Page 4 of The Sniper

And then I heard the screaming.

“Where is she?” a voice roared—low and brutal, slurred at the edges. “Where’s my wife?”

My heart leapt to my throat.

I didn’t even have time to think. I just ran.

Down the hall. Past the laundry room. I threw open the playroom door where two women and four children had curled up on the mats for sleep. “Out the back,” I whispered fiercely. “Now. Go through the kitchen. Through the fence gate. Lock it behind you.”

Eyes wide, they scrambled to obey.

Melissa burst out of the room across from me, her voice shaking. “Is that?—?”

“He followed her,” I said. “He found us.”

My stomach turned.

And then?—

Heavy footsteps. Stomping. Fast.

We had maybe seconds.

“Get them out!” I hissed. “Back exit—now. Use the padlock!”

It was meant for bad weather. That was the irony. That fenced-in courtyard out back with the storm shelter doors and the security floodlight—that was where we kept the emergency kits and the backup generator. I never thought it’d be where we’d hide from a man like him.

“Y’all listen to me,” I barked louder than I meant to, spinning toward the living room where four morewomen were half-standing, confused and scared. “Move. Now. Get outside. Go!”

And bless them, they moved. Even in their fear, even in pajamas and tears, they followed my voice.

I waited long enough to count heads. Ten women. Six kids. My fingers trembled as I keyed in the lock code on the back gate. The mechanism clicked, and the metal latch slid into place just as the sound of shattering glass echoed from the hallway.

He was in.

The front window. He’d smashed it.

My breath caught.

“Hallie Mae!” Melissa shrieked from behind the storm shelter door. “Come on!”

“I’m right here,” I said, more to keep myself calm than anything else. I took one last look through the fence slats and slammed the latch shut. “Lock it from the inside. Don’t open it unless it’s me. Got it?”

Then I turned around, walked back into the house?—

And walked straight into him.

He was big. Dripping wet from the rain. Shoulders like a linebacker. His flannel shirt hung open, soaked through. His face was red. Bruised, too, like maybe someone had fought back.

But it was the gun that stopped me cold.

He raised it like it weighed nothing. Pointed it at my chest. And smiled.

“You hiding my family?”

My mouth was dry. “They’re not your property.”

Wrong words.

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