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She opened the door to the corridor and ran out. She needed as much of a head start as she could get.

She got none.

He was standing in the doorway, his hood pulled low over his face. He reached for her, but she shoved him, hard, in the chest, and he took a partial step backwards. She managed to push through the gap, past him and into the corridor, where she reached for the front door. If she could open it and get through onto the driveway, she could slam it behind her and slow him down long enough, maybe, for her to escape.

Her head snapped back. She heard a tearing sound, shockingly loud, as her hair ripped from her scalp.

And then came the pain. She screamed, but her scream was interrupted as her feet splayed out in front of her and she fell heavily, the wind knocked out of her as her back slammed into the wooden floor.

For a moment she was stunned, but then she twisted onto her front, getting ready to jump to her feet and attack him with her knees and elbows and teeth, to punch him in the balls and press her thumbs into his eye sockets; whatever she could do to get away from him.

Before she could, he dropped his knees onto her shoulders. She wasn’t sure what was more painful; the crunch as something broke in one of them, or the agony from her torn scalp.

It didn’t matter. He looked down at her. She could not make out his face; all she saw was a black hole under his hood.

And then his hand moved towards her neck and she felt the prick of a needle.

Her vision began to swim, and soon there was nothing.

The Leg of a Bed

The next thing Mary knew she was waking up, clawing her way inch by inch out of a deep, clinging pit. It took an age, but as the fog in her brain cleared, the first coherent thought she registered was that, groggy as she felt, she was glad she was waking up at all.

She opened her eyes, and for a moment she had a panicked feeling that she had gone blind, but then, as the blackness resolved into shades of grey, she realized that she could see after all. It was night, but not much darker than when she had been drugged.

That thought brought her to her senses.

She was sitting upright, her lower back against a wall. She was leaning forward, her legs flat in front of her, her hands on the floor between her thighs. A gag filled her mouth. Her shoulders and back ached; it was an unnatural position, and she tried to pull her hands free, but they were shackled by a chain to a joist that had been exposed by a lifted floorboard. Easy, she realized, to put back and hide all evidence anybody had ever been there. She pulled again, but there was no movement at all.

She could move her feet, not that it helped much. She swept them left and right and, with her right foot, she banged into a hard pole.

The leg of a bed, maybe.

To her left she could make out the slightly less dark shape of a window. OK, she said to herself. At least I know where I am. This is the bedroom next to the kitchen.

She listened, hoping to make out the sound of someone moving around or talking; anything to break the silence.

There was nothing.

Had Carl tied her up and left her here to die? Surely not – if he had wanted her dead, he would simply have killed her when he arrived. In fact, why get her out here at all? He could have killed her in Barrow. Perhaps that was what he had been planning to do the night he killed Wally, but Ryan had fought him off and he had been forced to change his plan.

No – she was alive, so he wanted her alive. The question was why?

None of the answers which occurred to her gave her much comfort.

She opened her mouth to shout – maybe it would get Carl’s attention, or maybe by some fluke chance there would be somebody out walking by the lake at this late hour in the off-season – but all that came out of her mouth was a kind of strangled, muffled cry. The gag tied tight across her mouth saw to that.

Her mouth hurt, too, although not as much as her torn scalp or damaged shoulder, not to mention the ache in her back from the position he had put her in.

God, this was a mess. Her body heaved with a huge, wracking sob. She started to cry, the tears running down her cheeks.

And then she heard a noise.

It was similar to the sound she had made. An indistinct, strangled cry. Like someone who was gagged.

She heard it again. It was coming from the other side of the room.

Someone else was in here with her.