Karen Robards

by Obsession

  If she and Lisa didn’t get out of there soon, they were going to die. It was as simple—and as galvanizing— as that.

  “Yes, okay,” Katharine whispered.

  Focusing required painful effort, but Katharine did it. She attacked the duct tape around Lisa’s wrists with her teeth, ignoring the shaft of fire that shot through her excruciatingly sensitive nose as she accidentally brushed it against the warm firmness of Lisa’s forearm.The pain was bad, bad enough to make her want to pull back and lie very still for a very long time, waitingfor it to subside. However, death was worse. With that thought lodged at the forefront of her mind, Katharine ignored the pain and went after the tape with a ferocity born of desperation. Lisa kept her arms as stiff and still as possible, stretching them backward, straining against the tape with all her strength to take advantage of the tiniest rip.

  There wasn’t one. Despite Katharine’s best efforts, the tape remained intact. It was gummy and acidic-tastingand just plain nasty. Getting any kind of purchasewith her teeth was difficult. She kept hitting her nose on Lisa’s arms. The resulting pain would have been disabling under any less dire circumstances. The appendagewas as sensitive as an exposed nerve. It was so damaged that she couldn’t breathe through it; she had to gasp for air through her mouth. She was almost positiveit was broken.

  Not that the state of her nose mattered at all under the circumstances. They had only this brief window of time… .

  “Hurry,” Lisa breathed.

  It seemed like hours passed. Days. Weeks. Months. But when she caught a glimpse of the microwave’s clock, she realized that she was wrong. It was only one-fourteen.Impossible to grasp that only seven minutes had passed since she had last looked at those glowing numbers.

  No matter how it felt, she couldn’t have been chewingon the tape for longer than a minute or two.

  “Don’t do that,” one of the bad guys snapped, loud enough so that Katharine jumped as if she had come into unexpected contact with a live wire.

  “You got a better idea?” came the growled reply.

  Heart pounding, Katharine quit with the tape for long enough to shoot a nervous glance over her shouldertoward the door. They sounded so close— terrifyingly close. Still, nothing more than the sliver of dining room that she’d been able to see before met her gaze: a corner of the glass-topped dining table, part of an upended gray-and-chrome upholstered chair, the painting of the single lily in a vase lying where it had been flung on the carpet. There was no sign of the men, thank goodness. They were in all likelihood still in the den; obviously, they had no idea what was happening in the kitchen.

  Oh, God, how long until one of them decided to check?

  Fright flooded like ice water through her veins as she arrived at the unavoidable conclusion: probably not very long.

  “Hurry,” Lisa breathed.

  Oh, yeah. Recalled to herself, Katharine attacked the tape with renewed desperation. Her heart thumped. Her pulse raced. Her stomach twisted itself into a pretzel.At any moment—at any second—one of the men could come back into the kitchen.

  Then she had no doubt at all that she and Lisa would die. After all, the bad guys had found the safe. They didn’t need either of the women anymore.

  Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. The word formed an urgent chorus in her brain.

  “Where you going?” The raised voice belonged to the bad guy who had slammed her face into the floor. Even as she nearly had a heart attack, Katharine recognizedit without a doubt. There was a roughness to it, a hint of New York or New Jersey street in the accent. He was clearly talking to his partner, who was just as clearly no longer nearby.

  Oh, God, where was he? Her heart thumped like a piston in her chest as her every sense strained to find out. She couldn’t tell; she could hear nothing, no footfalls,no sounds at all, to locate him.

  Please, please, let him not be heading for the kitchen.

  Panic gave her strength. She got a grip with her cuspids,ripped downward. Miracle of miracles, the tape tore. Yes. The moment was electric, and Lisa felt it, too, Katharine could tell by the triumphant clenching of her fingers. It was just the smallest rip, but it gave them hope, made success seem not so impossible after all. She kept at the tape like a terrier, the taste metallic in her mouth. Or maybe that metallic taste was blood. She didn’t know, didn’t care.

  He could step into the kitchen at any second… .

  Muscles straining, using short, sharp jerks that caused the tape to snap taut each time, Lisa tried to yank her hands apart as Katharine kept feverishly rippingat the layers of tape. Slowly, slowly, way too horriblyslowly, it tore… .

