With luck, the burglar will take the television and go. That was what burglars used to do. This is a fifty-five-inch flat-screen, a lot to grab and dash with. Money? Guns? Drugs? It would be a stupid criminal who sought that unholy trinity in a small upscale suburban residence. But then small-time criminals were not noted for high IQs and long-range planning skills.

Rose eases the door closed. With the shades drawn, the room is dim, but the skylight over the bed seldom loses its urban incandescence. For a moment she stares blankly around, her mind flitting from one half-baked plan to another. Attack the intruder? Little more deadly than a coat hanger presents itself as a weapon. The bed stand would serve as a hefty cudgel. Rose could lift it up, then wait against the wall by the door. When the intruder came through, wham! Crack his skull with it.

Rose has never bludgeoned anyone with a piece of furniture. She has a feeling it is not as easy as they make it look in the movies. Hiding might work. There is the closet, and beneath the bed. Neither infuses her with a sense of security.

Decision unmade, she takes her trousers and tunic from the chair where she’d dumped them and pulls them on over her short pj’s. Her feet she slides into a pair of well-worn Toms. She is damned if she is going to face another trauma without proper clothing.

Dressed, she sneaks back to the door, opens it a sliver, and listens. Faint as the hiss of a snake on sand, she can hear what sounds like a gloved hand sliding up the banister.

A landing, another eight steps, and the intruder will be upstairs. Three bedrooms, two baths. There are boxes in the other bedrooms. They might hide her for a minute or two, no more than that.

A needle of blue-white light slices across the dun-colored faux shutters over the small window on the stair landing.

Rose silently pushes the door shut. There is no lock. No matter; it’s a cheap hollow-core. A booted foot will punch right through it.

No hiding.

No attacking.

All that remains is running away.

She crosses the bedroom to the window facing the street. Making no noise, she slithers behind the curtain and blind. A streetlight glares at her from across the sidewalk, throwing the roof of the wraparound porch into high relief. On the window frame, nicely illuminated and right before her eyes, is the lock. Rose flips it open, puts her fingers into the pathetic grooves on the bottom of the frame, and lifts. The windows are new and cheap. The metal in the grooves makes only the slightest hiss. Hope surges. Eight or nine inches up, the window jams.