That was a first. I asked around, but no one had seen him since Friday afternoon. I assumed he might not be feeling well, so didn’t think about it a...fterwards. That lasted until noon hour when Marcus Conradi and Mr. Pankhurst, the college counselor approached me.“Joel, I had a call from Mrs. Payne about Tory,” Marcus said solemnly. “It seems he was attacked and beaten very badly over the weekend. He’s in the hospital. He’s got some cracked ribs, a ruptured spleen and a concussion. He hasn’t been. We've only got seconds left before we're in position and I want to be ready. It's going to be your job to stop the forward momentum of the Windrunner or we'll be ploughing into the Serpent ourselves and doing the Minoans job for them. Now get with it."I didn't wait for his reply. Instead I started calling for my party. Dork and Nimue reached me first followed by Rory and Zahra and Goiania. They were all looking at me wondering what we were about to do.The big problem with my plan was that the. Wife Meg, son Carter, 19, and daughter Kaylee who had freshly turned 18, all piled in the car.Carter wore shorts, freeballing, a tank top and flips. Meg and Kaylee wore sun dresses with no panties, and Aaron decided to drive over shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a pair of shorts, commando style.The parents sat in the front seat and the kids in the back and it wasn’t long, more like the end of the driveway, that Carter and Kaylee were tickling each other and grabbing each other’s nether. We gave no interviews, as usual, but the hostages were eager to talk about their ordeal and rescue. By the evening news, our pictures were splashed all over European TV. Well, we had gotten a start on the publicity that we wanted. Dammit, we had forgotten to copyright the figurines, so Salamander jumped to that chore as soon as we returned home.As Genie had predicted, there were a few news stories about the thrill-seeking vigilantes who had interfered with the police work in Dabrovia, but most.