"You got someone else to do it? I thought-well, who was it?"

"You don't know."

"I know I don't know! Who-"

"You don't know."

He was silent for a moment. "Oh. You don't want me to know."

"I want you to be able to answer truthfully. If asked."

"I don't know who brought him into the hospital."

"Right."

"And leave you out of it, too."

"Double right."

I felt like curling up in my reading nook, buried in the cushions. I wanted to jump to Australia and throw myself into the surf. I wanted to do both of these things with Joe.

I did not want to deal with Caffeine's bullshit anymore.

Before, I'd found her irritating. I'd expected something like her at school. Everything I'd ever read, both fiction and non, led me to expect queen bees and bullying and other stupid behavior in high school.

Tony's suicide attempt put it way over the edge, though.

I waited two days to see if Tony or Dakota or Grant would go to the police. One cure for blackmail, after all, is making the subject public, to remove the threat of exposure by doing it yourself. But Tony hadn't said anything by Tuesday after school. His family had him admitted to the psych ward for "observation." Which meant suicide watch.

His attempt was the talk of the school and, at first, it even seemed to shock Caffeine-she was pale on Monday. By Tuesday, though, she was back to her old nasty self. I guess she figured he wasn't going to talk.

After all, he was willing to kill himself rather than deal with exposure. Why should he talk now?

I found myself shaking as I watched her laughing with her peeps, after school.

Ah well, if you're going to get mad, use it.

Start with a quart of corn syrup, add one-and-a-third cups of water, then start dripping the red food coloring in, stirring briskly. Don't overdo it. Once it approaches blood in color, add a tiny bit of green or blue food coloring. Then thicken with chocolate syrup to taste, uh, I mean texture.

It doesn't smell or taste like blood, but it sure looks like it.

Three cars were parked beside the garage clubhouse, including Caffeine's Honda.

I set the plastic bucket of fake blood on the roof and went to the edge. I perched on the balustrade for a second, like a gargoyle, before leaping off and dropping seven feet onto the roof of Caffeine's car. The roof crumpled a good half foot under the motorcycle boots, and I absorbed the shock by bending my knees. I was hoping for noise. I got it, too. The car alarm had a vibration sensor.

I was back on the roof before the first of them came out the door-Calvin, followed by Caffeine. I guess she recognized the sound of her alarm. From above, I poured a cup of "blood" onto the snow behind Calvin. He didn't hear it over the blaring of the alarm.

Caffeine finally fumbled her keys out of her jacket pocket, but I dropped a lentil bag over Calvin's head and jumped him away before the car alarm chirped and stopped.

We appeared in the pit in West Texas, about twenty-feet above the water.

I guess it's a family tradition.

There wasn't cell phone reception there, even from the surrounding desert above. Down in the pit, there wasn't any chance of a signal. And once you soaked the cell phone in water you didn't have to worry about the GPS, either.

I watched Calvin splash his way to the shore of the little island before I checked back on Caffeine and company.

When I peeked over the broken wall of the ruin, Caffeine was staring down at the "blood" at the foot of the garage wall while Hector and Marius faced the surrounding lot.

Hector had a gun.

The gun was shaking.

The blood looked great, but if they used their noses, it wouldn't hold up. Better do something before they examine it closer.

I picked up a half a cinder block, jumped to the roof, and threw it.

Hector's Toyota also had an alarm but, alas, not an unbreakable windshield. All three of them jerked and turned toward the car, spreading out.

I poured another cup of the "blood" behind Hector. I didn't have time to use the hood, but he still never saw me. He appeared in midair over the water and fired his gun reflexively. The noise echoing off of the pit's walls made me flinch away to my reading nook with my head buried in the cushions.

I checked back on him, cautiously, from the rim of the pit.

He'd made it to the island, but Calvin had taken his gun away from him. I wonder if a ricochet had come uncomfortably close.

All the cars were still at the clubhouse when I returned, but the door was shut. I jumped onto the roof, stomped around the skylight, and was rewarded with a muffled shriek from below.

I got another cup of blood from the bucket and jumped to the garage closet with the camera. The closet door was slightly ajar.

Marius and Caffeine were standing across the garage, opposite the outside door, halfway between the wall and the skylight. They didn't see me-they were looking up at the skylight and the ceiling. I jumped behind them both and threw the cup of blood at the wall, then took Marius.

Marius was fast, lashing out with one elbow and then the other. One of them hit the side of the helmet and the other glanced painfully off my goggles. When I let him go, I confess he may have been higher above the water than the others.

Like twenty feet higher.

"Oh SHIT!"

I watched him hit the water, from the rim.

Try and push me down a stairway!

