AT THE TOUCH of the cold steel against his flesh, Rick’s eyes flashed open.
“What?” he murmured sleepily.
“Shh,” hissed the man standing in the darkness above him. “Make one move and you’re dead.”
Confused and frightened, Rick lay still, his heart hammering in his chest as if he had awakened from a nightmare. But this was no nightmare. This was real. He stared up into the shadows, trying to see the face of the gunman staring back down at him. Bizarrely, the gunman didn’t have a face. There was just more darkness up there.
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” said the faceless man. “If you lie, even once, I’m going to blow your brains out. Then I’m going upstairs to have the same conversation with your mama and your kid brother, and if I don’t get what I want, I’m going to do the same to them. Do you understand me?”
Rick gave only the slightest, quickest nod. He didn’t want the gunman to think he was going to try anything. “I understand,” he whispered.
“You don’t want me to go upstairs to talk to your mama, do you?”
“No,” said Rick. His eyes were wide open now, his mind fully awake. He had figured out why the man didn’t have a face. He was wearing a mask. He was dressed all in black and wearing a black ski mask. “I’ll tell you whatever you want, whatever I know. Just don’t hurt my family.”
“Smart boy,” said the gunman—and to emphasize the words, he jabbed the pistol point hard into Rick’s brow. Rick grunted at the pain and his heart beat even harder. “Okay,” said the gunman. “Here’s question number one: Where is he?”
“What?”
The man jabbed him in the head again. “I got a short fuse and a hair trigger, son. Mess with me not, you hear me?”
Rick’s hands came up from his sides in a gesture of helpless pleading. “I’m not messing with you, man, I swear it. I don’t know what you mean. Where’s who?”
“Your old man. Your father. Where’d he go?”
“My father? I don’t know that.”
This time the man pulled the barrel of the pistol away and quickly rapped it across the side of Rick’s face. It wasn’t a hard blow, but it hurt plenty all the same. “Wrong answer, kid,” he said. “Tell me now, or say, ‘Bye-bye, Mama.’ ”
“No, no, no, listen to me. I don’t know where my father is. I really don’t. And my mother doesn’t know either. He just left us. He left a note. He said he was going away with an old girlfriend of his from college.”
“But you don’t know where.”
“No. He didn’t say.”
“And he hasn’t been in touch. All this time.”
“It’s true, so help me.”
“I’m having a hard time believing that, Ricky boy. I’m starting to think maybe you’re lying to me. Or maybe I’m talking to the wrong Dial. Maybe your mama knows something you don’t . . .”
Rick felt the gun barrel steady itself against his brow. He was pretty sure the man was about one second away from pulling the trigger. And after he’d turned Rick into a corpse, he’d head upstairs for Mom and Raider . . .
Rick had to do something, say something.
“All right,” he said. “All right. I lied. I do know something.”
The gun barrel relaxed a little. “I kind of thought you might,” said the man. “I didn’t think Mars would just leave you in the dark.”
Startled, Rick hesitated. Mars? Did the guy just mention Commander Mars? The leader of the MindWar Project? What did that have to do with his father?
The gunman jabbed him with the gun barrel again. “I can’t hear you, son,” he said. “Speak up.”
“Right,” said Rick. “Right. I’m the only one who knows. My mom and Raider don’t know anything.”
“Stop babbling. Where is he? Tell me or I’ll drag you upstairs and kill your family in front of your eyes. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” said Rick. He did, too.
“Then start talking.”
Rick was about to do just that. He was about to say anything, tell any crazy story he could think of to keep this guy from going nuts with that pistol. But before he could get out a word, he saw something out of the corner of his eye—something that made his stomach turn to acid.
A line of light had appeared at the bottom of his closed bedroom door. Someone had come into the hall out there. A moment later, a floorboard squeaked.
Then a little voice called to him softly: “Rick?”
Raider.
Rick stared up into the darkness. The man in the mask lifted his free hand and pressed a finger to where his mouth should have been: Shh.
If Raider comes through that door, this nut’s going to kill him, Rick thought. He’ll kill us both.
Another floorboard squeaked in the hall.
Raider called again, from closer this time, “Rick? Is everything okay? I thought I heard something.”
The doorknob began to turn.
“Raider! Go back to bed! Everything’s fine!” Rick shouted.
