This kind of trouble.

  God, please help me.

  Fighting to keep from erupting into a scream, she rounds the corner into the pitch-black hall.

  Don’t scream.

  If you scream, you’re giving off aHere I Am signal.

  Don’t make a sound.

  She feels her way into the alcove, where faint light spills through the bare windowpanes. She glances up, sees tree branches silhouetted against the night sky.

  Maybe I can use something to break the window and climb right out from here.

  Yes, and that would trigger the alarm system—

  No, she remembers. Somehow, the alarm system isn’t working.

  And her attacker would be upon her at the sound of breaking glass, before she could get out through the window.

  Her only escape is the front door.

  She’s almost there, and still not a sound behind her.

  She makes it to the threshold of the foyer, where she struggled so fiercely, frantically, just moments ago…

  Why? Why are you doing this to me?

  What did I ever do to deserve this?

  Fragmented thoughts flicker in her brain; okay, so she’s no saint.

  Hot tears slide from her eyes, landing on her hands splayed on the floor.

  She’s no saint, but she doesn’t deserve to die for her sins.

  Die? Oh, my God, is she about to die? Is that what’s actually going to—

  No! Stop it!

  She isn’t going to die. Not like this, crawling like an animal. Not here, now, on her birthday.

  She’ll be fine; she just has to stay calm.

  And, look, there’s the front door. Less than three yards away. Salvation.

  The front hall is silent, dark, aside from the faint flickering from the next room, and seemingly deserted.

  She inches her way forward, forcing herself to stay low, quiet, calm.

  Still no sign of her tormentor.

  Tildy is just a couple of inches from the door now.

  Almost free.

  Almost safe.

  She stealthily kneels, reaching up, feeling around blindly.

  There.

  Thank God.

  Thank God.

  Her hand closes around the knob and turns…

  Just as she hears a rustling whisper of sound behind her and feels the air stir with movement.

  No.

  Please, no–

  Shattering pain explodes in the back of her head.

  No!

  She topples forward, her face landing on the nubby rug in front of the door.

  Rough hands grab her and roll her over. Her eyes are open, but she can’t see.

  Oh, God.

  Oh, no.

  Her eyes…

  She’s been blinded.

  What am I going to do? How am I going to live my life if I can’t see?

  A bizarre image strikes her: she sees herself, Matilda Harrington, tapping along Commonwealth Avenue with a white cane and dark glasses, like Mrs. Stallsman next door.

  I can’t do that. I can’t live that way.

  “Did you actually think you were going to walk right out the front door?” The voice is eerily close to her, and she still can’t see the face. She can’t see anything.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’s aware that her vision was snuffed out in that horrible blow to her head. She’s going to come out of this sightless.

  Come out of this?

  I’m not going to come out of this at all if I don’t do something.

  Oh, please. Somebody help me. Help!

  No. Nothelp…

  She opens her mouth, lips twitching, throat rasping.

  “What? Speak up, Matilda. I can’t hear you.”

  “Fire,”she whimpers faintly.

  An explosion of maniacal laughter, not her own, echoes through her brain…just before the next blow smashes her skull into it, obliterating her remaining four senses, and Matilda Harrington ceases to exist.

  CHAPTER 10

  Cassie awakens abruptly at the sound of a ringing telephone, takes one look at the unfamiliar surroundings, and manages to remember instantly where she is: at a Marriott Residence Inn somewhere in the Boston suburbs.

  And her skull is throbbing.

  And the phone is ringing.

  Oh, God, they’ve found me.

  Or, maybe not. Maybe it’s just her cell phone. It rang a lot last evening, before she turned it off somewhere north of Providence…

  And she never turned it back on, so it can’t be ringing now.

  She turns her head, painfully, to look at the room phone on the bedside table just as it rings again.

  Oh, God, they really have found me.

  Then she realizes that nobody on earth can possibly know where she is, unless someone was following her every move from the time she blew past her exit.

  When she stopped for gas at the Rhode Island state line, she checked the glove compartment and immediately found what she was looking for. The surprise party invitation was still there, right where she stashed it after it turned up on her windshield.

  But the details were sketchy. There was just a date—October 4—and a place: Tildy’s house, which is on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. Oddly, there was no time, and no phone number for an RSVP.

  Figuring it must be an oversight, Cassie decided to just show up and hope for the best. With luck, she would arrive well before, or well after, the guest of honor.

  But when she reached Tildy’s address, she found only Lena Schicke, the housekeeper. She answered the door wearing her coat, a scarf tied over her whitish-gray bun, obviously on her way out.

  “I’m here for the surprise party,” Cassie whispered to her, wondering if everyone was hiding inside, waiting for Tildy.

  Confusion settled in Lena’s slate-gray eyes. “Surprise party?”

  “For Matilda.”

  “Oh, that’s not a surprise. She’s the one who’s throwing it.” The housekeeper’s firmly set mouth told Cassie precisely what she thought of women who threw parties for themselves.

  Not to mention what she thought of women who impulsively turned up on Back Bay doorsteps looking for surprise parties where there were none.

  Now it was Cassie’s turn to be confused. “But…I mean…Is the party tonight?”

  Lena nodded.

  “Is it…here?”

  “No, at some big fancy hotel. I can’t remember which one,” she added, as if sensing Cassie’s next question.

  Maybe she was telling the truth about that, maybe she wasn’t. But her all-business demeanor made it obvious that she wasn’t interested in elaborating.

  There was nothing for Cassie to do but leave.

  So she did, promptly.

