When she popped up, she whirled around the room to look for threats. What she saw made her mouth drop open. Across the massive living room, in front of a crackling fireplace, was a girl. She was sitting in a chair, her arms strapped to the armrests, her feet bound to the chair’s legs. Her eyelids were taped open.

But her mouth was stuffed with a rag. The screams weren’t coming from her. Instead, they seemed to be coming from the woman in front of her, whose arms, tied to an overhead roof beam with bungee cord, dangled above her head. Jessie saw that a steady stream of blood was seeping onto the floor from her midsection. Next to her, a man dangled limply, a huge pool of blood at his feet. He looked to be dead.

Jessie glanced around for any sign of Thurman. He was almost certainly around, as evidenced by the recent screaming. But he wasn’t immediately visible. Though she had no choice but to move forward, something felt off about the situation to Jessie. How had her father prepared this elaborate setup so quickly?

Her eyes fell on the poker to the right of the fireplace. Moving cautiously, she edged toward it, hoping to secure any weapon that could even the odds. As she reached the couch, she peered around it in case he was hiding behind it. There was no sign of him.

She continued toward the fireplace, passing the dangling man and the moaning woman to his left. She wanted to help, but refused to even look over at them. Any distraction might give Thurman, wherever he was, a chance to make a move.

She got around the couch and was within feet of the poker when she allowed a passing glance at the girl seated within reach of her. Closer now, Jessie realized that she wasn’t so much a girl as a young woman. She looked to be in her late teens.

Despite her best efforts not to, Jessie looked at the girl’s eyes. Taped wide open, they looked terrified. But there was something else in them too. There was intent. She seemed to be trying to convey something to Jessie, who studied her more closely.

The girl’s eyes were moving, darting to a spot to Jessie’s right and then back to her. Jessie glanced to the right, expecting to see Thurman crouched there. But what she saw instead was a pair of shoes. Just beyond them were the sock-covered feet of someone lying face down on the floor.

Another dead body, just like the man dangling behind her?

And that’s when it clicked for her. The girl’s eyes weren’t bouncing between the body on the floor and Jessie. They were bouncing between the body on the floor and the man dangling behind her.

She turned around to face him, knowing it was already too late. She was right. The man behind her was no longer dangling and his arms were no longer above his head. One of them, the one injured from the gunshot to the shoulder a few ago, rested at his side. But the other one, already swinging a candlestick holder toward her head, worked fine.