My breath is gone. An ache in the sternum. What happened? Did it hit him? I scrabble along the floor. A gurgling sound. Heavy breathing. I find the lighter. A breath, stillness. I click it and the room glows once more. Outside, the storm quietens a little. I slide my back along the wall. There’s blood, pooling. The shotgun blast has left a shark bite at the side of his torso. Heavy metal tang on the air, burrowing into my nostrils. I feel sick, a medical compulsion to help. But not this man, first I must find my husband. The light from the lighter only travels a few feet. I glance once more up into the darkness of the hallway, the other rooms. Then slide along until I can see into the spare room at the end of the hallway, the wall first, then I see more blood. A single drip first of crimson on the pale wall, but the further I slide the more I see. An arc of red. A slash. Cain’s blood. Rain is trickling into the house through a hole in the wall. It must have been from the shotgun blast. But Cain’s not there. Daniel had dragged him in a sheet further along to the spare room. I continue deeper into the hallway. Then I see him. He’s on the floor beneath the sheet; a bloodied mess where his head is.

‘No, no, no, no, no.’ The words rush out. I drop to my knees, pull the sheet back.

One eye moves. He sees me, shock spreads across his bloody face. His mouth open. I see his hands now, taped together, he’s almost got the tape apart, it’s torn the hair off his wrists.

He’s alive. Relief, a surge replaces the adrenaline with something softer, heavier. I rush forward and pull the tape from his mouth. Tears run down my face.

‘Quick,’ Cain says, louder now. ‘Untie me.’

I drop down beside him and pick at the tape. Over the slamming of my heart I hear that sickly breathless gurgling sound in the hall.

A thought sends an ice pick sliding in beneath my ribs. What if there is someone else? I thought I saw movement.

‘Cain,’ I begin, the tape coming away from his hands. ‘Was it just one?’

He looks confused. ‘I,’ he says, pausing, ‘I think so, yeah. Just him.’

My breath comes back. ‘I thought I might have seen… I don’t know, it was hard to see anything on the camera but there looked like movement behind him.’

‘Camera?’

‘It’s a long story.’

Cain shakes his head, stands up and takes the gun from my hands. I light the lighter again. He checks the gun is still loaded before stepping forward into the hallway, motioning for me to wait in the room.