"Because I like you."

"You like me like me or just like me?"

"I like you."

My chest tightened and I got out of the car, then turned back and leaned close.

"Listen, I get it. You've taken me on as a project. Poor, big, stupid Alfred Kropp. Well, I don't need your pretty . . . I mean pity. Find some other loser to feel sorry for."

I turned away before she could say anything, jogging across the yard to the front door. I missed seeing the gnarled old oak root sticking up in front of the sidewalk, tripped, and sprawled flat on my face in the cool dirt. Could it get any worse? I had been waiting for a sign and, as I pushed my big slobbery bulk from the ground, I realized this was the sign I was waiting for.

It was time to leave.

7.

Horace was standing in the entryway holding a gray suit on a hanger.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Your suit, Alfred."

"I don't own a suit."

"You do now. You need to try it on to see if it fits. Tomorrow afternoon is the hearing. And you gotta look nice for the judge, Al," he said.

I brushed past him, went into the bathroom, and proceeded to floss. After a second there was a soft knock and Horace whispered from the other side.

"Hey, Al, I think you forgot the suit. I'll just hang it here on the knob. We're having fried chicken for dinner. Isn't that your favorite?"

I didn't answer and Horace went away.

I went into the bedroom and pulled my old duffel bag from the closet. It took about five minutes to pack because I didn't have much. The door opened and Kenny came in.

"What are you doing, Alfred Kropp?"

"Packing," I said.

"You're leaving!"

I looked up at him. He started to cry.

"Don't do that, Kenny. I don't want Horace and Betty to know."

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know. I'll figure it out."

"Take me with you."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"I just can't, okay? Look, it's going to be all right. I can't live here, Kenny. Horace is plotting to adopt me and take all my money and I can't let that happen."

He climbed onto the top bunk and refused to come down for dinner, but I ate to keep up appearances, plus I didn't know where my next meal was coming from. I planned to slip out the window as soon as Horace and Betty went to bed.

Around eleven I heard the Tuttles go to their room.

"Alfred Kropp is leaving me to die," Kenny muttered in the top bunk.

I sighed. "Look, when I get to wherever I'm going, I'll call you to make sure everything's okay. And if it's not okay I'll come back and rescue you. How's that?"

"You'll rescue me? You promise?"

"I promise."

I guess that satisfied him, because he quieted down. It was time to go, but I didn't move. What was I waiting for? I had thought Ashley's pity was the sign I needed, but now leaving was the last thing I wanted to do.

Looking back now, I wonder what would have happened if I had gotten off my big butt and left that moment. If I had snuck out ten or even five minutes earlier would the horrors I was about to unleash on the world have been averted?

I'll never know, because I didn't leave that moment. I was waiting for Kenny's breathing to even out. It must have been close to midnight when he yelled, "What's that? I heard something, Alfred Kropp, outside the window."

"I didn't hear anything."

"I heard it. I-" He stopped himself, then hissed: "There's someone outside our window."

"Look, Kenny," I said. "There's nobody outside the window."

But he wouldn't settle down until I checked the window. I pulled up the blinds and squinted through the glass, resting my hands on the sill. I turned my head toward the top bunk.

"See, Kenny? There's nothing-"

Suddenly, the window exploded inward, just like it would in a horror movie, when the teenager turns and says, "See, there's nothing there." Two large, black-gloved hands shot through and grabbed my wrists. I was dragged through the broken window before I could even make a sound.

8.

I saw a flash of night sky, a swaying tree branch, and the lawn as it rushed up to meet me. I landed face-first in the grass and something hard pressed into my lower back. I heard someone screaming; I guessed it was Kenny. I had fallen with my mouth open, and now I could taste grass and dirt as a voice whispered hoarsely in my ear.

"Don't fight me."

I twisted to my right, bringing my left elbow up and back, a glancing blow to the guy's head as he leaned over me. He fell away and I pushed myself up, and then he was back on me, throwing his forearm across my neck, pulling back hard, cutting off my oxygen. Black flowers bloomed before my eyes.

He dragged me toward the back corner of the house and whipped me around.

"Settle down!" he hissed. "Settle down!"

He held my arms behind my back and pushed me toward a dark convertible sports car parked by the curb.

He threw me into the passenger seat and brought his face close to mine. I got a heavy dose of spearmint.

"Hey, Al," Mike Arnold said.

I couldn't believe it: Mike Arnold, the OIPEP agent who had betrayed the knights and nearly gotten me killed. Abby Smith had told me they fired Mike for turning double agent. So this wasn't an OIPEP operation. And if this wasn't an OIPEP operation, what was it?

He raced around the front and leaped into the driver's seat of the Porsche Boxster. The car gave a throaty roar and Mike punched the gas. My head snapped back against the headrest. He whipped the car into a U-turn, the back tires locking up and squealing, sending plumes of smoke boiling into the air.

