A man who’d killed twice was closing in on us, gun in hand, and looking to kill again. He’d already tried to kill tonight, and if it hadn’t been for a little bit of luck, would already have committed another murder. Maybe two.

I pulled in a deep breath, thinking as fast and hard as I could.

There had to be a way out of this. Keith could not die tonight, and neither could I. I had to stay alive. Rafe needed me. Eddie needed me. My parents and brother and sister-in-law and nieces and nephew needed me. Kristen needed me. Aunt Frances needed me. The bookmobile needed me. Josh and Mia needed me. I needed me, and I was not going to be killed by some guy who was trying to balance a budget.

Thus fortified with righteous outrage, my bravery swelled to an astonishing size. And with it came an idea. Not a very good one, but it was an idea, and the only one I had. “If there’s no door in the fence,” I said quickly, “he has to come at us from the driveway side, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“So you distract him. It’s pitch dark now. I’ll crawl all along the fence, down behind the bushes so he doesn’t see me, around the other side, sneak out, and get some help.”

“Minnie—”

But I was already down on my hands and knees and gone.

Ten feet later, my stupid curly hair got caught on . . . something. I tossed my head, trying to yank it free, but that only made things worse.

I did not have time for this. Absolutely did not.

Muttering silently to myself, I leaned back on my knees, reached up to loosen my hair from whatever it was, and—

“Minnie!” Keith whispered. “Watch out for the rosebushes.”

I would have made a quiet response, but I was too busy trying to stifle my cries of pain while hoping I wouldn’t bleed to death from the new scratches on my hands. Rosebushes. Of course he had rosebushes in his backyard. Who didn’t?

Slowly and carefully, I pulled my hair away from the thorns. And started crawling again.

This time I tried harder to see what I was heading into. By now, we’d been away from the fire long enough for my night vision to adjust. However, there had to be light for eyes to adjust to, and there wasn’t much of it back here on the ground, behind the rosebushes and next to the fence. If only I had Eddie-like eyes, I could have seen . . .

“No,” I murmured, dropping down to my forearms to belly-crawl underneath a particularly low rosebush.