"Damn," said Dakota. "We could've used it."

I scratched my head. "Is the yearbook really that hard up for material?"

Dakota looked at me, confused, then shook his head. "Uh, no. We might have been able to trade it."

"Trade it? For what?"

He looked at Tony and they both dropped their eyes.

I heard a familiar voice from the street and pulled Dakota over to join me and Tony behind the Dumpster. We ducked as Caffeine and her two peeps jogged by, looking back over their shoulders toward Main Street but not down the alley.

Softly, I said, "Wonder what happened with the nice doggies?" I straightened. "Anyway, you ladies were about to go into the coffee shop?"

Tony said, "Don't call us ladies." It wasn't quite a shout but he was angry. I took a step back.

Dakota put his hand on Tony's arm.

"Calm down. She's not Caffeine."

I licked my lips. "Sorry. Let me rephrase it. Would you guys like to join me back at Krakatoa?"

They didn't come out of the alley until they'd both peered around the corner and made sure Caffeine was gone. When we went over to the coffee shop entrance, there was a police car pulled over in the next block. I thought about going over there to see what had happened, but the couple with the dogs might recognize me.

"Dakota, go see what happened."

"You go see what happened!"

"They'll recognize me. Go on-I'll buy you a drink."

He looked down the cross street again, to see if Caffeine was coming back. "All right, but make it a large."

"A large what?"

"Mocha. Extra whipped cream."

"Right."

Dakota came back about the time the drinks were ready. When we were seated at the back of the balcony, he said, "They knocked the man down and he hit his head. His wife called 911. They asked me if I'd witnessed it."

I felt bad. "Is he okay?"

"Yeah. A little blood. A goose egg. They're going to the ER just in case."

Crap. "Wish I'd run the other way."

"You didn't knock him down, did you?" Tony asked I shook my head.

"How'd you find us?" asked Dakota.

"I saw them intercept you on the sidewalk." I pointed downstairs. "I was up here. You didn't look happy."

They looked at each other, then back at me, without saying anything.

"Was I wrong? Would it have been better if I hadn't stuck my big nose in?"

They spoke at the same time. Dakota said, "Yes." Tony said, "No." They looked away from me and each other.

"Really?" I said.

Dakota said, "It's not that we don't appreciate it, but you may have made it worse."

"How much worse?" said Tony. "From my viewpoint, it's about as bad as it can get!"

"Oh, yeah! And when the video is all over school?" said Dakota.

Tony clamped his mouth shut.

"What video?" I asked.

Dakota looked away. "None of your business."

I looked at Tony. He was looking down at the table. He shook his head without saying anything. I took a napkin and tore it in half. I wrote my phone number on each piece, set them on the table, and walked away.

I wasn't very happy with Tony and Dakota. They were being stupid and I wondered what kind of stupidity they'd been involved in earlier. I didn't have a lot of personal experience with them, but everything I'd read and everything I'd seen, showed me that teenage boys didn't always make wise decisions.

And, apparently, they'd managed to get the results of one decision recorded on video.

I walked back around to the alley. I didn't know what Tony and Dakota would do. It wasn't really my business, even if Caffeine was involved. It was cold outside, too.

Dammit.

I'd need some warmer clothes.

I returned to the alley thirty seconds later, the extra clothes clutched under one arm. I'd left my usual snowboarding coat behind and was shivering, but I hadn't wanted the boys to leave before I got back.

There were no windows opening on the alley where I stood but you couldn't see the front door of Krakatoa and somebody could walk or drive up the alley at any time and see me.

I jumped in place, adding enough velocity to rise fifty feet up. When I could clearly see the roof behind the balustrade, I jumped to the center, near the A/C unit.

I kneeled on the gravel-covered tar and looked around. Most of this roof was clear of snow, probably melted by the building's heat, though snow still drifted against the west and south balustrades. One building in the immediate vicinity rose to six stories, higher than the coffee shop, but that was the Wells Fargo Bank and it was Sunday, so I doubted anyone was in there. Even if they were, they would've had to be looking at this building at exactly the right time to see anything odd.

