Absolutely, Positively

being stalked.

    Someone had been hiding in one of the basement storage rooms while she methodically toured the upstairs rooms.

    A floorboard groaned.

    Panic seized Molly. She glanced back toward the stairs and knew a searing helplessness. She would have to go past a long line of storage rooms in order to escape. Someone waited in one of those rooms.

    Even as she contemplated her chances, a door opened at the end of the hall. A man materialized in the shadows. His face was covered with a ski mask. He raised his hand. Molly saw the gun in his fist.

    She chose the only option open to her. She dashed through the workshop doorway, whirled around, and slammed the old wooden door closed. She threw the bolt.

    Muffled footsteps thudded down the hall. They came to a halt on the other side of the door. The antique glass knob rattled under Molly's hand. Instinctively she jerked her fingers away from it.

    Belatedly she realized that it was not smart to stand directly in front of the door. The intruder could easily shoot through the aging wood.

    She took several more steps back from the door until she reached the center of the workshop. A heavy, jarring crash shook the door. It rattled on its hinges. The gunman intended to force his way into the workshop. It was only a matter of time before he achieved his goal.

    Molly turned in a slow, desperate circle, feeling like a trapped animal. There was no escape from the workshop. The brick walls of the basement loomed around her, confining her in a space that was no larger than the upstairs parlor. There was no place to hide.

    Her gaze fell on the brooding, shrouded shapes that lined one wall of the room. The image of two black-haired children with intelligent amber eyes popped into her head again.

    The children wanted to play with the glittering, flashing, mechanical toys that Jasper Abberwick had built for his daughters.

    There was another thud. The door shuddered and groaned as if it had taken a mortal wound. Molly knew now that the intruder meant to kill her. She felt the menace in her bones. She had to act or else she would die right here in the basement of her own home.

    Harry. Harry, I need you.

    The silent scream for help shrieked through her head. There was no point calling out. No one would hear her.

    The amber-eyed children wanted to play.

    Molly gathered herself and hurried across the room to the nearest tarp-covered form. She yanked the canvas aside to reveal the huge, lumbering toy she had once named the Creature from the Purple Lagoon. It was as tall as she was, with a great, gaping, toothy mouth and a long tail. When she had been eight years old she had thrilled to the knowledge that she could control such a grand beast.

    Molly steadied the monster on its wonderfully hideous feet and punched a button on the control panel. Her faithful, semiannual attention to the special long-life batteries was rewarded.

    Red lights flashed in the creature's eyes. With a hiss of fake steam, the monster cranked slowly into motion. It started forward on its huge, claw-footed legs. The thick tail shifted from side to side.

    The door trembled beneath another blow.

    Molly jerked the canvas shroud off another one of the mechanical toys. This one was a spaceship. Two large dolls dressed in bizarre costumes manned the ray guns. Molly punched a button. The ship hummed to life. Strobes pulsed around the outer edge. The imitation weapons beamed green rays into the shadows.

    There was another jarring crash of noise from the door. Molly uncovered more toys. One by one she powered up the robots, monsters, and vehicles of her small army.

    She was working on a miniature glider, a prototype of the machine that had killed her father and her uncle, when she heard the door give way with a splintering crack.

    She hit the master switch on the panel that controlled all of the household electricity.

    The workshop was instantly plunged into a stygian darkness just as the man in the ski mask came through the door. Molly's mechanical defenders chugged, roared, and hummed through the inky blackness, filling it with a nerve-shattering barrage of flashing lights and whirring, clanking noises.

    The toys surged willy-nilly around the room, charging blindly into each other, the walls, and anything that got in their path. Molly ducked down behind a workbench and held her breath.

    It was a scene out of a special effects nightmare.

    The cavelike darkness was pierced with wildly pulsing strobes. A