Trey’s next breath was sharp and panicked. Had someone shot him? Was he in even greater danger than he’d imagined? His ears buzzed, and he thought he might pass out from terror. But nothing else happened, and after a few moments his mind cleared a little.

He looked at the blood again. It was barely more than a single drop.

Okay, Trey steadied himself. You just had a panic attack over a paper cut. Let’s not be telling anybody about that, all right?

A paper cut indoors would have been no big deal. But outdoors — outdoors, the need to breathe was enough to panic him.

He forced himself to breathe anyway. And, by sheer dint of will, Trey made himself take a single step forward. And then another. And another.

Mr. Talbot had a long, long walkway between the street and his house, and the chauffeur had inconveniently parked off to the side, under a clump of trees that practically hid the car from the house. They considered turning around, getting back into the car, and telling the chauffeur to pull up closer — say, onto the Talbots’ front porch. But that would mean retracing his steps, and Trey felt like he’d already come so far.

Maybe even all of three feet.

With part of his mind, Trey knew he was being foolish — a total baby, a chicken, a fear-addled idiot.

It’s not my fault, Trey defended himself. It’s all… conditioning. I can’t help the way I was raised. And that was the understatement of the year. For most of his thirteen years, Trey hadn’t had control over any aspect of his life.

He was an illegal third child — the entire Government thought he had no right to exist. So he’d had to hide, from birth until age twelve, in a single room. And then, when he was almost thirteen, when his father died…

You don’t have time to think about that now, Trey told himself sternly. Walk.