Jody used one strip to dry off the area; then laid another strip half in and half out of the tank. She used the burning strip to ignite the one in the tank, dropped it, and ran into the woods, away from the trailer. In all her years of movie watching, she'd seen a lot of cars and trucks blow up. But those were rigged to blow with carefully placed explosives, not a full tank of gasoline. She had no idea how big, how loud, or how destructive the blast would be.

It occurred to her to put her hands over her ears as she ran.

Only a minute or so passed when she heard the muffled timpani boom of the blast, followed by the louder rending of metal and the deafening explosion of the tires. A heartbeat later she was hit by the concussive heat wave which rolled from the blast. Jody felt the intense heat through her wet blouse and against her scalp. But she forgot about the heat as hot shards of metal rained down, along with particles of glass. She thought of the burning hail from The Ten Commandments, how when she saw the movie she remembered thinking there was no way to protect yourself from that. She dropped to the ground and covered her head with her arms, bent her chest to her knees. A large piece of fender tore through the canopy of trees and slammed to the earth just inches from her foot and she jumped.

She swung toward a tree and hugged it, kneeling, thinking that the branches might offer some protection against the larger chunks of the trailer. She held the tree tightly, sobbing again, as though all the courage had been drained out of her. She remained there even after the downpour had stopped. Her thighs were shaking wildly and she couldn't stand. After a moment, she couldn't even hold the tree anymore.

Letting go, Jody walked for a while. She was exhausted and lost and decided to rest. Though the soft, green grass looked inviting, she pulled herself up into a tree. Cradling herself in two closely spaced branches, she put her head on one of the branches and shut her eyes.

They left me to die, she thought. They killed others. What gives them the right?

The sobs came less frequently. The fear didn't go away. But along with a realization of how vulnerable she'd been was a sense of the strength she'd managed to find as well.

I didn't let them kill me, she told herself.

She saw Karin's face in her memory, vivid and cold. She hated it, hated how smug and confident the woman had been. Half of Jody wanted to let the monster know that they had nearly taken her life but not her spirit.

The other half of Jody wanted to sleep. Within a few minutes the sleep-half had won, though not without a struggle.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Thursday, 6:40 A.M.,

Quantico, Virginia