A threat.

  A threat to the people I cared about.

  A threat to the home I’d found with them.

  A threat to my new way of life.

  I had already watched one world burn down to ash around me. I was not about to stand by and watch another go up in smoke. I did not know what the three intruders wanted from Lloyd and his family, but I could not gamble on mercy. Mercy was a fairy tale told by men who’ve never had to pull the trigger.

  The shouting inside had thinned to low conversation, harsh and clipped, like dogs circling a wounded thing. I listened for the sound that would end it all. A scream. A sob. Another gunshot. None came. No wailing of terrible loss drifted into the night. No more shots followed the first few. That meant Lloyd, Carol, Derek, and Katie were still breathing. For now.

  Pistol in hand, I crept through the dark and slipped out of the garage, keeping low as I moved toward the house. Gravel and broken bits of wood littered the yard. I recalled when I had tried and failed to spy on Katie without being noticed that first night that she was back. One careless step had betrayed me then. One careless step now would get someone killed.

  I paused in the shadows and weighed the madness of what I was about to do. This was the kind of thing police handled. Hostage situations. Armed intruders. Men with radios and backup and badges dealt with this sort of thing. But the nearest deputy was miles away, and this was a county where most calls involved reckless drivers and stray cattle. I no longer had a cell phone. Even if I ran for help, by the time I found an officer, the farmhouse might be a slaughterhouse.

  No. Out here, we are on our own.

  Light poured from the windows in a dull amber wash, shadows shifting across the curtains like figures on a funeral screen. I edged closer and found the smallest gap where the fabric failed to meet.

  Through it, I saw Katie bound to a living room chair. Rope bit into her wrists. Her chin was lifted, eyes blazing with fierce defiance. A figure passed in front of her. Boots thudded softly against thin carpet. The intruder paced in a tight circle, restless, predatory.

  So, I know where one of them is.

  The front door would be suicide. Anyone bursting in that way might as well tape a target to his chest.

  The back door, then.

  I circled toward the kitchen entrance, crouched low. The curtains there were drawn tight, but the light behind them betrayed movement. A silhouette shifted across the cloth. Another intruder. I could not tell whether he was guarding a member of the family or simply holding the line.

  Beyond the kitchen door sat the entrance to the cellar, half-hidden in the dark. I had never been down there, but Derek had mentioned it in passing. Part storm shelter, part storage. A place to ride out tornadoes. It might have been enough to get the drop on the armed men.

  I slipped to the cellar doors, which lay nearly flat against the ground. The sight of a padlock on the handles drained the hope from me for half a breath. Then I saw it. The lock hung loose, unlatched. Carelessness. Luck. Providence. I did not stop to decide which.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Slowly, carefully, I lifted the wooden flap. I glanced back toward the kitchen, listening for any change in the rhythm of footsteps or voices. Hearing none, I lowered myself inside and eased the doors shut above me.

  The basement swallowed me whole. Pitch black. Thick with the smell of dirt and canned vegetables. Above, footsteps moved across the floorboards. Four distinct patterns. Four sets. At least one member of the family was still free to walk.

  Why leave one person unbound?

  The answer came in the scrape of a door opening. A thin blade of light cut through the darkness, illuminating shelves lined with canned food and the narrow stairs descending from the kitchen.

  “Show me!” demanded a cruel, youthful voice.

  “I will!” Lloyd answered. “Just stop pushing me!”

  I crouched deeper into shadow, pistol tight in my grip. The intruder pressed a shotgun into Lloyd’s back, herding him down the steps. The metal glinted faintly in the weak light.

  Could I fire? The crack of a shot down here would echo. The others would know. They would panic. Panic meant blood. It would be better to take him silently, if such a thing were possible. But I had no training for this. No manual. Just instinct, action movies, and fear.

  The intruder yanked a chain attached to a bare bulb overhead. Nothing happened.

  “Been meaning to replace that,” Lloyd said.

  The gunman backed up a step, keeping the shotgun trained on him, and opened the door above a little wider. More light spilled down the stairs. I caught a glimpse of the man’s eyes beneath the cheap ski mask.

  I froze.

  For a heartbeat I was certain he saw me. My pulse battered my ribs. My fingers began to tremble. A cold, crawling sensation crept along the back of my neck, as if something unseen were tracing the line of my spine.

  One wrong move and someone would die. Even if I succeeded, someone might still die.

  Since the night I slew my father, I had been afraid of what it meant that violence came so easily to me when cornered. I had told myself I was different now. That I had left that world behind. But standing there in the dark, pistol in hand, I understood something terrible.

  I had not gone looking for bloodshed.

  It found me.

  Maybe this was what I was. A vessel shaped for ruin, destined either to break others or to be broken. A potter’s flawed creation, better smashed than displayed. Or perhaps an avenging angel dressed in mortal skin, sent to mete out judgment in backwoods basements.

  More likely, I was just a frightened, fractured kid trying to stitch meaning onto chaos. Trying to pretend that evil had reason rather than madness.

  Lloyd knelt at the far wall. I heard the faint, deliberate clicks of a dial turning.

  A safe. So that’s why.

  The intruder stood just behind him. The shotgun was still in his hands, but its barrel drifted slightly, no longer pressed to Lloyd’s spine.

  A small chance.

  I began to move. One slow step. Then another. The concrete floor felt like ice beneath my shoes. I crept toward the man in the ski mask, each breath shallow, controlled.

  Footsteps thudded overhead. My heart leapt into my throat. Dust sifted down from the ceiling as someone crossed the kitchen above us.

  The gunman twitched and glanced up.

  That was the only opening I would get.

  I lunged, bringing the butt of my pistol down against the back of his skull. Twice. Hard. Like driving a nail into stubborn wood. His body crumpled, folding in on itself. I went down with him, knees slamming into concrete. I seethed as the pain throbbed.

  “Who’s there?” Lloyd whispered.

  “It’s me,” I whispered back.

  “Alex?”

  I did not answer. Sound carried too easily in a house like this. Lloyd seemed to understand. He said nothing more, only reached down and lifted the fallen shotgun from the floor.

  One of the three intruders lay unconscious at our feet.

  Two remained.