I shivered. The wind was brisker up here. I pulled on a fleece and then my sheepskin-lined gray hoodie. Before I pulled the hood up, I put on my helmet liner, a black balaclava that came down over my forehead and up over my nose. Good as a ninja mask, any day.

Now I was warm enough and I could do stuff without necessarily being recognized.

The boys left a few minutes later-slowly, tentatively. I had no idea where they lived or even if they were going home. After deciding the immediate vicinity was clear, they headed east up Main. I thought about jumping down to the sidewalk and following them but I just watched instead. When they got to the next block, I jumped to the roof of the building on that corner. This building either had better insulation or they hadn't been running the heat as much 'cause I found myself standing in two feet of snow.

On the sidewalk below, Tony and Dakota peered around the corner, then went south on Fourth Street.

A few more blocks later, the commercial downtown changed to residential, and I couldn't jump from pitched roof to pitched roof in broad daylight without attracting attention. I jumped home and got my binoculars. They weren't image stabilized like Mom's, but they were good enough to stay well behind Tony and Dakota while keeping an eye on them. Walking was better, anyway. The wind wasn't quite as sharp at ground level and I'd been getting cold sitting motionless on the roofs.

They stopped, finally, in front of a split-level ranch, its front yard dominated by a huge blue spruce. Tony, his back to the house, gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. Dakota looked down at the crusted snow for a moment, then shook his head. Tony shrugged and went to the house, unlocking the door with a key.

Dakota continued on down the sidewalk, his head swiveling to check the street. I was a full block away, watching him through binoculars across the hood of an SUV. When he reached the corner, he cut left on Maple.

I jumped to the blue spruce first. Its limbs reached all the way to the ground, shielding me from most of the houses. Next I jumped to the corner, between a beat-up panel van and a four-wheel-drive pickup with oversized wheels.

Dakota had crossed to the far sidewalk. He was still looking over his shoulder. I waited until he was farther down the block before I crossed, too.

He looked back while I was in the middle of the street and began walking faster.

Think I'm one of them, do you?

I turned away from him when I reached the far sidewalk and headed in the opposite direction. When I reached Third Street, I glanced back. He was standing at the intersection at the other end of the block, looking toward me. I turned the corner and when I was out of his line of sight, jumped back to the panel van and off-road pickup.

Dakota had walked on, but he was still looking over his shoulder.

I used the binoculars and jumped ahead of him, and then a block further, past Sixth Street, so I was well in front of him, behind a pile of plowed snow made higher by the snow cleared from someone's driveway.

I was glad I'd changed to the hoodie. It was practically the local school uniform. Tony and Dakota had each been wearing one, though Tony's had been white. Dakota's was gray, like mine.

I kept my eyes open for Caffeine, too. Anybody walking got a scan with the binoculars, but I almost missed Caffeine and her buddy because they were in a car. I saw her by chance. I was checking out a figure a block behind Dakota when a tricked-out Honda Accord turned the corner toward me. The side windows were tinted so it was hard to see into the interior but as I scanned past the car through the binoculars, the driver turned her head and I saw a flash of blonde with black roots. I flicked the binoculars back and confirmed it: Caffeine driving with one of her guys in the front passenger seat.

Dakota, from half a block away and without binoculars, took one glance over his shoulder and ran, so I guess he recognized the car.

He was pounding up the sidewalk toward me. I heard the engine on the Honda rev up as they spotted him. I ducked down. When Dakota shot past my snowbank, I snagged his arm and pulled. He crashed into the snowbank on the other side of the driveway opening. Before he could get up, I grabbed his shoulders and jumped away, back to the gap between the SUV and the panel van, two blocks back.

He was thrashing, trying to get up, to turn, but I jumped away before he ever saw me, going back to the driveway where I'd snagged him.

I arrived just before Caffeine's Honda passed the gap and they saw me, or at least the gray hoodie, and rubber on asphalt shrieked. I ran back down the sidewalk, in the other direction. Caffeine didn't bother to turn the Honda, but threw it into reverse.

