Watching Will disappear around the corner of the Langford warehouse, Lucy felt the dead weight of the night settle around her. She looked at Marta standing beside her, and she knew her impetuous daughter would follow him—it was obvious in her frozen watchfulness.
     “I’m going,” and Marta was gone in the darkness.
     Lucy wanted to scream, Stop! Come back! Let Will handle it! But she was afraid the sound would carry, and she would put them in even more danger. “Damn you, Marta,” she said, under her breath, “when are you going to stop terrifying me?”
     Lucy paced until her feet began to feel the strain of the long evening at Camp Horizons and her head wanted to explode. Will’s car never looked so small and insubstantial, so claustrophobic. The idea of getting back in it repelled her. She stared hard at the peeling white wall of the warehouse, as if she could will it to disintegrate and reveal everything on the other side.
     “Please, Marta,” she whispered, “be careful.”
     Finally, she could wait no longer. She began walking, then running toward the building, and into the shadows. The steps of the loading dock led her up onto the greasy, curled wooden planks of a gangway that stretched the length of the building. The awning overhead sheltered her from the revealing light of the moon, as she moved quickly, unthinking toward the far end of the building.
     Just as she reached the end of the plank walk, headlights swept around the corner and came down the street toward her. Lucy flattened herself against the grimy wall of the warehouse. She tensed as the car pulled up along the sidewalk and the engine cut. She sucked in her breath.
     Teddy Milcheford and some shaved-headed bruiser were emerging from Milcheford’s Jaguar. Milcheford looked in her direction, and Lucy froze like a frightened rabbit. Had he seen her?

     When Will came around he was lying in a small room, about twelve by twelve feet. He gently touched his head and a sharp pain ripped through him. His hand came away sticky with blood. Next to him on the floor, still bound, lay Bug and Tweak, their eyes moving frantically from Will to a skinny man with buzz cut and several days growth of beard, who was perched near the door bouncing a large hand gun on his knee. It looked to Will like the guy was on something, maybe methamphetamines.
     Beyond the herky-jerky man, Will could see Marta almost in silhouette, her face a dim oval that appeared and disappeared as the skinny man jounced his leg. She was on her knees, her wrists bound in front.
     “Well, if it ain’t the professor,” he said. “Welcome to the party. Just your kind of party, ain’t it, Professor? Young girls all tied up. I heard all about you and your girlfriend. Sorry I didn’t have time to tie you up too.” The man’s laugh had a nasty edge that made Will feel sick to his stomach.
      “It’s too bad,” The man continued, “the party’s gotta end at midnight. Poof. Pumpkins.”
     He gestured broadly, waving the gun in the air. Will closed his eyes, wished he were religious.
     “Look,” Will said, eyes still closed, “you don’t have to harm these kids. They’re no threat to you.”
     Will knew as soon as he said it that it wasn’t true, that it wasn’t going to fool even this dimwit.
     “Well, Professor, we got us a little bitty problem here. The boss says now don’t you hurt no one, see, just find out where my precious little Mad-o-line is. But then these here stupid lesbo bitches gotta go and fuck things up. Now nobody really gives a shit about these street sluts, so maybe we can rough ‘em up a bit, get what we need and send ‘em back to the sewer. That’s what I was thinking until you and Brown Sugar here show. I’m real sorry, Professor, but add it up. Two and two don’t make five.”
     “What if we tell you where Madeline is?” asked Will. “We just pretend none of this happened.”
     “Oh, you’re gonna tell us where she is all right. Brown Sugar here knows, don’t ya, darlin’?”
     He licked his lips lasciviously and Marta spat at him, “Fucking pig.”
     The little man laughed. “Oh we’re gonna have fun, darlin’.”
     He stood and walked over to Marta. He stroked her face with the barrel of the gun and Marta began to shake violently.
     For the first time, Will felt the tautness in his calves and his thighs, felt his heart pumping, charged by adrenaline. He watched the skinny little man carefully, and waited for a moment of inattention. He shifted his weight, prepared to spring to his feet when the right moment came.
