Sinner by Ted Dekker

bell?”
    Billy searched the man’s thoughts for a few seconds, finding nothing useful.
    â€œYou’ve dug deep,” he said.
    Muness dipped his head. “You do anything I don’t like, she pays.”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œAnd your debt?”
    Billy withdrew a slip of paper with the information he’d assembled on Sacks’s theft and handed it to Muness. “My debt was three hundred thousand dollars. Now we’re even.”
    Muness hesitated, then took the paper. His mind was running through ways to eliminate Billy along with the threat as efficiently as a college graduate might run through single-digit addition tables.
    â€œI don’t like to be blackmailed, Mr. Rediger. I can’t live with the pressure hanging over my head, you understand. You want a week; I’ll give you three days. Then we settle this, one way or another.”
    Billy took a deep breath, nodded once, and turned for the door.
    â€œAgreed.”
    But nothing could be further from the truth.Muness had already settled on his decision, one that made liberal use of force and torture within the hour of closing arguments in the case against Anthony Sacks.
    Muness had no intention of allowing blackmail to rule his life. And Billy had no intention of allowing Muness to rule his.
    He was going on the run. Tonight.

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    CHAPTER SIX
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    WATCHING A cloaked stranger nail her door shut in the middle of the night was enough to stop her lungs from inhaling. Staring into the stranger’s shadowed eyes was enough to freeze her heart.
    Darcy didn’t know if he could see her eyeballs through the gap in the slats, but if he saw movement, he would know she was awake and watching him.
    She had to get to the phone!
    The man abruptly turned and walked along the wall, then disappeared around the corner. Going where? To seal the back door too?
    Darcy released the blinds and ran toward the kitchen. White venetian blinds covered all of the windows in the family room adjacent to the kitchen. From her vantage point, the back door looked undisturbed.
    She considered making a run for it now, into the garage, into her Chevy, into the night. But she hesitated—surely there was an explanation for all of this. Who’d ever heard of a woman being sealed in her own home by a man with a hammer? If he wanted in, he would have just shattered the door, not nailed it shut.
    Run, Darcy! Get out now while you still can.
    She ran for the garage door, thinking she should grab a knife just in case. But her urgency to escape, to get out now while she still could, over-powered the desire for a weapon. And she didn’t want to alert the intruder by clattering through a drawer full of knives.
    She slid her keys off the hook on the back wall and tried the door leading to the garage. Locked. She eased the dead bolt back and shoved again.
    No. Locked .
    She checked the dead bolt again, thinking she’d turned it the wrong way, but the bolt was open. And the door handle twisted in her palm. The door was jammed from the outside.
    Gooseflesh rippled on her arms. He’d gotten to the garage door?
    Darcy spun around, breathing hard. Her mind was blank. She turned and slammed into the door, grunting, ignoring the pain in her shoulder.
    It refused to budge.
    The back door! She whirled, took one step, and slipped on the rug in front of the sink. Her arm caught her fall, but not without slapping into the metal sink. Loud.
    She scrambled to her feet. The delay in her progress to the back door gave her time to recall her first impulse to call for help. Moving with less concern about stealth, she crossed the kitchen, snatched the phone off the counter, and pressed it to her ear.
    It was programmed to engage upon contact with her fingers. But the familiar dial tone was gone. Instead, static.
    Darcy punched the manual power button, tried again, and heard the same static.
    Now, true panic collided with her mind. He’d cut her phone