"Don't you fucking dare kick me." But Lizzie didn't stop kicking - or screaming either. "Help me. Somebody, help! Somebody, please!" Then both of them lifted her up in the air as if she weighed next to nothing. The man mumbled something to the woman. Not English. Middle European, maybe. Lizzie had a housekeeper from Slovakia. Was there a connection? The woman attacker gripped her around the chest with one arm and used her free hand to push aside tennis and golf stuff, hurriedly clearing a space in the back of the station wagon. Then Lizzie was roughly shoved inside her own car. A gauzy, foul-smelling cloth was pushed hard against her nose and mouth, and held there so tightly it hurt her teeth. She tasted blood. First blood, she thought. My blood. Adrenaline surged through her body, and she began fighting back again with all her strength. Punching and kicking. She felt like a captured animal striking out for its freedom. "Easy," the man said. "Easy-peasy-Japanesy... Elizabeth Connolly." Elizabeth Connolly? They know me? How? Why? What is going on here? "You're a very sexy mom," said the man. "I see why the Wolf likes you." Wolf? Who's the Wolf? What was happening to her? Who did she know named Wolf? Then the thick, acrid fumes from the cloth overpowered Lizzie and she went lights out. She was driven away in the back of her station wagon. But only across the street to the Lenox Square Mall - where Lizzie Connolly was transferred into a blue Dodge van that then sped away. Purchase complete.

EARLY MONDAY MORNING, I was oblivious to the rest of the world and its problems. This was the way life was supposed to be, only it rarely seemed to turn out so well. At least not in my experience, which was limited when it came to anything that might be considered the "good life." I was walking Jannie and Damon to the Sojourner Truth School that morning. Little Alex was merrily toddling along at my side. "Puppy," I called him.