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His yellow eyes flared I knew that he had registered the pistol in ht hand and that it was an unpleasant surprise for hiht struck the farther wall, bounced to the floor without shattering the lens, and revolved like the pointer in a galossy blue walls

Even as the flashlight clattered to the floor, , handling the two-by-four like a baseball bat this time

Rocked by the first bloarned hiun, and the expression on his broad blunt face was pitiless fury

I squeezed off a shot as I twisted out of his way The club cut the air with sufficient force to have driven shards of bone and splinters of wood into e it, while the 9- ricocheted noisily but hare

Instead of pulling the blow, he followed all the way through, allowing the rees As the spinning flashlight slowed, the attacker’s distorted silhouette pumped around the corridor, around and around, pu shadow, he rushed at ainst the featureless wall opposite the doors

He was as condensed as a cube of squashed autoht but without depth, face knotted and florid with rage, smile fixed and humorless He appeared to have been born, raised, educated, and groo me to pulp

I did not like this man

Yet I didn’t want to kill hi I surf, I read poetry, I do so of my own, and I like to think of enerally don’t resort to bloodshed as the first and easiest solution to a probleh the possible effects and analyze the co to use persuasion and negotiation instead of violence, hopeful that each confrontation will culs and dinner dates

He swung the two-by-four

I ducked, slipped sideways

The club cracked so hard against the wall that I could alth of the wood The two-by-four dropped from his numbed hands, and he cursed veheht have been nasty enough to loosen some of his ht, that’s enough," I said

Hehis powerful hands, snatched the club off the floor, rounding on un, probably becauseshot, had convinced him that I was too chickenshit to blow hiht individual, and stupid people are often dangerously sure of thee, a sly look in his eyes, and a sudden sneer toldwith the club but not follow through He would come at me some other hen I reacted to the false ht atto knock me down and then smash my face

While I like to think of otiation were unlikely to bear fruit in this situation, and I manifestly do not like to think of myself as a dead Renaissance man When he feinted, I didn’t wait to see what the bastard’s real plan of attack entle persons everywhere, I pulled the trigger

I was hoping to hit hih I suspect it’s only in movies that you can confidently calculate to wound a man rather than kill his up Most likely, more often than not, in spite of the best intentions, the polite wounding shot drills through the guy’s brain or bounces a his ribs, off his sternurandh I wasn’t firing another warning shot, Ielse that would have bled Panic, physics, fate The bullet tore into the club, spraying his face with splinters and larger fragments of wood

Suddenly convinced of his own er of confronting a marksel, turned, and ran back toward the elevator alcove

I juked when I saas going to throw the club, butof Really S away froot rapped across the chest, and fell

I was getting up even as I was going down, but by the ti the end of the hall My legs were longer than his, but I wasn’t going to be able to catch up with hi for soardless of the circumstances My attacker safely turned the corner into the elevator alcove--where he switched on a flashlight of his own

Although I needed to nail this creep, finding Jiht have been hurt and left to die

Besides, when the kidnapper arrived at the top of the ladder, a toothy surprise would be waiting for hiet out of the elevator shaft

I scooped up the flashlight and hurried to the third in the line of doors along the hall It was ajar, and I pushed it all the way open

Of the three chambers I’d thus far explored, this was the sht swept from wall to wall Jimmy was not here

The only item of interest was a balled-up yellow cloth about ten feet beyond the threshold I al the corridor, but then I ventured inside, and with the sa off the floor

It wasn’t a rag, after all, but the soft cotton top froht size for a five-year-old Across the chest, in red and black letters, were the words Jedi Knight

A sudden foreboding o dry

When I’d followed Orson away fro’s house, I had already reluctantly decided that her little boy was beyond saving, but subsequently, against ment, I had allowed myself to hope too much In this uncertain space between birth and death, especially here at the end of the world in Moonlight Bay, we need hope as surely as we need food and water, love and friendship The trick, however, is to re, that it’s not a steel and concrete bridge across the void between this er than tre on a fila support the terrible weight of an anguished mind and a tortured heart Because I had loved Lilly for so many years--now as a friend; in other days, more deeply than one loves even the dearest friend--I had wanted to spare her from this worst of all calamities, from the loss of a child I had wanted this more desperately than I’d realized, and consequently I’d been running across a bridge of hope, a high arched span, which now dissolved like gossamer and directedthe pajama top, I returned to the corridor

I heard the boy’s name, "Jimmy," before I realized that I was the one who had softly spoken it

I called to hiain, not sotto voce this tiht as well have spoken in a murmur, because my shout drew no more response than rily, I wadded the thin pajama top and stuffed it in a coat pocket

With the illusion of hope dispelled, I could more clearly see the truth The boy wasn’t here, not in any of the roo this hallway, not on the level below this one or on the level above I’d thought it must have been difficult for the kidnapper to descend the maintenance ladder with Jimmy, but Jimmy hadn’t been with him The yellow-eyed bastard had at so He had put Ji the pajama top--which was saturated with the boy’s scent--into the rat cataco to mislead us

I re me so confidently to the warehouse entrance He had wandered nervously back and forth in the serviceway, sniffing the air, as though puzzled by contradictory spoor