Caffeine was trying to get her car door open but the distortion of the roof, from when I'd landed on it, had warped the door and bound the lock.

I dropped a lentil bag over her head from behind and jumped her to the sandy wash in West Texas. She flailed, but I just shoved her forward. She went down on her hands and knees in the sand, gasping, then pulled the bag off of her head.

As she scrambled to her feet, I backed off a few yards and crouched, one knee in the sand. I was wearing the entire ensemble: helmet, tinted goggles, balaclava, armor. Bulky. Faceless.

When she finally turned enough to see me, she flinched, took a step back, and dove her hand into her pocket.

Oops. Guess Hector wasn't the only one packing.

It was a small semiautomatic but new to her, I think, 'cause she was fumbling it. Before she turned it dangerous side out, I sprang upward and jumped in place, adding a hundred miles per hour straight up.

Her head tilted up, her mouth wide. The gun hung limply at her side.

When I was several hundred feet in the air and slowing, I jumped back down to the ground, but behind her. She twisted her head back and forth, scanning the sky. I raked the gun from her hand and shoved her, sending her stumbling forward.

When she turned around, I was crouched again, watching her, the gun on the ground before me.

She ran.

Caffeine's keys were still in the Honda's door lock. I pulled them out and used them to pop the trunk. Her backpack was there, with her laptop in it-the latest Apple product, probably bought with her drug money.

The computer was in sleep mode and woke immediately when I opened it, but it was password protected.

Hmph.

I left the keys sticking out of the trunk lock.

I couldn't see Caffeine when I returned to the wash, but when I shot high into the air and scanned, I spotted her a half mile down the wash, where it deepened to an arroyo. She was still moving briskly when she came around a bend and found me crouching in the middle of the gully, holding her computer.

I used my raspy voice.

"I warned you."

She stepped back, but I guess she'd realized there was no point in running.

I took a crumpled piece of paper from my pocket and threw it toward her.

She picked it up and unfolded it enough to identify it. It was the sign I'd glued to her jacket when she'd been lurking in the doorway opposite the coffee shop, the one that started with, Overuse of caffeine may lead to ... and finished with, (Your Imaginary Friend).

"Who are you?"

"Your imaginary friend. Well, maybe not 'friend.'"

"Where are we?" Her gesture took in the gully and the sky and the surrounding desert.

I ignored her and opened the computer, holding it so she could see the streaks of fake blood from my glove. "What's your password?"

She shook her head.

I set the computer in the sand and stood up.

"Do you really want to make me more angry?" I said. And I really was, which made the raspy, hoarse voice sound even scarier. "What is the password?"

She took a step back, still shaking her head.

This time, when I grabbed her from behind, I jumped in place, throwing us up into the sky at a modest seventy miles an hour.

She screamed.

I let go of her and she screamed louder. We drifted apart. Our upward velocity slowed to a stop 160 feet in the air and it felt like we hung there for an instant before the drop. The screaming intensified as we fell again. I jumped to close the gap, grabbing her around the waist, and jumped us back to the arroyo, spilling her into the sand.

I returned to the computer while she shuddered on the ground.

"Password?"

She spelled it out. I had to make her repeat it twice before it was coherent enough for me to type it in.

The account unlocked.

The files were named Grant, Tony, and Dakota. I briefly scanned the beginning of the videos, confirming they were the right ones before I had to watch too much of them. I checked the file dates. "Where else are the videos?"

She shook her head.

I looked at her backup settings. There was a backup volume, and the last backup had been the previous evening. She also had a couple of network cloud storage accounts. I shot into the air again, with the computer, and, fifty feet up, jumped to New Prospect, by the library.

When I connected to the library's WiFi, I found the files there, too, in the cloud accounts. I deleted them and, to be sure, killed the accounts, which was only possible because she'd used the same password for the net accounts as she did for the computer.

I returned to the wash. She was gone again.

I sighed and checked from above. She'd left the wash and headed east across much rougher terrain.

I put the computer in the cabin, in a desk drawer, then returned to the garage rooftop for the plastic bucket.

It was child's play to get in front of her, but this time I didn't hang around and wait for her to arrive. Instead, she'd climb over a ridge or around a stand of lechuguilla, and find "blood" splashed across her path.

She changed course and I did it again. And again. And again, until the bucket was empty.

By then, she couldn't even walk. She'd collapsed on a stretch of gravel, her torso held up by her elbows, her jacket tied around her waist. She was gasping.

I walked loudly across the gravel, scuffing my boots, and Caffeine jerked her head around and stared at me, whites showing, like a deer in the headlights.

"Where is the backup drive?"

She looked at me like the words hadn't made sense.