Intensity

restraints was a shackling chain.
        She had been violated. The pants of her baggy blue pajamas had been cut off with a neatness worthy of a conscientious tailor; the blue panels of cloth had been smoothed across the blankets to both sides of her. The pajama shirt had been shoved up her back; now it was gathered in rumpled folds across her shoulders and the nape of her neck.
        Chyna moved deeper into the room, her fear equaled now by a swelling sorrow that seemed to enlarge her heart yet leave it cold and empty. When she caught a faint odor of spilled semen, her fear and sorrow were matched by anger. As she stooped beside the bed, her hands curled into such hard fists that her fingernails pressed painfully into her palms.
        Sweat-damp blond hair was pasted to the side of Laura's face. Her delicate features were salt-pale and clenched in anxiety, and her eyes were squeezed tightly shut.
        She was not dead. Not dead. It seemed impossible.
        The girl-terror had reduced her to the condition of a girl-was murmuring so softly that the words couldn't be heard even from a distance of inches, yet so urgently that the meaning was harrowingly clear. It was a prayer, one that Chyna had recited on numerous nights long ago, in far places: a prayer for mercy, a plea to be delivered from this horror untouched and alive, dear God, please, untouched and alive.
        On those other nights, Chyna had been spared both violation and death. Already, half of Laura's petition had gone unanswered.
        Chyna's throat tightened with anguish, and she could barely speak: "It's me."
        Laura's eyelids sprang open, and her blue eyes rolled like those of a terrified horse, wide with disbelief. "All dead."
        "Ssshhh," Chyna whispered.
        "Blood. His hands."
        "Ssshhh. I'll get you out of here."
        "Stank like blood. Jack's dead. Nina. Everyone."
        Jack, her brother, whom Chyna had not met. Nina, her sister-in-law. Evidently the killer had been to the vineyard manager's bungalow before coming to the main house. Four dead. There was no help to be found anywhere on the sprawling property.
        Chyna glanced worriedly at the open door, then quickly rose to test the handcuffs on Laura's wrists. Securely locked.
        With fettered hands and fettered ankles linked by a chain, Laura was thoroughly hobbled. She wouldn't be able to stand, let alone walk.
        Chyna wasn't strong enough to carry her.
        She saw her reflection in the vanity mirror across the room, and she realized with a shock how nakedly her terror was revealed in her wrenched face.
        Trying to look more composed for Laura's sake, Chyna stopped beside the bed again and murmured almost as softly as her friend had been praying: "Is there a gun?"
        "What?"
        "A gun in the house?"
        "No."
        "Nowhere in the house?"
        "No, no."
        "Shit."
        "Jack."
        "What?"
        "Has one."
        "A gun? At the bungalow?" Chyna asked.
        "Jack has a gun."
        Chyna didn't have time to get to the bungalow and back before the killer returned to Laura's room. Anyway, more likely than not, he had already found the gun and confiscated it.
        "Do you know who he is?"
        "No." Laura's sky-blue eyes appeared to darken with despair. "Get out."
        "I'll find a weapon."
        " Get out ," Laura whispered more urgently, cold sweat glistening on her brow.
        "A knife," Chyna said.
        "Don't die for me." Then, sotto voce , tremulously but fiercely, fiercely she said: "Run, Chyna. Oh, God, please run! "
        "I'll be back."
        " Run ."
        From outside, a sound arose. A truck engine. Approaching.
        Astonished, Chyna shot to her feet. "Someone's coming. Help's coming."
        Laura's bedroom was toward the front of the house. Chyna stepped to the nearer of two windows, which provided a view of the half-mile driveway leading in from the two-lane county road.
        A quarter of a mile away, bright headlights pierced the night. Judging by the height of the lights from the ground, Chyna concluded that the truck was big.
        How miraculous that anyone would show up at this hour, in this lonely place.
        As a thrill of hope swept through Chyna, she realized that the killer would have heard the engine too. The man or men in the truck wouldn't know what trouble they were getting into. When they