Intensity

parked the vehicle near the end of the halfmile-long driveway, out toward the county road, and must have walked to the house.
        Now tires crunched through gravel. Air brakes issued a soft whoosh and a softer whine, and the motor home came to a full stop in front of the house.
        Remembering the oval rug that had turned under her feet and had nearly sent her sprawling, Chyna dropped to her knees. She crawled across the wool, smoothing the rumples with her hands. If the killer tripped over the disarranged rug, he would know that it hadn't been in that condition when he'd left.
        Footsteps arose outside: boot heels ringing off the flagstone walkway.
        Chyna came to her feet and turned toward the study. No good. She couldn't know for sure where he would go when he reentered the house, and if he stepped into the study, she would be trapped in there with him.
        His tread echoed hollowly from the wooden porch steps.
        Chyna lunged across the foyer, through the archway, into the dark living room-and immediately came to a halt, afraid of stumbling into furniture and knocking it over. She edged forward, feeling her way with both hands, vision hampered by the muddy-red ghost images of the motor-home headlights, which still floated faintly across her retinas.
        The front door opened.
        Less than halfway across the living room, Chyna squatted beside an armchair. If the killer entered and switched on the lights, he would see her.
        Without closing the door behind him, the man appeared in the foyer, beyond the arch. He was dimly limned by the glow from the second-floor hallway. He passed the living room and went directly to the stairs.
         Laura .
        Chyna still had no weapon.
        She thought of the fireplace poker. Not good enough. Unless she caved in his skull on the first blow or broke his arm, he would wrest the poker away from her. She had the strength of terror, but maybe that wouldn't be enough.
        Rather than rise to her feet and blunder blindly across the living room, she stayed down and crawled because it was safer and quicker. She reached the dining-room archway and angled toward where she thought she'd find the kitchen door.
        She thumped into a chair. It rattled against a table leg. On the table, something shifted with a clink-clink , and she remembered seeing carefully arranged ceramic fruit in a copper bowl.
        She didn't think that he could have heard these sounds all the way upstairs, so she kept going. There was nothing to do but keep going anyway, whether he had heard or not.
        When she reached the swinging door sooner than she had expected, she got to her feet.
        Though the infiltrating moonlight was already dim, it suddenly faded away, causing the flesh on the nape of her neck to crawl with a dire expectation. She turned, pressing her back against the doorframe, certain that the killer was close behind her, silhouetted in front of a window, blocking the lunar glow, but he wasn't there. The silver radiance no longer painted the glass. Evidently the storm clouds, rolling out of the northwest since before midnight, had finally shrouded the moon.
        Pushing on the swinging door, she went into the kitchen.
        She wouldn't need to switch on the overhead fluorescent panels. The upper of the double ovens featured a digital clock with green numerals that emitted a surprising amount of light, enough to allow her to find her way around the room.
        She recalled having seen a section of butcher-block countertop to one side of the stainless-steel sinks. The sinks were in front of the wider of the two windows. She slid her hand along the cold granite counters until she located the remembered wooden surface.
        The house above her seemed filled with a higher order of silence than ever before.
         What's the bastard doing up there in all that silence, up there in all that silence with Laura?
        Under the butcher block was a drawer where she expected to find knives. Found them. Neatly slotted in a holder.
        She withdrew one. Too short. Another. This one was a bread knife with a blunt round end. The third that she selected proved to be a butcher knife. She carefully tested the cutting edge against the ball of her thumb and found it satisfyingly sharp.
        Upstairs, Laura screamed.
        Chyna started toward the dining-room door but sensed intuitively that she dared not