Intensity

slammed into the outside of it. The fourth dog.
        She took off the helmet, the gloves. She stripped out of the padded jacket.
        Teeth bared, the fourth Doberman leaped at the side window. Its claws rattled briefly against the glass, and then it dropped back to the lawn, glaring at her.

    
        Revealed by the light from the narrow hallway, Laura Templeton's body still lay on the bed in a tangle of manacles and chains, wrapped in a sheet.
        Chyna's chest tightened with emotion, and her throat swelled so that she had trouble swallowing. She told herself that the corpse on the bed was not really Laura. The essence of Laura was gone, and this was only the husk, merely flesh and bone on a long journey to dust. Laura's spirit had traveled in the night to a brighter and warmer home, and there was no point shedding tears for her, because she had transcended.
        The closet door was closed. Chyna was sure that the dead man still hung in there.
        In the fourteen hours or longer since she had been in the motorhome bedroom, the stuffy air had acquired a faint but repulsive scent of corruption. She had expected worse. Nevertheless, she breathed through her mouth, trying to avoid the smell.
        She switched on the reading lamp and opened the top drawer of the nightstand. The items that she had discovered the previous night were still there, rattling softly against one another as the engine vibrations translated through the floor.
        She was nervous about leaving the engine running, because the sound of it would mask the approach of another vehicle in case Vess came home earlier. But she needed lights, and she didn't want to risk depleting the battery.
        From the drawer, she withdrew the package of gauze pads, the roll of cloth tape, and the scissors.
        In the lounge area behind the cockpit, she sat in one of the armchairs. Earlier, she had stripped out of all the protective gear. Now she removed her right shoe. Her sock was sodden with blood, and she peeled it off.
        From two punctures in the top of her foot, blood welled dark and thick. It was seeping, however, not spurting, and she wasn't going to die from the wound itself anytime soon.
        She quickly pressed a double thickness of gauze pads over the seeping holes and fixed them in place with a length of cloth tape. By tightening the tape to apply a little pressure, she might be able to make the bleeding slow or stop.
        She would have preferred to saturate the punctures with Bactine or iodine, but she didn't have anything like that. Anyway, infection wouldn't set in for a few hours, and by then she would have gotten away from here and obtained medical attention. Or she'd be dead of other causes.
        The chance of rabies seemed small to nil. Edgler Vess would be solicitous of the health of his dogs. They would have received all their vaccinations.
        Her sock was cold and slimy with blood, and she didn't even try to pull it on again. She slipped her bandaged foot into her shoe and tied the lace slightly looser than usual.
        A folding metal stepstool was stored in a narrow slot between the kitchen cabinetry and the refrigerator. She carried it into the short hallway at the end of the vehicle and opened it under the skylight, which was a flat panel of frosted plastic about three feet long and perhaps twenty inches wide.
        She climbed onto the stool to inspect the skylight, hoping that it either tilted open to admit fresh air or was attached to the roof from the interior. Unfortunately, the panel was fixed, with no louver function, and the mounting flange was on the exterior, so she could not get at any screws or rivets from the inside.
        Under her padded clothing, she had worn a tool belt that she'd found in one of the drawers of Vess's workbench. She had taken it off with the rest of the gear. Now it was on the table in the dining nook.
        Unable to be certain what tools she would need, she'd brought a pair of standard pliers, a pair of needle-nose pliers, both flat and rat-tail files, and several sizes of screwdrivers with standard blades and Phillips heads. There was also a hammer, which was the only thing that she could use.
        When she stood on the first step of the two-step stool, the top of her head was only ten inches from the skylight. Averting her face, she swung the hammer with her left hand, and the flat steel head met the plastic with a