  She never gave the housekeeper her name, and, anyway, her name alone couldn’t give away her current location.

  Meaning, it’s safe to assume that whoever might be calling this hotel room, it isn’t Alec, or, God forbid, her mother.

  Still, she holds her breath as she lifts the receiver with a hoarse, “Hello?”

  “This is your sevenAM wakeup call,” a computerized voice announces.

  Relieved, Cassie vaguely remembers that she called for one just before falling asleep.

  “Have a pleasant day,” the recorded operator advises her from the telephone pressed hard against her ear.

  A pleasant day. Yeah, right.

  She opens her eyes abruptly and plunks the receiver back into its cradle.

  Okay. She’d better get up, get on the road…

  Wait a minute.

  Why?

  So she can return to her life, and the utter shambles she’s made of it?

  How could you have done this to yourself? What were you thinking?

  Shewasn’t thinking. If she had been, she wouldn’t have done it.

  Any of it.

  Oh, God.

  Oh, God.

  She should have just gone to her bridal shower and smiled and thanked everyone and told them she’ll see them all at the wedding.

  Instead, for the first time in her life, she acted on sheer impulse.

  And now look at you. Pounding headache, upset stomach, waking up in a strange hotel room, in Boston, of all places.

  But she supposes Boston is as good a place as any, if you’re going to run away from home.

  Wow.

  She finally, actually did it.

  After a good twenty years of daydreaming about it, she finally ran away.

  Actually, in her fantasies, she always galloped away, on Marshmallow.

  Still, driving away felt pretty good, too.

  While it lasted.

  Now it’s time to drive back and face the consequences.

  Isn’t it?

  Cassie’s gaze falls on the television remote lying on the table beside the phone.

  She can either get up, get dressed, drive back to Connecticut, and pick up the pieces of her life…

  Or she can stall it by lying here watching morning television, pleasantly anonymous for a little longer.

  What to do, what to do…

  As if there’s any choice.

  She snatches up the remote and aims it at the open armoire across from the bed. The television clicks on.

  The sound is onMUTE , she realizes, as the picture fades in: Matt Lauer silently laughing with a woman who isn’t Katie Couric. Oh, that’s right, she leftThe Today Show awhile back, Cassie recalls—not that she ever watched it anyway, other than catching the occasional fleeting snippet of morning news in the hospital lounge.

  Unaccustomed to lying around in bed, staring at the tube, she tells herself to relax, reminding herself that this is what regular people do.

  Really? Do regular people also run out on their wedding showers?

  Not to mention abandoning a fiancé, parents, assorted family members and friends…

  And my job,she remembers guiltily, glancing at the digital clock next to the bed.

  She was supposed to be at the hospital two hours ago.

  Well, it’s too late for that, isn’t it? It’s too late to salvage anything.

  You’re here, in Boston, with no one to answer to but yourself, for once in your life.

  So relax and watch TV, dammit!

  She idly stares at the screen for a moment, where a weather map shows a tropical depression forming in the Caribbean. As she idly presses random buttons on the remote, trying to find the volume, she accidentally hits thePOWER button.

  The screen sparks and goes dark.

  Cassie sighs.

  I can’t do this, anyway. I can’t just lie here and ignore my life.

  She gets up, winces at the ache in her skull and the rising tide of nausea, and looks around for her purse.

  It’s tossed on a nearby chair, unzipped, the contents spilling over the cushion and the floor.

  Relieved that her wallet, keys, and phone are accounted for, she turns on her cell phone.

  Over a dozen new messages.

  Cassie sinks heavily into the chair and reluctantly goes through them.

  Most are from her mother, speaking above chattering female voices in the background, clearly calling from the bridal shower. At first she sounds irritated, then angry, and, finally, in calls that are interspersed with Alec’s, worried.

  Her fiancé’s recorded voice, too, is laced with concern.

  “Please call me, baby, and let me know that you’re all right. Nobody knows where you are. If we don’t hear from you soon we’re going to call the police.”

  Which they did, at twoAM , according to her mother’s final message.

  “Cassandra, I have a gut feeling that you’re all right.” Regina Ashford’s tone has almost regained its crisp control, but with an undercurrent of distress. “Alec suspects that you might have cold feet. He says you’ve been less enthusiastic about the wedding than he had hoped. If that’s the case, you really need to get over it and remember that a lot of people have gone out of their way to attend your shower, and it’s…inappropriate,andimpolite… not to show up at all.”

  Inappropriate.

  Impolite.

  That it is, Cassie thinks, fighting back the strange urge to laugh at her mother’s understated choice of words.

  One more message.

  She braces herself to hear once again from her mother, or Alec.

  Instead, she hears a chorus of female voices. Singing.

  What the…?

  We’ll always remember

  That fateful September

  We’ll never forget

  The new sisters we met

  We’ll face tomorrow together

  In all kinds of weather

  ZDK girls, now side by side

  May travel far and wide

  But wherever we roam

  Sweet ZDK will be our home.

  A chill slithers down Cassie’s back as she recognizes the lyrics…and the voices, including her own.

  Rachel’s distinct soprano soars highest and sweetest on the last note.

  Brushing her teeth at the sink in the hall bathroom, Brynn spots a shadowy figure looming in the doorway.

  She screams.

  “Shhh! You’ll wake up the kids.”

  “You scared me!” she hisses at Garth.

  “I’m sorry. I called you but you didn’t hear me.”

  She turns off the tap with a jerk of her hand; the rush of running water gives way to the hush of the still-slumbering household.