     But the man noticed his move. Turning away from Marta, he waved the gun at Will. “No, no, Professor. You just sit still like a good boy.”
     Just then Marta, who was on her knees, raised her hands between the little man’s legs and dealt a blow to his gonads. As he doubled over, Will jumped to his feet and landed on him with all his weight. The gun went sailing across the room.
     As the man moaned in pain, Will began untying Marta’s hands.
     “No, get the gun first,” Marta hissed, but Will ignored her until she was free and moving to untie the girls, before he went for the firearm.
     “Way to go, girl,” Bug said to Marta as she scrambled to her feet.
     The bonehead was now coming out of the fog of pain, and Will pointed the gun at him. ”Can you tie his hands Marta?”
     Marta nodded and grabbed some rope. Will told the man to lie on his stomach and Marta tied his wrists and ankles, then bent his legs up and secured all of them together.
     When she was finished, Marta appraised Will. With one eyebrow raised, she asked, “You do know how to use that, right?”
     Will nodded, hoping that Marta would believe him. How hard could it be? Point and pull the trigger.
     Bug and Tweak had watched them without saying a word. Tweak’s bravado was missing. She stood behind Bug, twisting her head around and peering into the dark corners of the room, looking pale and sickly.
     “Hurry,” Bug pleaded, “we gotta get out of here, before that other guy gets back.”
     “Other guy?” asked Will.
     “Yeah, there’s two of them.”
     With Will in the lead, the four of them quickly filed out the door into the larger warehouse. A row of clerestory windows ran the length of the building and through these, the light of the moon was strong enough to reveal some features of the warehouse. Will guessed that it was several thousand square feet, with vaulted ceilings roughly sixteen feet high, its exposed beams supported by large wooden posts. At the back of the building were several boarded up cargo bays that had once opened onto the railway loading docks on 15th Avenue. Along one side of the room, a stairway led up to the mezzanine level–a private coop from whose windows shop supervisors could look out over the workers below. More offices and smaller rooms lay between them and the 14th Avenue door.
     Their survey of the layout was cut short by a noise from the front entrance.
     “Up to the mezzanine,” Will’s voice was a forced whisper. “Quietly.”
     The girls bee-lined for the stairs with Will close behind them. The steps, made of century-old planks, had warped and pulled loose from the risers. The stairs rocked and squeaked under their weight.
     Behind him, Will heard cursing, then hurried footsteps. The skinny man’s friend had found him and set him free.
     “They gotta be still inside,” a voice declared in the dark.
     “That’s Giorgi,” Bug whispered. “The other guy, the skinny one you met, he’s called Hammer.”
     “Giorgi! What the hell is going on?” A third voice, one Will knew—Teddy Milcheford.
     “It’s okay, boss. We got everything under control.”
     “If you had it under control, I’d be home in bed. Find them, and find out where Maddy is. I’ll be waiting at the store.” A door creaked, and then silence.
     The silence was followed by approaching footsteps. Will froze on the stairs. Bug and Tweak had made it to the top, but Marta had four or five noisy steps to go. Will, a dozen or more.
     Marta looked back for direction from Will, who held his finger to his lips. The two girls had disappeared into the darkness above.
     Then a loud thunk echoed off the far wall of the warehouse, and the boneheads ran off in the direction of the noise. Will bounded up the stairs, grabbing Marta along the way. Bug and Tweak crouched at the top of the stairs. Will noticed the open window that looked out over the warehouse, some two by four ends scattered on the floor. One of the girls must have tossed a piece of wood out across the warehouse to distract their pursuers.
     Giorgi and Hammer, realizing they had been tricked, headed straight for the mezzanine stairs. There was only one way to go now, up. Will motioned the girls toward the stairway to the second level. He carried the gun uneasily, convinced that he would have to use it. Behind them, Hammer and Giorgi were bounding up the lower stairs, two steps at a time.
