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She answered with a cry of her own, then the sound came again, and she realized it was not in the room with her; it was too distant. It was in the other bedroom.

There was somebody else in the lake house, somebody who, if they too were gagged and trapped in a bedroom, was also a captive.

Mary fell silent. It had sounded like a man’s voice. Did she really want him to know he was not alone? Although it was too late now to stop him finding out.

There were so many questions. Had he been here when she got to the lake house? She didn’t think so. When she had opened the door the air had smelled stale, undisturbed since their last visit earlier in the summer. If somebody had been brought in, she did not think it would have been like that.

That suggested that he had arrived either with Carl, or after Carl.

When Carl had arrived, she had not seen anybody else, although in the darkness and confusion there was no guarantee she would have done. She hadn’t seen Carl through the glare of the headlights.

The more she thought about it, the more she thought it was Ryan. Who else could it be? He was the only other person who knew she was here.

Other than Ben. Was he involved, too? Surely not, so it must be Ryan. And if it was him, she was pretty sure she knew what had happened.

Ryan would have arrived to find Carl’s car parked out front. He would have been puzzled, but Carl would have had the advantage of surprise. Somehow, she guessed, he had overpowered Ryan, and now Ryan was in the same position as she was, but in the other bedroom.

What about the kids? They would have been with Ryan. Perhaps they had run away? It was very possible. Three people were a lot to handle. Maybe that was where Carl was, hunting down her children in the dark night. He would have anticipated this, would have guns and night-vision goggles and all kinds of fancy equipment.

Her kids, her babies, would be defenceless.

He – if he hadn’t already – would catch them and bring them here and nobody in the world would know where any of them were.

Carl could do with them – all of them – as he pleased. Mary closed her eyes and lowered her chin to her chest. How had it come to this? It had happened so quickly. You went about your daily business, safe and secure, completely unaware that in reality you were skating on thin ice. There were mere inches between you and disaster. And if there was somebody who, unsuspected, was working against you, creating traps and pitfalls that you had no way of anticipating, then how could you avoid it?

You thought your life was so solid and well built, but in reality it was fragile. If somebody really, really wanted to do you harm – they could. There was little you could do about it, because you had no idea – and could never have any idea – that they were plotting against you. How could you know what was going on in the minds of the people around you? How could you know what hatred and resentment seethed under their calm, friendly exteriors?

You assumed they were what they seemed. You assumed they were no threat. What other option was there? You could not go through your life seeing potential threats in everybody you met.

But they were there. And your life could be destroyed in an instant.

I Am …

There were more muffled shouts from the room next door, but Mary could not make out what Ryan – assuming it was him – was saying. Eventually, he fell silent.

She was in constant agony. The pain seemed to move from her scalp to her shoulder to her stiff, aching back. To these she added a new pain; her right knee felt as though somebody was inserting a needle into it. She had a friend, Clarissa, who was an orthopaedic surgeon, who had told her that at some point, after the years of running and playing soccer and tennis, she would need a knee replacement, but she had advised Mary to wait as long as she could.

The new knee will probably last about twenty-five years, she said, so if you can hang on until you’re about sixty, you’ll probably need only one. If you have it now, there’s every chance you’ll need another one at some point.

It was a morbid thought. Mary had realized it was the first time she had made a decision that involved a consideration of when she might die. It was ironic, too. Given her current situation, it looked as though it would have made no difference at all. She could have all the new knees she wanted, but none of them would help her now.

The muffled cry from the other bedroom came again. She listened carefully. It was definitely a man’s voice, but was it Ryan? It didn’t sound much like him, but then again she didn’t know what Ryan sounded like with a gag in his mouth.

‘Ryan!’ she tried to say, hoping that he would be able to make out the word, but all that she managed was a strangled moan.

It was answered by another low cry, followed by three taps on the wall.

There was a pause, then some more taps, another pause, more taps. There was a silence, and then the taps and pauses began again.

It was a code of some kind. A message. She thought about what she would do, if she were hoping to invent a simple code that someone would guess without prior instruction. The answer was obvious: she would tap a number that corresponded to a letter’s position in the alphabet. One tap for ‘A’, two for ‘B’, and so on.

She listened to the next set of taps.

Nine. If she was right, and this was the code, that would be an ‘I’.

After a pause of about three seconds, the tapping started again. Nineteen.

An ‘S’.