She stood on the tiled floor—her gun, keys, and phone feet away from her. Her heart pounded against her chest as she took her first soft step toward them. But just as her foot hit the ground, she heard something—footsteps quickly descending the stairs, hitting the bottom floor and moving into a dining room, right off of the room she now stood in.

She scanned the room quickly. There were two entranceways to the kitchen, so she quickly trod to the one opposite of where the footsteps were coming from and hid behind the doorframe. She stood in a mudroom, the smell of muddied boots floating through the air, the back door inches from her. There was a large bench underneath a rack of coats. It will conceal me, she thought, as she quickly crawled underneath it—her body now fully shielded from sight.

She heard the footsteps reach the kitchen. She was sure they were the man’s because they were heavy, hitting the ground hard upon each step. They moved swiftly until they stopped short and Tara heard something clank on the island counter. It was her gun, she was sure of it. She had picked it up and placed it down so many times before that she could almost identify her gun by the way it touched a surface, by the weight of it. She could hear it sliding toward him, and then the room fell silent.

She listened uneasily, unsure of what he was doing, until the footsteps picked up again, moving briskly. The sound grew closer, moving toward the room she now hid in.

Tara’s heart pounded against her chest as she checked her feet, pulling them fully under the bench, double-checking that she was fully out of vision. He had a gun now, and while the bench provided some concealment, she knew all he would have to do to see her would be to step in front of it. Each end of the bench was fully covered, but the length of it was fully exposed. It was pushed up against the wall between the two rooms, so Tara pressed as close as possible to that wall as the footsteps entered the room.

Tara braced herself. All it would take would be for him to see her and she would have nowhere to go. She would have nothing to defend herself. She would be an easy target. She would have to act quickly if he was moving too close, because once he noticed her, it would be too late.

I’ll kick his legs out, she told herself. It was her only possible defense to knock him off his feet, and she would have to do it as soon as she had a chance. Maybe then she could get her gun back.

But as Tara prepared herself for what was next to come, the footsteps did not move closer. Instead, she heard the jostle of the door handle to the back door, then it swiftly open, and the footsteps continuing through the threshold before the door quickly slammed shut behind them.