"I'd run if I were you," Donald croaked. "You're in deep doo-doo now, Huckleberry." He slid back down out of view. Martin had no idea what he was hiding from, but right now he couldn't dwell on how much of an idiot Donald was.

He saw a pickup truck approaching, and recognized it right away. His dad! Martin ducked behind a tree and peeked around as the truck pulled in the driveway and parked behind his mom's car. Sheriff Grimes opened the front door of the house and called to Mr. Tinker as he got out and headed up the walk.

"Hey there, Gordo!"

"What's the rap, Frank? I paid my taxes." Unlike Mrs. Tinker, he didn't seem all that concerned to see the sheriff in his house.

"No big deal, my friend. Just checking something out here, eh?"

Once they had gone inside, Martin emerged from behind the tree. But he still had no plan. All the ideas that came into his head were bad ones. He looked over at the police car and saw the top half of Donald's p.r.i.c.kly head peeking nervously out the window toward the house.

Deciding he needed to act now and think it through later, Martin took off around the side of the house, heading straight for the backyard. Maybe, by some miracle, he could still get Rufus out of the barn cellar before they discovered him.

As he was about to pa.s.s by an open living room window, he heard his dad and the sheriff talking inside. Ducking down to stay out of view, he stopped to listen.

Mr. Tinker laughed. "You can't be serious."

"Yeah, yeah, you know how kids are," said Sheriff Grimes. "Probably just some goofball prank. I'm just doing my job, eh?"

"Marty's a bit of a square peg, I'll give you that. But that'd be way out in left field, even for him."

He laughed again, which might have bugged Martin at another time, but right now he barely gave it a thought. He continued along the side of the house to the gate leading into the backyard-and froze when he looked across to the far end of the yard and saw his mom coming out of the barn workshop, through the side door.

She didn't look especially rattled; obviously she hadn't ventured around to the far end and seen the cinder blocks piled in front of the lower-level doors. So, figuring there was still a shot at keeping her in the dark, he raced toward her.

"Mom! Hi!" he called in a chipper voice. "Looking for me?"

"Martin, what is going on with you and the Grimes boy?"

She didn't sound the least bit chipper.

"Grimes?"

"He told the sheriff you had-"

With his usual terrible timing, Rufus poked his head right up to a cellar window. Martin's mom caught a tiny glimpse as he dropped back out of view.

"What have you got down there?" She went over to the window and stooped down, trying to see inside. "Martin, are you keeping an animal in there?" Her face was practically right up against the gla.s.s.

"Animal? Well, um...well, if by 'animal' you mean, like-"

Suddenly, Rufus appeared again, right on the other side of the gla.s.s from Mrs. Tinker's face. A thick pink tongue shot out between two rows of glistening teeth and slapped right against the pane, just an inch and a half from her nose.

With a monstrous gasp, she launched herself backward, landing flat on her b.u.t.t.

Martin sucked in a lungful of air, his hands flying to the top of his head. "Ohhhhhhh, wow..."

His mom scrambled back on all fours like a panicked crab, emitting terrified little grunts. She seemed to want to scream, but her vocal cords must have seized up like a twisted garden hose, because nothing came out.

With quick little hops from one foot to the other, Martin started talking, hoping for the best. "Okay, he's kinda big, he looks scary and all, but he's really just a big puppy dog, y'know, this big, nice...nice, um...Mom?...Mom, wait!"

She had managed to find her feet and was running toward the house.

Martin looked over at the cellar window. "Rufus!" he growled through gritted teeth.

With nothing to guide him now but desperation, he ran around the corner to the back of the barn, slipping and sliding down the slope to the lower-level doors, and yanked away a cinder block. Maybe they could just make a break for it into the woods. But before he could pick up a second block, he heard the agitated voices of his dad, his mom, and the sheriff approaching fast from the house.

Ditching the quick-escape plan, Martin clambered back up the slope and raced around to the side door leading into his lab. As he rushed in and sprinted across the barn floor toward the trapdoor, he could hear the three of them arriving outside.

"Annie, what is going on?" said the sheriff.

"In there!" she rasped. "In there in there!"

"What!" said Mr. Tinker.

Martin threw open the trapdoor and dropped down to the cellar floor in three quick bounds, skipping over most of the steps. He spotted Rufus in a corner and rushed over, throwing his arms protectively around as much of the big guy as he could hold.

Just above them, Sheriff Grimes's face appeared in a recessed window. He squinted. "What am I looking for?"

"Just look!" Mrs. Tinker squawked from behind him.

Rufus tensed up, and Martin held on tight, whispering urgently but rea.s.suringly.

"We're gonna keep calm now, okay? It might get a little crazy, but we'll make it through if you just stay cool, all right? You can do that, right?"

"Ah geez, who put these..." It was his dad's voice, and it sounded somehow closer than the others. Martin froze, listening, trying to figure out what was going on out there.

It was strangely silent-all he could hear was the deep huffing of Rufus's breath. Then there was a faint thunk outside. Then came another, then another. The cinder blocks! His dad was tossing them away from the lower doors.

Martin jumped up.

His mom had apparently heard the same sound. "Oh, no.... Oh, no!" he heard her yell, running around from the side to the back of the barn. "No, Gordy! Don't open it!"

"Huh?"

A crack of light appeared between the doors, and in a flash, Rufus bounded across the room.

"Rufus, no!" Martin exclaimed in a whisper-shout.

Bam! The burly dino crashed into the doors, knocking them partway open.

