"This is going to be weird, okay. You're not going crazy. I just want you to remember that."

He frowned. "What are-"

I jumped him to Mrs. Begay's art classroom, then steadied him when he staggered.

"-you-what the fuck!"

He sat down suddenly, at one of the classroom desks, and I dropped his backpack on the desktop. "Not crazy."

"What was that?"

"Explain later, but if I can't-" The words stuck in my throat for a moment before I blurted them out. "I love you!"

I jumped away before he could react.

Back in the coffee shop, his phone and our combined papers still lay on the table. I dropped his phone into the breast pocket of my snowboarding jacket, but left the papers and my backpack. I used my phone to call Dad. It went straight to voice mail so he wasn't in town. Likewise Mom, though I'd talked to her briefly before walking to Krakatoa.

I left the same message on both numbers. I didn't bother telling them the time; the voice mail system would do that.

I stuffed my phone inside my jacket sleeve, and went down the stairs, quickly, before I could think about it too much. The traffic was brisk and I had to wait for the light.

Marius rolled down the back passenger-side window as I walked up. "Where's Joe?"

He was alone in the back seat. I could see Jason in the driver's seat, the older man I'd seen once before in this car and the one time on that video from the garage. He was wearing dark sunglasses and looked straight ahead, as if he was ignoring us. I tilted my head to look behind Marius and saw Calvin in the luggage compartment, squashed to one side.

Marius got louder. "Where. Is. Joe?"

"He went home," I said. "He left before you called. Where's Jade and Tara?"

In the back, Calvin lifted his arm. His fingers were threaded through Tara's hair and he held a blocky automatic pistol in his free hand, next to her face.

I inhaled sharply.

Marius said to me, "I don't believe you."

"See for yourself!" I said.

I doubted they'd snatched the girls right here on Main. It was too busy, so they probably weren't here long enough to know that Joe hadn't left by the front door.

Marius looked at Jason. Jason, without turning his head, said, "Put her in the car, then go look."

Marius climbed out of the car and held the door for me. I hesitated. Inside the car Tara cried out as Calvin did something.

Right. I climbed in.

"All the way across," Marius said.

I slid over until I was behind Jason, directly in front of Calvin.

"Put on the seatbelt," said Jason. He'd twisted his head slightly and I could see the sunglasses in the rearview mirror.

I felt Calvin's gun press against the back of my head and I nearly jumped away.

I took a deep breath and put the seatbelt on.

Marius shut the door and I saw him move briskly across the front of the car, then dash through a gap in the traffic, over to the coffee shop.

"Phone," said Jason reaching his hand back.

"Give it," Calvin said. He tapped my head suggestively with the business end of the gun.

I took Joe's phone out of the chest pocket and dropped it in Jason's hand. He glanced at it, then tossed it in the front passenger seat.

Marius was back in a minute, climbing into the backseat across from me. "Not upstairs or downstairs, and not in the restroom."

Jason grunted, then pulled out into a gap in the traffic.

"What do you want?"

Jason hung a left almost immediately, heading back through the oil field service companies.

I asked again and he said, "Shut up." He reached over into the passenger seat and flipped a plastic bag back to Marius. "Her hands." The bag held foot-long nylon cable ties.

Marius grabbed my nearest wrist and snaked a tie around it, pulling it snug. "Give me your other hand."

"Around the shoulder belt, or under?" I said. "You want me locked to the vehicle?" Hostages or not, I was going to jump away if they attempted to secure me to the entire car.

Marius looked at Jason. "Don't lock her to the seatbelt," he said.

I tried not to sigh with relief and snaked my left hand under the shoulder belt.

Marius threaded a second tie through the one around my right wrist and snugged my left wrist into my right. He let me settle back but then reached into his jacket and pulled out another blocky automatic, twin to Calvin's.

I wriggled my fingers, checking the circulation.

For a moment I thought Jason was headed for the garage/clubhouse, but he turned away from that side of town and went south, winding down through the lower foothills below town. Was he taking us out to the desert?

Instead, he turned in at the county airport, a small general-aviation facility for private planes. It had a single runway, some T-hangars, and larger maintenance hangars by the fixed-base operator's fueling station.

Flying us someplace?

He paralleled the runway, moving away from the hangars, and pulled the Hummer up to a warehouse outside the airstrip's security fence. He clicked a box clipped to his visor and a garage-style door slid up. He drove the Hummer inside.

There were no other vehicles. There were overhead skylights but the sun was low and, when the door closed behind, it was significantly darker within.

"Wait," Jason said, taking off his sunglasses. He got out and walked through a door in the far wall.

I considered moving then but the numbers still weren't right. I couldn't jump both Jade and Tara out at once, not with my hands bound. I couldn't get Calvin and Marius. I wanted to call Dad again. Even if he was still out of range, at least I could update our location, but Marius was watching me, the gun resting in his lap.

Jason came back through the far door, and opened my car door. He reached across and undid my seatbelt. "You give me any trouble, and I'm gonna come back in here and have a little party with your friends. And after a while, when they wish they was dead, we'll take care of that, too."

In the back, Tara began crying softly.

Jason looked at me to see if I'd heard him. With his sunglasses off I could see four teardrops tattooed below his right eye. He had a scar running through his left eyebrow, across his upper eyelid, and then continuing on his left cheekbone.

