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toward the sound as if I could see through walls. It sounded like one of the decorative flower pots my mother kept on the front porch.
    “I thought your folks were gone,” Bobby hissed, his voice now barely above a whisper. He was already rising from the bed, searching for the shoes he’d had time to kick off, unlike me who’d been totally ambushed by the sunrise.
    “They are. They have to be … ” because no way would they risk countering their Botox treatments—their faces might crack. “Let’s check it out.” I was flooded with purpose. “Maybe it’s a burglar and we can have some fun.”
    Bobby looked at me like I’d lost my mind, but I was getting used to that.
    “Come on ,” I insisted.
    I was out of the room and halfway down the stairs before he could protest, not that it would have done him any good.
    “I don’t hear anything now,” Bobby whispered.
    Neither did I, unless I counted the creaking of the staircase close behind me. “Keep toward the railing and walk on the blades of your feet,” I instructed him.
    “You’ve done this before?”
    I refused to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me. Besides, if “this” meant catching burglars in the act, the answer was no. If it meant sneaking out … “The sound came from around front,” I said instead. “We’ll go out the back door and circle around behind them.”
    “What if they’re coming in one way while we’re going out the other?”
    “Jeez, Bobby. First you think no one’s here, now you’re afraid we’ll miss them. Make up your mind.”
    I stopped Bobby’s eye roll with a light elbow to the gut, causing him to “oof.”
    “Follow me,” I ordered.
    I led him through the kitchen, all silent and pristine, and put my ear to the back door. Nothing. Or maybe a little wind and some rustling leaves, but nothing special.
    “You ready?” I asked, feeling him move up behind me.
    “Go.”
    I turned the lock, threw the door open, and bolted through it, a reprise of the Mission Impossible theme song running through my head.
    Pain registered before the pressure. Something grabbed my arm and twisted. Blunt force smashed me up against the wall of the house, my cheek scraping on the fake Tudor stucco.
    “Ouch!” I yelled.
    “Hey, let—” Bobby’s cry was cut off by the thump of more flesh on stucco.
    The smell of something really foul, like beef jerky and cheap beer, nearly made me gag.
    “Shut up,” a voice ordered, low and mannish and the source of those fumes. “Mellisande wants to talk to you two.”
    “Who?” I asked.
    Bobby moaned.
    The owner of the jerky breath wrenched my arms up and my shoulders shrieked in pain as my blades tried to meet in the middle of my back. Something was slipped around my wrists and pulled tight before I could even process it enough to react. Only once my hands were trapped did the weight against my back ease.
    I whirled around to face Chickzilla—the same bulgy bimbo I’d seen lugging the bags with Rick Lopez last night. Bobby was getting pinned and zip-tied by some thug built like a hydrant—low to the ground and rock-solid—with scary amounts of hair bursting out of the collar of his wife-beater T-shirt.
    Larry and another thug came running from around the front of the house.
    “Piece of cake,” Chickzilla announced.
    “Oh, man, I missed all the action,” Larry protested.
    “Later. You have all eternity,” the Chick said with a twist of her lips, like maybe she didn’t.
    She did, however, have the joy of manhandling me toward some waiting cars, one the sedan from the strip mall and the other a matte green muscle car … with a nearly caved in wheel well and a long scrape along the side. It was the last thing I remembered seeing before waking in my coffin.
    I stopped short and the Chick crashed into me, almost knocking me to the ground.
    “That car,” I said, ignoring her attempt to budge me again. “You’re the reason I’m dead!”
    A blow fell right between my poor