Mom nodded. "Certainly."

The corners of my mouth wrenched down. "I didn't know Jason would do that to her!"

Mom moved over beside me on the couch and put her arm around me. "Shhhhhhh. Of course you couldn't know that."

"Dad would've known!" I said.

Dad looked away. "Not necessarily."

Mom pulled me closer. "You already saved Tony's life once. Maybe twice, by going after the video. Also, you didn't beat Caffeine bloody, did you? That was Jason."

"You're not responsible for the evil others do," Dad said. "I never killed anyone, but people have died because of some of my actions. Not by my hand directly, but ... people have died."

Mom looked over at him. "And hundreds have lived who would not. Thousands perhaps, if you count relief efforts." Mom let me sit back up but stayed close, her arm still around my shoulders.

I got my breathing back under control, "When it went down, today, I jumped Joe from the coffee shop to the school."

Dad sighed. "Of course." He no longer sounded angry, just resigned.

"They called me using Tara's phone. Joe and I were still at Krakatoa, but they'd grabbed Jade and Tara as they were walking home. Marius wanted both Joe and me to come down and get in the Hummer but I wasn't going to hand them another hostage. That's when I called you guys.

"You know everything else."

Dad shook his head. "Not everything." He touched his own neck. "Mom told me about the garrote. How'd they get that on you?"

"It was dark. Jason was taking me into another room. I thought it would be a great opportunity to remove him from the equation, then go after Calvin and Marius. I didn't even see the wire until I felt it tighten around my neck. It was that guy who came with Hyacinth Pope. Jenkins."

Mom shook her head. "That's a new technique. We'll have to watch out for it. How did you get out of it?"

"I did the jump in place thing. Added velocity right into him-the same direction he'd pull from. Broke his forearm and knocked him through the wall."

Dad's eyes went wide. "That's what that hole was?"

I nodded. "I was getting desperate. Hyacinth was loading up a hypodermic, probably to knock me out." I reached up and touched the scab on my neck. "Jenkins never got a chance to pull on the wire, but it twisted around a bit as we went though the wall. More abrasion than compression."

Mom said, "We heard you go through the wall. We'd already peeked in through the skylights by then. What did you do to Hyacinth?"

I told them about accelerating through her legs when she ran after me with the hypo. "I was worried about her neck. Do you think I broke it?"

Dad shrugged. "Don't know." From the look on his face, he could have easily added, "Don't care."

Mom saw the look on my face and said, "We'll talk to Agent Martingale and find out."

I exhaled. "So, now you know everything."

Two day later, Mom got Agent Martingale's status report.

They couldn't hold the pilot they found in the charter jet parked over at the airport. He worked for the charter company. They made a note of the company that had leased it, though.

They held Mr. Sidney Jenkins on weapons charges. He did not have a local permit and his prints were all over both the handguns Dad removed from his person.

Hyacinth was also good for weapons charges, compounded by her status as a fugitive convicted felon. There was no question about holding her.

Jason, Calvin, and Marius were held for kidnapping with Tara and Jade as initial witnesses, but the most damning witness ended up being Caffeine. Additional charges resulted from the over fifty pounds of marijuana and the several thousand caps of ecstasy found in the office where Caffeine had been tortured. Oh yeah, kidnapping and grievous bodily harm and conspiracy to commit murder.

There was no way Jason was going to release Caffeine in the end.

As I suspected, Jason's jaw was broken as well as his radius and ulna. Marius had breaks in one carpal and two metacarpals. Calvin had two phalanges and one metacarpal broken.

Mr. Jenkins regained consciousness shortly after we left. Like Jason, both bones in Jenkins's forearm were broken. He also had a bump on the back of his head where he'd clipped a stud going through the wall, as well as various related bruises.

Hyacinth had a hairline fracture of her third cervical vertebra, and a concussion. They had considered opening her skull to relieve pressure but her CT scans showed very minor swelling and she regained consciousness after six hours.

Caffeine, whose injuries looked the worst, had no broken bones. She had trouble sleeping, though, waking with screaming nightmares. This got worse when she found out Jason was in the same hospital, though under guard.

