No Axel or stinky pirates in sight. “Kel.”

Kel, just above me, squatted, too, looking in the glass. “Shit.” Then he opened the window.

“What are you doing?”

“Keep going. I’ll be right behind you before you touch the ground.” With lithe ease, he swung into the room.

William went white. Shook his head violently.

I caught the message. Don’t stop for us. Save your own damn necks.

Not that Kel listened. He never listened. He moved quickly to Serena and untied her hands, then turned toward William.

But before I could drop into the room as Kel had, Serena yanked off her gag. “Kellan! No! Take Rach and get out!”

It terrified me, hearing her fear, but before I could climb inside, the bedroom door slammed open.

I jerked back and nearly fell off the damn ledge.

Moe leveled his gun at Kellan. “Tie them back up.”

Kellan didn’t move. Nor did he look at me. But I could feel him, desperate for me to get out of sight.

“Tie them up now,” Moe said to Kel.

The voice was terrifying, the gun even more so, and I pressed back out of view, willing Kel not to do anything stupid, so he wouldn’t die right here.

“You deaf?” Moe yelled at Kellan. “I said tie them up.”

“No,” Kellan said.

I think I stopped breathing as I clung to the drainpipe, trying like hell to vanish into thin air.

If I could somehow shimmy down, then find a way to rescue them all-

With what? My X-ray vision?

Oh God. I was panting for air, and it was so loud, I was shocked Moe hadn’t stepped to the window to investigate. Any minute now I would hyperventilate and pass out.

And fall to my death.

No. Not going to fail Kellan. Omigod, Kellan, who was right this very second staring down the wrong end of a very long, very-powerful looking barrel.

What if they killed him?

I actually had to stop and hold still for a second at this thought: my life without Kellan in it. It was too dark, too overwhelming, too lonely, and I couldn’t even contemplate it.

He wasn’t going to die.

No one was.

Because I was going to get down.

That’s right. I was going to get down, and then I’d find my own weapon and somehow save the day. Me, a muralist, a pacifist, a woman who hated conflict. I was going to do this one thing, and I was going to do it one step at a time and not think about it too hard.

First, down the drainpipe.

Easier said than done in a state of near-panic. Hand over hand…Finally I managed to get within five feet of the ground, and feeling triumphant, I glanced down.

And gasped in new terror.

Because Curly stood there, gun pointed directly at me.

“Hands up,” he said, with a nasty smile revealing his distaste of daily hygiene.

I went from icy fear to furious anger. Gun or no gun, I was getting damn tired of the fear. In fact, I wasn’t going to be afraid again. Unless I saw a spider. “I can’t let go,” I said, gripping the drainpipe.

“No problem.” He took aim. “I can shoot you from right here.”

Ah hell. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe I can let go.”

“Atta girl.”

With nothing else up my sleeve, I had little choice. I began to slither down the pipe, heart pounding in my throat. “Shooting me would be a bad idea,” I said, just in case he got trigger-happy.

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’ve hidden the laptop.”

He just looked at me.

“You need it to do the swap of the abilities,” I reminded him.

“No problem.” Curly smiled evilly. “Because you’re going to tell me all about where you hid it.” His fist closed at my nape, and squeezed. “Start talking.”

“Um.”

“Faster, hot stuff.” His breath was rank enough to nearly knock me out. To add insult, he ran the gun up my ribs, over the side of my breast.

I’ll never know where the move came from-probably from watching too many Jackie Chan movies-but I kicked back and nailed him in the knee.

“Fuck!” He bent, and somehow I managed to elbow him in the throat.

He let out a gargling sound and hit the ground.

Okay, so far so good. I whirled to run, but he recovered quickly, damn pirate, and wrapped his arms around my legs.

Then tugged.

Hard.

And down over the top of him I went. He smelled like week-old garbage, but his body was whipcord hard and sinewy, which did not bode well for me. While I was still in shock, he rolled me beneath him and grinned down at me.

I kneed him in the balls, hard enough to make him pale, but not hard enough to incapacitate him.

Bad idea, Rach.

We rolled around for a minute, me trying to get loose, him trying to cop a feel and control me at the same time, but neither of us getting much of what we wanted.

Finally I crawled free-

Only to feel his gun jam into my back.