"It goes without sayin' that I will also mess you up."

I kept my face still and avoided his eyes.

He pulled me out of the car, his hand gripping my upper arm. "Come on." He walked me to the far door, pushed it open, and pulled me through.

There were no skylights or lights in the far room. A bit of reddish sunlight outlined a window mostly blocked by closed blinds, but my eyes weren't adjusted. I never saw the loop of wire that dropped over my head and cinched tight around my neck.

Oh, shit.

I froze. Someone had one hand against my spine, right below the wire, holding me away. I raised my bound hands toward my throat and a man's voice said, "Don't." The loop tightened enough to bite into my neck. He pulled me back and to the side, so his back was against the wall to the right of the door, I guess so nobody could come up behind him.

I dropped my hands.

Someone adjusted the blinds, letting the setting sun shine into the room and I winced and narrowed my eyes.

A woman, silhouetted against the window, said, "That's better, we can-" She stopped and took several steps closer, moving to one side to avoid blocking the light.

As my eyes adjusted I could see that she was an older woman wearing a business suit and a long red wool coat. Her graying hair was pulled back so tightly that I thought it was altering the shape of her eyebrows. She was staring at me intently.

"Oh, my," the woman said, "aren't you just the spitting image of your mother?"

Oh.

I'd seen her picture. Mom had shown it to me in our living room. This was the woman who'd held Dad captive for months, who had killed his NSA handler, who had escaped from prison.

Hyacinth Pope.

THIRTY-THREE.

Millie: "Mayday"

Millie got the message first. She'd been dealing with some e-mail correspondence and working at her desk in the Yukon cabin when she wasn't downloading (Ontario) or uploading (Lisbon). But she'd popped into the house to see what was in that freezer before deciding what to make for supper.

Her phone made its alert chirp. She glanced at it and saw that there was a voice mail. She wondered if Joe had asked Cent out to dinner, but her stomach clenched when she heard the tension in Cent's voice.

"Mayday. It's local trouble. Gang related. They've got Tara and Jade. We're at Krakatoa, but not for long. They're driving a black H3 Hummer with chrome spinner wheels and a custom plate: numeral 2, K, O, O, L, numeral 4, U. Too cool for you. I'm about to be in a 'great' situation. I'm cooperating until I can get Tara and Jade away. Could really use a hand. I'll try to update my location when it changes."

She jumped to the coffee shop immediately, downstairs, in plain site of everyone.

A woman fell away from her, gasping. "Jesus! Where did you come from?" A man turned around and helped the woman up off her knees. Other people looked up from their tables but at the noise, not her arrival.

"Sorry. My fault."

Millie scanned the downstairs, then went to the window and looked outside for the Hummer. There was a large black SUV parked across the street, but it wasn't a Hummer and it didn't have chrome wheels.

She ran up the narrow flight of stairs to the balcony. There was nobody up there, but the table by the railing had cups, a backpack, and sheet of paper on it. She stepped closer and recognized the handwriting. The backpack was Cent's.

She jumped back to the Yukon, took a framed photo of Cent off her desk, jumped back to the balcony, and ran down the stairs to the baristas.

"Have you seen this girl today?"

"We see her every day. She ran out about ten minutes ago. I went upstairs to bus the tables and saw that she left her backpack, so she's probably coming back in a minute."

"I'm her mom. If she shows back up, tell her I took her backpack, okay?"

"Thought so. You guys really look alike."

Millie nodded and ran back up the stairs. She scooped up the papers, grabbed the backpack, and went toward the back of the balcony where the head of the stairway was. When the balcony blocked her from the view of the people below, she jumped back to the house.

"Davy!" she yelled, on the odd chance he was there, but there was no answer. She set her phone on the counter so it would it stay in the network, and jumped back to the cabin.

Davy wasn't there, either. He'd told her he was going to do some more surveillance of the Stroller and Associates compound in Costa Rica. Though Millie had a jump site for the beach town of Santa Teresa on Costa Rica's Pacific coast, she had nothing for San Jose in general, or the area where the compound was, northwest of the city.

There was a whiteboard in the kitchen where they wrote grocery lists and left messages to each other. She grabbed a handful of paper towels, wiped the central section clear, and wrote, Mayday @ New Prospect House!!!

She jumped back to the house in time to see Davy calmly lift his cell phone to his ear. "Got a voice mail."

On the chance it was more information-hopefully an updated location-she didn't say anything. She watched his face go from relaxed to tense and wide-eyed. He opened his mouth to speak and she held up her hand sharply, then ticked the info off on her fingers, staccato like.

"Hummer. Chrome wheels. Too cool for you. Krakatoa. They've got Jade and Tara. I've already been to the coffee shop. She left about twelve minutes ago. Anything else? Did she call with a new location?"

He shook his head, but was doing something with his phone.

"If you call her they'll take her phone. Going to call the police?"

"I'm getting her location."

"How?"

"I put an app on her phone. If I text a code word to the phone, it texts back a map link and coordinates. If the phone is moving, it shows the direction and speed as well." He exhaled. "It will take a minute." Then he muttered, "If her phone is still in the county."

It was on the tip of her tongue to talk about spying on his daughter, but considering the circumstances, she was really just grateful. She considered his clothes. He was dressed in tropicals, for Costa Rica. "I'll get your coat," she said.