy," he said. She looked up, for a moment thinking he was speaking to her, which didn't make any sense. But then the small, edgy man who had stood in the shadows on the porch, suddenly stepped out of nowhere and started up the stairs.

Teri tried to clear her head.

"It didn't have to be like this, Mrs. Knight. I'm sorry."

"I don't have anything of value," she said, rubbing the back of her neck. Things had gone gray for a moment, even rippling, but they were clearing now. She sat up, catching a breath, and listening to the footsteps of the other man as he climbed the stairs.

"I'll try to keep that in mind."

"Just leave the boy alone, all right. He didn't do anything."

"Wish I could oblige."

"Please."

"You'll do both yourself and your son a big favor if you'll just keep your mouth shut, Mrs. Knight. Do I make myself understood?"

"He's not my-"

"Uh, what did I say?"

Teri stared at him, working it over in her mind. Finally, she swallowed back the rest of her sentence, hating the bitter taste it left in her mouth. She leaned back against the pantry and turned her gaze away.

"Good girl."

Upstairs, the echo of footsteps had fallen silent. It was like a small death, not knowing what had happened up there, praying the boy was all right. Teri held onto a long breath. The sound of her heartbeat pounded against her eardrums. The man, who had been standing next to her all this time, moved to the base of the stairs, and gazed up into the darkness. The uneasy silence apparently preyed heavily on both their nerves.

"Hey, Jimmy! Hurry it up, will you?"

No response.

Behind them, the man from the other side of the sliding glass door came dragging into the room. His face was an ashen mask, eyes dull, a thin sheen of perspiration across his forehead, and a sick, twisted grimace that cut so deep into his cheeks he looked as if he were a comic book character. He held his hand out in front of him, making certain to keep it elevated. The pain had to have been something awful.

Too bad, Teri thought guiltlessly.

"You gonna be all right?" his partner asked.

The man shook his head, naked fear looking out from behind his eyes. "I don't know, man. I think they're worse than broke. I just don't know."

"Christ."

"I gotta get back."

"We aren't finished here, yet."

"I'm gonna lose my fingers, man."

Teri caught a clear, unmistakable flash of anger pass across the other man's face. He scowled, until he couldn't seem to stand it any longer, then he reached out and clamped his hand around his injured partner's wrist.

The man screamed. "Jesus, Mitch!"

"Hurts that bad, huh?"

"Like a fucking hot iron!"

"Go wait in the car, then. We'll get there when we get there."

"All right. All right." The man turned away, and it was evident that whenever he dropped his hand below the height of his elbow, the blood did a mad dash for his fingertips. Apparently, an excruciating explosion of pain followed shortly thereafter, because the one time that Teri noticed this little movement, the man's face went instantly pale. Still, he managed to drag himself out of the kitchen and disappear from sight with little more than a whimper or two. She was glad to see him go.

"Goddamn idiot," Mitch said. His face was tight, the scar above his eye stretched taut and wide, looking as if it had been even larger at one time, maybe as thick as a shoelace. "How in the hell did you-"

Teri turned away from him. She glanced toward the upstairs darkness where she had heard something stir. Actually, she had heard more than that. They had both heard more than that. It had sounded a little like a bat against a baseball, only slightly muffled. Following that-in perfect progression, she imagined-came the sound of a weight collapsing against the wall. It made a hollow thud and rattled the china in the cupboards behind her. Then everything fell silent again.

Somewhere in the distance a dog barked.

Mitch, who was still standing at the foot of the stairs, called out anxiously: "Jimmy? What the hell's going on up there, Jimmy? You got him or not?"

Outside, a car backfired, the shot echoing down the street and back again. Teri shuddered and felt her heart skip a beat. The dog stopped barking. The car turned the corner and disappeared into the eerie blanket of nightfall.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll stay put," Mitch said, pointing across the room at her. "You hear me? Because if I come back down here and find you've moved a goddamn muscle..."

"I know," Teri said. "You'll still have the boy."

"On the money, Mrs. Knight. On the money." He took two or three steps up the stairway, then paused and turned back. Mistrust was suddenly alive and etched into his face, replacing that somber, all-business cast that she had nearly come to expect by now. "On second thought, you'd better come with me."

[2].

"Jimmy?"

The top of the stairway was cast in gray shadow. It was as if the fog had moved inside and was creeping across the upper floor to greet them. Mitch stopped halfway up and wiped the back of his hand across his face.

"Christ, where's the damn light switch?"

"At the top, on the left," Teri said. It was the truth, though it wasn't the whole truth. There was another switch near the bottom landing that was easy to miss if you weren't looking closely. The man had walked right passed it.

"Keep it slow," he said, guiding her. Teri stood one step up from him. He had the tail of her blouse wrapped in his fist, making the effort to keep her close at hand. "One step at a time. Nice and easy. You got it?"

She didn't answer.

Behind them, the last of the kitchen light quietly fell away.

A thick darkness lay ahead.

"Jimmy?"

No response.

"That jackass," Mitch mumbled grumpily.

They neared the top landing. Only two more steps and they would be standing at the head of a short hallway, with a door to the left and another door straight ahead. Teri took a step up, her legs weak and unsteady.

A near perfect darkness shadowed the back end of the hall. Someone had left the door on this end open, though. It was the bathroom door. A faint, grayish cast of light spilled into the hall. She thought it was probably coming from the small window over the tub.

"Where's the damn switch?"

"On the left," she said.

Something moved, and as she leaned toward the light switch, intending to turn it on, she thought she saw a shadow slip furtively across the gray cast.

"Hold it. I'll get it-" the man started to say.

But if he got that far, he certainly got no further than that. Teri thought she might have heard him say the word, bitch, but she wasn't sure, because the door on the left swung open at that moment and the boy stepped out. He brought the cane down full-force across the man's outstretched arm.

Mitch let out a sharp, immediate yelp and pulled his arm back. "Jesus Christ!"

Even in the moment, with his free arm in apparent agony, he managed to hold onto Teri with his other hand. The boy brought the cane down a second time, striking at a ninety degree angle across the man's forearm.

Mitch yelped again.

He stepped back, his face suddenly ashen, his eyes wide and no longer penetrating. Teri's blouse slipped out of his hand. That was all that remained for him to hold onto and he teetered there a moment, grasping at thin air, trying to maintain some semblance of balance. Teri wasn't going to help. She stepped out of his reach and watched the terror cross his face as he tumbled backwards down the stairs. At the bottom, he spilled bonelessly out across the linoleum and lay there without moving.