The motor started and then another figure emerged and came down the steps. She squinted through the rain and recognized Kenji Noda, Bartlett's ever-present bodyguard. He was carrying a plastic bottle, along with a small white towel. He's going to chloroform me and then God knows what. I'm about to disappear the same way Kristen did. She stared at them both, wondering what to do. "Alexa, I regret to say that you are either with me or you are a problem I cannot afford to have," Bartlett said, and then he nodded to Noda. Shit. She backed to the edge of the pier as Noda advanced on her menacingly, dousing the cloth. He was a foot taller than she was and he weighed over two hundred pounds. Her first instinct was to run, but then she sensed an impulse to stand her ground. Something told her to try to use her strength against him. He wouldn't expect it. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that a white car had pulled onto the pier and was cruising down the side, slowly inching their way. It looked like a police vehicle, probably a couple of cops curious about the presence of a helicopter on the Field Turf. They were approximately half a minute too late to make any difference. Kenji Noda was five feet away and they were fifty yards away. And they probably couldn't see what was going on anyway. The rain had chosen that moment to begin to gush, shrouding everything in sheets of water. Knickers was nudging at her leg, as though urging her to flee. And again she thought about running, but an instinct told her to stand her ground. She was feeling a sensation of power growing in her limbs. She found herself oddly calm as Kenji Noda reached her, then wrapped his left arm around her neck and with his right hand clamped the cloth over her nostrils. It was infused with chloroform--she knew the smell-- but she held her breath. Then it happened. She casually reached up and took his left arm and pulled it away from her neck. It was so easy. There was the same feeling of strength she'd had when she wrenched open the air lock. Yet it was something that came and went. She had no inkling how long it would last this time. "I don't think you should do that," she said continuing to pull his arm around behind him. Then she twisted it to the side and there was a sickening snap as it came out of its shoulder socket He groaned lightly but did not speak. Instead he reached with his right hand and pulled an automatic out of a holster at the back of his belt dropping the chloroformed cloth in the process. While his left arm dangled uselessly, he brought around the pistol and tried to aim it at her torso. Her senses, though, were coming fully alive now and she seized his wrist and pushed it away just as he fired.