“Open the fucking door, bitch!” A thunder of loud hammering buffets the door to the bedroom. My hands are shaking like crazy.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! Quick!” I mutter the words under my breath as my hands try to move faster, fumbling with the zip and then struggling to upend the contents on the bathroom floor. Blister packs of drug samples, small glass vials, syringes, dressings, tongue depressors—the lot ends up pouring out onto the tiles. I grab the first vial I see and a syringe and then I’m running out of the door. Not the one back into my bedroom. The connecting door that leads into the third bedroom. I hold my breath a moment, listening.

“..back up for her. We need to get this one in the car first.”

“No way. She’ll get out!”

“So?” The guy with the deeper voice, the one who’d been holding Lacey’s legs, sounds like he’s getting pissed off. “Where the hell is she gonna go out here? She can’t call the cops. The phone line’s dead, too. Come on. We’ll let her stew a minute.”

Stew a minute? Hardly. Someone asked me a long time ago how I thought I would fare in wartime situation. Would I be able to fight, or would I crumple under the pressure. The life and death of it all. Well, I suppose right now is a good indicator of how I’d react. I’m not crumping. I’m reacting.

I give it a solid minute, battling to make myself wait as I listening to grunts an scuffling sounds moving through the house. And then I’m moving.

Thank fuck for trauma surgery.

That’s what races through my head as I stumble blindly down the now empty hallway and down the stairs. If it wasn’t for trauma surgery, I wouldn’t be practiced at snapping a syringe from its sterile plastic, plunging the needle into a vial and drawing the correct amount of fluid from inside to treat my patients, and all the while moving as fast as humanly possible. The men are at the front door, exiting with Lacey, bucking and finally screaming through the hand clamped firmly over her mouth. I catch sight of the vial I grabbed as I begin filling the syringe with the clear drug inside: Diclofenac. Great. 25mg if you have bad period pains. 200mg if you wanna knock a kidnapper the fuck out. I drop the bottle, not registering the fact that it’s raining, that my bare feet are running on gravel, or the fact that the guy carrying Lacey’s feet has seen me coming, before I plunge the syringe deep into the base of the other guy’s neck.

He sags like I shot him in the head instead of pumped him full of painkiller. In a tumble of arms and legs, he hits the ground, taking Lacey with him. Her back lands heavily on his chest.

“Fucking whore! What did you do?” the conscious guy roars. “You fucking killed him!” I doubt I have. No time to check for a pulse, though. The guy comes at me, a gun suddenly in his hand. “Get in the fucking car.” He jerks his head over his shoulder. The black sedan that followed us earlier is parked to his right, the door to the rear already prepped and standing open, presumably awaiting the reluctant form of Lacey. Rainwater has pooled on the leather, soaking the seats. A jolt of panic seizes hold of me, a violent reminder that I only had one of the syringes and now it’s gone, buried in the fallen man at my feet. Not so smart after all. If I had been, I would have grabbed the baseball bat from its resting place as I charged past. Not that a baseball bat is much against a handgun, but still. It would feel better to have some sort of weapon handy.

“Are you fucking deaf as well as incredibly stupid?” the gunman spits. “Get. Inside. The. Fucking. Car!”

I always thought living in the middle of nowhere was the most amazing thing. No people to harass you; no cars passing by to create noise; no nosey neighbors to watch you covertly from behind twitching curtains. Now I feel quite differently about the matter. No people to come to your rescue; no cars passing by to flag down for help; no nosey neighbors to witness a berserk gunman and call the police. Shit.

I’m not stupid. This guy could shoot me right here and now and it would be at least twenty-four hours before anyone came up here to find out where I’ve gotten to. Despite that, though, I know getting into that car means I’m dead either way. There’s no time for me to feel sorry for myself, panic or beg for my life. Nor to strike bargains or try and worm my way out of it. I just point-blank refuse to accept it.

“No. I’m not getting into the car.”

“No?” The gunman’s face scrunches up into a mask of disbelief. “You do see this gun in my hand, right?” He holds it up sideways so I can get a good look at it, index finger still poised on the trigger. He begins to stalk forward, an intent look on his face that can only mean one thing: he’s going to force me into that car, conscious or unconscious, dead or alive.

I consider my options very quickly and decide that I have none. My bravado is all well and good, but when he reaches out and grabs for me it disintegrates into a paralyzing wave of fear. The first thing I automatically want to do is call for Zeth, but he’s a thousand miles away. A thousand miles away and I need him here, right in front of me, to pound this guy into the dust with his fists.

With a vise-like grip, the guy secures a vicious hold around my wrist. He reaches up with his gun hand and is about to bring the weapon down with full force onto my head when a strange impact makes his body stumble forward into me. His eyes are vacant as he slides down my body, hand still doing its level best to keep ahold of me, except now it’s in an effort to remain upright instead of to detain me.

I make a weird gasping noise of surprise as he finally lets go and his body starts to convulse. His arms and legs spasm like crazy, his head tipped back in a strained position. When I look up, mouth open, Lacey is standing over his convulsing body clutching a gigantic hunk of rock to her chest. It’s so big and hefty that she has to hold it in with both hands, and a ridged corner of it is darkened with something dark and wet. Blood.