"Did anybody follow you?" No. At least, not that I noticed." Things have gotten really bad since that night. Sara's hiding out." Yeah. I was just at h...r place." Look –" She looked at me again and sighed. "Sara is with Madeline, staying at The Independence Hotel. Do you know where that is?"I nodded. Everyone in Boston knew the Independence, an old jail turned luxury hotel. I knew it better than many others, at least among we normal folk who could never afford to stay there. I'd sauntered through. If I neglected my studies, mom would sit me down and remind me of my responsibilities. If I did not have time to prepare supper, she would order something delivered for the two of us. Often, mom would return home from the bank exhausted and a little cranky - and I learnt how to manage her on those occasions. Or I wanted a cool new thing all my friends are buying, often with their own money from working part time jobs, and mom could not afford it so we would argue. Mom spent one weekend day a. They were sharing a cup of sorrow and a bottle of wine.I went upstairs to get comfortable and got an idea. I went downstairs and took Keri and Sarah by the hand and led them down stairs to the basement and had them sit in the pit that looked out through the underwater window into the pool.“Mick, what are we doing down here?”“I thought that you might want to watch a little porn and cheer up.”“Porn? Really? And what are we going to watch it on there is not TV down here?”“Just sit here and. Well, we have the living proof! Swift Rat and a couple of his scouting pupils went to make a regularly scheduled inspection of Landing Site #1 and ran head on into the pirates. They barely got away, but one of the two boys was captured by the pirates, so we knew that they would soon know how to find us.We were almost certain to be attacked, and we were anxious to rescue the boy before he was killed. Swift Rat and his remaining pupil had raced to our town to report the encounter so that we would.