One Door From Heaven

against one wall of the maze, her head raised to detect faint telltale sounds. She moved as silently as fog, practicing a stealth that she had learned in childhood, when preventing further assaults on her dignity meant avoiding one of her mother's bad boys by making of herself a living ghost, silent and unseen.
        She didn't pause to saw at the wrist bindings, because that tricky task would take time, at least a few minutes, and would inevitably distract her. She was St. George in the lair, and the awakened dragon prowled.
        At the corner, she paused. The next passageway, meeting this one at right angles, continued both to the left and the right. She didn't want to stick her head out there and find Maddoc watching, listening. She remembered how furtively, how fox-smooth, and with what boldness he had invaded Geneva's home only a few nights ago, and she did not underestimate him.
        Her assessment of him immediately proved accurate when suddenly he cursed, his voice arising no more than a few feet from her, around the corner to the left, where he had been standing without so much as a revealing inhalation. But then, in an apparent fit of uncontrolled anger, he threw down something that hit the wood floor with a hard clatter, tumbled, and came to rest in front of the termination point of the passage in which Micky sheltered, only inches from her feet: Leilani's leg brace.
        If he followed the steel contraption, they would be at once face-to-face, and her survival would hinge on her ability to thrust the shard of glass into one of his eyes in the instant of his surprise. Miss, cut only his cheek or his brow, and he would take advantage of her shackled hands to finish her with brutal dispatch.
        Micky held her breath. Waited. Shifted her body without moving her feet, turning to face the intersection more directly, glass at the ready.
        She wore a cheap and classic Timex. No digital components. Old-fashioned watchworks in the case. She swore she could hear the tick-tick-tick of gear teeth biting time between them. She'd never heard them before, but she detected them now, so acutely heightened were her senses.
        Nothing followed the clatter of the tossed leg brace. No sound of Maddoc approaching or departing. Just the expectant silence of a coiled snake, sans rattle.
        Loud, her rampant heart stampeded. Her body resonated just as hard ground would vibrate with the thunder of a herd of drumming hooves.
        Yet somehow she heard through the tumult of her heart, filtered it, and filtered out also the regiments of rain tramping across the roof, so she could still perceive the silence that otherwise ruled, and would perceive any sound that, however faintly, disturbed it.
        Wait here another minute? Two minutes? Can't wait forever. When you stand still too long, they find you. Ghosts, living and not, must be elusive, in constant drift.
        She leaned forward, exposing as little as possible, just the side of her head, one wary eye.
        Maddoc had moved on. The next passageway, to the left and right, was deserted.
        The brace meant Leilani had been brought here. And she must not be dead yet, because Maddoc wouldn't have removed the brace from her corpse, only from the living girl with the cold intention of further incapacitating her.
        A tough choice here. Leave the brace or try to take it? Getting Leilani out alive would be easier if the girl had two legs to stand on. But the contraption might make noise when Micky tried to gather it off the floor. Besides, with her hands tied, she couldn't easily carry the brace and also effectively wield the shard of glass as a weapon.
        Micky stooped and gripped the appliance anyway, because Leilani would be not only faster and more surefooted with the brace, but also less afraid. She lifted it slowly, carefully. A faint clink and a tick. She held the brace against her body, cushioning it to prevent further noise, and rose to her feet.
        Because Maddoc was rain-soaked, Micky could see which way he had gone and where he'd come from. The bare wood floor, its finish long worn away, left no water standing on the surface, but sopped up each of the man's wet steps, resulting in dark footprints.
        She was sure that he must have left the girl in the space with the television, where he had bound Micky herself earlier. Indeed, the trail led to that very place, but Leilani wasn't