The Never List

about Adele.”
    I shrugged as we stepped into the hall to avoid the flying shards. “Or maybe she knows even better than we do how dangerous this place is.”
    Adele finally stood motionless, panting, her face red, her hair a tangled mess. She still held up her broom, ready to attack, as we cautiously reentered the kitchen to survey the damage. The counters, sink, and floors were covered with broken glass. I moved closer and examined the mullion of one window that had splintered apart from Adele’s thrashing. There was something there between the two thin strips of wood. I touched it. Cold metal. I realized then that each window was covered by a grid of iron bars. The painted wood built around them was only a facade.
    The place was rigged.
    At that, without a word, we split up, each of us going to different doors, pulling and banging at them all in turn, futilely. They were sealed shut, the doorknobs jammed. I heard screams of frustration from each corner of the house as every possible exit resisted our efforts.
    Christine gave up first. She sat in a corner of the library, curled up, and began to cry, moaning words of apology to her daughters.
    I couldn’t stop myself, though. I pounded and pounded every available surface. Finally, dispirited, I stood at the kitchen counter, looking out of the broken window over the sink toward the barn.
    “Only thinking can save us,” I whispered to myself, drawing on the last bit of my fading inner strength.
    As I turned to leave the kitchen, I saw Adele walking toward the door leading downstairs to our former prison. I couldn’t face the idea of anyone going there.
    “Don’t bother,” I said. “That goes to the cellar, and I can tell you with utter certainty there is no way out of there.”
    She flinched and backed away from the heavy metal door in horror. She didn’t have to be told twice. A few minutes later I heard her hurling what must have been her whole body at the back door, grunting as she hit the solid wood.
    Each of us gave up in our own time, then made our way, one by one, into the library. I sank down into the couch in the middle of the room, facing the large fireplace. Tracy slumped down beside me and put her head in her hands.
    “He did it. He got us back,” she said quietly.
    I shook my head in disbelief.
    “How could he have known we’d come here alone?”
    “He took a chance, I suppose. What did he have to lose? Plus, if he was counting on us being stupid and arrogant, he was right.”
    “It won’t take long for Jim to realize we’re missing, though,” I said.
    “Jack knows that too,” Tracy replied, “since he’s obviously got someone following us pretty closely. That just means whatever he’s got planned for us will happen sooner rather than later.”
    I scanned the room, wondering where the attack would come from. I felt helpless, panicked.
    “We need some kind of … weapons,” Tracy said, looking as frazzled as I felt. I nodded and we scattered, each of us searching for something with which to fight back. Christine returned brandishingthe broom handle Adele had used on the windows. Tracy and I, clearly the most practical, each took a kitchen knife from the block, and Adele found a heavy frying pan.
    When we gathered again in the library, I bolted its heavy wooden doors shut behind us. Without discussion, we spread out, as though taking up guard stations around the room. Tracy stood in one corner, I took up a post in the other. Adele squatted over by a window, her eyes just peering out over the sill, into the woods.
    Christine pulled herself up and crawled into the window seat, as far from the rack as she could get. Her knees were tucked up under her, and she clung to the curtains, weeping. She had carefully propped the broom handle beside her, but I didn’t have much confidence that she’d be of any use in a crisis this time. The old Christine was back.
    “What was that noise?” Adele said suddenly, jerking to attention.
    “What?” Tracy said, cocking her head to hear.
    “That noise. I heard something, I think from the cellar.”
    “I’m not going down there,” I said decisively.
    Tracy shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything,” she mumbled.
    It’s possible we were in denial.
    “So that’s it?” Adele said. “We just sit here and wait for someone to find us? And hope it’s the good guys first?”
    “I guess that’s about right,” Tracy said bitterly.
    “Well, I for one,” Adele began again, “plan to do