I cut left at the intersection, not wanting to lead them back to Dakota. Sixth Street had been plowed, but obviously before all the snow had finished falling, because the asphalt was still covered with packed and rutted snow dappled with sand spread for traction. Caffeine backed past the intersection and then turned in. She gunned it, but the tires slipped and the front end walked sideways for a second, so she had to cut back and accelerate more carefully.

I waited until they were almost up to me, then ran out into the road, in front of them.

Caffeine hit the brakes, but the crusted snow didn't have enough sand on it and the car slid. I could hear the "tuk, tuk, tuk" of the antilock brake, but the car wasn't slowing noticeably. I waited until the Honda was about ten feet away and then "tripped" falling forward, still in the street. I jumped away before the car reached me, but later than I'd intended.

I'd felt the bumper brush my leg.

There was the sound of breaking glass and cracking plastic and a car alarm went off. I was back in the cleared driveway just around the corner, on Maple. I ran back and peered down the street.

Caffeine must've jerked the steering wheel in an attempt to miss me, 'cause her car was jammed into the side of a parked Nissan, the source of the car alarm. There was steam around the front end of the Honda from a ruptured radiator. The driver-side door was open and Caffeine was in the road, on her hands and knees, looking under the Honda.

House doors were opening and a woman, coming out of the house in front of the Nissan, was talking on a cellphone. With her other hand she pointed something toward the Nissan and the siren cut off.

Caffeine's friend got out of the passenger side of the Honda slowly, unable to open his door fully because the car was jammed up against the Nissan. He had one hand pressed to his forehead and blood seeped down into his eyebrow.

They hadn't been going that fast.

Somebody wasn't wearing his seatbelt.

I looked back down Maple but there wasn't any sign of Dakota.

Good.

SEVENTEEN.

Millie: Hilltop Millie got to the site by hiring a boat taxi in Bhangura and traveling down the Baral River fifteen kilometers, using her own GPS to verify her location. When she'd gotten as close as she could, she paid and dismissed the boatman and walked west on a raised path between rice paddies and jute fields.

Her destination was in sight almost immediately. The ridge rose only a bit around the surrounding farms, but it looked taller because of a stand of trees.

The Bangladeshi army had set up a mobile clinic at the north end of the trees.

Akash, an aid official with Pabna District who was coordinating with the local Bhangura Upazila, told Millie, "There are higher sites north of here, but the ground is steeper and prone to mud slides."

He was greatly relieved when Millie told him she was bringing in two tons of rations.

"Bloody marvelous! I was counting on Hunger Free World, but most of their supplies went south. This just isn't the season. Four more months and we'd be ready for it."

Davy brought in a U.S. Army surplus tent, fourteen by fifteen feet, double-walled, which broke down into two luggable bags. They could've set it up themselves, but enlisted men from the army medical unit next door, already set up and waiting, came over and with much confusion and laughter got the thing set up and thoroughly anchored. The forecast called for winds up to ninety kilometers per hour, and Davy had brought extra stakes and straps to reinforce the structure.

"When do your rations arrive? We will be glad to unload the trucks," the medical unit's lieutenant said.

"Tomorrow," Millie said.

"Before the rain, I hope!"

"Early," Millie said. Very early.

The next morning, as the winds picked up and the rain began, Akash came to Millie, worried. "Where are your trucks coming from? The road to Bhangura is going to be a swamp, soon."

Millie led him into the tent.

Though the tent had an integrated floor, they'd stacked the rations on doubled pallets, in the event there were any local drainage issues. The cases were piled nearly to the roof of the tent. Davy had also brought all the water filters from the warehouse, but this was only a few cases.

Akash blinked. "Oh. Didn't see them come and go. I guess that was while we were setting up tarps." The aid workers had been stringing tarps through the stand of mixed trees, both overhead and horizontally, attempting to turn the woods into a giant rain shelter.

Millie made a noncommittal "um" sound. "Hope to have more water filters, later."