Daring Time

"Shhhh," Ryan hissed. He heard it again, the rustle of someone moving in the hallway, the sound soft and furtive, as though they'd been leaning in to listen with their ear pressed to the door. The latch clicked open and the door swung silently inward.

"Don't move. I have a gun pointed at you," Mario said in a deep, sinister voice. "You didn't really believe Jack would let you get away that easily, did you?"

EIGHTEEN

He's bluffing, Ryan thought after a panicked second. Mario's eyesight couldn't have accustomed to the darkness yet. The hallway was dimly lit by a distant wall sconce. He knew they were in here, perhaps, but he didn't know where.

He mentally cursed himself for removing the borrowed coat and tossing it on the couch.

He grabbed it but the gun was buried deep in the one of the pockets. If he tried to extract it, he would waste precious seconds and possibly risk making a noise that gave away their whereabouts in the room.

Instead he delved his fingers into the silky mass of curls piled on Hope's head. She jumped in surprise but had the wits not to cry and betray their location in the darkness.

He extracted one of the combs he knew he'd find and flung it toward the far corner of the room. A second after he heard the sound of the comb rattling on the wood floor as it landed, a shot rang out.

Ryan fell on top of Hope, pushing her down on the couch. He pressed his mouth directly next to her ear.

"Stay low and move toward the wardrobe . .. very quietly."

Hope felt Ryan rise from the couch at the same moment that she did. He pushed down on her back, reminding her to stay low. She held her breath as she moved stealthily in the darkness, deathly afraid the intruder would hear her panting.

Her heart seemed to seize in her chest when she heard the man step into the room.

"Where's the damn light?" he muttered in a guttural, lightly accented voice. Hope imagined him running his hand along the wall. Any second now he would switch on the electric overhead light. Ryan must have realized the same thing because he pushed harder on her back. She scurried silently toward the mirror. "I know you're in here. You can't escape. You made a fool out of me and Jack both and no one makes a fool of me and my boss."

He made a grunting noise of satisfaction and Hope knew he'd found the switch. The room flooded with light. Hope had a brief impression of an enormous, brutal-looking giant of a man with a black eye and a snarl twisting his thin lips.

Then Ryan shoved her hard. She heard a shot ring out and she was falling. A pocket of air punched out of her lungs when she landed hard on a wood floor. She scrambled up and waited anxiously for Ryan to step through the mirror. He didn't immediately follow her, however, and then Hope heard a truly horrifying sound.

Although it was distant and muffled, she distinctly heard the pop of a bullet's impact and then the sound of glass shattering.

***

Ryan shoved Hope through the gateway of the mirror at the same moment that Mario raised his pistol and aimed. The bullet tore a hole in the wood of the wardrobe when Ryan ducked. Another shot rang out. The sound of shattering glass seemed to pierce straight through his heart.

Everything seemed to switch into slow-motion viewing. The bullet blew the glass to smithereens at the point of impact. A crack splintered down the mirror. One large piece toward the bottom separated from the gilded frame.

Ryan dove headfirst into the mirror fragment even as it fell forward.

"Ryan," he heard Hope scream before he crashed onto the unforgiving wood floor. He'd landed on top of the borrowed coat and his ribs had slammed against the hard metal of his gun.

There wasn't a damn place on his body that didn't throb in pain at that moment. His heavy fall on the floor seemed to reactivate every one of Big Mario's punches in the ring.

Big Mario.

The last twenty seconds came back to him in graphic detail— Mario aiming his pistol.

The shot. The shattering mirror.

Shit.

He sprung up off the floor, doing his best to ignore his aching muscles and joints. He inspected the intact mirror closely. A thin ring of fog had returned around the outer edges. He pushed his fingers to the surface, but there was no give.

Nothing but smooth, impenetrable glass.

Something caught his attention. He reached up and ran his finger over the rough hole on the closed right door of the mahogany wardrobe—a bullet hole that had certainly never been there before, either in Hope's time or his own.

He turned around slowly to face Hope. She still knelt where he'd fallen on the floor, her skirt spread out around her. Her face