a big, stand-alone freezer, the horizontal kind. On the far left she could see the workbench with just a few tools hanging from a pegboard above it. All I have to do, she told herself, is find the flashlights and get out.
She crossed the cement floor and tugged at one of the two drawers. Her arm felt oddly weak, and the drawer refused to budge. She tugged again, harder, and this time the drawer jerked open. Its bottom was scattered with loose nails, nothing more. She tried the other drawer. Two flashlights lay side by side. They were the long heavy-duty kind security cops carried.
She grabbed one, pushed the switch up and to her relief saw that it worked. She blew out the candle and then grabbed the other flashlight. Now get the hell out of here, she told herself. As she turned, a muffled crash sounded directly above her, making her whole body jerk. Something had fallen hard in the kitchen. Had Rory tripped? Had someone gotten into the house? Was it Harry? Or the man from Brooklyn? She had to get back upstairs to help Rory.
Flooded with fear, she lunged through the near-darkness toward the stairs. Suddenly she felt dizzy and disoriented in the near-darkness. She raised her foot to meet the first step but didn’t reach it, and she stumbled, falling. As she landed in a heap, both flashlights bounced from her hands. She heard one roll across the floor to her left. The other, the one she’d been using, was just a few feet away, shooting a beam of light across the hard cement floor. Terrified, she crawled toward it on her knees. Don’t let it go out, she begged.
She reached the flashlight and stuck her arm out feebly to grab it. Then she felt an intense, searing pain in her head. A split second later she slipped into unconsciousness.
Pain woke her, forced open her eyes. She was lying in pitch-black darkness, and her head was throbbing, as if someone had smashed the back of it with a chair. There was a weird taste in her mouth—metallic. I’ve cut the inside of my mouth, she thought. She tried to find the spot with her tongue, but it was too swollen to move.
Where am I? she wondered panic-stricken. Her heart began to pound in time with the throbbing in her head. She tried to shift her body, but she felt paralyzed.
She forced herself to take a breath. I’m in a nightmare, she told herself, one of those nightmares you can dream and see yourself in at the same time. And I’m going to wake up. As she breathed, she smelled something musty, like mildewed clothes. No, this was real. She tried again to shift her body. Her arms didn’t move but she was able to twist her head a little.
A sound slid through the blackness—a long, low groan that she didn’t recognize. Her heart pounded harder. It’s a motor, she thought finally.
She realized at last where she was. But why? Had she fallen? Or had someone hit her? Her mind was so confused, her thoughts choked like a tangle of weeds in a lake. She found the beginning and tried to go step by step from there. The last thing she recalled was trying to reach the flashlight. It must have gone out, though. How long had she been here and why was she alone? And then suddenly she knew. She remembered everything. She let out an anguished sob at the truth.
She realized that the hum of the motor must be from the freezer she’d seen earlier, which meant that the power was back on. She had to get out. She twisted her head back and forth and commanded the rest of her body to move. Her legs felt leaden, like they were metal drums filled to the brim, but she was able to move one of her arms—the right one. She flexed her right hand slowly open and closed, back and forth.
There was another noise—from far above this time. Footsteps. And next a door opening. Terror engulfed her body, squeezing air from her lungs.
The killer was coming to get her.
Lake tried desperately to move again. She managed to drag her hand to her face, but that was it. Suddenly the lightbulb in the ceiling popped on. The light made her head hurt even more but she forced her eyes to stay open. She realized that she was lying just to the left of the bottom of