She woke up with a stranger's hand on her face. The palm lay on her cheek, the index finger slowly stroked her right temple. When her eyes popped wide, the hand clenched. She could feel the skin around her eyes being dragged downward and the thumb of the stranger's hand dug into the sensitive side of her neck. She felt no other weight on her body, so contracted her lower body toward her torso and shot to the side with her legs, making contact with her assailant's ribs. As he grabbed his side and fell away from the bed she rolled over to face him, slid her left arm under her pillow, and transferred the weapon to her right hand. When he looked up she hesitated.

"You," she whispered harshly.

He said nothing, and his eyes offered no explanation and no apologies. She swung her arm quickly, slicing his throat with the blade. He fell fully to the floor and she crouched on the bed, clutching the knife, shivering. She was used to the way her husband's men looked at her. Some of them had even tried, foolishly, to lure her away from him. But there had been none of that need, that greed in Nathan's eyes when he looked at her just now.

Instead, there was the nothing she had grown accustomed to seeing in her husband's eyes when he talked about "getting rid of problems." So that was it. She had become a problem and he had sent his best man-Nathan-to take care of her. His best man, she thought, stealing a glance down at Nathan and the dark pool on her carpet. But she had been his best woman.

She packed lightly. A weekend bag with toiletries, underwear, cash. In the back of her closet, a compartment even her husband knew nothing about, with souvenirs of the life she lived before he took her under his wing. She stuffed them into a second bag and turned out all of the lights in the house. An old signal her husband liked to use on the special jobs where he might be watching. A sign that everything had gone according to plan. She had no fear he'd changed the code. He was a creature of habit.

She made her way through the house in the dark and slipped out the side door off the kitchen. The cab she'd called from her cell phone would soon be waiting at the address she'd given-a neighbor's house two doors down. She crept through the neighbors' unfenced yards without looking back. Everything leading to her survival lay ahead of her now.

©2005, Michelle Pratt Mellon