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privateer must have read her body language just as Torrent had because he raised the machete. “No, Teach. Don’t think about it.” His voice wasn’t much above a whisper.
    “What do you want?” Alyssa hissed, dropping to her knees to check on the fallen boy. She felt for his pulse, and must have found him still alive, for she ran her hand over his face, pushing his hair back. “Josh,” she whispered to the boy. “Wake up.”
    “Don’t bother,” the privateer with the pistol said. He was clearly the leader. “He won’t wake up for a while.” He snickered. “These LokShoks are the latest and greatest that the Leaguers have come up with. And we have them.”
    Hidden from view by the bullet-ridden column, Torrent assessed the best means to approach the situation. He’d have to move fast. The LokShok needed five minutes to recharge, half the time of its predecessor. He wasn’t sure if the Leaguers had told the privateers that.
    Alyssa rose from her kneeling position next to the boy and planted her hands on her hips. “What do you want with us? We wouldn’t get you much for ransom. We’re poor citizens. There are families who can give you much more money than we could.”
    “Ransom?” The head privateer scoffed. “Who said anything about ransom?”
    Torrent took the opportunity to move forward while Alyssa’s questions and their answers kept all of them occupied.
    “Then why?” Alyssa’s voice was loud and indignant.
    “Keep it down. It’s not like anyone’s going to come to your aid. Look around you. This street is still uninhabited. It hasn’t been rezoned for habitation yet.”
    “Someone would hear me scream,” Alyssa announced.
    “Dead people don’t scream.” The pistol moved from being aimed at her chest to her head.
    Torrent groaned inwardly. She was more brave than smart at times. He couldn’t waste any more time.

Chapter Nine
    S urely the privateer wouldn’t shoot her, would he? Alyssa’s heartbeat was so strong and loud she thought it would drown out the privateer’s words. He leered at her, his hair scruffy and long, in a ponytail that wasn’t much thicker than the tails of the rats that overran their building. They were the only creatures that fared well in the new Texas, the new Houston. His goatee was hit or miss, the hair growth scant, and emphasized a jagged white scar that crossed his chin at a diagonal.
    Beady eyes studied her, dark brows drawn in a vee. “You have two choices. Unconscious and painful, conscious and pain-free. Relatively.”
    His men snickered at the word relatively .
    Alyssa looked at the girls. Marie and Michelle, twin sixteen-year-olds, Hailey, their seventeen-year-old neighbor, and her now unconscious brother, Peter. She couldn’t risk their getting hurt. But what if the fate that awaited them was worse? Could it be?
    While she measured her options, something dark, a silhouette, crossed behind the privateers. Alyssa fought the urge to look at the shadow. It couldn’t be a privateer; he’d be out in the open, with them, not lurking in shadows.
    Was it a Leaguer? They worked with the privateers, not against them. They’d have no reason to hide, either.
    She looked down at her feet to keep the privateers from noticing her curiosity.
    A grunt made her look up. One of the privateers was on the ground. It was the one with the pistol, the leader.
    He was clutching his stomach, his face a mask of pain. Blood gurgled out of his mouth.
    Michelle started to scream. Alyssa reached for her, held her close. Marie’s scream echoed, bouncing off the buildings.
    One of the remaining privateers looked wide-eyed at his leader. On the ground, the former leader’s limbs jerked twice, then stopped.
    Alyssa gasped as she recognized the form attacking the second privateer, the one with the machete. It was the stranger who’d come to their home looking for Guillermo, the man she’d found on the rooftop.
    “You.” The word escaped her.
    The stranger cast her a