Abby put her phone away.

     "That was Dad," she said. "He should be here any second."

     "Thank God."

     One of the four men from "the woods" smacked his baseball bat-sized branch at one of the windows of the car. It was enough to smash the window into a spider web pattern. One more swing of the branch, and the window would surely shatter.

     Cathy reached into her purse to wrap her hand around a palm-sized canister of mace. First person to stick his head into the car was to going to get a spritz right in the eye.   

​     Alison reached into ​her purse to wrap her fingers around the pistol she'd carried with her since the last time her family's world had been violently rattled the year before. She intended to put a bullet in the forehead of the first threatening face she saw.

​     Abby slipped on a ring her father had given her the year before after Silveria had shredded into toothpicks the house Abby'd raised her children in. 

​     "It's a laser like nothing you've ever seen before," Gramps told her as he put the ring in her hand. "It will cut through anything. Don't use it until you absolutely feel it's necessary to save the lives of either you or the children, but, if that happens, slip it on, aim it at whatever or whoever it is you want to slice through, then give a mental command. The ring will take it from there."

​     If she had any reason at all to think that these people meant any harm to either her or any of her children, Abby intended to use the ring her father had given her to slice them all in half.

​     Skip carried absolutely nothing to defend himself with. He barely knew how to throw a punch. He felt so frightened he thought he might lose his Quad.

​     The forest man swung his bat/branch again, and this time the car window shattered to pieces.

​                                                    CONTINUE