  Lisa forced her arms apart and suddenly her wrists were free. As Katharine, panting, let her head sag down onto the tile, their eyes met in a single brief moment of triumph. Then Lisa, loose strips of tape dangling from one wrist, jackknifed into a sitting position, yanked the tape from her mouth, and bent to claw at the tape around her ankles.

  The sound of a flushing toilet answered at least one urgent question: the location of the second bad guy. He was in the powder room off the entry hall. For about half a heartbeat, knowing where he was even made Katharine feel better.

  Then she realized that the kitchen could be his next stop. All he had to do was turn left and walk about a dozen paces straight down the hall. The arched opening that led from the entry hall into the kitchen didn’t even have a door on it. He would be able to see them long beforehe reached it.

  Lisa moved, and Katharine watched with her heart in her mouth as Lisa scooted on her butt across the kitchen floor. Katharine only realized her intended destinationas 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 terrifiedglance 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 uprightso 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 lea
st one cracked rib. Pins and needles attacked her blood-deprivedarms 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 towardthe 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 buttonat the bottom of the control panel might still be functioning, too.

  It was connected directly to the police department. All she had to do was hit that button and cops would be on the scene within minutes.

  If it still worked, that is.

  Flying across the room in Lisa’s wake, she detoured slightly and stabbed the button hard just as Lisa reached the back door.

  What she heard next made her forget about everythingexcept the need for immediate escape: the quick slap of footfalls walking into the kitchen.

  They sounded as loud as an alarm to her ears.

  There was a split second in which her heart shot into overdrive. Her stomach clenched. Her blood turned to ice. Her eyes instinctively swiveled toward the rectangle of light that was the door to the kitchen.

  For a terrible moment, nothing happened. Then …

  “Hey! Where are they?” At first the man sounded confused, as if he thought he might just be overlooking his captives. A second later he managed to put things togetherand yelled, “They’re gone!”

  Their escape had been discovered.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  The frantic breath of sound came from Lisa as she fought to open the back door, twisting the knob, tuggingat it without result. Katharine heard it as she reached her friend, who cast a hunted look back over her shoulder.

  “It won’t open.”

  Frantic with terror, not understanding anything exceptthe need to get out that door NOW, Katharine pushed Lisa’s hands aside, grabbed the cold metal knob, turned, and pulled, too.

  To no effect. The knob turned, but the door didn’t budge.

  Then Katharine understood.

  The door was equipped with a dead-bolt lock that requireda key to open. It had been designed that way to counteract the security risk posed by the window set into the top of the door. The key that fit the lock was at that moment hanging from a slender length of blue satin ribbon on the Peg-Board beside the dryer.

  Some six feet away.

  Her eyes flew to it, and then she leaped for it just as a man’s tall silhouette appeared in the laundry-room doorway.

  3

  Trapped. We’re trapped.

  At that awful realization, adrenaline shot through Katharine’s veins. Her heart gave a great leap. Her breathing suspended. Her pulse raced. If they didn’t find a way out now, they were going to die.

  “Hold it right there!”

  The shout, coming as it did as she snatched the key from the Peg-Board and whipped back around with it, made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. This was the second bad guy, the one who had searched the place, Katharine realized from his voice. She could hear the other one coming, his footsteps a quick, continuous drumbeat of sound as they pounded across the kitchen.

  Panic clutched at her heart. Time’s up.

  This guy’s gun was in his hand now. He had pulled the weapon out from behind his back. She saw the movingglint of it as the light from the kitchen touched the metal. In a moment of dreadful clarity, she realized that he was raising it, positioning it, aiming at Lisa, whose back was turned to him as she tugged frantically at the door.

  The door was locked. Struggling with it was useless. There was no way to get it open without the key.

  “Lisa,” she cried in terrified warning as she instinctivelyducked down beside the dryer. “Look out.”

  “Shit.”

  Whirling, Lisa recognized her danger instantly. Katharine saw her spot the pistol, and the emotions that flitted in rapid succession over Lisa’s face were as heartrending as they were impossible to mistake. Her eyes went huge; her mouth contorted. Her face turned ghostly white in the reflected light. Katharine could read her fear and desperation in every tense line of her body. Her hands came up in a classic defensive gesture. “No …”

  Katharine was still looking at Lisa when she heard a peculiar whistling sound. What?

