I inch over to the door and put my ear to it. I hear nothing. I try the doorknob just in case it’s unlocked.

I have my handy lock picking set in my back pocket as usual. I found the kit in a teenager’s room during my first week of foraging for food. It didn’t take me long to realize that picking a lock is a whole lot quieter than breaking a window. Stealth is everything when you’re trying to avoid street gangs. So I’ve been getting a lot of practice picking locks the past couple of weeks.

The doorknob turns smoothly.

These guys are cocky. I crack it open the tiniest bit and pause. There are no sounds, and I slip into the darkness. I pause, letting my eyes adjust to the deeper darkness of the house. The only light is the mottled moonlight streaming in through the windows at the back of the house.

I’m getting used to seeing by dim moonlight now. It seems to have turned into a way of life for me. I’m in a hallway with four doors. One door stands open into a bathroom. The other three are closed. I grip my knife as if that could stop a bullet from a semi-automatic. I put my ear to the first door on the left and hear nothing. As I reach for the doorknob, I hear a very quiet voice whispering through the last door.

I freeze. Then I walk over to the last door and put my ear against it. Was that my imagination, or did that sound like, “Run, Penryn?”

I crack open the door.

“Why don’t you ever listen to me?” Raffe asks quietly.

I slip in and close the door. “You’re welcome for rescuing you.”

“You’re not rescuing me, you’re getting yourself caught.” Raffe sits in the middle of the room, tied to a chair. There’s a lot of dried blood on his face, streaking from a wound on his forehead.

“They’re asleep.” I run over to his chair and put my knife to the rope around his wrists.

“No, they’re not.” The conviction in his voice trips alarms in my head. But before I can think of the word “trap,” a flashlight beam blinds me.

CHAPTER 16

“I can’t let you cut that,” says a deep voice behind the flashlight. “We have a limited supply of rope.”

Someone grabs my knife out of my hand and shoves me roughly into a chair. The flashlight turns off and it takes several blinks for me to adjust my vision again to the dim moonlight. By the time I can see again, someone is tying my hands behind my back.

There are three of them. One checks Raffe’s ropes, while the remaining one leans against the doorway as though here for just a casual visit. I tense up my muscles to try to get the rope to be as loose as possible as the guy behind me ties me up. My captor grips my wrists so hard that I’m half convinced that they will snap.