Another hand reached out and grabbed his shoulder. Myron brushed it off. Someone dived for his legs, wrapping Myron up by the ankles, attempting a tackle. Myron bent his knees. He used one hand for balance on the floor. With the other, he tucked his fingers down and delivered a palm strike to the man’s nose. The man let go of Myron’s legs. The music stopped now. Someone screamed. Bodies began to topple.

This was not good.

Confusion, chaos, and panic. In a crowded nightclub, those things are both enhanced and ridiculously contagious. Someone nearby gets jostled and panics. He throws a punch. People back up. Spectators who’d been enjoying the relative safety of that passive act realize that they are now in harm’s way. They begin to flee, crashing into others. Pandemonium.

Someone hit Myron in the back of the head. He spun. Someone hit him in the midsection. Myron’s hand instinctively whipped out and grabbed the man’s wrist. You can learn the best fighting techniques and be trained by the best, but there is no substitute for being born with amazing hand-eye coordination. As they used to say in his basketball days, “You can’t teach height.” You also can’t really teach coordination or athleticism or competitive instinct either, try as parents might.

So Myron Bolitar, the superior athlete, was able to snatch a wrist mid-blow. He pulled the man toward him and using that momentum, threw a forearm into the man’s face.

The man went down.

More screams now. More panic. Myron turned, and in the rush of people, he saw the Maybe-Kitty by the door. He started toward her, but she vanished behind an onslaught of bouncers, including two of the guys who’d given Myron a hard time on the way in. The bouncers—and there were a lot of them now—headed straight toward Myron.

Uh-oh.

“Whoa, fellas, slow down here.” Myron lifted his hands, showing that he had no intention of fighting them. As they drew closer, Myron kept his hands up. “Someone else started it.”

One tried to get him in a full nelson, an amateur move if ever there was one. Myron calmly slipped out of it and said, “It’s over, okay? It’s—”

Three more bouncers tackled him hard. Myron hit the floor with a thud. One of the guys from out front climbed on top of him. Someone else kicked Myron’s legs. The guy on top of him tried to put his bloated forearm on Myron’s throat. Myron ducked his chin, blocking it. The guy tried harder, moving his face close enough for Myron to smell the guy’s stale hot-dog breath. Another kick. The face came closer. Myron rolled hard, catching the guy’s face with his elbow. The man cursed and backed off.

As Myron started to rise, he felt something hard and metallic push against the bottom of his rib cage. He had a tenth of a second, maybe two, to wonder what it was. Then Myron’s heart exploded.

At least, that was what it felt like. It felt like something in his chest had just gone boom, like someone had placed live wires on every nerve ending, sending his parasympathetic system into total spasm. His legs turned to water. His arms dropped away, unable to offer up the least bit of resistance.

A stun gun.

Myron dropped like a fish on a dock. He looked up and saw Kleavage Kyle grinning down at him. Kyle released the trigger. The pain stopped, but only for a second. With his fellow bouncers surrounding him so no one in the club could see, Kyle dug the stun gun back into Myron’s lower rib cage and zapped him again. Myron’s scream was muffled by a hand closing over his mouth.

“Two million volts,” Kyle whispered.

Myron knew something about stun guns and Tasers. You are only supposed to hold the trigger for a few seconds, no more, so as to incapacitate but not seriously injure. But Kyle, maniacal smile on high, did not let up. He kept the trigger pressed down. The pain increased, became overwhelming. Myron’s whole body started to quake and buck. Kyle kept his finger on the trigger. Even one of the bouncers said, “Uh, Kyle?” But Kyle held on until Myron’s eyes rolled back and there was blackness.

6

What must have been seconds later, Myron felt someone pick him up and carry him fireman-style over a shoulder. His eyes remained closed, his body limp. He was on the cusp of unconsciousness, but he was still aware of where he was, what was happening to him. His nerve endings were shot. He felt exhausted and shaky. The man carrying him was big and muscular. He heard the club music start up again and a voice over the sound system shouted, “Okay, folks, the freak show is ovah! Let’s get back to the par-tay!”

Myron remained still, letting the man carry him. He didn’t resist. He used the time to regroup, recover, start to plan. A door opened and closed, smothering the music. Myron could feel the brighter light through his closed eyes.

The big man carrying him said, “We should just toss him outside now, right, Kyle? I think he’s had enough, don’t you?”

It was the same voice that said, “Uh, Kyle,” when Myron had been getting zapped. The voice had just a lilt of fear in it. Myron did not like that.

Kyle said, “Put him down, Brian.”

Brian did so with surprising gentleness. Lying on the cold floor, his eyes not yet opened, Myron did some quick calculating and knew what his next steps were: Keep your eyes closed, pretend you’ve totally blacked out—and then slowly start snaking your hand toward the BlackBerry device in your pocket.

Back in the nineties, when cell phones were just starting to become the norm, Myron and Win had developed a techno-savvy and occasionally life-saving mode of communication: When one or the other of them was in trouble (read: Myron), he would hit his speed-dial #1 button on his cell phone and the other (read: Win) would pick up, put the phone on mute, and listen in or rush to or at least help the other. At the time, fifteen years ago, this trick had been cutting edge; today it was about as cutting edge as a Betamax.

That meant, of course, taking it to the next level. Now, with modern breakthroughs, Myron and Win could have each other’s back in a much more efficient way. One of Win’s tech experts had enhanced their BlackBerrys so that they had a special two-way satellite radio that worked even in spots where there was no cell service, as well as both audio and visual recording devices, and a GPS tracker so that one knew exactly where the other was, within four feet, at any given moment—all of which could be activated anytime with the push of a button.

Ergo the snaking hand heading toward the BlackBerry in his pocket. With his eyes closed, he faked a groan so he could roll just enough to get his hand closer to the pocket. . . .

“Looking for this?”