This had to be a dream. Right? A nightmare. She swung her head around and saw him, a big bull of a man at some kind of workbench, bare-ass naked except for a black bib apron. Hairy arms, a hairy butt and legs. The back of his thick neck glowed dimly from one of those battery-powered dome lights used in attics, closets, and basements that didn’t have power or sunlight. Just beyond the bench, a clock ticked loudly on the wall.

From the dank smell, she suspected she was underground, that this man who looked like an NFL lineman had captured her, though she couldn’t remember her abduction. She tried to move, but her restraints held her fast to some kind of ring cemented into the floor. Blinking again, her mind clearing from the shot of adrenaline suddenly singing through her blood, she focused on one of the walls. Again, cement. With dark stains running down it. Water, she hoped. Mixed with rust.

Please don’t let it be blood.

She wanted to scream, but bit any sound back. Instinctively she knew it would be best to let him think she was still passed out, still stuck in a fetal position, as he worked. Jesus-God, what was he doing? Cutting lengths of red ribbon, measuring them over and over again, and then snipping them. The sound of his god-awful singing and something else—some other noise—caused her skin to crawl.

Mewling.

The soft, frightened cries were slightly muffled, as if whatever was issuing them was trying to hold back the sobs.

An animal?

No.

Some other person.

So Zoe wasn’t alone. He’d captured another prisoner.

Her heart dissolved.

Chloe. Her twin sister. In a flash, Zoe recognized Chloe’s voice, the choked sobs she’d heard as a child whenever Chloe was scared or being punished or whatever. Chloe had always been the weaker of the two Denning girls, the more sensitive. It had been Chloe who had held funerals for their pets, or run upstairs, footsteps banging on the wooden steps, when their parents fought. Chloe had stayed on her knees for hours, eyes shut, hands folded, as she’d prayed that the discord in the family would be quieted by the Holy Father and that their ever-quarreling parents would stay married. “You should try it sometime,” she’d told her minutes-older sibling. “A little prayer can solve a big problem.”

Or not. Mom and Dad had gotten divorced, and Mom was still not over it.

Zoe only hoped that Chloe was praying now, that her presumed connection to the Lord God Almighty would garner them both some quick salvation because, as her mind cleared, Zoe realized the situation was more dire than she’d wanted to believe. No college prank. No mistake. Somehow, some way, this huge sicko had been able to subdue and abduct them both.

How?