Karl Ruger’s smile swelled like a hammer-​struck thumb; his dark eyes fairly twinkled with wit and gentlemanly charm. He stepped forward and pressed the barrel into Val’s stomach and like a storm wind, pushed her backward into the house. Without looking he hooked a heel around the edge of the door and swung it shut. It closed with a mild click.

The absurdity and total shock of this man with the feeble-​looking little gun still held Val in a bemused thrall. She looked down past her breasts to where the hard metal of the gun made a soft dent in her midriff.

“What…?” she asked again. Her mouth worked, trying to say more, but her brain possessed no adequate vocabulary for this kind of thing.

“Val? Who is it?” Her father’s voice floated from the kitchen with amiable curiosity, but it might have been the howl of a banshee for the effect it had on Val’s befuddled mind. As if a strong wind had blown sharply across her brain, her wits cleared and abruptly she was back in her own consciousness. There was a gun pressing against her stomach and the smiling man was pushing her backward into her own house.

“Dad!” she cried out in a sharp, shrill voice, and a moment later something struck her face so hard and fast that her newly returned awareness was swept from the saddle. She reeled away and slammed into the wall, only dimly aware that it was a hand that had struck her, not a bullet. The hand had been so fast that she hadn’t seen it even twitch, let alone have time to duck the blow. The whole right side of her face burned as if the man had splashed her with boiling water, and tears sprang into her eyes.

“Val?” she heard her father call. “Jesus Christ! Who the hell are—”

Val couldn’t see a thing; stars swirled with firework frenzy before her eyes, and before she could shake her head clear, something clawed at her hair and then wrenched her backward with horrible force. She staggered and fell back against a firm yet yielding surface. A body. She could feel fingers snarled in her hair and then something that was cold-​hot pressed into the soft flesh below her right ear. Something very hard, small, and round.

A whispery voice spoke and all around her the world froze.

“Stop right there, old fella, or I’ll blow this bitch’s brains all over the wallpaper and all over you, too. You want that? No? Then just stand right there.”

Val’s eyesight cleared and she saw her father standing just inside the hallway, face shocked and pale, body held unnaturally straight. Behind him, farther down the hall, was the silhouetted form of Connie, standing with both hands pressed against her mouth.

“Who the hell are you?” demanded her father, his eyes blazing, fists balled at his sides.

“The bogeyman,” said Karl Ruger with his graveyard whisper voice. “Now shut the fuck up.”

Guthrie shut up, but he looked desperately at Val. Val’s eyes were streaming with tears of pain, and her heart felt as if it were going to kick its way out of her chest.

“Hey, you down there,” Ruger snapped. “Yeah, you…get in here. Right now.”

Connie did not move so much as an eyelash.

“I ain’t gonna tell you twice, woman. Get your ass in here right now. Don’t make me come and get you.”

“D…Dad?” Connie asked in a tiny voice.

Guthrie met Ruger’s eyes, read them. Understood. “Come on in, Connie. Do as he says.”

She still hesitated. Guthrie turned halfway around and hissed at her, “Get in here, for God’s sake!” That got her moving, and she scurried down the hall with mincing steps on legs that seemed to move like unbending sticks.

Ruger looked at her, all dolled up with a pearl choker and a full-​skirted print dress. He chuckled. “Who the hell are you? Donna Reed?”

In other circumstances, the observation might have been as funny as it was accurate, but at the moment Ruger was his only audience. Still he gave himself a good chuckle at his bon mot. Giving Val a vicious jab with the gun barrel, he said, “Now, who else is here?”

Guthrie shook his head. “No one. Just us.”

“You better not be lying to me, old fella, it’s been a trying day, and I’m really not in the mood for fun and games.”

“Mister,” said Guthrie, “as long as you got that gun to her head, I am going to do whatever you say. I don’t want no trouble, and I don’t want no harm to come to me or mine. If you want money, I’ll give you what I got. Just please don’t hurt the girls.”

Ruger liked the speech, and said so. Guthrie said nothing, but his eyes were hard and steady. “Tell you what, Mr….?”

“Guthrie.”

“Guthrie. Fine. Tell you what, Mr. Guthrie, why don’t you and Donna Reed park your butts on the sofa over there?”

