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serious skill in bombmaking, but he’d claimed not to have any experience with guns. If she were lucky, Brisbane wouldn’t be a sharpshooter, either. Even if he were, what was the difference, really?
    Better to die trying to escape than let the terrorists use her to kill more innocents.
    Mariah paused just shy of the doorway, feeling very small and alone. Raised by parents who’d met as rock band roadies and liked to keep moving, she’d lived in ten different places before her tenth birthday. Even after her parents had finally settled down in Bear Claw and her father had gone into engineering, landing a good job at the American Mall Group, Mariah had remained a private person, a loner who had to make a real effort when it came to meeting people. Her few forays into couplehood—including her disaster of a marriage—had only proved that she was the sort of person who was better off alone. Problem was, she wasn’t always strong enough, smart enough, or just plain enough to do the things that needed to be done.
    You have no choice, she told herself, clamping her lips together and fighting to be as silent as possible as she reached for the doorknob. Putting her ear to the panel, she listened intently but heard nothing, not even the radio. Did that mean both men were outside, maybe preparing for the arrival of the others? Or were they somewhere inside the cabin, just being quiet?
    She didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to figure it out by listening at the door, either.
    Blowing out a shallow, frightened breath, she eased the panel open and paused, tense and listening. Still no sound. She slipped through, unsteady on her numb legs, her heart beating so loud in her ears she was sure Lee and Brisbane would hear it all the way out front and come running.
    But there was no shout of discovery as she slipped around the corner to the other back room, where she’d installed a rear door several months earlier. The room had served as her office; now it was overstuffed with the furniture Lee and Brisbane had pulled out of her bedroom, along with her usual office clutter. She glanced at her bureau, but it was facing the wall, which meant there was no way she could pull out clothes or shoes with any sort of stealth.
    Crossing the room, barely breathing, she unlatched the dead bolt, wincing when the loud click cut through the silence. Then she opened the door and paused on the threshold, stalled by the sight of the fifty feet of raw-edged stumps between her and the relative safety of the forest.
    Her heart thumped in her ears. She couldn’t stay in the cabin. But crossing the clear-cut zone would trigger the alarms.
    They don’t want me dead, she reminded herself, although that was little solace as she drew a deep breath, plucked up her thin courage and plunged through the door.
    She hit the ground running. Splinters and woodchipsfrom the clear-cutting bit into her feet, but she kept going. Seconds later, the alarms went off, emitting a mechanized buzz that sliced through the air and straight through to her soul.
    She wanted to scream but held the sound in, hoping to delay discovery as long as possible. Maybe they weren’t even home. Maybe they’d gone to meet—
    “She’s out. Get her!” Lee’s shout warned that she wasn’t that lucky.
    Moments later, a shotgun blasted behind her, and a full pellet load blew out the top of a nearby stump as she ran past it. The next shot hit the ground behind her, stinging the backs of her calves with dirt spray.
    The pain worried Mariah that she’d miscalculated, badly. Apparently, they’d rather have her dead than free.
    She screamed once in fear, but then clamped her lips on further cries. She wouldn’t give up! Sobbing, she flung herself the rest of the way across the clear-cut zone and hurdled the low electric line with ill grace.
    She landed hard, stumbled and went to her knees, her legs burning with injury and exertion. As she fell, the shotgun roared, and tree bark exploded right