'The governor had to call in these special teams of navy frogmen to go down there and hunt the crocodiles. Only, it's hard to kill a crocodile with just a spear gun and there were so many of them down there that a lot of these Navy guys just got chewed to pieces. So then they called in the National Guard and what they did was go around the city and lift up every manhole cover they could find and drop hand grenades down there.'

Jack and Marcie couldn't hold it in any longer. They both started laughing and Brenda realized that she'd been had. Jack and Marcie, who both knew Ned from school, were used to him doing things like that. He could tell the most outrageous stories with a straight face, just making them up as he went along; Seeing how far he could push it before people realized he was pulling their legs.

He was a real screwball that way, always goofing off, but the work that morning had gone a lot easier with him around, keeping things light. It hadn't taken him long to realize that Brenda was a sucker for a straight face and outrageous line. And she had immediately become his favorite mark, but she didn't really mind. He made her laugh. It was a big improvement over most of the guys she'd known who were always so concerned with coming on strong and cool to impress her. Ned's sense of humor impressed her much more than some guy cruising her like a macho jerk. She'd had more than her share of those.

She opened the door of the prefab storage shed and took out one of the straw archery butts. Earlier that morning, she'd slipped the new targets on over the straw butts and screwed the tripods together. So, now all she had to do was carry the targets onto the range. She picked up the target. It was awkward to carry, though not very heavy. She walked out to the range with it where she had already set up the tripods. She hung the target on the tripod and stepped back from it a pace, brushing a few stray pieces of straw off her shirt.

Suddenly, an arrow hissed right past her and thudded into the bullseye of the target, missing her by only about a foot. She gasped and turned to see Ned standing a short distance away, holding a bow and several arrows.

"Ta-da!" he sang out, giving her a little bow. She stared at him with disbelief.

"Are you crazy?"

"Want to see my trick shot?" he asked, grinning and fitting two arrows to the bow. "It's even better!"

"I don't believe you!"

He dropped his lip in a Bogart sneer.

"You know, you're beautiful when you're angry, sweetheart."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," he replied.

"Did you come here to help me or scare me to death?"