Let's pause for a second to catch up with Rachel.

Half an hour before my reunion with Dewitt, she'd left me in Maddie's apartment, headed downstairs and asked the superintendent about Maddie’s schedule and friends, her habits and neighbors. He’d told her he'd only talked to Maddie twice, then offered to show her the leases of all the apartments on the fourth floor.

Then her phone rang and Jason Umlaut said, "Rachel--he’s moving."

"What an asshole." She turned to the super and said: "I've got to run. Back later."

"Oh!" he said, surprised. "Sure. Okay."

She pushed through the front door with her hip, talking into her phone. "I can't believe Lark stole my ride."

"You wanted him to," Umlaut reminded her. "You gave him the keys."

"Yeah, but still." She stopped on the sidewalk and scanned the traffic. "You hired me a car?"

"A Lincoln Towncar," Umlaut said. "The driver’s watching the building, he should be right outside--"

A horn honked twice, and Rachel said, "Got him," and jogged into the street.

She opened the passenger door and sat next to the driver.

"You’re her?" the driver asked.

"Yeah." She spoke into her phone. "Where to?"

On the other end of the line, Umlaut checked his laptop--which was tracking the GPS system in the first rental, the one I’d borrowed.

"Go south on FDR Drive," he told Rachel. "Shouldn’t this tell me Lark's destination? Oh, here--he’s heading into Red Hook."

Rachel relayed the information to her driver.

"How did you know he’d steal the car?" Umlaut asked.

"Just a hunch," she lied.

The truth was, she knew because of Shandra. She’d found me in that excavation because of Shandra, she trusted me because of Shandra. She understood me because of Shandra.

Back in the hospital when they met, Shandra had given Rachel enough information to track me. She’d felt the street excavation amid the psychic chaos--maybe a trace of Maddie or Boone or PJ on the sidewalk, to this day I'm not sure--and she’d blurted confused directions.

Then Rachel deciphered them, sped across the city, and saved my life.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Not a bad day’s work, but Shandra had done more than help Rachel find me. She’d dug deeper into herself than ever, then groped for Rachel's hand. For the first time, instead of only absorbing psychic imprints, she’d transmitted them. Into Rachel. Not an avalanche of psychic pain, just one impression: of me.

Shandra had opened herself to Rachel, and shared what she knew of me. Not the complete picture, thank God, just a rough silhouette. So Rachel knew me before she met me, which explained why she'd taken me to her hotel and brought me into her investigation.

And why she'd given me the keys to the car. She knew I’d follow Maddie to the edge of the world, then take one more step. So she'd tracked me down.

----------------------------------------

My head throbbed from the mozzy sting.

Dewitt squeezed me tight, and Maddie clamped the cloth to my face. Chloroform, maybe, or some updated equivalent: if I breathed, I was finished.

Except I couldn't not breathe. My lungs burned, my eyes watered, my heart pounded. And I finally gave up...

But instant before I drew breath, the cloth whipped from my face. I gasped and Maddie spun away from me. She slammed into the soda machine with a hard smack, then crumpled to the ground in a daze.

"Let him go," Rachel told Dewitt, standing over Maddie.

Dewitt tossed me into the wall. Too groggy to cushion the impact with the orbs, I banged my head and slumped to the floor and watched him swing at Rachel.

She backed away and he jabbed with his left then swung again. She stepped inside and hit him with her elbow, then punched him in the gut. I could've told her not to try that; Dewey's gut was well-padded.

He grunted and shoved her. Not pretty, but he outweighed her by a hundred pounds. She stumbled into the corridor then sprawled to the floor and he kicked her in the side and she rolled and he stomped at her face and missed.

Lying on her back, Rachel drew her gun. "Back!"

Maddie yelled, "No!" and pulled a yogurt container from her satchel. Low-fat blueberry.

Dewitt kicked at Rachel again, and she shot him.

The crack stopped everything. My brain took a snapshot: Dewitt’s shoulders tensed, his curly hair frozen in the air; Maddie’s fierce eyes and down-curved mouth, her fingers prying the lid from the yogurt; the red EXIT sign at the end of the hallway.

Then Dewitt howled. A bullet hole appeared in his pant leg, at the meaty part of his calf, and he hopped twice and fell.

Rachel rose to her feet against the wall, gun extended, and swiveled toward Maddie.

"I need you to put that down," she said.

Maddie’s fingers curled around the yogurt container. "Or what? Are you going to shoot me, too?"

"Yes."

With a shhhhk, Maddie opened the container and Rachel’s finger tightened on the trigger and an orb blurred forward and knocked the gun from her hand.

The gun clattered down the hall and Dewitt crawled after it, leaving a smear of blood behind him.

Maddie didn’t look at me, her head bowed over the now-open container. Rachel did look at me, though, and her dark eyes scorched the air. I'd just disarmed her in front of a girl who controlled freakish insect weapons, a girl who wouldn't hesitate to hurt her--or worse.

I have nothing to say in my own defense. I saw Maddie threatened, and I reacted.

Maddie emptied the container into her palm. Five mozzies. "Some of them sting." She stepped toward Rachel. "Some bite, some burrow."

"How do you bring them to life?" Rachel asked, standing very still.

"Some fly." Maddie took another step closer, only a few feet away, as the mozzies started to wriggle. "Some dig, some spit. Some don’t do much except--"

Without any warning, Rachel drove her forehead into Maddie’s. She'd learned a few things in prison. A meaty smack sounded, and Maddie dropped unconscious as her mozzies scattered to the floor.

"Holy crap," I said.

Before she could respond, PJ’s voice came from around the corner: "No sudden moves or we fire. Let me see the yo-yos, kid. Look at your buddy."

I spun toward Dewitt. He’d crawled to the intersection, a few feet from Rachel’s gun, and two red dots hovered on his chest. Laser sights.