Zero Visibility by Sharon Dunn

door burst open. Leather Coat came into view with the gun in his hand.
    Heart pounding, Nathan glanced back to the tree where Merci was. She had slipped into hiding. The thief stepped off the concrete slab by the door and walked a wide circle, stopping every few seconds to survey the area around him.
    The man walked out quite a ways from the occupied dorm in a straight line. Then he turned and moved toward the first dorm. Nathan slipped to the other side of the building and sunk low to the ground. He could hear the approaching footsteps. When the man coughed, it sounded as if he was right in front of Nathan.
    Nathan pressed harder against the building, not even daring to breathe. He adjusted his grip on the crossbow and slid the arrow into place. The time it took to hear the retreating footsteps seemed like an eternity.
    Nathan waited for a long moment after the area had gone quiet before he dared to move. He angled around to look at the closed door of the second dorm. The man in the leather jacket had limited his patrol to a big arc around the front of the building.
    The dorm was one long structure without any interior walls and only rows of beds with a bathroom at one end and a fireplace at the other. He would be able to see if Lorelei was inside by peering through one of the windows.
    The problem was he didn’t know where they were in the dorm. He ran toward the back of the building and hunkered down against the wall of the other dorm. He lifted his chin. He ran the risk of being seen here, if someone looked out the window, but it allowed him to look for movement in several windows.
    He sat with the sound of his own breathing surrounding him like a drumbeat. It looked as though the thieves had managed to come up with some form of light. The middle part of the dorm was illuminated. Only the main building and the cafeteria were wired for electricity. They must have found a Coleman or another flashlight.
    Crouching, he moved toward the window where the light was the strongest. He raised himself up slowly. If he moved into a standing position, he would have a clear view of what was going on in there, but he would also be spotted the second someone looked toward the window. Not a good idea. Most people could sense when they were being stared at.
    He bent his knees and peered through the window with his eyes barely above the bottom sill. A bed was pushed up against the window blocking his view. He ran bent over to the next window. Most of his view was of the man in the orange coat with his back to the window.
    The man moved slightly. Nathan angled his head to take in more of the room.
    The third thief, the leader they called Hawthorne, was perched on the top bunk opposite the window. Leather Jacket lay on a lower bunk with his face to the wall. He couldn’t see Lorelei anywhere. He moved down to the next window. Open, industrial-size cans of food were on one of the nightstands.
    Hawthorne and Orange Coat were having some sort of loud discussion that sounded as though it verged on being an argument. Obviously, things had not gone as planned. They had intended to take whatever treasure two college girls might have and head for the highway. Now they were stranded and half starved. The quick gestures and set jaws of both men indicated that the conversation seemed even more tense than the earlier one they had overheard in the main building.
    Hawthorne jumped down from the bunk. His swagger and expansive gestures suggested confidence and control. Growing frustrated, Nathan moved to the next window. Where was Lorelei? He refused to believe that she was dead. Maybe they had her tied up in one of the other buildings.
    No, that didn’t make sense. They would have put a guard on her. The view through the third window was covered in shadows as it fell outside the circle of illumination created by the lanterns.
    Still no Lorelei. His spirits sank. Had they missed the signs of an assault or worse on the way up here? Maybe the darkness had