  Her head was in the process of instinctively snapping around to try to ascertain what the hell that was when the answer became clear. Lisa squealed, the cry fraught with shock and pain. Katherine watched with disbelief as her friend was lifted off her feet and slammed hard against the door as if she had been picked up and thrown against it by an invisible hand. Behind her, the window shattered with a boom of exploding glass. The tinkle of glass raining down on the concrete steps and walk outside formed an eerie accompaniment to Katharine’s horrified realization that Lisa had just been shot. The whistling sound—the gun was clearly equipped with a silencer—that she had heard was the bullet speeding past.

  “Lisa,” she screamed, too overwrought in that momentof extremis to remember her own danger. Surging to her feet, she darted toward her friend as Lisa’s limp body slowly slumped to the floor.

  Is she dead? Please, God, don’t let her be dead. Her eyes are still open… .

  “Bitch.” The guttural expletive from the doorway was the only warning she got before a metallic thwack sounded right behind her.

  Katharine’s every sense refocused and went on red alert. A bullet had just smacked into the corner of the dryer. A bullet aimed at her. If she hadn’t moved at that exact moment, she would have been hit. Her stomach knotted. Her skin crawled. With all need for concealmentpast now, she let loose with a scream that would have done a teen fright-queen proud, the sound tearing painfully out of her throat, echoing off the walls, never-ending.A lightning glance back over her shoulder revealedthat the shooter was all the way inside the small room now. He was on the move, taking up a stance in the corner, positioning himself so that he had a clear shot at her as she hurtled toward Lisa—and the door. Another male silhouette—the second bad guy—filled the doorway where he had been.

  “Get her.”

  The shadowy figure that was the shooter grunted in answer as he crouched slightly, both hands steadying the gun as it tracked her flight. Cold sweat broke over Katharine in an icy wave. Her heart pounded out a desperaterhythm: She had to escape, had to escape, had to escape… .

  There was no way out.

  “Goddamnit, shoot the bitch already!”

  As she waited with agonizing certainty for the bullet to slam into her back, time seemed to slow to a crawl. It was almost as if she had become separate from her body and was observing herself from a distance. It was, she thought grimly, the out-of-body experience from hell. She was still screaming, long, continuous riffs of sound over which she had absolutely no control. Her frantic shrieks ripped through the miasma of fear and violence and imminent death that shimmered like heat vapor in the small room.

  Couldn’t anyone hear?

  No more than a couple of seconds could have passed. Terror sharpened her mind as it lent strength to her limbs and wings to her feet. In th
at instant of terrible clarity, as she raced toward the locked door and felt the tingle of a gun taking aim at her back, she already knew that she had no chance. There was no way she was going to be able to fit the key in the lock and get the door open before they shot her. She was as trapped in that small, dark laundry room as any cornered animal in a snare. At any instant now a bullet was going to rip its way through her trembling, sweating, cringing flesh and she would die.

  Smack.

  She stretched out, the key in her hand yearning for the lock that was less than a yard away, just as the bulletshe’d been dreading sang past her cheek and slammed into the drywall beside the door frame with the sharp sound of a hand slapping flesh. Hard, dry grains of plaster blew back into her face, stinging her eyes.

  “No!” she screamed. As her head snapped back in instinctivereaction, her frantic gaze fell on Lisa. Her friend’s now-glassy brown eyes stared blankly up at her from the semi-sitting position she had slumped into. Black as oil in the near darkness, blood welled from Lisa’s chest as she rested limply against the door.

  She’s dead. She looks dead. Oh my God, she’s dead.

  Above Lisa’s head, the streetlight glowed brightly, a beacon.

  Even as her forward impetus continued, even as she reached out for the knob and thrust the key desperately toward the lock, Katharine realized that she was no longer seeing the outside world through glass. Warm night air now mixed with the chill of the air-conditioning.Underlying the near-deafening shrillness of her own screams, she could just hear the ubiquitous chorus of cicadas—and the approaching wail of multiplesirens.

  “Hey, what’s going on in there?” a man’s deep voice shouted from outside. A blur of movement in the darknessbeyond the door told her that someone was racing across the backyard toward the town house. Help was just seconds away—but that was still an eternity too far.

  “Help! Help! Hurry …”

  “Kill her!” came the roar from behind her.

  This time the bullet was so close she could feel the wind of its passing in her hair.

  There was only one chance of escape. Katharine took it.