"Jumping catfish!" Sheriff Grimes blurted out, and through the narrow opening Martin could see his parents and the sheriff leap back from the doors like startled house cats. Mrs. Tinker let out a terrified howl and ran in the other direction.

"What in the b.l.o.o.d.y blazes is that?" Martin's dad shouted as Rufus kept banging against the doors, trying to bull his way through the crack, teeth-first.

There were just a few cinder blocks left at the base of the doors keeping him from pushing all the way through to freedom. But they were inching forward under his repeated charges. Bam!...Bam!

Martin leaped over and wrapped himself around Rufus's tail, trying to pull him back. But Rufus was too big, too strong, and too determined to get out to pay any attention to him at all.

The doors kept inching open. Martin could see his dad through the crack, standing there with an otherworldly expression on his face, while his mom watched from way back, her eyes like full moons. "Stay back, Ann," he said urgently. "Go in the house."

"Right, let's go," she said, edging away. "Gordy, Frank, come on!"

The two men just stood there, frozen, like they had no clue which way to go.

Then, suddenly, Mr. Tinker lowered his shoulder and hurled himself right at the double doors. Wham! He pushed against Rufus with everything he had, trying to get the door shut again.

The shock of being abruptly knocked back set something off in Rufus, and he pushed back angrily, teeth snapping and claws slashing through the opening, growling like a junkyard Rottweiler.

Mrs. Tinker was aghast. "Gordy, no! Just run!"

"You gonna help me out here, Frank?" Mr. Tinker barked at the sheriff, who snapped out of his stupor and jumped in to help. The two of them pushed as hard as they could, while doing their best to avoid those flying claws and teeth.

In the scuffle, Rufus's tail jerked hard and Martin got tossed into a pile of cardboard boxes. As he watched the struggle, he realized he hadn't ever seen his big pet quite so riled up, and for the first time he wondered if maybe there was something more to Rufus-something more dangerous-than he'd realized before. He had never felt so helpless in his life.

Finally, Mr. Tinker and the sheriff succeeded in getting Rufus back in and shutting the doors. Rufus kept growling and banging, but Martin could hear the cinder blocks getting stacked quickly back in place until the barrier was secure again.

Martin clambered out of the boxes and tried to grab hold of Rufus. "Shhhhh! Easy! Easy!" But Rufus was still all worked up, and in no mood to be comforted. Martin rushed over and put his ear up against the double doors.

He could hear his dad and the sheriff trying to catch their breath.

"Gordon," Sheriff Grimes said matter-of-factly, "if I was actually awake just now, and not in the middle of some whacked-out dream, I would say you've got a dinosaur in your barn."

"Don't be dense, Frank. Dinosaurs are extinct."

"Yeah? Then what would you call that thing?"

There was an excruciating silence. Martin bit down hard, fearing the worst was about to come. Then he heard his dad walking away, back toward the house.

"Where are you going?" said Mrs. Tinker.

"My rifle."

Martin gasped and went stiff as a ramrod.

"Forget that, Gordy," said the sheriff. "I'll take him out right now, eh?"

"NOOOOO!" Martin bellowed at the top of his lungs.

"Martin?" he could hear his mom exclaim.

"Holy geez, is he inside there?" his dad shouted.

"NOOOO! NO GUNS!" Martin rocketed across the cellar and shot up the stairs, flying through the trapdoor.

As he raced over toward the lab area, his parents and Sheriff Grimes rushed in the side door.

"You can't shoot him!" Martin hollered. "He's not hurting anybody. Please, no guns, no shooting!"

His mom was slack-jawed. "You were down there with that thing?"

"Martin, what the b.l.o.o.d.y blazes is going on here?" his dad snapped.

"You got him all worked up," Martin said loudly. "He's not vicious or anything, but you have to-you can't just-"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute. You knew that thing was down there?"

"Yeah. I mean...well, yeah. But-"

"For how long?"

"If everybody could just, you know, like, calm down-"

"How long, Martin?"

Now, with his dad scowling and everybody's eyes focused on him like lasers, Martin was starting to feel a bit daunted.

"Four and a half months." He took a hard swallow and let out a puff of air. "I found him. I fed him, and raised him. He thinks I'm his mom."

The silence was deafening. Everybody gaped at him as though he had just dropped a boulder on a priceless Ming vase.

"Oh, lord," Mrs. Tinker droned, a vaguely astonished look of recognition on her face. "The deformed lizard..."

Martin gave a pained little grin and a tiny shrug.

"What is that thing, son?" Sheriff Grimes asked.

Martin hesitated. "It's um...it's a, um..." He cleared his throat and faked a cough, covering his mouth. "T. rex."

"A what?" his dad said.

"T. rex."

Now the silence was even heavier-until it was broken by two loud roars from below.

Mrs. Tinker let out a faint moan, and her knees buckled. The sheriff grabbed her arm and steadied her.

"But it's all okay now," Martin said, with new purpose. "I told Mr. Eckhart, and he went over to the U, and they're gonna, they're gonna-"

"Who's Mr. Eckhart?" Mr. Tinker said sharply.

"My science teacher. He said he can help. He's gonna find a good place for him"-Rufus roared again, and Martin had to talk loudly to be heard over the din-"and so that'll work out really well because that way n.o.body-"

"All right, stop. Stop! Don't talk," his dad interjected. "I need to think." He started pacing, a look of intense concentration on his face.

"Look," Mrs. Tinker said, "let's all just go in the house for now, okay? We can call the police, and then things can-"

"I'm already here, Ann," said Sheriff Grimes, with barely concealed annoyance.