But the kid wouldn’t listen to him. The door swung in. Raider stood in the light from the hallway.
“Rick? What’s going on?”
Without warning, in one swift motion, the gunman swung the pistol from Rick’s head, and pointed it at Raider.
But Rick didn’t need a warning. He knew what the thug was going to do before he did it. Even as the gunman was bringing the weapon around toward his brother, Rick was rolling off the sofa, hurling his big body at the creep’s knees. In football, it would have been cut blocking—totally against the rules. But this wasn’t football. And there were no rules.
Rick hit the guy’s knees full force. The gunman toppled over, his arms flying upward. That’s when the gun went off. The shot was deafening. The flame cut through the shadows. But where did the bullet go? Into the wall? The door? Into his little brother’s body? Rick didn’t know.
His legs were on fire with pain as he continued his tackle. He tumbled off the sofa, bringing the gunman to the floor beneath him. The killer tried to shove Rick off, tried to bring the pistol around to get a shot at him. But Rick had the man’s arm gripped in his two hands now, had his wrist, was struggling to tear the weapon from his fingers.
Fighting to keep the gun, the thug kicked a sharp heel into Rick’s shin. Rick cried out in agony. The thug shot his elbow back into Rick’s mouth. Rick felt his lip split painfully, but he wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t release his grip on the gunman’s wrist. He twisted it. The gun came loose. Rick ripped the weapon from the man’s grasp.
But at the same moment, the gunman used all his strength to hurl Rick off him. Rick flew backward, crashing into the sofa. He roared again as the fiery agony flashed through his legs.
Rick caught a confused glimpse of the room. The shadows were lanced by the yellow light from the open door. Where was Raider? Was he wounded? Was he dead? Rick couldn’t see him. And where was the gunman? Rick had lost him in the confusion of the fight.
But there he was. Rick saw him now. The thug had jumped to his feet. He was running toward the light from the open door.
And then, suddenly, the light went out. An enormous rectangular shadow loomed in the doorway, blocking the thug’s path. In the craziness of the moment, it was another second before Rick recognized Juliet Seven.
The thug tried to stop himself from running into the great block of a bodyguard, but he was moving too quickly. He stumbled forward—within Juliet Seven’s massive reach.
And Juliet Seven punched the thug in the face so hard that even Rick flinched at the bone-crunching sound the big fist made when it landed.
The thug’s body went so loose it looked as if he had turned to string. He fluttered to the floor and lay still.
The lights came on. Rick looked around wildly, in a panic. The masked gunman lay unconscious on the floor. Juliet Seven loomed enormous and rectangular in the doorway.
But where was Raider?
“Raider!” Rick shouted. “Raider, you okay? Are you hurt? Are you shot?”
“He’s all right,” said Miss Ferris coolly. She stepped around the massive wall that was Juliet Seven. She had Raider lifted in her arms—in spite of the fact that she wasn’t much bigger than he was. The boy’s face was white. His eyes looked to be the size of dinner plates. He was pressing his lips together hard as he tried not to cry. “I’ve got him,” Miss Ferris announced in her flat, robotic voice. “He’s unharmed.”
Rick nodded. With a sigh of relief, he dropped the gun. He let his head fall back to the floor. He lay there on his back and tried to massage some of the pain out of his screaming legs. Blood from his busted lip ran down over his chin.
The next moment, Rick’s mom rushed into the room, pulling a bathrobe closed around her. Raider had slid down out of Miss Ferris’s grip. He rushed to his mother and wrapped his arms around her. She held his head against her robe. If Raider’s face was white, his mother’s face was practically transparent with shock.
Her voice came out a hoarse croak. “What is going on? Rick, are you all right?”
Still rubbing his legs, still flinching with the pain, drinking the blood that dribbled out of his broken lip, Rick nodded. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m fine, Ma. I’ll be fine.”
“Who are these people?” she said. “What’s going on?”
Rick had no idea how to answer that.
But Miss Ferris calmly drew a billfold out of her jacket pocket. She flipped it open. There was a badge inside. It flashed in the light as she showed it to Rick’s mom.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Dial,” Miss Ferris said in her steady monotone. “We’re the police. We received a 911 call that there’d been a break-in here. But don’t worry. Everything’s all right now.”