DADDY, MOMMY IS UNDER THE FLOOR!” MY TWO-YEAR-OLD WHISPERED. THEN MY NEW WIFE TURNED DEATHLY PALE.

The darkness was alive with tiny, suffocating sounds.

The drip of rain from the eaves outside. The groan of the timber roof settling in the wind. And the faint, rhythmic scuff of rubber-soled boots against the linoleum in the kitchen.

I backed into the shadow of the brick hallway arch, pressing my shoulder blades against the wall. I held the Glock with both hands, my index finger resting lightly along the frame above the trigger guard, exactly as the range instructor had taught me years ago. My palms were slick, but my breath was slow, measured, and silent.

A beam of light sliced through the living room.

It was a narrow, tactical pencil-beam, flickering across the family photos on the mantle, illuminating the velvet sofa, cutting across the wooden dining table.

Behind the beam moved a silhouette.

She was dressed in black tactical fatigues, a dark windbreaker zipped to her chin, her auburn hair pulled back tight into a braid. Across her forehead was a jagged butterfly bandage where the Lexus airbag had split her flesh, and her left arm moved with a slight stiffness. But in her right hand, held with terrifying familiarity and precision, was a suppressed black semi-automatic pistol.

Victoria.

She didn't look like an interior designer. She looked like a ghost, a lethal specter born of calculated malice.

“Owen,” she whispered into the darkness, her voice carrying through the empty rooms with chilling acoustic clarity. “Did you really think an illiterate county deputy in a rented cruiser could keep me away from my family?”

I didn't answer. I remained frozen in the hallway shadows, tracking her movement with the barrel of my gun.

She stepped into the center of the living room, her boots crunching slightly on the broken glass she had tracked in from the patio.

“You’re hiding in the dark like a coward,” she murmured, her flashlight beam flicking toward the hallway where I stood. “Just like you hid behind your lawyers during the divorce. Just like you hid behind your excuses when your business failed in Seattle.”

She knew everything. Every secret I had ever confessed to her late at night in our bed, she was now weaponizing, looking to crack my composure, to draw me out into her line of fire.

“Where is Sophie, Owen?” she asked, her voice softening into that sickening, sweet purr she used when tucking our daughter into bed. “I brought her bunny’s sister. A little pink one. She’s going to love it. We’re leaving tonight. The boat is waiting in Baltimore. In forty-eight hours, we’ll be in the Caribbean, where nobody can ever touch us.”

“Sophie isn't going anywhere with you, Victoria,” I spoke from the shadows, stepping forward just enough to clear the archway, raising the pistol to center mass. “Drop the gun. Now.”

The flashlight beam snapped instantly into my eyes.

The blinding halogen light bleached my vision. In that split second of blindness, I saw the dark silhouette raise her right arm.

*PFFT-PFFT.*

Two suppressed rounds hissed through the air. The drywall beside my left ear exploded in a shower of plaster dust and splintered wood studs.

I fired back blind.

*BANG! BANG!*

The deafening report of my unsuppressed 9mm roared inside the enclosed room like thunder, spitting two bright cones of yellow muzzle flash that illuminated Victoria’s face. She gasped, diving behind the heavy oak dining table as my hollow-point rounds shattered the wooden chairs into kindling.

The living room filled with the sharp, acidic stench of burned gunpowder and pulverized sheetrock.

“You missed, darling!” she called out from behind the overturned table, her voice slightly breathless, adrenalized. “You never were good under pressure!”

I moved fast, sidestepping into the kitchen, using the refrigerator as cover. My ears were ringing from the gunshots.

*PFFT.*

Another round punched through the side of the stainless steel refrigerator, barely two inches above my scalp, spraying freon gas into the air with an angry, high-pitched hiss.

She was maneuvering around the table, flanking me toward the hallway.

Toward the bathroom.

*No. Not them.*

I lunged out from behind the refrigerator, firing two more rounds into the shadows of the living room. *BANG! BANG!*

A sharp cry of pain echoed from the dark.

I heard her stumble, her boot skidding on the hardwood. I had clipped her.

I rounded the corner of the hallway, pistol raised, ready to end it.

Out of the darkness, a heavy ceramic vase swung with brutal, blinding speed.

It slammed into my temple.

Explosions of white light detonated behind my eyes. The force of the blow ripped the pistol from my grip, sending it skittering across the floorboards down the dark corridor. I hit the floor hard, my knees buckling, my skull throbbing with sickening, nauseating agony.

Before I could recover, a heavy boot slammed into my ribs.

The breath exploded from my lungs. I rolled onto my back, gasping, coughing blood as Victoria stepped over me.

Blood was dripping down her left thigh where one of my rounds had grazed her, soaking through the black tactical fabric. But the pain only seemed to feed her madness. Her face was twisted into a terrifying snarl, her green eyes burning with psychotic triumph.

She raised the suppressed pistol, pointing the dark muzzle directly between my eyes.

“You should have let me kill Natalie quietly, Owen,” she hissed, her thumb pulling back the hammer with a sickening metallic click. “Now, you get to watch me take Sophie... right after I put a bullet in your brain.”

Her finger tightened on the trigger.