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Katharine added, “Don’t do this. Please don’t.”
    “Where’s the safe?”
    Why wouldn’t he believe her? What else could she say? Sticking with the truth—that she didn’t know, that as far as she was aware there wasn’t one—would get her hurt. Panic twisted through her insides like a coiling snake. Could she lie? she wondered desperately. But if she lied—if, say, she pretended to know the location of the supposed safe, just picked a site off the top of her head and said it was there—he would go look, and in just a matter of minutes, he would discover that she was lying. The thought of what he might do to her then made her dizzy.
    But could it be worse than what he was getting ready to do to her now?
    “Katharine?” His voice was so soft it was barely above a whisper. A silky, almost caressing whisper. He turned the knife over, resting the honed edge in the hollow beneath her cheekbone. Her breathing quickened. A scream bubbled up in her throat.
    She dared not let it loose; he would cut her for sure then.
    Fear tasted sour as vinegar in her mouth, but she forced the words through.
    “If there was a safe, and I knew about it, don’t you think I’d tell you?”
    “Depends on how smart you are. For my money, you’re not very smart. After all, you’re fucking Ed Barnes.”
    Terror made it difficult to think, she discovered. Whatever she said, whatever she did, the end result was going to be the same. He—they—were not going to just go away. They were going to keep torturing her and Lisa until they either found what they were looking for or were finally convinced that it didn’t exist, by which time both women would probably be dead. Since it was Saturday, it was unlikely that anyone would even miss them until Monday, when Katharine didn’t show up for work. When she didn’t answer the inevitable phone calls that would be placed to her home, someone from the Agency would be dispatched to check on her. That someone would show up at her door and not be able to get in and would sooner or later call the police, and eventually her corpse and Lisa’s would be found right here on her grubby kitchen floor.
    No. I’m not going to let that happen.
    Determination stiffened her spine, had her gritting her teeth. She refused to just lie there and die.
    There had to be a way out. She had to try.
    Please, God, please . . .
    Wetting her lips, she glanced up at him. “Look, I have money in the bank. Lots of money.” His eyes darkened. He frowned. Oh, no. Already knowing he was going to refuse, she rushed on desperately. “Over a hundred thousand dollars. I’ll give it to you. All of it. My ATM card’s in my purse. We can—”
    “Yo, found it!” The exultant cry cut her off in mid-spiel. It came from, she judged, the small den that, with the living room/dining room combination, kitchen, entry hall, and half-bath, made up the town house’s first floor. It, uttered in such a gleeful tone by the second bad guy, could only mean one thing: the hidden safe.
    Apparently it did indeed exist, because he’d found it.
    Who knew? was her first lightning-fast reaction, followed almost immediately by a devout Thank God.
    Even as the thoughts formed in her mind, the knife fell away from her face. One second it was there, the next it was not.
    She let out a deep, relieved breath.
    “You’re a lucky girl, Katharine.”
    Lucky or not, Katharine knew that this wasn’t salvation. At best, it was only a brief reprieve. Her heart knocked against her ribs as her eyes locked with his for what seemed like an excruciatingly long moment. They were utterly cold; there was no pity for her there in those murky hazel depths. The hand that was still twisted in her hair shifted its grip.
    He smiled at her.
    Then, deliberately, with no warning at all, he slammed her head down. Her nose and forehead smashed into the tile with all the force of his arm behind it. The blow was so intense that she saw stars.
    “Uh.” The pained cry came