Erin seemed unable to turn her head, but threw her eyes out of focus so they wouldn’t continue to take further inventory of the damage to the poor dog. She bent over and vomited onto the floor just as her parents came charging through the door in utter panic, able to tell the difference between a scream of absolute horror and a more run-of-the-mill variety their youngest daughter might issue.

Erin’s father took one glance at the black Lab’s remains and gently but hurriedly pulled both of his daughters away from the crate, ushering them into their mother’s arms, one on each side. Erin turned and emptied the remaining contents of her stomach onto the floor and then pressed into her mother’s side once more.

Ted Palmer spun around the room, searching for something—anything—he could use as a weapon in case whoever did this was still on the premises.

It was too late. Alerted to their presence by Anna’s screams, a man was standing calmly near the opposite door to the room, waving a gun with its barrel extended to an unnatural length. Even though Erin was still a few months away from her twelfth birthday, she had seen enough action shows on television to recognize the long attachment as a silencer immediately.

The man approached and the entire family retreated as he did so, their backs against a table along one wall. Above their heads a strip of wallpaper, three feet wide, ran along the border between wall and ceiling, depicting the repeated image of a Dalmatian puppy playing with a ball.

The intruder tilted his head as if annoyed. “My luck has really been bad this week,” he said as though looking for sympathy. It was as if the bad luck he was speaking about involved something mundane, like a paper jam while he was printing, rather than being interrupted after mutilating a helpless animal.

“Take anything you want,” said Ted Palmer. “Just leave us alone.”

The man smiled serenely, but did not reply.

“If you tell us what you’re doing here,” said Cheryl Palmer, “maybe we can help you.”

“The cops have been after me,” the intruder explained, as though trying to be cooperative. “I don’t think they really understand me,” he added, as if he couldn’t figure out how this could be. “But that isn’t uncommon, I guess. Anyway, I’m trying to keep a low profile. The cops almost had me a few miles from here, but I gave them a head fake and came this direction on foot. I assume this is your pet clinic,” he said, looking at Ted Palmer. “When I stumbled across it, I knew it was perfect. You’re kind of out of the way, and you’ve been closed for several hours. I thought this would be a great place to stay out of sight for the night.” He shook his head as though reprimanding a child. “And now you’ve ruined that.”

Erin found it almost impossible to breathe, as if her throat had constricted entirely closed. She pressed even more tightly into the crook of her mother’s arm and watched her father’s face. She could tell his mind was racing furiously. “Sorry about that,” he said calmly. “I’ve got some bigger crates in another room. You can padlock us inside until you’re ready to leave. We won’t cause any trouble. You can stay the night like you planned.”

“No,” he said sadly. “I appreciate the offer. But I’m afraid that won’t do at all.”

In that tiny instant something inside Erin felt a dread beyond dread. It was an instant frozen in time that presaged a horror beyond comprehension. The intruder was clean-cut and looked normal in every way, but his eyes were totally … dead. Lifeless. As if they weren’t connected anywhere. There was no feeling. No emotion. No mercy.

He moved his arm just slightly and fired at Erin’s mom in one smooth motion, and her entire face seemed to explode. Ted Palmer screamed and lunged at the man, but a slug exploded through the center of his body, just above his stomach, and blood spouted from him like water from an opened fire hydrant. His momentum carried him three more steps before he crashed into a glass bank of pharmaceutical cabinets, filled with a variety of bottles and other medical equipment. Several pieces of glass drove into his face, neck, and arms, releasing additional streams of bright red blood to add to the gore and exposed intestines.

Noooo! screamed Erin internally; a wail of anguish that wasn’t vocalized but which permeated every inch of her body and mind, threatening to tear away her sanity. Anna screamed beside her, her vocal cords not paralyzed, but the scream barely registered with her older sister. Erin felt weak and dizzy and her heart thundered in her chest. Both of her parents had been taken from her between one blink and the next. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

The intruder glared at Anna with such withering, dead-eyed intensity that her screaming stopped as though he had thrown a switch. He tilted his head and sniffed. “Did someone puke in here?” he said, glancing down at the floor for the first time and seeing two separate piles of semi-digested pizza and breadsticks.

“Let’s go in the other room and get away from this mess,” he said calmly, his expression not changing in the slightest.

Both girls were sobbing and whimpering uncontrollably now. The intruder pulled little Anna away from her fallen mother and locked an arm around her waist with an iron grip. Anna tried to bite his arm, but it was a halfhearted effort through hysterical sobbing and he backhanded her across the face so hard Erin thought her sister’s head might fly off. Anna screamed through her tears, her face a rictus of pain and terror.

“Don’t do that again,” said the man.

He turned his cruel, cold eyes on Erin. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go. Don’t dawdle.” When she hesitated he kicked her leg with the front of his hard shoe. The pain was so great Erin thought her leg might be broken, and she nearly lost consciousness, something part of her realized she would have welcomed.

“Let’s move,” he said again.

The man carried Anna with him into the adjoining room and Erin limped behind him. He found a dog collar and slipped it over Erin’s neck, leashing her to a desk.

“Stay here,” he ordered, moving a few yards away and clamping his large palm over Anna’s tiny mouth. “Since you both interrupted what was supposed to be a private evening, you deserve what you get,” he pointed out.

He turned to face Erin. “So here’s what I’m going to do,” he said calmly. “I’m going to see how much pain your sister can take. And then I’m going to kill her. While you watch. How does that sound?”

Erin had slumped to the floor without being aware of it and was making mindless mewling sounds. She was still conscious but paralyzed in mind and body. The horror of what she had seen, and what was happening to her and her sister, had overwhelmed her mind’s capacity to absorb shock, and her centers of reason were retreating deep within her consciousness, creating an out-of-body persona to take over and buffer the horror her mind could not have survived otherwise.

“No objections?” said the man. “Good. Remember, this is your fault. You had no business coming here after hours.” He smiled serenely. “Do you know what sex is?”

Erin continued whimpering, making no reply.

The intruder produced a scalpel from some unknown location, one with dried blood covering it from the helpless puppy he had butchered, and stabbed it into Anna’s arm. She screamed over and over again into the man’s palm and writhed against him, trying to get free, but he held her body and mouth with a force she couldn’t begin to break. He removed the scalpel from her arm and glared at Erin with his ice-cold eyes. “Answer my question or your sister gets punished.”

He paused. “So let me ask again, do you know what sex is?”

Erin fought to reply, but couldn’t. She had learned about sex in health class that year and had had a short discussion about it with her parents. It was disgusting, and it had been hard for her to believe this is how babies were really produced, but the answer to his question was yes. She struggled with all of her might to form this simple word, but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate.