"You shot me! You shot me!" Kristen started screaming. Her reaction was unsurprising considering the gun had been very carefully pointed at her head, but at the last second the gun had shifted position, instead sending a bullet flying into the fridge. "You shot me! You- wait, where's the blood?"

As Ben fired another bullet into the poor fridge, I shouted over to Regan, "Get her down!" Although she still looked very pale-faced and out of it, she responded immediately, tackling her hysterical boss to the ground. Then, when Kristen refused to shut up, Regan slapped her so hard across the face that it left bright pink finger marks. Kristen was so shocked that Regan, of all people, would dare lay a hand on her, that she actually stopped. Reagan herself looked equally shocked.

The gun fired again, and I followed my own advice by dropping to the ground. I crawled under the table to reach Regan, who squeezed my hand tightly. I had a better vantage point from this angle, and I was able to see the sheen of sweat that covered Ben's face. As he let off yet another round, I realised he wasn't just firing out of panic. That would be extremely unlikely for an assassin at any rate. But his gun was pointed at something; the bullets hit the same place each time. The only problem was that there was an empty space where he was aiming, unless, of course, the fridge had offended him.

I felt a chill go down my spine. Ben was clearly seeing something that wasn't there - just like both Kristen and I had done tonight. Was it possible he was seeing his own ghost? It would certainly explain his shooting, and the fact it wasn't accomplishing anything. Despite the urgency of the situation with the assassin holding the gun, another thought immediately popped into my mind; did that mean I'd really seen my sister's ghost tonight?

"Amber!" I suddenly realised that Reagan had been shouting my name above the gunfire for several seconds. I tried to unlock my hand from the death-grip she had on it, but she just gripped it tighter, cutting off my circulation. "What do we do?" She yelled. Kristen even looked hopefully at me, as if waiting for some brilliant plan to save the day.

I didn't know about brilliant plans or saving the day, or rather night, but I did know I was the only one fit to be in charge. This was new territory for me, as I'd never been in a situation like this without Brooke by my side. Brooke would definitely know what to do, coming up with some rational, calm plan that I could help her carry out. She always kept me steady and prevented me from doing something crazy that I thought would be heroic.

"Amber!" Reagan pleaded, and I realised that I had to stop thinking about what Brooke would do. She had let me down with the worst possible timing, and I had to do it without her. I had to do it on my own, which was frightening, but not just as frightening as the man letting off rounds a few metres away.

I took a deep breath, trying to pretend I was the commander of some hopeless troop like in one of those war films, about to make some inspirational speech. "Okay. Here's what we do." I hoped that saying those words might actually inspire some kind of plan, but no genius idea sprung to mind. I tried to think back to my training, namely what we'd been taught about human instinct. "Fight or flight." I thought aloud. "That's our natural response to any dangerous situation. In this scenario, Ben clearly has the upper hand. So we need to run."

I eyed up Reagan and Kristen, who nodded along. So far so good. "We use the table for cover for as long as possible, then we make for the door out of the kitchens." I nodded at the cupboards. "Try and stay behind the cupboards in case Ben changes his mind and tries to shoot us. Move quickly, but try not to make too much noise. He seems distracted right now, and he'll remember about us if we start clattering about. Stay low. Once we reach the door, make a run for it. I don't know the layout of the house, so Reagan can lead the way." I couldn't resist adding in the classic line, slightly adapted to suit us; "No woman gets left behind."

"Everything's good." Reagan pronounced her words clearly. "Amber has a plan. We'll all be alright." It seemed weird to me that Reagan was offering Kristen words of comfort, but I guessed scary situations brought people together.

"Okay, let's move." Kristen went out first, crawling along the tiles, which followed my command to stay low but also revealed Kristen wasn't the fastest crawler. I could feel Reagan's impatience as she went along behind her, and I gave it a few more seconds before joining them. The pace we moved at was laughable, but we went largely unnoticed by Ben. Just as we neared the door, a deafening silence arose. Without the sound of gunfire to cover it up, our movements suddenly seemed so noisy, and I mentally urged Kristen to go faster.

But Kristen turned out to be the least of my worries as Reagan popped her head above the counter to see what was happening. I reached out to try to shove her forward, but the damage was done as a bullet skidded precariously past her ear, Reagan luckily having ducked her head down at the last minute. I wanted to scream my frustration at Reagan drawing Ben's attention back to us, but there was no time. Tactics abandoned, we all crouched low and sprinted towards the door, aware that Ben was now on our heels.

"Where should we go?" I yelled as we took off down the corridor. Reagan led the way into the old part of the house, where cobwebs were rife and decay was obvious. I noticed as I ran that Reagan and Kristen were holding each other's hands. This was far from the best running tactic, and I was about to tell them so, when I realised Kristen was just slightly in front, and she was actually pulling Reagan along as her short legs struggled to cover the distance in the same time. If this had been any other situation, it would be oddly heartwarming to observe the way they were looking out for each other. However the squeaky floorboards did nothing to hide our location, and they also revealed that Ben wasn't too far behind. I knew we couldn't keep running forever, and we had to find somewhere to hide.

"The basement." Kristen answered the question I'd addressed to Reagan. "It was never cleared of my parents' stuff, so no-one ever goes down there."

I nodded my assent at the plan, and Kristen took us through a maze of rooms that eventually led to a small staircase to the basement. Kristen went down first, followed by Reagan, whilst I kept a careful lookout. We seemed to have lost Ben somewhere along the way, which gave me a temporary sense of relief. I bolted the door to the staircase behind us before stumbling down the darkened stairs myself.

It was pitch black in the basement, leaving me grasping the sides of the walls as I tried to navigate my way down. I could hear the sound of Reagan's heavy, laboured breathing brought on by our run, but it was hard to pinpoint where exactly she was. "Hold on," Kristen's voice floated eerily out of the dark. "There's usually a torch about here somewhere, if I can just find it..."

A distinct click echoed through the room, but there was no light to accompany it. "It must be out of batteries." Kristen's voice now contained a note of panic, which I was beginning to share. Being shot in a dark basement seemed to be a very cliché-murder-mystery-film way to die. Her voice went up a notch. "Okay, don't panic. There should be another one around here somewhere..."

This time some much needed illumination accompanied the click, and I jumped when I realised Reagan was right behind me. "Found it," Reagan said unnecessarily, brandishing the torch. The yellow-tinted beam of light made her tired face seen ghastly, as if she was about to tell us a spooky story. She flicked the light away from her face, using its beam to death for Kristen, who has delved much further into the basement than we had. It turned out Kristen was right next to a pile of spare torches, and it didn't take long to find some more working ones so each of us could have a light.

"What do we do now?" Reagan asked. Her constant questioning was beginning to get on my nerves, but I knew it was only because she was scared. I scanned the torch around the basement, which was enormous, crammed from head to toe with boxes and useless things that had been stored there throughout the years. I wondered why nobody had ever been through it; there was bound to be some valuable stuff in there, as most of it looked pretty old.

Kristen wasn't as intrigued by it all as I was, shying away from the boxes as if scared the'd reach out and grab her. I looked towards her, and she flinched as the bright light of my torch hit her square in the face. "Is there any other way out of here?"

She paused, trying to remember. The torch perfectly highlighted her pale, frightened face, such a contrast to the confidence she'd exuded earlier. Over the course of less than a day, I'd seen many sides to Kristen McMahon, from the bored heiress to guilt-plagued daughter to the cold-blooded murderer, and fear seemed to be the worst look on her. "I think there's another one." She said cautiously. "But it's been a long time since I was down here. I have a feeling it might have been boarded up. Should we check?" I gestured for her to lead the way.

The other entrance took us almost entirely across the basement, and when we got there, it was clear something strange was going on. There were planks of wood indicating the entrance had indeed been boarded up as Kristen suggested, but they had been inexpertly ripped off to free the entrance once more. Kristen looked at me nervously. "What happened?"

I grimaced. "It looks like someone's opened it up again. Recently."

"Which means someone's been using it." Kristen finished  my thought. "But what does that mean for us?"

I didn't get a chance to answer that question because Reagan, who had been poking around the stuff littered near the entrance, let out a scream. Skidding past the obstacle course of overflowing boxes, I made it to Reagan just as she puked on top of one of Kristen's old schoolbooks. Wordlessly, she pointed at a half-open long black bag before throwing up some more.

My torch beam fell on the bag, and when I saw what was inside, I had to fight my own gag reflex which had never quite gone away despite many years on the job. Because the bag wasn't just a long black bag, it was a body bag, and it wasn't empty. The body inside was slowly decaying, as if it hadn't been dead for overly long, but just long enough for the body to no longer look quite human. The result was grotesque, especially as the bag hadn't been closed properly and some flies had evidently gotten at it.

Something about the disfigured face seemed vaguely familiar. I felt my heart swoop down to my feet with a sickening lurch as I recognised the stand-out features of the body. The blue hair. The piercings. The same face that had jumped out at me from all over Gibson's room earlier that day.

The dead girl was Angela.

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For some reason I felt weirdly incentivised to continue this story and wrote this entire chapter today. I'm hoping this will continue as I'd love to get this book finished. I also just realised about two chapters I started spelling Reagan's name with another 'a' so I just went back through the book and changed it to the way I'm spelling it now. Please let me know if you see any mistakes as her name should now be spelt as Reagan not Regan. As always, thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed this chapter!