The two men got the message. They brought Fierenzo to a halt; and then, even as Nose hauled the detective out of his sag, Curly let go entirely and took off at a dead run down the sidewalk, zigzagging like a soldier crossing an enemy field of fire. Nose swiveled Fierenzo around again, this time to face the street, and shifted to a one-armed hold beneath his rib cage. His other hand snaked around to join it, and for a moment he seemed to be fiddling with something just beneath Fierenzo's sternum. His hands separated; and Fierenzo winced as a gleaming, short-bladed knife flashed into view, clutched in Nose's right hand. It waved in front of his eyes a moment, a silent warning to behave himself, then came to rest against his throat. "Show yourself or the cop dies!" he shouted past Fierenzo's ear.

The only answer was another crack of exploding sidewalk, this one a yard to their right, followed by another the same distance to their left. Fierenzo strained his eyes against the glare of the streetlight and the headlights of the oblivious drivers zooming past, trying to spot the shooter.

But there were no figures moving around in the shadows of the buildings across the street, and no obvious silhouettes in any of the windows. Another chunk of pavement disintegrated to their right without even a hint of a muzzle flash that he could see.

Nose apparently couldn't find the shooter, either. He snarled something under his breath and again shifted grip, this time grabbing a handful of Fierenzo's hair and yanking his head up and back to expose his throat more conveniently to the knife. "Last chance!" he shouted. He hauled Fierenzo backward, and there was a metallic rustle as he brushed up against the playground fence. "Show yourself!"

Fierenzo stiffened. With his face pointed upward at this new angle he couldn't see what, if anything, was going on with the shooter across the street.

But he was in perfect position to see the shadowy figure that glided silently across the night sky above the glare of the streetlights to his right, dropping toward the playground behind him.

He barely had time to wonder whether he had imagined it when a voice came suddenly from across the street. "All right!" it called. "I'm here! Don't hurt him!"

"There you are," Nose muttered. Taking a deep breath, he screamed.

The earlier screams, aimed at Fierenzo from six feet away, had been bad enough. This one, bellowed practically in his ear, was a hundred times worse. His whole body stiffened and then turned to jelly, sagging him toward the ground in spite of the grip on his hair. Whereas before the world had seemed to twist around him, now it was as if he no longer had any direction at all. His chest and gut were a whirlpool of agony as his internal organs seemed to grate violently against each other. He wanted desperately to be sick but his stomach muscles couldn't even organize themselves enough to vomit.

The scream cut off into a fainter echo. At first he thought it was just a trick of his ears or mind as they vibrated with an afterimage of the sound. But then the fainter scream came again, and he realized that it was coming from Curly, somewhere down the street. He hadn't run off in panic, as Fierenzo had thought, but had merely moved away to deprive their attacker of the advantages of a bunched target.

Curly screamed again, too far away for Fierenzo to feel any fresh effects from the noise; and as some of the other agony began to subside he became aware of a duller secondary pain coming from the top of his head. Nose was still holding him mostly upright by his hair, the knife still resting against his neck, using him as a human shield against the silent gun across the street.

And as Curly's screams continued and Fierenzo's brain started sluggishly working again, he realized that the attacker's gun had indeed gone completely silent. Twisting his neck, he got one eye turned far enough to look toward the street.

There, on one of the twenty-story buildings on the far side of the pavement, was a sight that a week ago would have made his jaw drop all the way to the ground. Halfway up the side, midway between two of the darkened windows, a human figure was pressed against the sheer wall, arms and legs spread-eagled as if he'd been shot out of a cannon and slammed bodily into the brickwork. There was no sign of ropes or a platform, no indication even of any climbing hooks.

The scream came again; and as the sound echoed off the building, he saw the figure's right foot twitch loose from the wall as if his magic glue had suddenly evaporated. He scrabbled frantically for a grip, sliding a couple of feet down the side before he could catch himself again. Clearly, the screams were having the same debilitating effect on him that they'd had on Fierenzo.

Just as clearly, he was hanging on for dear life. Curly gave another scream, a short one this time, and the human fly slid another foot downward.

Fierenzo felt his jaw tighten as he finally caught on to the strategy. By moderating the length of their scream attacks, his captors were trying to bring the attacker down in a controlled fashion; not hard enough to drop him ten stories to his death, but also not giving him a chance to fight back.

Only they didn't know about the other man, the one who had glided over their heads during the noisy attack on the sidewalk an eternity of pain ago. The man who might at this very moment be moving stealthily up behind him and his captor.

The only problem was, the way things stood right now there was precious little he or anyone else could do from back there without putting Fierenzo's life at risk. The chain-link fence effectively blocked any way of getting to Nose's knife hand, and Nose himself showed no sign of letting down his guard any time soon.

Of course, for all he knew the stalker might be focused exclusively on rescuing the figure being forced down the building across the street. He might not care at all whether or not a police detective ended the evening with his throat still intact.

It was Fierenzo's job to make sure he had that option.

"Let me go," he gasped, putting all the agony and fear into his voice that he could. It didn't take much effort. "Please. You've got him—he can't do anything to you anymore. Please—my stomach—

I'm going to be sick—"

"Oh, for—" Lifting the knife away from Fierenzo's throat, Nose let go of his hair and disgustedly shoved him away to sprawl onto the sidewalk. Fierenzo tried to catch himself, but his disobedient muscles weren't up to the task, and a chorus line of stars flashed across his vision as the side of his head slammed into the cold concrete. Stifling a groan, he flopped over onto his back to look up at Nose. The other looked back for a moment, his face expressionless, then shifted his attention back to the building across the street. From down the sidewalk, Curly gave another of his short screams, rattling Fierenzo's ears still further.

And as the two of them concentrated on bringing down their opponent, they completely missed the giant Lincoln Log that came swinging up out of the darkness of the school ground to land across the top of the chain-link fence.

The figure who ran up the makeshift ramp was nearly to the top when the rattle of the metal rings finally woke Nose to his danger. He spun around, searching for the source of the noise, his knife arcing up into guard position. But he was too late. Even as he spotted the log and looked up, the newcomer had reached the top and taken off upward in a high, arching leap. Nose spun around to follow his motion, knife held high, his mouth opening for another scream.

He never got it out. As the newcomer reached the top of his arc there was a sound like a guitar string being plucked, and something gripped in his left hand sent a slender line of white shooting into Nose's chest.