Shandra’s face was white and shocky, her eyes impossibly wild. And I realized: the stretcher. God only knew what psychic impressions were crashing into her mind, what pain and misery and death.

When I lifted her into my arms, she weighed nothing. "I’m here, it’s Lark, I--"

She bucked and her forehead clipped my jaw.

I staggered backward, still holding her. "Shandra!"

"They have--Dewitt." She shook her head, and strands of hair plastered her face like seaweed on a corpse. "They t-took him. Helicopter."

"Where? Is he--"

"Alive." Her teeth started chattering. "T-t-taking him. New. New Park City."

"Where? Where in New Park, Shandra?"

"D-don’t know." A red flush spread across her face. "I’ll recognize. When I see."

"You’re going to New Park?"

"We are," she said, and fainted.

A slapsounded behind me, then a faint muttering. Footsteps approaching …

I drew the orbs close and spun, with Shandra limp in my arms.

The bleak man from the marine patrol stepped through the clouds of dust. Except he didn’t look so bleak anymore: he looked disconnected, absent.

"What happened?" he said. "Is she okay?"

"She’s epileptic," I said. "She's having a seizure. I’ve got her."

"What happened?" he asked. "Is she okay?"

"Um," I said.

Behind him, the other four guys were milling around the courtyard. A stocky guy slapped himself in the face. Then looked at his palm. Then slapped himself in the face.

"What happened?" the bleak man said. "Is she okay?"

The dust swirled away and the moon showed through the clouds and I saw his pupils: dilated glossy narcotic black. I’m pretty much drug-free, myself--I find the possibility of being orbited by three hallucinating orbs deeply unsettling--but I’d spent half my youth in Dewitt’s house. Between him and his parents, I’d seen plenty, and these guys were, as Mrs. D would say, ‘baked as a bunt cake.’

I didn’t stand around wondering why. I didn't wonder about that rotting-seaweed stench, either. Maybe I should’ve. Maybe that would've saved lives.

But my mind screamed Get Dewitt! so loudly that I couldn’t hear anything else.

I carried Shandra through the courtyard. Onto the beach. Into the marine patrol’s Ribcraft inflatable. I lay her in back, as gently as I could, and headed for Portland.

Halfway there, a Coast Guard boat roared past, just a few minutes too late to catch me.

When I reached Portland, I set the Ribcraft adrift and dragged Shandra up a wooden ladder onto a dock down a Commercial Street alley with a few dumpsters and shabby shop-fronts. Then I took stock. My gear: Blue jeans, black shirt, damp boots. A hoodie printed with the faded words ‘I’m Good Now.’

And Shandra, moaning faintly as she clawed back into consciousness.

I couldn’t call the Rock, not with the sat phone busted. That didn’t matter. I needed to get to New Park, to wherever in New Park they were taking Dewitt.

Only Shandra knew the location, but she missed details sometimes. Hell, she missed days sometimes, she missed weeks and months. She lived in a world of nightmares and she couldn’t make it stop. She didn’t want to eavesdrop on your ugliest thoughts, but they didn’t ask her permission, they just shouted into her mind.

I’d promised myself years earlier that I’d never avoid Shandra's touch, that I'd never cross the street to keep away from her. I’m not saying that I’m never ashamed of myself. I’ve got all the ordinary male urges, and the idea of Shandra seeing my fantasies mortified me, sure. But she didn’t see only the worst of me, she also saw the good parts: my adequate decency, my average ability, my mediocre integrity.

Besides, I had no choice. I needed her to save Dewitt, so I carried her in my arms. She’d feel whatever she felt. The bigger question was, how could we get to New Park without money? Forget the plane. Train and bus took too long. We needed to drive--New Park City’s only five or six hours from Portland by car, at least in the middle of the night, without traffic.

Except we didn’t have a car, and only one solution occurred to me.

So I flattened a cardboard box behind one of the dumpsters for a floormat and sat Shandra down. Her empathy works through clothing--and sometimes from an inch away--but it’s most acute with contact. Any barrier would help.

"I’m stealing a car," I told her.

She stared at me, eyes hollow.

"I’m getting a car," I repeated. "Shandra. Can you hear me?"

"Lark," she whispered. "Don’t leave me."

"We need a car, I’ll be right back."

"Don’t leave me."

"Are you sure they’re taking Dewey to New Park?"

She nodded.

"I’ll be right back. Don’t--" I didn’t know what to say. "Just don’t …"

"Go crazier?" she said, faintly.

"Yeah," I said, touching her hand. "Stay exactly this crazy."

A tiny smile rose and broke on her face, then she lowered her head and hid behind her hair.