'Let me untie you. We can hide in the walls.'

'No! They might hurt Daddy! Listen, if they find out that you're not in your room, I'm going to tell them that you got out. They won't know you're still in the walls. They'll never even think of that! But if both of us are gone, they'll take it out on Daddy. They might hurt him!'

Thomas thought about it.

'Okay, Jen.'

'Okay, what?'

'We're not going to leave him. I'm going to get us out of here.'

Jennifer jerked so hard against the cords that she almost tipped over the chair.

'You leave that gun alone! They'll kill you!'

'Not if I have the gun! We can hold them off long enough to let in the police, that's all we have to do.'

She twisted hard in the chair, trying to see him.

'Thomas, don't you dare! They're adults! They're criminals and they've got guns, too!'

'Don't talk so loud or they'll hear you!'

'I don't care! It's better than you getting killed!'

Thomas reached up, pulled the tape back over her mouth, and rubbed it hard so that it would stick. Jennifer squirmed, trying to shout through the tape. Thomas hated the thought of leaving her tied, but she just didn't see that he had no other choice.

'I'm sorry, Jen. I'll untie you when I get back. Then we can get Daddy out of here. You'll see. I won't let them hurt us.'

Jennifer was still struggling as Thomas worked his way back through the shadows. When he reached the closet he could still hear her trying to shout through the tape. She was shouting the same thing over and over. He could understand her, even though her words were muffled.

They're going to kill you.

They're going to kill you.

Thomas slipped back into the crawl space, working his way carefully through the dark.

The little bathroom off the garage was as dark as a cave when Dennis showed them the window, telling Mars and Kevin that they could work their way into the neighbor's yard and then around the side of that house to slip past the cops. Mars seemed thoughtful, but Dennis couldn't be sure with all the dark shadows.

'This could work.'

'Fuckin' A, it could work.'

'But you never know what the police are doing or where they might be. We have to give them something to think about besides us.'

'They'll be watching this house. They got nothing else to do.'

Kevin said, 'I don't like any of it. We should give up.'

'Shut up.'

Mars went into the garage and stood by the Range Rover. Dennis was scared that Mars would suggest killing the kid again.

'C'mon, Mars, we've got to get goin' here. We don't have all the time in the world.'

Mars turned back to him, his face lit by the dim light from the kitchen.

'If you want to get away, we should burn the house.'

Dennis started to say no, but then he stopped. He had been thinking of putting the kids in the Jaguar and opening the garage door with the remote as a diversion, but a fire made better sense. The cops would shit their pants if the house started to burn.

'That's not a bad idea. We could start a fire on the other side of the house.'

Kevin raised his hands.

'You guys are crazy. That adds arson to the charges against us.'

'It makes sense, Kevin. All the cops will be watching the fire. They won't be looking at the neighbor's yard.'

'But what about these people?'

Kevin was talking about the Smiths.

Dennis was about to answer when Mars did it again. His voice was quiet and empty.

'They'll burn.'

The back of Dennis's neck tingled as if Mars had raked a nail across a blackboard.

'Jesus, Mars, nobody has to burn. We can put'm here in the garage before we take off. We'll figure somethin' out.'

They decided to use gasoline to start the fire. Dennis found a two-gallon plastic gas can that the family probably kept for emergencies, but it was almost empty. Mars used the plastic air hose from the family's aquarium to siphon gas from the Jaguar. He filled the two-gallon can, then a large plastic bucket that was stained by detergent. They were carrying the gasoline into the house when they heard the helicopters again change pitch and more cars pull into the cul-de-sac.

Dennis stopped with the bucket, listening, when suddenly the front of the house was bathed in light, framing the huge garage door and spilling into the bathroom window even through the oleanders.

'What the fuck?! What's going on?'

They hurried to the front of the house, gasoline splashing from the bucket.

'Kevin! Watch the French doors!'

Dennis and Mars left the gasoline in the entry, then ran into the office where Walter Smith still twitched on the couch. Spears of light cut through the shutters, painting them with zebra stripes. Dennis opened the shutters and saw that two more police cars filled the street. All four cars had trained their spotlights on the house and a great pool of light from the helicopters burned brilliantly on the front yard. More cars arrived.

'Holy shit.'

The television showed the L.A. County Sheriffs rolling through the dark streets of York Estates. Dennis watched a group of SWAT assholes trot through an oval of helicopter light as they deployed through the neighborhood. Snipers; stone-cold killers dressed in ninja suits with rifles equipped with night-vision scopes, laser sites, and – for all he knew – motherfucking death rays. Mars had been right; these bastards would drop them cold if they tried to drive away with the kids.

'This is fucked. Look at all those cops.'

Dennis peeked out the shutters again, but so many floodlights had been set up in the street that the glare was blinding; a thousand cops could be standing sixty feet away, and he wouldn't know.

'Fuck!'

Everything had once more changed. One minute he had a great plan to slip away, but now all sides of the house were lit up like the sun and an army of cops were filling the streets. Overhead, the helicopters sounded as if they were about to land on the house. Sneaking through the adjoining neighbor's yard would now be impossible. Dennis turned back to the television. Six patrol cars filled the cul-de-sac, washed in brilliant white light from the helicopter, as many as a dozen cops moving behind them.

Dennis went to Walter Smith, and inspected his wound. The bruising had followed his eye socket under the eye to his right cheek, and moved across most of his forehead above the eye. The eye had swollen closed. Dennis wished now that he hadn't hit the sonofabitch. He turned away and went to the door.

'I'm going to check the windows again, okay? I gotta make sure Kevin isn't falling asleep. Mars, you keep an eye on the TV. If anything happens, yell.'

Mars, leaning against the wall with his face to the shutters, didn't respond. Dennis wasn't sure if Mars heard him or not, but he didn't care. He trotted back to the family room to find Kevin.

'What's going on? Aren't we leaving?'

'The goddamned Sheriffs are here. They're crawling all over the goddamned neighborhood. They got snipers out there!'

Dennis was consumed with the sudden notion that he would be assassinated. These cops would want to pay back the bastard who had wounded one of their own, and that was him. If he passed a window or showed himself in the goddamned French doors, those sniper bastards would bust a cap and put one right through his head.

Kevin, of course, made it worse by putting on the pussy face.

'What are we going to do?'

'I don't know, Kevin! They got so many lights out there I can't see a goddamned thing. Maybe I can see better on those televisions back there in the safety room.'

Kevin suddenly turned toward the rear of the house.

'Did you hear that?'

Dennis listened, scared shitless that SWAT killers were even now slipping into the house like a tapeworm up a cat's ass.