Rose and Mel squawk simultaneously. Then Mel is snatched out of the bushes, Rose along with her, losing her footing and falling to her knees. The hobbit door rattles as the thug tries to pull it open or push it out. The stick will break before the door, Rose knows. When Harley built a thing, it stayed built.

The thug yelps, then curses. Rose hopes he is right-handed, hopes he jammed the bloody stump of his severed finger into the metal as he tried to force the gate. Hopes the pain will slow him. It can’t slow him enough. Not long enough for Rose to find her feet, let alone walk.

Hands catch her. She is lifted up. Mel on one side, a boy on the other.

“Come on.”

“Don’t hurt her.”

“Get her on.”

“Hold on, Gigi.”

Chatter boxes Rose’s ears as she tries to help them and fails. Then she is astride the back of a bicycle. “Hold on to me,” the boy says. “Keep your feet up.”

Mel races away on her bike. The bike Rose is on lurches forward. Rose lifts her feet, legs out straight, and clings to the boy’s waist.

A loud cracking sound brings her head around. The knifeman hurtles out of the bushes, stops, turns his head in Rose’s direction. All he will see is the back of her disappearing into the moonlight on a bicycle. Rose thinks of E.T. silhouetted against the full moon on a bike, and wild irrepressible laughter bursts from her aching lungs.

From behind she hears: “Crazy bitch!”

CHAPTER 20

“You’re in an igloo?” Marion sounds annoyed, as if Rose is enough trouble without dragging housing into it.

Rose lounges back on a bed of animal “skins” of thick soft acrylic, a zebra and a tiger. A polyester wolf skin, complete with stuffed head, lies in front of a flap that, when open, shows a neatly trimmed yard.

“A teepee,” Rose corrects. It is a real teepee with poles and canvas walls. The walls are decorated with boyish paintings: stick-figure Indians, stick-figure buffalo, stick-figure cowboys on stick-figure horses. Rose loves it. She’s slept eleven hours straight and feels downright festive.

A cause for happiness.

“Mel’s pal Royal has it pitched in his backyard. He was careful to inform me that he personally was much too old for it. His little brother, a mere lad of ten, is now the chief of the neighborhood tribe. The brother is at camp for a couple of weeks. Mom and Dad took the opportunity for a grown-up getaway. Royal, fourteen and a rising freshman, was left to guard the home front under the watchful eyes, and deaf ears, of Grandma. I am the criminal in residence for the nonce.”