Shiver

took off, heading toward the street. The fence was in the way. God, would he have time to get through the gate before the monsters in the house figured out that their prey was getting away? His little bare feet flashed pale through the darkness; his pajamas gave off the faintest of neon glows. Something small and dark bobbed at his side. In the split second that it took Sam to recognize Ted, paw still clutched tightly in Tyler’s hand, she already had one foot braced on the windowsill. Eyes burning and watering so badly that things kept going in and out of focus, feeling like her skin was blistering everywhere that it was exposed, Sam took a split second to pulverize the shards that still clung to the sill and then scrambled out the window, taking in greedy gulps of the honeysuckle-scented air even before she hit the ground. Somewhere in the distance she heard a siren; closer at hand, the brittle snap of glass breaking under her boots and the rustling of the bush she’d landed in were overridden by the sound of her pulse thundering in her ears. Careful not to rub at her burning eyes—no stranger to pepper spray, she knew that would only make the effects worse—she cast a quick, involuntary glancebehind her, through the shattered window toward the bedroom door. Her vision shimmered and shifted, due to both the watery veil of stinging tears that obscured it and the menacing vapors that filled the room, but she could see the rocking chair, which was still in place, and the door, which was still shut. Wonder of wonders, they weren’t trying to break into the room. Maybe the knowledge that they had just filled it with pepper spray was keeping them at bay. Maybe they thought the two shots she had just fired at the window had been aimed at them. Or maybe—horrifying thought—they were already racing for the front door, to catch her and Tyler in the enclosed yard . . .
    Terror formed a hard, cold knot in Sam’s chest as she, too, plunged through the honeysuckle and bolted for the street.
    Bam! Bam! The unmistakable sound of splintering wood behind her made her heart lurch. It sent panic shooting along her nerve endings, gave fresh wings to her feet.
    “Party time, bitch.” The words, which unmistakably came from inside the room she had just left, had an oddly muffled, slurred quality.
    “I don’t see her! Or the boy!” It was a different voice, filled with consternation, speaking a heartbeat later. It had the same odd muffled quality as the first.
    “She’s got to be here. They’ve got to be here! Search! Check the—”
    “They went out the window! Look! There she goes!”
    A quick, fear-filled glance over her shoulder showed Sam a man in a dark hoodie leaning out Tyler’s shattered bedroomwindow staring after her. If the moonlight hadn’t gleamed off the gun he was holding, she wasn’t even sure she would have spotted him through the darkness and the overarching honeysuckle. But it did, and she did, and her breath caught and her heart slammed against her chest wall and her stomach did a back flip. Only, his face was weird—eyes like a bug, dark and featureless lower down.
    For a shocked instant that felt like a moment out of time, she went shivery with horror. What kind of men were these?
    Then she realized: goggles and a bandanna. He was wearing that, or something similar, plus the hood pulled over his head and who knew what else to protect himself from the pepper spray. They both—all—however many of them there were, however many were in that room—must be swaddled in protective gear. That accounted for the distortion of their voices, for the fact that they had dared to enter the room so soon.
    If the murderous asswipes turned and ran for the front door this minute, this second, they would be barely behind her as she raced for the gate, Sam calculated. If they just wanted her dead, they could shoot her—and Tyler—from the porch. It was a footrace now, and not one that she was sure she could win. Heart jackhammering, with all need for subterfuge past, Sam ran for her life, letting loose a scream that split the night as she tore around the corner of the house—
    —just in time to see Tyler being lifted over the fence by a man on its other side. In the split second that it took her mind to process what she was seeing, blinking through the darknessand the burning curtain of welling tears that kept her from seeing anything clearly, she tried to ascertain what was what. She registered that the