"What's going on?" I yelled. He swerved into the right-hand lane, making for the on-ramp to the interstate.

"This is what's known in the trade as an 'extraction'!"

Mike had cut his hair since I last saw him in Merlin's Cave, wearing it now in a buzz cut, like a marine. He still dressed like a frat boy, though: Lacoste shirt, Dockers, the New Balance running shoes. I could see his 9mm Glock tucked into his belt.

There was hardly any traffic in the westbound lanes of I-40, and Mike pushed the car up to ninety, his eyes darting between the road and the rearview mirror. I glanced behind us. Somebody wearing a black jumpsuit was pacing us on a motorcycle.

"Who's following us?" I shouted over the wind.

"Well, it ain't the Publishers Clearinghouse Prize Patrol!" His lips pulled back and he showed me his big white teeth.

He ran up on the bumper of a lumbering Chevy Suburban, whipped us into the emergency lane with less than an inch to spare, and floored the accelerator.

"Excuse me, Al," he said. He pulled the Glock from his waistband, swinging his right arm in my direction. I ducked, his arm pivoted over my lowered head, and I heard the sharp pop-pop-pop of the gun as he fired at the rider behind us.

We jounced over the rough pavement as the speedometer needle hovered around a hundred. I looked behind us again, but the black motorcycle was nowhere in sight.

"You lost them!" I yelled.

He barked out a laugh and cut back into the right lane, right in front of a Best Buy semitruck. Up ahead was the exit for the highway that connected Knoxville and Alcoa.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Safe house!"

"A house safe from what?"

He faded onto the exit ramp, going way too fast for the curve, and I grabbed on to the door handle to keep from flipping over the door. The highway was deserted, and Mike took the opportunity to push us to 120. My eyelashes felt as if they were being torn from my lids.

"Slow down, Mike!" I yelled.

I heard a rumble that sounded like thunder behind us: two big black attack helicopter gunships came straight at us, screaming out of the night sky, their sleek bodies glistening in the glow of the streetlamps.

"We're not going to make it!" I shouted.

He gave another of those sharp barking laughs. Tall hills rose on either side of the highway; we were heading due south, toward the Smoky Mountains. About a mile ahead the hills parted, allowing the Tennessee River to pass between them.

As soon as we reached the bridge, Mike slammed on the brakes. We went into a skid, spinning clockwise until his door smashed against the three-foot-high concrete wall separating the edge of the road from the hundred-foot drop to the water below.

"Here we go!" he shouted as he scooted over the back of the car and ran to my side. Suddenly the night lit up all around us: the gunships were training spotlights on the bridge. They had dropped to only a hundred feet or so above the ground as they bore down.

He flung open my door and yanked me onto the pavement. "Oh, no," I said. "Mike, I can't swim."

"Good thing I can!"

He forced me over to the concrete barrier.

"It's pretty simple, Al! Jump and live or stay here and get your head blown off!"

I stared at him for a second. "Okay," I said. We climbed onto the barrier. Mike gave me a nudge in the small of my back, and we plunged a hundred feet down, into the murky waters of the Tennessee River.

9.

I hit the water feetfirst and just kept sinking, my eyes clinched shut, thinking, This is where Alfred Kropp buys the farm. I flailed my arms and kicked my feet, but I just kept sinking. My lungs began to ache and my movements slowed down, and then a great sense of peace settled over me like a comfortable blanket. This wasn't so bad. Maybe I'd take a nap. My chin dropped to my chest and I thought of cold winter nights in Ohio where I grew up, snuggling under the warm covers, drifting off to sleep while Mom sat in the kitchen, working her calculator as she balanced some business's books.

A hand grabbed my collar and I slowly started to rise. Whatever was left in me that still wanted to live took over, and I began to kick my feet again. My head broke the surface and I took a huge gulp of air.

"Shhhh," Mike Arnold whispered in my ear. "We're not out of the woods yet."

He gently rolled me onto my back so I was lying on top of him, his arm around my chest as he backstroked toward the south shore. I could hear the thumpa-thumpas of the helicopters as they patrolled the river, swinging the searchlights right to left and back again, looking for us. Just our faces were out of the water, though, and Mike pushed us along slowly, causing barely a ripple.

"Nice night for a swim, huh, Al?" Mike murmured into my ear. "Okay, real quiet now; we're almost at the shore. I'm gonna set you down easy. About twenty yards south we've got some cover, but it's gonna be a long twenty yards, Al. Easy now. Almost there."

He took his arm away and I sank about a foot before my butt hit the bottom. I raised my head a little and saw a chopper over the river, so low, the water churned beneath it, the wind of the blades creating little whitecaps in the harsh glare of the searchlights. I didn't see the other one. We were about five feet from the rocky shore. The ground rose sharply toward a densely wooded hillside directly ahead.

"Okay," Mike breathed. "On my mark. Three, two, one . . . mark!"