“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, easing down the ramp into a clog of traffic at the stop light. A small man wearing an overcoat, camouflage pants, and a hat with a long feather slowly pushed an overflowing grocery store cart across all the lanes of traffic while Bentz felt time slipping by. Precious time.

At last the man rolled past, the light changed, and the idling vehicles were able to move again. Bentz gunned it, his heart hammering crazily. Fueled at the prospect of coming face to face with Jennifer.

Lorraine Newell knew she was a dead woman.

Shaking, she watched as her assailant, the woman who had held the phone to her ear and a gun to her temple, hung up the phone in her living room. All the shades were drawn. They were alone. And she’d lied to Rick Bentz, begged him to come over. She should have warned him, told him the truth, but she’d been afraid, so damned afraid. Either way this witch was going to kill her.

Trembling inside, she looked at the woman holding the gun on her, the dark, deadly muzzle only inches from her forehead.

“He’s coming,” she whispered and thought she might pee all over herself. How had she been so foolish to open the door to this woman, to agree to let her use her phone? She was just being a Good Samaritan. She’d wanted to help. When she’d opened the door, handing her phone through the crack, the woman who had pleaded that she’d needed to call a tow truck and that her cell was out of batteries had turned into a demon. She’d slammed the door in Lorraine’s face, pulled a black gun from her jacket, and rammed the steely muzzle deep into Lorraine’s ribs.

Once in the house, she’d bound Lorraine’s hands behind her back, then held the phone to her ear and forced Lorraine to read from a careful script, only improvising when she had to.

And she had.

Oh, God forgive her, she would have done anything to save her life. But it was for nothing. She knew it now.

“You…you can leave me out of it,” she said, in a desperate plea, sweat running down her back, her insides quivering. “I won’t say anything to anyone. I promise. When Bentz gets here I’ll…I’ll tell him it was all part of a joke.”

“It is,” the woman said cryptically.

“Please.”

“Shut up!”

If only she could run. Could knock the gun away. But it was too late. She didn’t doubt for a second that this fiend would blow her to kingdom come.