Darker Than Midnight by MAGGIE SHAYNE

reached out to take the light, lowered her guard.
    He moved closer, one step, and even as he shoved her chest with the flat of his hand, his foot hooked behind one of hers, ensuring she would go down, and she did. And dammit, she landed on the handgun and bruised her tailbone to hell and gone, which resulted in her barking a stream of cuss words as the man fled. His feet pounded down the stairs.
    She surged to her feet, pulling the gun and rubbing her ass with her free hand. Then she grabbed the light and limped into the hall after him as she flicked it on.
    The sounds of his retreat were clumsy. He didn’t go out the front door, but through the back, through the kitchen, where she thought he might have fallen down once. She racedthrough the house, but by the time she reached the kitchen, he was gone.
    The back door stood wide open, and as she swung her light around the room, she noticed the broken pane of glass, its sharp fingers pointing inward, while other bits of glass lay on the floor. His point of entry. There were a pair of socks there, too, and puddles where shoes must have been standing.
    He’d run out into the Vermont winter night with thin pants, no socks, and no coat that she knew of. And he’d held that flashlight on her in a very telling way. Overhead, above eye level. And in his left hand. He held that flashlight like a cop held a flashlight.
    She still had her boots on, no coat, but she’d survive. She had to see where he had gone. So she stepped outside, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, and studied the footprints in the snow.
    He’d headed around the house, and she followed the tracks. She had no intention of chasing this guy down, just wanted to see where he went, whether he had a vehicle or not, and if so, get the stats on it. Make, model, plates.
    But she didn’t see a car. The tracks vanished at the neatly plowed driveway. She walked around a bit more, and when she heard a sound, she crossed the street and moved off the road a bit, trudging past trees to the large, flat, snow-covered meadow that lay just behind them.
    She shone her light around that meadow, looking for footprints, but there were none. She was sure he had come this way. She took a few more steps, shining her light this way and that.
    â€œWhy are you running away?” she called. “What is it you have to hide?”
    She took a few more steps, then stood still, just listening. The night wind blew softly, whispering and even whining now and then as it blew past the naked limbs of wintry trees. And then there was another sound, a sharp creaking, cracking,snapping sound that seemed to grow louder. She swung her head left and right, because the sound seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
    And then she felt the icy rush of water over her boots, and snapped her head down. The snowy meadow on which she stood wasn’t a meadow at all. It was a pond. A frozen pond. She’d wandered almost to its center, and the ice was giving way beneath her feet.

CHAPTER 3
    â€œO h, hell,” she muttered, and then the ice gave way completely, and her body plunged into the freezing water. The shock of the cold engulfed her, made her go rigid, drove the breath from her lungs as the water closed over her head. And then she forced herself to move, to struggle for the surface. She kicked with her legs, reaching above her head with her arms, flailing in search of a handhold. Once, she felt the edges of the ice above her, and tried to grab on, but the ice broke away in her grip.
    She tried again, her lungs nearly bursting with need. And this time, something gripped her. Some one gripped her, a slick hold on one wrist, then the other, and then she was being pulled steadily upward. Her head broke the surface and she sucked in greedy gulps of air even as she blinked her eyes.
    The man lay on his belly on the ice beside the hole her body had made. His eyes met hers and held them, clearer than they had been before, but