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trailer steps at a run and the sound of the front door—right over my head—bursting open as a heavy body hurls itself against it!

CHAPTER EIGHT
Got Him
    “T he old man first!” A thin reedy voice with an English accent.
    “Got him.” The second male voice is one that I haven’t heard before. Unlike Darby Field, this man has a nasal South Boston accent.
    “Where’s the kid?” A woman’s voice with the kind of hoarseness in it that comes from smoking too many cigarettes.
    Three of them. I start trying to struggle out from under the board that has me trapped. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I have to do something. Run for help, try to fight them.
    Suddenly two loud thumps come from right over my head. Spaced just right so there is no doubt what they mean. Grampa Peter must havebeen awake and aware of what I was doing all the while I was creeping around and crawling under the house. Those stomps on the floor are his signal to me.
    Stay where you are!
    I freeze in place, but I keep listening.
    “Where’s your grandson?”
    No answer, of course.
    “I know how to make him talk,” South Boston growls.
    There’s the sound of a scuffle, a thud, a groan, a body falling to the floor.
    “Unh, unh, unh…you old…unh, unh.”
    It’s not Grampa Peter who’s rolling on the floor in pain, but South Boston. The man obviously never learned that it isn’t wise to try to muscle a Marine—even one who’s in his late sixties.
    The woman with the hoarse voice is laughing. “Come on, Tippy. Get up. This can’t be the first time you got kicked in the groin.”
    There’s the sound of furniture being pushed aside, a man pulling himself to his feet.
    I tense up, afraid of what he’s going to do now to Grampa Peter.
    “I’m gonna break your—,” the man called Tippy begins to growl.
    But Darby Field’s voice cuts in. “Tip, you can forget about physical persuasion. Now back off like a good lad. And you, sir, if you try anything like that again, I shall put a twenty-two-caliber slug into your knee. Sit down. Excellent. Now Louise is going to do a bit of scouting around to see if she can locate your beanpole of a grandson.”
    Feet walking across the floor, the door opening and closing, the wide beam of a heavy-duty flashlight visible through the cracks in the apron that goes around the base of the trailer.
    I slowly pull my knees up to my chest. I hope I can’t be seen under here. I put my hand over the luminous dial of my watch. I don’t want to risk the chance that its glow will give me away. I also look down at the ground. Eyes reflect back the beam of a light. Also there’s this sort of sixth sense that all people have, the feeling you get when someone is looking at you. If you don’t believe me, try staring hard at someone’s back and see if they don’t turn around. Or try looking at the face of the driver of a car coming at you in the opposite lane. Nine times out of ten that driver will make eye contact back.
    Louise—she must have been the woman with the Yankees cap and long brown braidin Field’s truck—is making her way around the trailer slowly, methodically. The way she’s moving, though, gives me hope. Her steps are tentative. She’s bumping against things, almost falling, and catching herself. She’s obviously one of those city people who is not used to such dark. The strong scent of her perfume, which I could smell even through the floor of the trailer, is getting closer. I sense her crouching at the opening under the trailer.

    “Huuuh,” she mutters to herself as her beam of light reflects off the web of my orb weaver friend, “spiders.” The light is directed away, and her feet move off.
    “Thank you,” I mouth to the spider, who has just repaid my respect by protecting me.

CHAPTER NINE
Looking
    “N o sign of the boy,” Louise says. She’s back in the house with the others.
    “And a great help you were,” Field says in a sarcastic voice.
    “Hey, I’m a soundperson, not