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coming to see you. Isn t that enough for one evening? You know that your poor old Uncle Jake gets
worn out easy. I ll run away a lot better if I do it on a good night s sleep. Huddy gave me two days,
remember. I have plenty of time.
Okay, she said worriedly, but don t dally around in the morning.
Me, a dallier? He smiled to the empty room. I ll leave here first thing tomorrow morning. I ll be up
with the sun like usual and I ll leave. But a good night s sleep is important.
Alright, Uncle Jake. I can t make you leave now. But you make sure you get away before they come
back to check on you.
Don t worry. Her thoughts were already fading. I will. I will....
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There was only a dull, empty echo of vanished consciousness in Amanda s mind, like the wind that
sweeps under the door of a tightly closed closet. She knew he was asleep.
Pushing away from the window she turned the wheelchair and rolled over to the bed. Using the armrests
for support she lifted her upper body onto the mattress, then picked up her legs and pushed them under
the covers. She snuggled down into the warm bed.
Worried, she was so terribly worried for him. She d read the histories of less than ethical medical
experiments. That s surely what this man Huddy wanted to do to her beloved Uncle Jake. Experiment on
him. Benignly if possible and otherwise if not. He d want to find out how Uncle Jake made dirt and bottle
caps slipt.
She d worry all night long, until she knew he was safely out of the little house in California. In a way it
might all be for the best, though she couldn t look at it as lightly as her Uncle did. It would be so good to
see him again. He was such a warm, easygoing person, a second father really. They had something in
common no other two people in the world could have, something only they could share.
No, she wouldn t stand for anybody mistreating her Uncle Jake. Everything was going to be alright,
though. All he had to do was slip away without being seen. He could make this visit a long one, maybe.
She knew that her mom and dad loved Uncle Jake almost as much as she did. They d be overjoyed to
have him stay. There was plenty of room in the house. She wouldn t worry about him because he
wouldn t be living alone. It wasn t good for him to be by himself, the Huddys of the world
notwithstanding.
Maybe her mom and dad could even persuade him to stay with them permanently, here in Port Lavaca.
They d tried to do that before. Maybe now he d listen. His heart wasn t getting any better. Yes,
everything might turn out for the good.
She turned on the pillow, smiling to herself now. She felt much better knowing that he was coming to
her. As she relaxed she thought about what she hadn t told him.
It was something she d come to worry about as a result of all her readings and researches. She d never
managed to learn what gave Uncle Jake the ability to make things slipt or what it might mean. Of course,
no one else knew about such things either.
The worry was that although he d only made little things slipt, like bottle caps and dirt, he might be able
to make other things slipt if he was pushed hard. She didn t worry about what might happen to Uncle
Jake if those circumstances ever arose.
She worried about what Uncle Jake might do to someone else.
The ambulance moved silently through the near-deserted neighborhood. Most of the children were away
at morning sessions. Those parents who held jobs had been working at them for hours. Only a few
housewives remained to stare curiously at the dimly marked old ambulance as it squeaked to a halt next
to the barrier at the far end of the road. It backed up carefully and turned around to point back toward
the city.
One man, tall and clad all in white, waited patiently behind the wheel. Two others emerged from a side
door and started up the narrow trail leading to the house at the end of the dirt path.
This was better than stealing around in the middle of the night, Huddy thought. Much better. Leave it to
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Ruth to think up a solution to an awkward problem. Her mind was as devious as her thighs.
Remember, Drew, he told his subordinate quietly, I want as little noise and activity as possible. This
man has a bad heart and he s no good to us dead. That s ostensibly why the ambulance is taking him
in. He nodded toward the bigger man s shirt pocket. The dosage should be just right. I made sure the
doctor measured it out carefully.
Drew grinned, tapped the pocket where the loaded hypodermic waited. Old man shouldn t give us any
trouble, sir.
Huddy nodded, turning his attention back to the house they were approaching. He didn t like Drew
much. Drew was dumber than he looked: a crude, ignorant, brutish speciman. Unfortunately, the primitive
qualities of such types were sometimes required.
I m still hoping none of this will be necessary and that he ll agree to come with us voluntarily. Huddy
self-consciously straightened his white physician s smock, If not, I ll engage him in conversation while
you slip around behind him and put him out.
What about finding a vein that way, Mr. Huddy? Wearing this ice cream suit doesn t make me a
paramedic.
You forgot, said Huddy irritably. The hypo s loaded with a general sedative. You don t need to inject
a vein. Just jab it into a muscular area.
Didn t look like the old bastard had any muscular areas. Skinny old dude. If you can get him to stand
up while you re talking to him I ll try hitting him in the butt. That way I can get an arm around him in case
he tries struggling or crying out.
Sounds like a good plan. Huddy found the mental image distasteful. It was one thing to arrange a
covert operation to clean up an inanimate chemical dump, quite another to take away a human being
against his will. Go on, say the word, he ordered himself. Kidnapping. Kid-nap-ping. There, that wasn t
so difficult, was it?
Not that he d be that blunt with Pickett. There were a host of excuses he could use on Pickett if the old
man required explanations. Necessary for his health, and so forth. Personally he would have prefered to
be directing this operation from a distance, just as he had with the dump clean-up. Unfortunately, he
couldn t trust anyone else to do this properly. Drew and Idanha were directly responsible to him, and he
had to be along to make certain everything went precisely as planned. This wasn t like shipping barrels of
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