My husband cooked dinner, and right after my son and I ate, we collapsed Pretending to be unconscious, I heard him on the phone saying, "It's done... soon they will both be gone."

My lungs locked. Under my sweater, the hard edges of the frozen plastic bag pressed against my ribs like a block of dry ice, burning my skin through my undershirt.

Daniel rifled through the contents. Frozen waffles clattered. A bag of ice cubes broke apart with a sharp crack.

"Frozen peas," he muttered, tossing the green bag aside. "Ground beef. Homemade stock. There’s nothing here, Evelyn. You're losing your nerve over a stray smear of gravy."

"Did she leave the room?" Evelyn’s voice had lost its professional silkiness; it was shrill, brittle with an escalating panic. "Did you actually see her drop, Daniel? Or did you just hear the stool fall?"

"I heard the crash, I came in from the den, and they were both on the floor," Daniel said, shoving the freezer drawer shut with a deafening bang that rattled the glassware in the upper cupboards. "The boy was out cold. She was barely breathing. Her pulse was thready. She’s out. She’s done."

"Then get her loaded," Evelyn said, though she still sounded unconvinced. "Take the boy first. He's lighter. I'll carry her legs."

Daniel walked back toward the entryway. I closed my eye instantly, regulating my heart through sheer, terrifying willpower.

I felt him step over my legs. He didn't touch me this time. He crossed the kitchen to where Noah lay.

"Come here, kid," Daniel muttered under his breath.

The sound of his voice speaking to my son with that casual, disposal indifference ignited a white-hot flare of rage behind my ribs. Daniel had coached Noah’s Little League team for three summers. He had sat on the edge of Noah’s bed when he had the measles, reading The Hobbit in different voices until the boy fell asleep. How long had he been calculating the actuarial value of our corpses? How long had this woman been sleeping in his car while I was packing school lunches and washing his grass-stained work pants?

I heard the rustle of Noah’s windbreaker as Daniel scooped him up.

Noah let out a faint, involuntary whimper—a soft, pathetic sound that slipped past his lips despite his best efforts.

Daniel froze.

"Did you hear that?" Evelyn hissed from the island.

"It was air escaping his lungs," Daniel said, though his own movement had halted. "Agonal respiration. It happens when the diaphragm relaxes."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure! Now open the back gate so I don't have to kick it open with him in my arms!"

Evelyn moved toward the back door, her heels stepping inches from my outstretched hand. The cold draft swept through the opening again as she shoved the screen door wide and stepped out onto the damp wooden deck.

Daniel adjusted his grip on Noah, turning his back to me.

In that two-second window, Noah’s left hand, dangling over Daniel’s broad shoulder, moved.

His small fingers curled into a fist, extended two fingers, and pointed toward the counter beside the knife block.

Two.

He wasn't paralyzed. The food had made him weak, violently nauseous, and slow, but the dosage hadn't taken his motor control completely. He had seen what I hadn't: on the secondary cutting board behind the espresso machine sat Daniel’s heavy eight-inch carbon-steel chef’s knife.

Daniel took two heavy strides out onto the porch.

The moment his boots cleared the threshold, I rolled onto my stomach, dug my toes into the grout, and pushed myself up.

My head spun violently. The room tilted at a sickening forty-five-degree angle as the residual poison in my blood fought my nervous system. Bile surged into my throat, hot and acidic, but I swallowed it down, clamping my teeth together until my jaw clicked.

I didn't reach for the chef's knife.

A knife meant close-quarters struggle against a man who outweighed me by eighty pounds and possessed a foot of reach on me. If I attacked him with a blade while he held Noah, Noah would be the one who hit the deck when Daniel pivoted.

Instead, my eyes landed on the kitchen island.

Beside the sink sat the heavy cast-iron Dutch oven Daniel had used to simmer the stroganoff. It weighed twelve pounds, filled with three quarts of boiling water and grease that he hadn't yet drained.

I grabbed the two looped handles with both hands.

The iron was still blistering hot through my sleeves, searing the skin of my palms, but the pain was an anchor. It cleared the narcotic fog from my brain in a fraction of a second.

I moved silently to the open doorway.

Below the deck stairs, Daniel was carrying Noah toward the open tailgate of Evelyn’s dark green Subaru wagon, which was backed halfway into the rhododendron bushes with its hazard lights off. Evelyn was standing by the rear bumper, holding a heavy plastic tarp open across the cargo floor.

"Hurry up," Evelyn whispered harshly, glancing nervously up at the tree line. "The fog is dropping."

Daniel leaned forward to lay Noah onto the plastic.

At that exact second, from two miles down the valley road, a sound pierced the night air.

It was faint at first—a distant, rising wail that bounced off the granite cliffs of Blackwood Ridge, rising and falling in sharp, frantic cadences.

A siren.

Not one. Two distinct sirens, running code three, cutting through the damp mountain air with terrifying speed.

Daniel froze, Noah halfway out of his arms.

Evelyn’s head snapped toward the driveway. "What is that?"

"It’s not for us," Daniel said, but his voice cracked, pure panic bleeding through the seams. "There's an auto repair shop down on Route 4. They get false alarms all the time."

"Daniel, that’s on the ridge road! That’s coming up the mountain!"

"Shut up and take his feet!"

"No," Evelyn backed away from the bumper, dropping the edge of the tarp into the mud. "You said she didn't touch the phone! You said the lines were clean!"

"I took the cell phones, Evelyn!" Daniel roared, turning around with Noah still clutched against his chest. "I ripped the router out of the wall! There’s no way—"