a few agonizing steps, his attention riveted to the car.
The red tail lights were joined on either side by the glow of smaller white ones. The hacking of the engine amplified as the driver shifted the car into reverse and backed up.
Garrett's blue eyes widened and his heart skipped a heavy beat. His breath hissed through tightly clenched teeth; the air in front of his face turned to vapor as the passenger window of the battered blue Volkswagen Rabbit pulled up even with him. A half dozen steps and he'd be able to reach out and pound his clenched fist on the glass.
The driver had swabbed a circle in the center of the breath-fogged window. A scant bit of the car's interior was illuminated by the harsh moonlight glinting off snow, a light that made the night seem unnaturally bright.
A woman sat hunched over the steering wheel, her neck craned as she peered out the windshield. All he could make out of her profile was the curve of her cheek, the tip of her nose. The rest of her face was obscured by a floppy hat and a dark, bulky scarf that had been coiled repeatedly around her mouth, jaw and neck.
Garrett shoved himself forward another step.
Two.
The sound of the engine swelled as the woman applied the gas. He heard the car's wheels skid over the slushy mixture of snow and dirt before finding traction.
She was driving away!
“Wait!” Garrett tried to run, but couldn't. Despair cut through him like a knife as the car lurched forward, then veered to the left. “Damn it, no!”
Blinking the snow out of his eyes, he watched the twin beams of red fade until they almost blended with the thick sheet of snow the wind continued to kick up around him.
The car didn't go far.
Just as Garrett was in danger of loosing sight of the tail lights, they swerved to the right, then glowed brightly as the woman applied the brakes. Even over the wind he heard the engine sputter out.
A car door slammed. Then, a few seconds later, another.
Garrett's breath caught. He waited, afraid to hope, afraid not to.
Scarcely two minutes elapsed before he heard the distinct sound of a wooden door creaking open then gently shut.
Garrett released the breath he only now realized he was holding. No noise on earth had ever sounded so sweet. After all, where there was a wooden door, there was something attached to it. Like a house. Where there was a house, there was a phone. And help.
Despite the stabbing pain in his leg and the cold-to-the-point-of-numb sensations in what felt like every muscle and tendon in his body, Garrett Thayer grinned.
MURPHY MCKENNA cupped the thickly padded headphones over her ears. With a flick of her wrist she cranked the volume up on the stereo.
Pivoting on her heel, she plopped down on the nearby couch, her body sinking into the plump blue corduroy cushions. She closed her eyes and released a long, contented sigh.
The music roaring in her ears was deliciously, rebelliously loud. The singer's screechy voice shot through her head like a bullet, blotting out the week of Musak she'd endured in her office at DCYF, Providence, Rhode Island's Department for Children, Youths and their Families.
The cushion beneath her hips shifted. Murphy cracked one eye open. Moonshine, her huge, chocolate point Himalayan cat, crawled onto the bed of her stomach; the latter made even flatter by the lazy slope of her spine. Murphy grinned, her fingers scratching him behind the ears as her lips moved silently over the lyrics of the song blasting in her ears.
Moonshine lazily kneaded her baggy, Irish-knit sweater. The creamy threads were too thick and tight for his claws to do more than tickle the flesh beneath.
The music faded as the CD player prepared to switch tracks. In the abrupt silence—it sounded like waves pounding on a sandy beach, thanks to her heartbeat echoing in the headphones—she heard the muffled whisper of the cat's purr; the vibrations of it trilled against her belly as he curled into a ball and began licking and scrubbing diligently behind the ear she'd just been scratching.
Her fingers running over the cat's thick, silky fur, Murphy mentally counted off the pause between tracks.
One. Two.
Creeeeeak. Thump!
Three. Four.
Her eyes snapped open. Her heartbeat pounded hard and fast, in time to the drum solo that exploded in her ears.
Murphy wasn't comforted to see that she wasn't the only one who'd heard the noise. Moonshine's head was tipped at an alert angle, his ears perked, his right paw poised in mid-lick. The cat's blue eyes were wide, his gaze fixed on the far corner of textured, baby-blue papered wall where the living room branched off into a short hallway leading to the kitchen.
The cat's mouth opened and closed in a yowl that the music prohibited Murphy from hearing.
She grunted when his powerful back legs used her stomach as a catapult. He bounded to the floor, his fluffy tail brushing the corner of the door frame just before he disappeared from sight.
Murphy snatched off the headphones. She didn't realize her breaths were choppy until she heard the rasp of them in her ears. Her legs were unsteady as she stood and crossed the room.
With trembling fingers, she turned off the stereo; the click of the cold metal knob sounded abnormally loud and menacing.
From somewhere near the foyers, Moonshine meowed.
The sound startled a gasp out of Murphy.
“Calm down,” she whispered to herself, then instantly wished she hadn't. Her voice sounded as shaky and watery as her knees felt. “Stop it. Just stop it. Every house makes noises. You know that.” Of course she did. Only Murphy had an uneasy feeling the noise she heard had nothing to do with the normal creaks and groans of settling wood.
Her gaze scanned the small living room, searching for a weapon. Not that she'd need one, she told herself. Still, as Tom was fond of telling her, it never hurt to err on the side of caution. It was one of her brother's rare words of wisdom that she actually heeded.
Twin brass lamps sat on the teak end tables flanking the sofa. They were large; lovely to look at, not to lift. She judged them too heavy and cumbersome to provide an adequate defense. Besides, in order to use one, it would need to be unplugged. If someone was out there and they saw the lights suddenly go out…
Thunk!
Murphy's hand went slack. The headphones dropped unnoticed to the plushly carpeted floor.
That was not the sound of a house settling, damn it!
Murphy raced into the kitchen. The soles of her sneakers squeaked on the linoleum floor when she stopped abruptly and squatted. If only she'd thought to ask Tom where he kept weapons when she'd agreed to borrow his new summer house for the week! But, of course, she hadn't. The thought had never crossed her mind.
Her gaze scanned the moonlit room, fixing on the knife rack. No help there; it was nailed to the wall next to the window on the opposite side of the kitchen. She didn't dare pass the window to reach it. In the drawers next to the stove, the sharpest weapon she found was a butter knife.
Metal hinges creaked as she eased open first one cupboard door, then the next. In the third, she found something useful: a big, fat, cast-iron skillet, the kind her foster mother used to cook mountains of blueberry pancakes after church on Sunday mornings.
The skillet felt heavy and solid in Murphy's trembling hands. Not the perfect weapon, but the best she could find in a strange house on short notice. God knows the skillet was less awkward than one of the lamps.
Breathing hard, she eased the cupboard door shut, then slowly, slowly, stood.
A shadow passed by the window on the adjacent wall.
Murphy's mouth went suddenly dry.
While she