Blythe pushed up, still moving carefully after the near disaster. She reached one hand out imploringly to her daughter.
For a long moment nothing happened. She had begun to despair when the little girl finally moved. With the same crab-like motion Blythe had used to make the descent, she edged down the incline.
Blythe took the child’s left wrist in her right hand. “I’m going to swing you off and drop you down on the grass. Bend your knees when you hit. You’ll be fine. I swear, Maddie, you’ll be fine.”
She expected resistance. Arguments. Something. The little girl nodded instead.
There was no time now to do anything other than swing her over the side and then let her go. One chance. One chance.
She took Maddie’s other wrist, pulling her around in front. Then, fighting to keep from falling off the roof, too, she swung the little girl over the edge, her shoulders screaming again with the strain.
She bent forward, her breasts touching her knees, in an attempt to hold Maddie away from the house. She took a final glance at the ground to verify that her daughter would fall onto the thick zoysia below. Then she closed her eyes for a final wordless prayer, before she allowed her fingers to release, dropping the child to the ground.
Blythe’s eyes followed her descent. For a long heartbeat, Maddie lay where she had fallen. Then slowly, more slowly than Blythe believed she could bear, she began to sit up.
“Maddie? You okay?”
Another eternity before the small blond head moved up and down. Blythe stifled the sob, knowing there was no time for tears, not even of relief.
“You have to run,” she said.
Despite the moonlight, the woods that stretched behind the house seemed dark and frightening. But if she sent Maddie toward the front, she wouldn’t be able to see her. She couldn’t be sure that the child wouldn’t go back inside the house to find a toy or because it had once been a place of safety.
“The woods,” she said. “Can you run to the woods and wait for Mama?”
“I want to wait here. You said you were coming.”
“I am. I’m right behind you. But you need to get away from the house. Away from the fire. Go on, Maddie. Just to the edge of the woods.”
She watched as her daughter reluctantly climbed to her feet. As soon as Maddie moved out of the way, she would jump down. Even if she broke an ankle, she’d still be able to get away from the fire. Even if I have to crawl…
“Go on, Maddie. To the edge of the woods and wait for me.”
As Blythe said the words, she raised her eyes to the thick pine forest that marked the property line. Something in the trees caught her eye. A shape, darker than the trunks themselves, was moving along the edge of the woods.
She blinked, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. When she looked again, whatever she’d seen seemed to have melted into the shadows. Still…
A movement below drew her gaze from the forest. Looking like a small, white ghost in her pale nightgown, Maddie was running across the back lawn toward those woods. Just as Blythe had told her to.
And she was running directly toward whatever—or whoever—had been moving there.
6
Eyes straining against the darkness, Blythe searched the property line again. There was nothing there now but the trunks of the trees, standing stark against the moonlight.
She knew in her heart that she hadn’t been mistaken. Something had been moving among them. Something upright. Too tall to be an animal.
That thought was almost as unnerving as the other. Whatever was out there, she had to stop Maddie and then get the hell off this roof. In that order.
“Maddie? Maddie,” she screamed.
The little girl didn’t slow. Maybe she couldn’t hear above the noise of the fire, which seemed to have grown louder in the last few seconds.
Blythe looked down at the place where she’d dropped her daughter. The quickest way off the roof—and the quickest way to get to Maddie—would be to jump.
Behind her a whoosh erupted. A flare of heat, strong enough to be painful, assailed her back.
Without looking around, Blythe scrambled to her feet. Her body poised on the edge of the roof, she tried to remember everything she’d ever read or heard about how to fall.
Bend your knees when you hit. Roll. There was nothing else. That was the sole store of her knowledge. Too little. And way too late.
She bent her knees, mentally as well as physically preparing herself, and then leaped out over the edge. The ground rushed up, giving her no time to be afraid.
For a second after she landed, she was aware of nothing. Not of pain. Not even of the impact itself. All she knew was that she was lying on her side on the cold, wet grass.
Then everything seemed to flood her consciousness at once. The burning house, flames and sparks shooting upward into the night sky. And the more frightening realization that Maddie was running toward whoever had been standing in the woods.
Blythe rolled over onto her hands and knees. When she put her weight on her right foot to push off the ground, she realized that she hadn’t escaped the jump unscathed. Even if her ankle was broken, it wouldn’t be enough to keep her from getting to Maddie.
As she got to her feet, her eyes found the small, ghostly figure. Maddie was almost at the edge of the forest, the white nightgown outlined against its darkness.
Blythe began to run, too, her speed hampered by her injury. She didn’t waste breath on shouting, knowing now that she couldn’t be heard above the fire.
Far enough, Maddie. Stop and look back. Look at me.
Even as Blythe willed her daughter to stop, the little girl drew closer and closer to the line of trees. Blythe’s gaze searched them, trying locate again whatever she’d seen before.
When she did, terror squeezed her chest. Although the shadowy form she’d spotted from the rooftop had been moving away from the property, that was no longer the case. The child in the pale gown and the dark shape moving among the trees now appeared to be on a collision course.
“Maddie. Stop, Maddie.”
The words had no effect. As Blythe’s eyes shifted to the other figure, she realized that it at least had stopped. Watching her?
Ignoring the agony in her ankle, she tried to increase her speed. Surely Maddie wouldn’t go into the woods. Surely she had understood…
“Maddie!”
Despite the awkwardness of her hobbling run, Blythe was gaining on the little girl. Encouraged by that realization, her eyes again lifted to search for the figure in the woods.
The shape was no longer in the place where she’d last seen it. Her gaze trailed along the edge of the forest, trying to find that dark anomaly.
Eyes on the trees instead of the ground in front of her, she stumbled, pitching forward despite her frantic efforts to regain her balance. Even as she broke her fall with her outstretched hands, she looked up to locate her daughter.
Perhaps emboldened by her fall, the shadowy figure at the edge of the woods seemed to once more be moving toward the little girl. The light of the fire clearly illuminated what was happening.
Blythe scrambled to her feet, again screaming her daughter’s name. Finally—unbelievably—the little girl turned, looking back across the yard. Looking directly toward her. Slowing. Stopping just short of the woods.
Still