"What the hell?" Mrs. D gasped.

"That was a gunshot," I said.

"Someone’s shooting at us?"

Mr. D groaned. "You bust something inside me, Lark. I need the doctor."

I grabbed the CB microphone dangling from the counter to call for help, but there was no power. The bullet had smashed the transmitter.

"Pull him into the grow room," I told Mrs. D. "I’ll get the doctor."

"Screw the doctor," she told me, crouching beside her husband. "You get Dewitt."

"I will."

"Promise me," Mr. D said, his voice tight with pain.

"I find him," I promised, and Mrs. D helped him scuff down the hall toward safety.

Two of the orbs hovered near the windows, but I couldn't sense anyone outside. I didn't send the orbs to explore, because they couldn't move much more than twenty feet from me. At the outside of my range, they got slower, and weaker, and unreliable.

Staying low to the ground, I slunk through the living room to the stairs. I climbed to Dewitt’s apartment then slipped into his bathroom. I was afraid the shooter was watching the front door, so I lifted the bathroom window and started squirming outside. The autumn ocean air brushed my face and I'd squeezed halfway through when the orbs clustered forward in a sudden blur, one nuzzling the bridge of my nose and another at my temple.

A gun fired from thirty feet away.

Pain burst in the side of my head and I cartwheeled from the window and sprawled onto the grass. My vision narrowed. Gravel bit into my cheek and my legs felt impossibly distant, my arms twisted and numb.

My heartbeat thudded painfully in the dim shocky darkness, then I heard footsteps approaching. The rustling of cloth. And familiar voices:

"Is he dead?" Sam asked.

"Headshot," Ed said, as confirmation. "What the hell kind of name is 'Lark?'"

"And Quan’s got the Daugherty kid?"

"He's trussed like a Christmas ham, halfway to the boat. Let’s move."

"What’s the rush?"

"We're on a schedule," Ed said. "And the parents heard the gunshot."

"What’re they going to do, call the cops? Out here?"

"They’re rednecks, Sam. You know they’re armed to the teeth, or …"

"Or what?"

"Or would be, if they had teeth."

The men laughed, then faded away.

Time limped past. When I finally opened my eyes, I was looking the gnarled roots of a juniper bush. I drew the orbs close and nudged myself into a seated position. My vision blurred and a trickle of blood ran down the side of my face.

What had happened?

They’d shot me in the head, that’s what happened. But one of orbs had gotten there first, tucked itself against my temple, and taken the impact of the bullet. Well, most of the impact.

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The orbs looked almost liquid, like balls of mercury, but they were dense and bulletproof. One morning last year, lolling in bed, Maddie had tried to scratch one with the diamond earrings I’d given her for her eighteenth birthday. The diamond hadn't made a mark. Of course, neither had the earrings. Two weeks later, she’d given them back--and left the Rock for good.

So instead of a bullet to the head, I got a hammer blow. Not quite a shoulder massage, but better than dying.

I stood jerkily, an orb tucked under each arm, and stumbled to my truck like a puppet on an unsteady string. I opened the driver’s side door and shoved myself inside. Turned the key and felt the truck lurch forward as I pressed the accelerator with a numb foot.

Sam and Ed said they were heading for ‘the boat,’ which meant the harbor or the old harbor or the pier or the beach, or any of a dozen other places around the Rock. Yet I drove straight across the island without hesitation: while I’d slumped half-conscious in the lawn, one of the orbs must’ve sensed the direction they’d headed.

When I topped a rise in the old growth--the last stand of wood not cut for masts a hundred years ago--I saw the rocky fields extending down toward the coast. I saw the moonlit ocean spreading out forever. And I saw small yacht anchored off the rocks. Nothing special, a mid-range sport yacht, 75 feet long with a maximum speed of maybe 35 knots.

Then I noticed the Reuter’s station wagon abandoned by the side of the road, flattening a hedge of wild roses. Looked empty now. Sam and Ed and the other guy--Quan?--must’ve used it to transport Dewitt. Were they already aboard the yacht? I couldn’t hear the engines, but that didn’t mean--

There! Two men on the beach. Dark shadows in the gloom. No Dewitt, though. Which meant either they’d already brought him on board, or …

Or killed him and dumped the body.

No. No, they said Quan had Dewitt trussed and halfway to the boat. So he was alive. No reason to 'truss' him if he were dead.

All of that flashed through my mind in two seconds. Then I breathed deep, ignoring the throb of pain in my head as the old growth trees whipped past. The pickup gathered speed, jouncing downhill on the dirt road, and I saw my only chance.

I flicked an orb onto the gas pedal to gun the engine, removed my foot, and crouched on the driver’s seat. Trying to stay low so they wouldn’t have a shot at my head, trying to stay mobile so I wouldn’t get trapped inside the truck cab.

Another orb hovered near the door handle. The truck rocketed downhill, bouncing crazily. The exhaust rumbled, the suspension squealed. I adjusted the steering wheel, aiming for a scruffy rock outcropping at the clifftop, angled skyward. Like a ramp, maybe eight or ten feet long, with the beach far below.

I didn’t hear a gunshot, but the passenger side window suddenly shattered.

The engine screamed. The wheels spun faster, the rock ramp was forty feet away.

Thirty.

Twenty.

And I want to say two things in my defense:

First, I was injured and panicked. My best friend had been kidnapped and someone shot me in the head. These things muddy your thinking.

Second, I’d formed the whole plan in two seconds. It’s like not I had time to ponder.

So. Metal pinged--bullets striking the jolting pickup--and in my mind’s eye, the truck was going to hit the outcropping at tremendous speed and loft into the air like some daredevil trick, clearing the forty feet to the yacht, a giant metal arrow flying straight and true.

What actually happened was this: the pickup rocketed into the air for about, oh, four or five feet. Then it swiveled downward, and I found myself driving off a cliff. I hadn’t even caught enough air to clear the beach.

So that was my big rescue attempt: come roaring out of the trees and drive off a cliff. I suspect the kidnapers would’ve shot me right then, except they were laughing too hard to aim.

The crash sounded bonesnapping.

Fortunately, I didn’t snap any bones, because the orbs thrust me from the truck before impact, and cushioned my fall onto the beach.

A little.

Everything hurt. My vision blurred and tilted. I wanted to cry, but I needed to get Dewitt. Which meant I needed to stand. I needed to swim. If I got within twenty feet of the boat, I’d send the orbs ahead to lodge inside, and then tow myself along behind. Like waterskiing without a rope. Or skis.

I crawled toward the lapping waves … and felt an uncomfortable tingling. Then I saw the boots. Two of them. Black, military style. Probably size eleven or twelve.

I raised my head and looked into the barrel of the gun, a yawning black hole.

Sam’s laugh sounded hard. "It’s the handyman."

"I shot him," Ed said, farther away.

"You missed."

"No way."

Now, one more thing about my orbs is, they send vague sensory information to me, but I do the same to them. Which was bad when my sensory information consisted of pain and and panic and blurred vision. In other words, when I was a mess, they were a mess.

And I was a mess. I couldn’t make the orbs do more than wobble slowly through the air.

"Finish him," Ed called.

Sam nodded and his finger tensed on the trigger.

"Why?" I mumbled.

"Orders."

"I’m dead, Sam," I choked out. "Tell me why."

He said, "National security," and fired.