Next thing, the sounds of shrieking metal-the shutters being pried off-and then breaking glass, and men shouting, and the sting of something in the air, maybe tear gas. I can hear the Barlows coughing and wailing.

Then a window smashes in the guest bathroom, right over the tub. Something hits my legs, nearly stopping my heart. I can’t see, but it hisses madly-a canister of noxious gas-and suddenly my eyes are tearing and I’m choking around the gag.

Coughing, coughing. Can’t breathe.

I manage to roll out of the tub and lay gasping, facedown on the cool tile floor. Whatever the gas or smoke is, it scalds my sinuses, induces fits of convulsive coughing. I’m desperate to get the damn gag out of my mouth-can’t breathe! can’t breathe!-but nothing works, and then I’m out of control, convulsing, as if my body is trying to vomit out the intrusive rubber gag in my mouth.

White pinpoints of light in my eyes-am I passing out from lack of oxygen?-and the lights become powerful flashlights. Muffled shouting, “Got her! Got her!” I can see just enough to recognize dark uniforms, men looking like big, scary bugs with their glistening gas masks, and then they’re carrying me out of the bath, into the smoke-filled bedroom, and down the grand staircase.

The air improves as we descend, although my eyes still sting, my throat and nose continue to burn. I kick and writhe-take the gag out of my mouth, you bastards!-but they’ve got me and I can’t get away.

The power comes back on and through my tears I see the Barlows facedown on the foyer floor, bound hand and foot with plastic ties, just as they had bound me. They’re crying and begging for mercy-We didn’t know! We didn’t know!-and then the handsome, hawk-nosed man with the mustache looms in, checking me out, and for the first time I’m truly terrified, rather than merely frightened.

Something in his eyes. Cold, calculating, dismissive.

He jerks his chin. “Outside. Put in van.”

As if I’m a piece of noxious garbage to be dispensed with.

The men who carry me have slipped off their gas masks and somehow it’s shocking to see how young they look, how perfectly ordinary. There’s no particular animosity in their eyes-indeed, they avoid making eye contact with me, ignoring my muffled pleas to remove the awful, choking gag-but no connection, either. I’m a task to be accomplished, a bundle delivered, but I’m not making it easy for them.

We’re at the front door when the sun explodes.

Night, I’m thinking. Can’t be any sun.

A concussive blast follows the hot, white flash, com pressing my lungs, squeezing out the air. People are screaming, shouting. I’m completely blind, the flash still burning deep behind my eyes. Has the house exploded? Am I dying? Already dead?

More than anything I want to scream, but can’t.

I’m on my back in the doorway, completely blind, writhing for air. Then strong arms lift me up, cradling me like an infant, and fingers gently pry the gag from my mouth, holding me as I suck in the cold air of night-we’re outside now, how did that happen-and I hear his deep and gentle voice saying, “I gotcha, Mrs. Corbin.”

Then he flips me up onto his big shoulders and runs away from the shouting, into the night.

Shane.

He doesn’t run far, less than a hundred yards, I’m guessing, but by the time he puts me down I can see again, although dimly. We’re on frozen, windswept ground, next to a metal shed or structure. The Barlow place is some distance down the mountain from where we’re crouched. It looks to be almost completely consumed by black smoke. Uniformed men run in and out of the smoke looking panicked, though somehow furtive.

“A flash-bang grenade, a few smoke bombs,” Shane explains as he clips away the plastic ties, freeing my arms and legs.

Behind me the shed door opens and a familiar voice says, “Quickly! We don’t have much time!”

Ruler Weems, urging us inside.

Shane helps me stand-my feet are still numb from the binding-and hobble into the deeper darkness of the little shed. Barely room enough for the three of us to stand, and so dark I can’t see my hands in front of my face.

Weems clicks on a powerful flashlight, aims it at the concrete floor. “Keep your hands at your sides. This is a transformer station. Touch the wrong thing and you’ll die instantly.”

Following his instructions we press our backs to the metal wall, inching along until he tells us to stop. Person ally I wouldn’t trust the little man to guide me across the street. I’m following Shane, who came and got me, just as he promised.

Weems crouches, fiddles with something on the floor. It makes a faint hydraulic sound, the sigh of pressure released, and then a portion of the concrete floor lifts, bathing our legs in a greenish light.

Beneath, steel rungs go down into an illuminated shaft.

“We must hurry,” Weems says.

“You think Kavashi knows about the tunnel?” Shane wants to know.

“He’ll figure it out eventually,” Weems says. “Right now I’m worried about the boy. What they’ll do to him when they realize we’ve escaped. Let’s go! Ladies first.”

I drop into the tunnel. Praying it will lead me to Noah.

As it turns out, torture isn’t necessary. Or not much of it. The Barlows have seen the error of their ways and are eager to cooperate. If Vash understands them correctly, and the whimpering makes it difficult, their defense is that Ruler Weems made them do it. They’re clueless about Randall Shane, or how he happened to escape from a locked holding cell, and have no idea where he might have taken Haley Corbin. All the Barlows know for sure is that whatever happened, it isn’t their fault, and to make up for it they’d like to become part of Eva’s faction, please. Pretty please with millions on top.

“Not my decision,” Vash had informed them. “Maybe Evangeline forgive you, maybe not.”

That had provoked much weeping and whining. Vash has a low tolerance for whiners-there’s something about a pleading voice that sets his teeth on edge. Had it been entirely up to him, the Barlows would have perished in their own home, victims of an unfortunate fire. Not as punishment, but because he finds them to be as irritating as they are untrustworthy. As it is, their fate remains undetermined-Eva has too much on her mind, and seems eager to blame Vash for not having the godlike powers to know everything and be everywhere at once.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” she says with her acid tongue. “You had him and you let him get away? This so-called nobody, this supposedly harmless man who used to be with the FBI? And then the harmless nobody steals one of your tactical vans, waits until your men retrieve the woman from the house, then steals her away and they both vanish in a puff of smoke. Is that about right?”

“Somebody help him, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

When Evangeline gets like this, frustrated because things haven’t gone her way, she looks as if the only thing that would make her feel better is the opportunity to kill someone with her own hands. Vash would be sympathetic-when he was slightly younger he often indulged in such excessive reactions-except that in this instance he’s the someone Eva would like to kill. Something to keep in mind, when it comes to long-term survival strategies.

“Any idea who helped him?” she asks sweetly.

“We review the video. Takes two hours, maybe three. Many cameras, much data.”

Eva the Diva gets up close and personal, bumping her hips into his pelvis, and not in a friendly way. More like the sexual aggression of a praying mantis, eager to be off with his head. “You don’t need to find it on the cameras, darling. We both know who it was.”