     The second floor was a maze of corridors and small self-storage rooms, now empty, creating a honeycomb of hiding places. Will directed the girls toward the center of the labyrinth where he picked a locker at random and ushered them in. In the dim light he found the locker number and committed it to memory. He could hear the two men now at the top of the stairs. He closed the door to the storage room and moved quietly away from them, toward the far side of the complex. If he could get to the windows on the south side of the building, he might be able to signal Lucy. Two obstacles stood between him and his goal. Giorgi and Hammer.
     As he slid along the dark corridor, the two men moved methodically from locker to locker. He tried to track them as they threw open one door, found nothing, and continued on to the next. They seemed to be taking their time. They knew that he had one of their guns, so they would be cautious. Will hoped that only one weapon remained between them. He looked around for something to throw, to distract them, but then it occurred to him that this ploy had already been used once. They wouldn’t fall for it a second time. Listening to their cautious, deliberate search, Will knew he had to move quickly.
     Will slipped silently to the end of the aisle of plywood and chicken-wire cages, and peered back down the long hall to the stairway and the grimy windows which overlooked Kearney Street, where Lucy would be waiting, anxiety gnawing at her gut. He stood frozen as he gathered his courage, his back flat against the plywood, his breath heavy and trembling. The corridor appeared to be a couple hundred feet long. About one third of the way to the far wall and the windows, hung the door of an opened locker. It could provide cover, and the sensible thing to do—not that any of this made sense to him—would be to quietly make his way to that plywood door, then gather the courage to run for the window.
     He listened. A door creaked. Footsteps. Pause. Another door slammed. Silence. Will waited, but he could detect no more movement. The girls, he thought, his heart about to explode through his chest, they have the girls. Another door shut with a loud clap. Someone coughed. They hadn’t found the girls yet, he realized. But Giorgi and Hammer were moving one locker at a time down the long aisles, and it wouldn’t be long before they discovered them.
     Will took one cautious step, and the wooden floor groaned loudly. Too much noise. Sweat poured down his forehead and his heart pounded. He couldn’t allow himself to be paralyzed. He called up an unknown reserve of courage, moved quickly along the surface of the lockers. Each squeak of the floor, he was certain, gave him away. When he reached the open door, he leaned back against its two by four support, allowed himself to breathe. He imagined the nasty little bonehead waiting for him at the end of the corridor, a vicious, triumphant grin framing the barrel of a gun. Will felt the steel of the gun in his own hand and realized, once again, how little he knew about weapons or about defending himself. With deep breaths, he took in the musty warehouse air, allowed the pounding in his chest to ease.
     A door slammed shut directly behind him, not more than an aisle away. A surge of adrenaline charged through his body, spurring him forward, no thought now but the primal need for survival. His world turned in nightmare slow motion, every step, every sound processed in absolute clarity as he moved toward the agonizingly distant window. His thoughts, too, were suspended in time as he imagined a dozen different outcomes, each more disastrous than the one before.
     At last, he reached the window, stopped, listened. There were no pursuing footfalls. Another door shut loudly, echoed. He turned his attention to the window, fumbled with the lock, slid the window up with little effort. A little miracle. He leaned out over the sill to signal, to shout if he had to.
     No Lucy. No Triumph.

     Allison Walkingstick sat in the dark corner of the closed storage locker and listened, intently, head cocked, as the thugs moved noisily from door to door. Tweak and Marta huddled beside her, silently trembling. She wanted to scream at them, “Wake up. Pull yourselves together. This is survival.” It was just like a man, she thought, to hide us here in the dark. As if he had to protect us, as if the dark could protect us for him. As if we needed his protection. Although, considering these two beside her, maybe he was right. Allison shook Marta. “Look for something. A weapon,” she whispered fiercely.
     Marta raised to a crouch and scanned the room, but Bug could already see that nothing useful was in the locker.
     Above them, the solid sides of the locker rose about seven feet. Above that, the cage was lined with chicken wire. If she could climb up she could see down the aisle and into the adjacent lockers. When Marta turned back from her futile search, Bug motioned upward, and Marta, understanding, shook her head violently. But Bug put out her hand, then gestured again, telling Marta that she was being overruled.
