Strangers

responding to her heartbeat, amplifying it until the hollow booming of atrium and ventricle must be echoing throughout the entire apartment.
        She held the knife low, ready to swing it up and into him in a deadly arc. However, that desperate scenario depended on his slamming through the kitchen door in a fit of hysteria and rage, reckless, crazed by the conviction that he was dying from his throat wound, bent on blind revenge. If instead he came slowly, cautiously, nudging the swinging door open inch by inch with the barrel of the gun, Ginger would be in trouble. But every second that passed without his appearance made it less likely that he would play the drama out in the way she hoped.
        Unless the throat wound was far worse than she had realized. In that case, he might be still in the library, bleeding to death on the Chinese carpet. She prayed that was what had happened to him.
        But she knew better. He was alive. And he was coming.
        She could scream and perhaps alert a neighbor who would call the police, but the gunman would not be driven off in time. He would not run until he killed her. Screaming was a waste of energy.
        She pressed harder against the wall, as if trying to melt into it. The swinging door, just inches from her face, riveted her as a blacksnake might command the full attention of a fieldmouse. She was tense, poised to react to the first sign of movement, but the door remained still, maddeningly still.
        Where the hell was he?
        Five seconds passed. Ten. Twenty.
        What was he doing?
        The taste of blood in her mouth became more rather than less acrid as the seconds ticked past, and nausea worked its greasy fingers in her. As she had more time to consider what she'd done to him in the library, she grew acutely aware of the bestiality of her actions, and she was shaken by her own potential for savagery. She had time, as well, to think about what she still intended to do to him. She had a mental image of the wide blade of the butcher's knife spearing deep into his body, and a shudder of revulsion shook her. She was not a killer. She was a healer, not merely by education but by nature as well. She tried to stop thinking about stabbing him. It was dangerous to think too much about it, dangerous and confusing and enervating.
        Where was he?
        She could not wait any longer. Afraid that her inaction was damping the animal cunning and savage ferocity that she needed if she were to survive, uneasily certain that each passing second was somehow giving him a greater advantage, she eased to the doorway and put one hand on the edge of the door. But as she was about to pull it open a crack and peer out at the hallway and into the living room, she was chilled by the sudden feeling that he was there, inches away, on the other side of the portal, waiting for her to make the first move.
        Ginger hesitated, held her breath, listened.
        Silence.
        She brought her ear to the door, still could not hear anything.
        The handle of the knife had grown slippery in her sweaty hand.
        At last, she took hold of the edge of the door and cautiously pulled it inward, until a half-inch gap opened. No shots rang out, so she put one eye to the crack. The gunman was not right in front of her, as she had feared, but at the far end of the hall where it met the foyer; he was just reentering the apartment from the public corridor, pistol in hand. Evidently, he had first looked for her at the elevator and on the stairs. Not finding her, he had returned. Now, by the way he closed the door, locked it, and engaged the chain to delay her exit, it was clear that he had decided she was still in the apartment.
        He held his bitten hand to his bitten throat. Even at a distance she could hear his wheezy breathing. However, he was clearly no longer panicked. Having survived this long, he was gaining confidence by the second. He had begun to realize that he would live.
        Moving to the edge of the foyer, he looked left toward the living room and right toward the bedroom. Then he looked straight back down the long shadowy hall, and Ginger's heart stumbled through a flurry of irregular beats as, for a moment, he seemed to be staring directly at her. But he was too far away to see that the door was being held half an inch ajar. Instead of coming straight toward her, he went into the bedroom. He moved with a quiet purposefulness