They were crouched on their knees at the edge of the bluff. As the girl rose Ryan held her arm with the back of his hand.

“Wait a minute. What do you do after you throw it?” He had taken his sneakers out of his back pockets and was putting them on now.

“I don’t know. Run, I guess. Don’t you run?”

“Where? You got to know where you’re going. You got to have a plan.”

“We’ll keep going around to the front.”

“To where?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just stick with me, Jackie.”

Jackie. Man, he started to think, what are you doing here? But Nancy was up, running crouched across the open lawn, and he was following her, running crouched because she was. It was dumb. There was no reason to hunch your shoulders. You walked in and walked out. Hunching your shoulders didn’t make it work better. You don’t hide hunching your shoulders.

Nancy stopped within twenty feet of the picture window, which would cost three hundred dollars to replace, and threw the rock in her left hand, throwing it like a right-handed man throwing left-handed. The rock fell short, landing in the shrubbery. “Damn!” Nancy said the one word clearly. She moved in closer, somewhat crouched, turning sideways and throwing in the same motion, and the picture window, a dull reflection in the night, exploded in a shower of glass. She was gone, somewhere around the left side of the house. Ryan raised the rock in his right hand shoulder-high; he started in set to throw as he would for a play at the plate. What the hell are you doing? he thought, and threw in a quick, short motion, not looking at the window, and heard the rock strike somewhere inside the house as he took off after the girl.

“Here!” A whisper hissed from the pines near the road.

She was out of breath, her shoulders moving as she breathed. As Ryan reached her she said, “Did you hear it?”

“Did I hear it? They heard it in Geneva.”

“Loud? Wow. Imagine a real grenade.”

“You know, you throw like a girl. It’s funny, I didn’t think you would.”

“Did any lights go on?” She was looking out through the branches, calming down now.

“I don’t see any. I guess you’re right, they’re at the club.”

She looked up at him. “Let’s do it where people are home.”

“You think that’d be fun, uh?”

“See their reaction.”

“Just stand around and watch.”

“I don’t know.” An irritable little edge in her voice. “Let’s pick the house first.”

The Pointe was old and overgrown with trees, a village of comfortable homes in the north woods, large homes set back from the elm trees that lined the beach drive, smaller but expensive homes on the winding lanes among dense pines and stands of birch. There were more houses than Ryan had pictured, dim shapes now in the tree darkness, soft lamplight showing windows and screened porches beyond well-groomed lawns. Here and there in driveways Ryan picked out the metal shine of automobiles, but there were no cars moving, no headlights creeping along the drive or coming suddenly through the trees. In his mind it seemed quieter than naturally quiet after the shattering sound of the window.

They followed the row of elms, drawn toward the house lights, Nancy leading, then quickly across the road to the pines that bordered one side of a two-story brick and frame Colonial.

“You like it?” Ryan asked.

“I don’t know.” She studied the house for a time. “Lights but no people.”

“They’re in back. In the kitchen. They’re having a glass of milk before they go to bed.”

“Let’s give them one anyway. For practice.”

She didn’t hesitate. She took off across the lawn on an angle that would take her within twenty feet of the house; she crossed the walk that led to the front door, stopped and turned to throw left-handed. In a natural forced-play-at-second position he threw hard sidearm and heard his window explode a half count behind Nancy’s: one-two, but almost as one sound. He followed her into the trees on the other side of the yard and they worked their way back to the road, crossing quickly to the elm shadows.

“There,” Ryan said. “Coming out the front door.”

They watched the man standing in the porch light, coming down to the walk and looking around, then going over to the two windows. Within one of the broken windows they could make out another figure, a woman.

“She’s telling him to come in the house,” Ryan said. “She’s saying come in, you don’t know who’s out there in the dark.”

“Just us chickens,” Nancy said. “I’d like to really hear what they’re saying. We’re too far.”

“He’s going in to call the cops now.”

“You think he will?”

“What would you do?”

“Yes, I suppose. Hey, what if we wait for the police car and when it comes-zap-zap.”

“What if we went and got a beer?”

“We have to get closer to one,” Nancy said. “Come on.”

She moved off again through the tree shadows with Ryan behind her, watching her legs and the ground, stopping close to her when she stopped, putting his hand on her shoulder and feeling her collarbone, frail beneath his fingers. She smelled good; not of perfume but maybe powder or soap. She smelled clean.

“There it is,” Nancy said. “Perfect.”

He followed her gaze across the road and the deep lawn to the new-looking, low-roofed house trimmed with grille work and bathed in a soft gray-pink spotlight rising out of the shrubbery. Dim lights showed in every room and on the screened porch that extended along the right side of the house, facing a stand of birch trees.

“A quiet party,” Nancy said. “A few friends over for a tightener after dinner.”

Ryan counted five on the porch. Three women. A man appeared from inside the house, coming out with a glass in each hand.

“Fresheners,” Nancy said. “Tighteners and fresheners. Sometimes drinkees or martin-eyes.”

“Duck,” Ryan said.

Headlights, turning onto the drive, swept the trees. Close to them, as the car hurried past, they saw the Sheriff’s Patrol insignia on the door. The car’s rear lights moved into the darkness and, a block from them, turned bright red.

“They’ll be there ten minutes,” Ryan said. “Then start prowling.”

“How do they expect to find anybody in a car.”

“They have to go through the motions.”

“Dumb official nothing.”

“What?”

“Listen, this time you go around to the back of the house and put one through the kitchen window,” Nancy said.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you get it?”

“You’ll be in the trees by the porch watching?”

“Very good.”

“We’ll only have about five minutes.”

“All we’ll need.”

“Wait a minute,” Ryan said. “I don’t have any more rocks.”

Nancy handed him one. “If you promise to pay me back.”

She moved off. Ryan watched the two red dots of light down the street as he crossed over. There were bushes here separating the houses, and a tall hedge. He moved along close to it, along the edge of the yard all the way to the house, then across the backyard, partly lit by the kitchen and breakfast room windows, to the side of the garage. If he ever ran into Leon Woody again, if Leon Woody ever got out of Milan and he ran into him, he’d say to Leon, “Hey, man, I got a new thing.” Leon Woody would say, “What’s that, man?” And he’d say, “Breaking windows, man. You go around at night breaking windows.” And Leon Woody would say, “Breaking windows. Uh-huh, yeah, that sounds pretty good, man.” For Christ sake, Ryan thought, and threw the rock through the window before he could think about it anymore.

He stepped back to the corner of the garage, partly behind it, and watched. When the man appeared in the kitchen-the man coming in and looking around and not knowing what to expect, and now the rest of them coming behind him-Ryan left. He went into the birch trees and worked his way up along the porch side of the house. He tried to pick out the girl among the trees, the shape of her in the darkness. He came up even with the porch. The girl wasn’t in the trees.