They moved her into the secure unit of psychiatric where she felt safer, being locked in.

Mom reported that, in Agent Martingale's opinion, "The tranquilizers probably helped, too. And she met someone she knew there in the ward, who was helping her adjust."

"Really?" I asked, absently. Then I sat up abruptly and said, "Oh my God. Tony?"

"Yes. Tony."

I climbed into bed and stayed there.

It was easy. It was dark inside and dark outside with heavy spring snows. And I was sore, but that went away pretty quickly. Mom would bring me a tray, kiss me on the cheek, and, thankfully, leave me alone.

On the third day Dad stuck his head in and I covered my face with the pillow.

He didn't take the hint, pulling the pillow away.

"Really, you want to hear this."

I opened one eye. "What?" I opened the other eye and pushed up on my elbows.

"I got an e-mail from Mr. Aniketa at HFW."

"Who? What's HFW?"

"Hunger Free World. They're the Japanese NGO that Ramachander works for. Mr. Aniketa is his boss."

I sat up, eyebrows raised. "Is? As in?...

"He showed up in Bhangura this morning."

"Squeezed?" I said.

"Yes, initially. But mostly they just held him, probably to see if we'd come looking, so he got to sleep a lot and, uh, heal. Finally they put him on a passenger ferry and faded."

"Heal? What do you mean, heal? What did they do to him?"

Dad didn't say anything.

"Was it like Caffeine? Did they beat him half to death?"

Dad looked away. "He'll be okay. Stay away from him, though. Just like your friends from school, they are probably still watching him. I mean it-it's as much for his sake as yours."

I covered my face with the pillow. "Understood."

Dad's muffled voice said, "Good."

After he left I tried to regain the advanced level of lumpitude I'd managed for the last three days, but it wasn't working.

I kept seeing Ramachandra's face, bloody and bruised, like Caffeine's. I kept doing math problems in my head or revising the thesis statement for my midterm humanities essay. I was wondering if Jade and Tara were back in school and what had happened to Hector.

And I wondered what Joe was thinking.

Then I was picturing Joe, beaten and bruised, like Caffeine.

I got up, took a shower, and under the hot running water, cried.

THIRTY-FIVE.

Davy: "Tea and Sympathy"

Millie was in the kitchen, pouring water from the electric kettle into a tea pot. "Still keeps to her room?"

Davy kicked the counter baseboard. "Yes. I chided her for it and she said, 'It gives such an elegance to misfortune!'" He smiled briefly. "I thought she was doing better, quoting Austen like that, but it just sets her off again. Apparently Joe likes Austen, too."

Millie sighed. "Tea?"

"No." He glared at the icicles visible through the window. More gently he said, "No, thank you."

Millie smiled briefly, and got down a mug for herself. "You told her about Rama?"

"Not everything."

"Really? I thought you were going to use it? You said you were."

Davy kicked the baseboard again. "Yeah. I couldn't. She guessed he was messed up already. She thought it was on the lines of what Jason did to Caffeine." He sat down at the table, but couldn't settle, rising again. "Telling her won't bring his eye back."

Millie winced. "No, I guess not."

"I wish she'd go do something!"

Millie nodded. "Physical activity would be good for her. Snowboarding, maybe?"

"I made that mistake. She started crying."

"Oh. Joe. The team."

"Yeah."

"I can't make her do anything."

"No. Even if she couldn't jump away from you, you shouldn't."

"It almost makes me wish for the days when she'd yell at me because I wouldn't let her go to school."

Millie shook her head.

Davy said, "You know, if I'd let her go to school before she discovered she could jump, she might never have been in this mess."

Millie snorted. "I was waiting for that. It's clearly all your fault. I especially like how you arranged for Caffeine to seduce the three freshmen. That was particularly clever. I would never know how to accomplish that."

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, half amused, half annoyed.

"Tambien, mi amor."

He deflated, sitting back down at the table.

"I feel so helpless."

She sighed and took another mug from the cabinet.

"Have some tea."

THIRTY-SIX.