     Bug listened carefully for Giorgi’s and Hammer’s footsteps, hoping their clumsiness would obscure any sound she might make. A squeaking door, rocking on its hinges, provided her with an opportunity to spring, and she quickly pulled herself up onto the locker’s frame. Her small body moved quietly and rapidly. She found she could balance precariously on the 2X4 runner at the top and by gripping the chicken wire could hold herself erect. From this vantage point, she could see down the aisle in both directions, into the locker next to theirs and partially into several of the lockers on the next aisle over.
     From the sound of their movement, Bug knew that the two men had reached the end of one aisle and were moving on to another. She gripped the chicken wire more tightly, frozen as she realized they were coming down the adjacent aisle and would soon be able to see her. On the floor of the next locker, she could see something, long, black, smooth, and metallic. A tire iron or a crow bar. Something left behind by the last tenant. She pointed frantically hoping that Marta would see. But Marta looked at her, perplexed.
     Bug waited for the next round of footsteps so she could climb down. Suddenly the door to the locker on the next aisle flew open and Giorgi stood there, gun in hand, looking directly at her. She knew she should jump, but the gun was now pointed right at her face, and she was unable to move. Giorgi held a finger to his lips, warning her to be silent. Then he motioned to his partner pointing him toward the girls’ hiding place.
     Bug heard the door behind her creak, but didn’t dare turn her head. She knew that Hammer was coming around to their aisle. If only she could warn her friends.
     “Bug, what’s wrong?” Marta whispered. Bug said nothing. Her eyes fixed on Giorgi. The door to the adjacent locker opened with a small creak, then closed. What was the skinny man doing? Could it be Will in that locker instead of the bonehead? Behind her, the locker door slammed open and Bug heard an exclamation of surprise from Marta.
     Giorgi grinned at her, lowered the gun, and went to join his partner. When Bug managed to turn her head, she saw Hammer standing in the doorway, a knife in his hand. Tweak was gone.
     “Where’s the other one?” Hammer growled.
      “I don’t know,” Marta replied. “She got scared and ran, I guess.”
     Just then, an iron bar came down on the man’s head. He dropped, and Tweak stood over him, trembling, and gripping a crowbar in both hands. Without thinking, Bug let go of the chicken wire and dropped to the floor. She could hear Giorgi bounding down the aisle, coming for them at a run.

     Will rested at the end of the first row of lockers. Where the hell was Lucy? He thought about Teddy Milcheford, slipping out the front door, down to Kearney Street where Lucy waited, and for a moment, he thought his heart had stopped. He gripped the gun tightly in both hands, pointed in the air, the way he had seen in cop shows. With his arm, he wiped the sweat from his forehead. His hands trembled. He swung around, pointed the gun down an empty aisle. He felt foolish. This was stupid. The only gun he had ever fired was Uncle John’s .22 revolver, when they had gone out one summer afternoon to shoot tin cans. But this wasn’t a revolver. He couldn’t tell if the mechanism was engaged. Did it have some kind of safety?
     Then he heard the thud, scuffling, someone running. His heart quickened. This time he knew with certainty that Giorgi and Hammer had discovered the girls. Will forgot the Kojak act and ran headlong toward the sound.
     When he got to the aisle where he had left the girls hiding, he stopped cold. The skinny man was sprawled out on the floor, Giorgi standing over him. The three girls were nowhere in sight. He barely had time to retreat as Giorgi raised his weapon. The sharp crack of the gun firing, the splintering wood where the bullet impacted a few feet from his head, the slow-motion sound of approaching footfalls all had the eerie intensity of a dream. Will could feel the grip of the weapon on his sweaty palm and a vein trembled in his finger where it touched the trigger, waiting. His heart wanted to burst through his rib cage. He heard every sound in his body, every creak in the old building. Outside a siren, an ambulance, he thought, come to carry away my dead body. Another siren. And then the flashing of blue lights through the slats of the venetian blinds that covered the lower windows of the old warehouse. And the sound of Giorgi’s fleeing feet.
     The police. Will let out his breath and his knees collapsed. He closed his eyes and told himself to breathe while his heart beat slowed to its normal rhythm.