Guthrie nodded, and he guided Connie over with a flat palm on her back. Ruger turned to follow, keeping Val between them, but it was clear that Guthrie was not going to do anything stupid. Ruger relaxed a little. He knew that most people weren’t stupid or heroic enough to face down a gun. With all the crime nowadays, everyone handled these things like business transactions. Once Guthrie and Connie were seated, Ruger let go of Val’s hair and gave her a shove that propelled her stumbling all the way to the couch, where she collapsed onto her father. Ruger stood with the gun pointed at her while she got herself sorted out. Connie edged away from her to make room, moving as far away as possible as if she feared to touch the woman who had touched the man with the gun. Val settled in between Connie and her father, who wrapped one strong and comforting arm around her shoulders.

“You okay, pumpkin?”

“She’s peachy,” answered Ruger. “Now shut up.” He prowled quickly around the living room, peering down the hall and up the stairs and out the windows. Satisfied, he dragged a Shaker rocking chair over and sat ten feet in front of the couch, resting the gun on his thigh. He drew in a deep breath and let it drain out of him slowly, the way a smoker exhales the first long drag of a cigarette.

Val stared at him, fighting the numbness of shock, still dazed from the blow he had struck. She had never been hit that hard in all her life, but it was more the fact of the blow than the force that made her want to scream and cry. Who was this man? What could he possibly want? This was so far beyond her ordinary experience that she didn’t know how to react, except to crouch there in fear on the edge of the couch and wait for whatever was going to happen next to unfold. The moment stretched and the man did nothing for a while except sit and stare at them, jiggling the pistol and occasionally pursing his lips the way people sometimes do when they are thinking.

Val tried to get some measure of the man; she studied him without appearing to do so. He was no local man, that was for sure, and no farmer. He was dressed in a dark city suit that was stained with dried blood, and his shoes were caked with mud. The man was rather handsome in an oily sort of way, with a long thin nose and a strong jaw, but his lips were too thin and looked cruel, and his chin was so pointed that it gave him a saturnine countenance. He had very high, prominent cheekbones and an almost Shakespearean brow, except for the sharp dip of his coal-​black widow’s peak. His hair was as dark and shiny as a magpie’s wing. But it was his eyes that disturbed her most: they were a strange charcoal gray and extraordinarily piercing, and despite the pretense at humor, there was no trace of humanity anywhere in those shadowy depths.

Ruger fished his cigarettes out of his pocket and fired one up one-​handed, never relaxing his grip on the pistol, even though it appeared to rest casually on his leg.

“Okay, folks, it’s question and answer time,” he said after he had made them sit and stew in troubled silence for almost a minute. “The rules are simple. I ask questions, and you answer them. You get points for all correct answers, but let me warn you—you could lose some substantial points for wrong answers.” He jiggled the gun for emphasis. He fixed his gaze on Guthrie. “Okay, Mr. Guthrie, you are our first contestant tonight.”

Guthrie said nothing, but Val could feel him stiffen beside her. This was so outrageous and unreal that he didn’t even know how to think about it.

“Now, unless you are some kind of Mormon and these young darlings are your harem, I can assume that these are your daughters. In fact, did I not hear Donna Reed there call you ‘dad’?”

Guthrie hesitated for only a split second. “Yes, they are my daughters.”

“Good, you get one point. Now, tell me their names.”

“Val and Connie.”

“Uh-​huh. Which is which? No…let me guess. That one looks like a Connie,” he said, nodding to Connie. “She looks like every Connie I’ve ever known. Prissy name, don’t you think?”

Guthrie didn’t think he was supposed to answer that question, so he kept his jaw clamped shut.

“I guess that means you’re Val?” Val nodded. “I’m sorry,” Ruger said, cupping a hand to his ear. “Didn’t catch that.”

“Y…yes. My name is Val Guthrie.”

“Ah, splendid.” Ruger looked as pleased as if Val had just won a spelling bee. “Now, ladies, hold up your hands. Mm-​hm. No wedding ring on your hand, Val. Too bad. Shouldn’t let fruits like yours spoil on the vine. But…ooo, look at that, Connie’s got a nice fat gold band. Well, where is Mr. Reed?”

“What?” Connie asked, confused.

“Your husband. Don’t you ever watch TV Land? Where is he?”

Connie said nothing, looking too scared to even open her mouth beyond the permanent shocked O in which it was set.

“Connie,” Ruger chided, “you’re forgetting the rules.”

“He’s not home,” said Guthrie.

Ruger smiled, stood, walked over to the couch, and looked down at Guthrie. With another demonstration of his terrible speed he punched the old man in the face. Guthrie’s head rocked back as blood erupted from his torn eyebrow. It poured down his face in a shocking flood of brilliant red. Guthrie clamped his hands to his face, and Val seized him protectively in her arms, trying to stanch the flow of blood. Connie recoiled in horror and squeezed herself farther into the corner of the couch.