CHAPTER ONE
Ten Days Later
Everyone had gone to bed; everyone except Gillian, of course.
As usual, while the rest of her family slept, Gillian Fahey puttered around the house, waiting to get tired. It was after 1 a.m. but she still felt wide awake. Watching TV hadn’t helped. Nor had reading or knitting.
Despite therapy, meditation, and pills, she still struggled with insomnia. Oftentimes, she wouldn’t drift off until 2 or 3 a.m., only to have to wake up again at six to get everyone ready for the day. It had been this way for months now. It was worse than usual tonight because her husband, Simon, was away on a business trip.
Gillian wandered from the sitting room, where she’d been looking at a collection of framed family photos, through the game room, the music room, and the family room, until she reached the kitchen. She wasn’t especially hungry but thought that maybe hunting through the fridge for expired food or leftovers that had turned bad would keep her busy for a while. Perhaps she’d even reorganize the small pantry.
She was just grabbing a few suspicious-looking Tupperware containers out of the fridge when she heard something. She immediately recognized the noise. The rope chain for one of the back deck table umbrellas was banging against the umbrella pole, making an annoying clanging sound.
She put the containers down on the center island in front of the knife block and headed in that direction, trying to keep her frustration in check. How many times had she asked people to properly tie off those chains for just this reason? It was almost as bad as nails on a chalkboard. When she had events on the deck, preventing the “chain clang,” as she called it, was essential in order to keep guests from going inside to escape the irritation.
When she got to the sliding back door, she turned on the deck light. Sure enough, the chain on the middle of the three tables was loose and clanging away. She hurried out to tie it down. It took longer than usual, as the chain ducked and parried in the howling wind. Luckily, she was wearing cozy sweats and her long black hair was tied back in a ponytail.
When she finally got the chain secured, she returned inside and locked the sliding glass door. Now there was no way she could get to sleep anytime soon, so she returned to the kitchen, resigned to an hour of pantry reorganization.
But as she reentered the kitchen, she noticed something odd. The Tupperware containers were no longer where she thought she’d left them: on the island, in front of the knife block. Or had she moved them and forgotten? Maybe the lack of sleep was playing tricks on her. Even though she was only thirty-one years old, she’d read that sleep deprivation could have all kinds of psychological effects, including hallucinations.
Not wanting to go down that road, she pushed the thought from her head and headed back to the smaller pantry to get started on the boring task. She decided to begin with the shelves and settled on the top one in the back, where all the canned goods were. The first step was to determine what had expired.
She had just stepped into the pantry when she felt a hard shove in her back. The force slammed her into the back wall and several cans toppled down on top of her. Turning around, she saw that she wasn’t alone. Someone wearing a face-covering watch cap with small slits for the eyes, nose, and mouth closed the door and stared icily at her. The trespasser was holding a long carving knife that looked to be hers.
It took a second for shock and confusion to give way to fear. But when it did, she opened her mouth to scream. The large intruder was already slicing at her neck. When the sound came out, it was more of a hoarse hiss than a scream. She felt a stinging sensation, then a burning one. She reached her hands up to her throat and saw that blood was shooting out the side of her neck, drenching the nearby cereal boxes. Yet somehow she was conscious. Somewhere behind the tower of fear that suddenly dwarfed her, a thought emerged. It occurred to her that the attacker had cut her vocal cords.
The attacker advanced on her and something in her brain told her it was a man. She extended her arms to defend herself but he swatted them down with unexpected force. She thought he was going to come at her neck again but instead, he swung the knife at her left thigh, just below the groin. Again she tried to scream as the pain ricocheted through her but no sound came out.
She stumbled to the right, where she slammed against another shelf and crumpled to the floor. Several more packages tumbled down on her, but she barely noticed. Her neck was burning and her leg, with blood spewing out of it, was throbbing. She didn’t know which hurt worse.
She fought to remain conscious as the man in the mask moved toward her. Her disorientation again made way for terror. She tried to open her mouth to try to scream again but found that her body wasn’t responding to commands. Desperate, she attempted to reach out and grab a large soup can in the hopes of slamming it down on the top of the assailant’s shoe. But her fingers wouldn’t grasp the thing.
She managed to loll her head up at the man standing over her. He removed his mask. She did her best to focus on him but it was difficult. ...
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