Page 170 of Everything She Feared

Upstairs, before Katie could lock her bedroom door, Magda forced it open. Katie disappeared under her bed, watching for Magda, seeing her shoes, then a diffusion of light, creaking floorboards.

Magda’s face appeared as she looked directly at Katie under the bed.

“Sweetheart.” Magda extended her hand. “Come out of there and give me a hug. I’ve waited so, so long.”

Shrieking, Katie kicked at Magda, whose face dissolved into anger. With the speed of a cobra, Magda seized Katie’s ankle and dragged her out from under the bed. With talon-like fingers, Magda clutched Katie’s arm. She yelped with pain when Magda yanked her to her feet.

When Magda turned to leave with Katie, Sara smashed a lamp into Magda’s face, then with an explosion of adrenaline she wrapped the cord around Magda’s neck, growling as she tightened it.

“Run, Katie!”

But the two women blocked her bedroom doorway.

Magda fought Sara, flailing and thrashing with the knife, some strikes landing on Sara’s shoulders and arms. Their struggle continued to the top of the stairs, where Magda, her face a mask of hair and blood, had nearly removed the cord. Magda raised her hand with the knife high to plunge it into Sara.

Sara’s blood-slicked fingers clawed at Magda’s as they battled for the knife, losing their balance in the struggle. Both fell down the stairs, entangled, crashing and tumbling to the bottom.

Neither moved, their bodies crumpled and twisted.

In the stillness, Katie crept down.

Hysterical and quaking with convulsing sobs, she rushed to Sara and fell to her knees, cradling her mom’s head in her lap.

“Wake up, Mom! Please wake up!”

Katie held her mother’s bloodied hand, felt her mother squeeze hers.

Sara was alive.

That’s when Katie felt Magda’s unflinching glare.

She was on her stomach, lying on the floor a few feet away.

Meeting Magda’s open eyes boring into hers, Katie was hit with one thought:the knife!She cast around.Where’s the knife?

Alarm hammering in her ears, Katie never heard the doorbell, or the voice at the front door after it opened.

“I’m sorry but I heard screams—Is everything—?”

Ryan Gardner stepped inside.

The air froze in a surreal, timeless moment that took his breath away and he was staggered by the heart-stopping scene.

Two women were on the floor, bloodied and broken in the aftermath of an epic struggle. A child held the hand of one woman, tenderly cradling her head in her lap, gently rocking and whispering.

“Wake up, Mom, please wake up.”

Then the woman’s grip slackened, her hand fell and the child’s screams merged with the wail of approaching sirens.

87

In the backof a yelping ambulance, a paramedic worked nonstop to revive Marjorie Cole.

She had no vital signs. An oxygen mask had been applied, a high concentration of oxygen was administered and he initiated CPR.

After a few minutes, he reassessed her.

Still nothing.

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