Be nice? She wanted me to be nice to the serial kil er in the guest room? My mother’s priorities were so screwed up.

“If you’re not going to make yourself helpful in here, do me a favor and take your brother something to eat. I don’t think he got any dinner, with al the excitement today. There’s some leftover stew on the bottom shelf of the fridge.”

By the time I’d warmed up what turned out to be a half gal on of very thick beef stew, my mother had al four chickens on the stove, in two huge stainless-steel pots. She washed her hands and left the kitchen, bound for company she obviously found more pleasant than mine.

Still irritated, I grabbed a spoon and slammed the drawer shut, not quite satisfied with the racket when the forks and spoons clanged together. My hand hesitated over a pitcher of tea in the fridge, but then I changed my mind. Ryan had plenty of water, and prisoners shouldn’t get sweet tea, anyway. Or silver trays and cloth napkins. So I crossed the kitchen holding only a plastic tub of stew, with a spoon handle sticking out. Just what Ryan deserved.

I smiled, truly pleased for the first time in hours.

Darkness greeted me when I opened the basement door. I flipped the light switch, but nothing happened. Damn it. The lightbulb had burned out again, and—naturally—we kept the extras in the basement.

Growling in frustration, I stomped down the stairs. “Ryan? You awake, you worthless lump of fur? I have your dinner, because everyone else has evidently forgotten you exist.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t even move, that I could tell.

The light pouring down the steps from the kitchen didn’t reach the cage, and I couldn’t see a damn thing beyond the bars. Wonderful.

I set the stew on the bottom step and made my way careful y toward the bathroom, arms out straight to feel for obstructions. But that precaution proved worthless when I tripped over the edge of the exercise mat and fell face-first onto the four-inch pad. After that, I whacked my elbow on the back of a folding metal chair and banged my left shin on what could only have been the leg-press machine. And, as my final feat of grace and balance, I knocked over a card table stacked shoulder-high with a collection of Marc’s old heavy-metal cassette tapes, which he listened to while he lifted, much to Ryan’s irritation.

Fortunately, the racket they made clattering to the concrete floor was nothing compared to the noise they made coming from the stereo speakers.

Finally, my hand brushed the bathroom door frame. Reaching around the wall, I flipped the switch and a single forty-watt lightbulb blinked to life, doing little to illuminate a basement that stretched the entire length of our house. But in the dark, even a little light goes a long way.

“Ryan?” I squinted across the room into his cage to find him sitting on the floor by the back wall. “Wake up. Why the hell are you sleeping on the floor, anyway?” The closer I came, the odder his pose seemed. He wasn’t so much sitting as slouching, his chin grazing his chest. “What’s wrong?”

My heart thumped painfully, and goose bumps blossomed al over my skin. If I’d had hackles, they would have been standing on end. Ryan wasn’t moving, and the basement light was broken. Something wasn’t right.

Cautious now, I stood completely still and listened. I heard breathing, coming from directly in front of me. Ryan. He was alive, but breathing so shallowly I couldn’t see his chest move. What was wrong with him?

Working on instinct now, I inhaled deeply through my nose.

Jungle stray.

My hands went cold. I would have recognized that smell anywhere, and I knew only one thing to do when faced with it alone and unarmed: run.

I spun and raced for the stairs. My foot hit the first step as my hand grabbed the banister, but I stopped short at the creak of hinges overhead. Slowly, I glanced up, already knowing what I’d see at the top of the stairs.

Luiz.

Chapter Thirty-One

I had only a second to process what I saw before Luiz closed the door softly, cutting off the light from the kitchen. But that was time enough to see the small pistol in his left hand.

Damn, is everyone walking around armed now?

My mouth opened, and I sucked in a breath in preparation to scream, but Luiz’s hoarse whisper—startling as a clap of thunder in the silence of the basement—made me reconsider. “Sim. Yell for help.” I recognized his voice, though I’d only heard it once before, three months earlier. “Yell for mãe. I take her, too.”

I’d intended to warn them to run, not yell for help, but his comment made me realize that would never happen. They would never run. Manx was dying to put Luiz in his grave, but with a broken arm and no gun, she didn’t stand a chance. And even if my mother was willing to leave me to fight on my own, she would never abandon Jace, who couldn’t run, no matter what the danger.

My teeth snapped together as I closed my mouth, my decision made. I would fight him alone. Or, rather, I’d dodge his bullets until he ran out.

No problem. Riiight.

“Good,” Luiz said, and I couldn’t help but notice how similar in timbre his voice was to Miguel’s, though his English was choppy at best. “Only us.” He clomped down one step and his gun made an odd slide-click sound. “You kill my brother. Miguel. I make you pay.” I wasn’t sure what he was doing until his shadow shifted in what little light from the bathroom reached the stairs. He was aiming.

My heart slammed against my rib cage, and I dove to the right. I heard an air-sucking sound and a hollow pop, then something flew past on my left. The bullet thunked into the wall behind me as I hit the floor. My torso landed on the mat, in a broad rectangle of dull light from the bathroom. My right hip smashed into the concrete.