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"There was a guy with her," grunts one of the men behind me "We knocked him down Out, maybe Didn’t have time to handle him permanently"

Theo By noill have phoned the police, my parents, everyone They must all be so scared

Paul says, "Then we don’t have any tiet rid of the evidence, or we have to work out a deal" He steps closer to me "I don’t want police attention How can I best avoid it, Miss Caine? By eli you free to tell the police you have no idea what happened to you?"

"Option two," I say "Definitely"

"You can’t trust her to do that!" objects one of the goons

"I don’t think she’s stupid," Paul says "She knows that if we found her once, we could find her again The police , but by now she knows I have et out of here" But not too quickly "You’ll drop me off? Don’t send me with the others I don’t trust them"

If he’s the one who drivesthe Firebird into contact with his body and rescue that splinter of my Paul’s soul Then I can leave this dimension Just leap out of here Theo’s Firebird will tell him that I’ve left; he’ll follow me to the home office, where we can finally have it out with Conley And this world’s Marguerite can wonder why the hell she cae street corner, call her parents or the cops, and go ho worse than a few bruises, sohts

"She’ll stay quiet," Paul says to the others "If she doesn’t--we can reain we’ve struck"

"Leonid has his ways," so with Paul Even with the duct tape around my chest and arms, I feel like I can breathe better Within a couple of hours, this will only seem like a bad dreaot mixed up in this--I mean, seriously, the Russian ht now My mind boils it down to the absolute basics: Stay quiet Trust Paul Get home

But Paul hasn’t said he’ll be the one to drop me off--

A metal door slaht across h sohtly behind ly accented voice "You went fishing, I see"

While all the otherkind of way, Paul’s face falls

I don’t even need anyone to say the nae Leonid

The footsteps circle around until I can see Leonid himself--still a shadow, uy knows better than to show anyone his face "This is a child My grandmother could catch this one"

Screw you too, I think