The silence was broken by a loud crash and the sound of glass shattering from inside the closed bedroom.

Then: a man’s cry of anguish. It must be Mel Owen.

Leah’s heart threw itself against her chest wall. What happened in there?

Aiden’s gaze was fixed on the closed door, knife at the ready to deal with whoever came out of the bedroom.

Don’t come out, Mr. Owen.

Please, don’t come out.

* * *

Harry crept down the stairs, his heart pounding. But his bare feet were steady. He kept his breath soft, crouching low and hugging the shadows in the corners as he crossed the foyer. The house was built on a center hall plan. On the right side of the foyer lay the formal dining room. The dining room led to the eighties’ era country-style kitchen that had never been renovated for a paraplegic, because his father never cooked.

The living room was on the other side of the foyer. For years, it had been a formal room, and the study in the back had been used as the TV room. But after Mel’s paralysis, the study had been converted to a bedroom, and the broom closet off the kitchen had been renovated into a bathroom.

Which way should he go? Into the living room, where he was sure he had heard the intruder?

Or go the back way through the dining room, into the kitchen, and then around through his parents’ bedroom?

The thought of his father lying on the floor and his mother hiding in the bed propelled him through the dining room. He needed to make sure they were safe.

Don’t think about what happened before.

He turned the corner into the kitchen, and slipped through the back entrance into his parents’ bedroom.

He froze in the doorway.

“Oh, my God.” His mother lay covered in glass, a lampshade tumbled drunkenly to one side as if it had fallen off her head.

His calm deserted him. He threw himself down by her side. “Ma—” His voice blocked his throat.

Fear chilled him.

Oh my God. No!

She couldn’t be dead. Not his mother.

Not his mother!

Then it hit him.

I never got to tell her.

The realization he would never be blessed with his mother’s forgiveness stopped his heart.

“Stop! You bastard!”

Harry saw his father, in his wheelchair, his back to them, yelling at a black-clad intruder in the living room. The intruder sprinted across the living room toward the back window.

It was wide open.

But had it been locked?

Before Harry could react, his father propelled his wheelchair directly toward a second intruder.

Dear God. He sprang to his feet and, with a final, frantic look at his mother, ran out of the bedroom. “Dad! Stop!”

“The bastard killed your mother, Harry!” His father snatched the revolver from his lap and pointed it at the intruder. “He killed her!