“Now, I’ve gotcha,” he said.

Chapter 22

Kellan’s view of things

You know what would be nice? If I could just wake up from this nightmare. Only unfortunately, I’m not dreaming. I really am standing with my hands up, facing a thug who thinks he’s a pirate from an alternate universe.

And oh yeah, he has a helluva gun.

All this, with Rach on the drainpipe outside the window. Please let her still be safe on the drainpipe outside the window.

“Down,” the pirate that Rach had nicknamed Moe said to me.

I hoped like hell Rach was sliding down that drainpipe and running for her life, and not planning on doing something stupid, like rescuing me.

Moe pointed his gun to the floor impatiently. “I said down, asshole!”

Rachel, walk away. Do not take this as a challenge to come save my hide.

But I could think it all I wanted. I had no telepathy skills, and in any case, Rachel didn’t have such great listening skills. She did what she wanted, when she wanted, which truthfully, was part of what made me love her so damn much.

“Are you deaf? Get down!”

I hesitated, thinking if he just came even a little bit closer, I could wring his neck, even if said neck was five times thicker than mine. See, getting superpowers had to be good for something.

Tired of me, he turned and fired off a round about a foot from William’s head, reminding me that he was dead serious.

Serena screamed as down I went, first to my knees, then to my hands, thanks to a vicious jab in my ribs from Curly.

“Flat on your face, asshole.”

Nice new nickname.

“Now!”

So with another bone-crunching jab to yet a different rib, I kissed the ground, thinking maybe I should just be thankful he was more fond of jabbing at me than actually shooting me. Bruises were a helluva lot easier to recover from than gaping holes in the flesh.

As my cheek pressed into the floor, dust tickled my nose. Seemed Marilee was an even worse maid than a cook, and that was saying something. I sneezed.

Moe leaned down and peered into my watering eyes. “Shut up.”

In answer, I sneezed again.

“I mean it. Shut up.”

Pissed off, I lay there, inhaling dust, trying not to sneeze, and contemplated my choices.

And it occurred to me for not the first time that the extra strength wasn’t nearly as convenient as Rach’s new vision, or, say, the ability to read the minds of these jerks. Unable to hold it back, I sneezed again, and a new pain radiated through my head. As my vision faded to black, I had to sigh. Yeah. Definitely, I’d rather have had a mind-reading ability, as then I’d have been able to anticipate that blow to the head…

I woke up with a headache from hell and the taste of blood in my mouth. But I had all my teeth and appeared to have all of the rest of me as well, though every single inch hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

I was sitting, my back to a beam in the center of the room.

Moe was tying me up, my hands behind me, my feet straight out in front of me. He yanked the ropes far tighter than he needed to, cutting into my skin. When I winced, he slid his eyes to mine and made sure to back up to a safe distance, holding his gun on me. “I did you a favor tying you up in front of the chick.” He jerked his head toward Serena. “You can see right through her clothes, right?” He chortled. “Lucky dog. Enjoy it, because soon we’re going to drag you out to the woods and do the swap, and then I’ll get to look through her clothes all I want.”

His thinking I had Rach’s ability was probably the only thing that had kept him from seriously incapacitating me. If he’d known I had the strength, he’d have had to be much more thorough in hurting me so that I couldn’t hurt him back.

I glanced at Serena, still tied to her chair. She’d been crying, and she had a bloody lip. But as she glanced at the rope they were using on me, her lips quirked with genuine wry humor. We both knew I could break the rope with one flex of a muscle.

William was tied at her back, facing away from me, and he murmured something to her, and she nodded.

Moe moved to a corner of the room, sitting on the bed to talk into a radio he held.

Serena met my gaze. “It’s nearly sunrise,” she said softly.

The dot on Gertrude’s calendar weighed heavily on my mind, as did the gut-tightening fear over Rachel and where she was right at this moment. “What happens at sunrise?”

“The reverse swap. We need the laptop,” she whispered. “It puts us in control. And-”

“Jesus. There’s more?”

“It affords us a certain protection. Without it…things could go bad.”

As opposed to how great things were now, I supposed. “Where is it?”

“I left it in the kitchen, which is where they nabbed us. It’s in the pantry. I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her eyes filling. “I’m so sorry this is happening to you and Rachel.”