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  “Listen! Don’t hang up! Listen . . .”

  I heard the phone click off, and all trace of my little girl with it. I pushed the button to call her back, but no one answered. I was left staring at her name on the cell-phone screen.

  My knees felt weak.

  I turned in the crowd, every corner of me filling up with a mounting sense of dread. He was right! I had to get out of here! I still had the cop to worry about. Liz had told me just to give up if anything went wrong. But now I couldn’t. Now I had to do everything I could to get away!

  I scanned the lobby and realized there was no way I could go back the way I’d come in. If the police were waiting for me here, there were probably dozens of them all around. I glanced back at the one I had seen, still protected by the crowd.

  A heavyset man in a green Sharks headdress shifted from my line of sight just as I did so.

  Suddenly the cop and I were eye to eye.

  My heart felt like it exploded. He looked straight at me, seemingly trying to pierce through the golf cap and the shades . . .

  Then, suddenly, he did just that!

  I watched his eyes grow wide and his face light up with recognition. He took a step toward me. I moved away, pushing my way through the throng of boosters. I thought I heard him shout out something, echoing, above the din of the lobby. I began to run.

  Then I heard him call out: “Steadman!”

  I spun and saw him pull out his radio, signaling the others. I slithered through the dense booster gathering, thirty or forty strong, and came out directly in front of the elevators. A door opened in front of me. I didn’t know where it would take me, other than away. Which was all I wanted right then. I jumped in.

  The cop was already running after me. “Steadman. Stop!”

  Bystanders turned. The cop still had to cross the lobby and make his way through the crowd. I jammed my finger against the heat-sensored panels. Pushing on every upper-floor—30 . . . 32 . . . 34.

  The doors didn’t close. C’mon, goddammit, shut!

  I watched, in mounting horror, as the cop elbowed his way through the shocked crowd. Midway through, he stopped, his eyes locked on me in the elevator, still thirty feet away.

  He pulled out his gun.

  C’mon, c’mon, close! I realized he saw me as nothing more than a cop killer. He’d be justified to shoot. He wouldn’t hesitate for a second. They already hadn’t hesitated! I kept pressing on the arrow. And on the upper floors.

  Close.

  The cop finally made it through. Suddenly we were face-to-face again. He leveled his gun at me. I realized he could squeeze off a shot at any second and I’d be dead. Close, you sonovabitch. Close!

  That’s when the doors finally started to shut. The cop sprinted toward me, aimed, and squeezed off a shot, which slammed into the doors as I ducked behind them.

  Another made it into the car, ripping into the wood walls. The guy was crazy! What if there were other people in here?

  A third clanged off the handrail.

  The doors finally squeezed shut an instant before he made it over to me. I could hear the cop holler, “Shit! Shit!” and bang on the doors as the elevator started to rise. All the higher floors were lit up now, and I knew in that instant that all that would happen if I went up there was that I’d be trapped and captured . . . and then Hallie . . .

  As if by instinct, I hit the button for the third floor. The elevator came to a sudden stop. I bolted out, knowing it would keep on going up, floor by floor, all the way to the top.

  I ran down the hall, searching frantically for the fire exit. I didn’t know how many cops were spread about—or would be, in a matter of minutes. But the elevator was heading up to the roof. They’d have to check around up there. They’d have to search all the upper floors. Room by room.

  By that time the entire building might be on lockdown.

  I had to get out of here fast.

  At last, I found the emergency stairwell and bounded down the stairs, two at a time, my heart almost in spasm. I was completely winded and gasping by the time I reached the ground floor. I fully expected to run right into some trigger-happy policeman who would force me to the ground with a gun at my head.

  Mercifully, no one was there. I pushed open the pneumatic door and, with a whoosh, found myself outside.

  Thank God. I didn’t wait to get my bearings—I just sprinted, fast as I could, away—spotting the golf course to my right and realizing I was heading toward the clubhouse. Where my car was parked!

  I spun around and didn’t see anyone behind me. No one shouted my name. I just prayed that I wouldn’t feel a bullet ripping into my back. Ahead, I saw the garage, which I figured was reserved for golfers. I knew I couldn’t use Mike’s car anymore. The police might have found him by now, and if they hadn’t, they surely would soon. Any second it might be over the airwaves . . . and then I was cooked.

  I ran inside the garage and spotted one of the green-vested valets hustling to get a car and I waited behind a stanchion until he climbed inside a Lincoln—and I saw him feel under the seat for the key. Then it started up. I had a flashback to my old parking-attendant days, one of the jobs I did to get myself through med school. I counted the seconds until the Lincoln drove off, then I ran over to a red GMC parked nearby. The door was unlocked and I felt frantically under the seat for the key.

  Shit. Nothing. I had to try another car.

  I hopped out and tried a blue Lexus SUV in the next bay. I figured there was a security camera here and that someone might well be watching me right now. Heisting a car.

  This time I found the keys under the floor mat.

  I started it up and drove out of the garage, leaving Mike’s Jag behind. It didn’t matter that my DNA was all over it. I wasn’t about to deny taking it. I knew I had only a short time before all exits from the hotel were shut down. I drove out to the front gate. There was a guard there. I’d had to talk my way past him the first time, but now he gave me just a lackadaisical wave, as if to say, Hope you hit ’em well. See you next time.

  I made a right, knowing I was only minutes from the highway. I was so excited, I wanted to whoop out loud.

  But then a sober realization ran through me, and my whole body began to tremble.

  I suddenly realized that if there was even a chance I was only a person of interest an hour ago after fleeing the scene of Martinez’s killing, that possibility was now long gone.

  My daughter was in peril. And I was a full-fledged suspect in two murders now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The evening was sticky and warm and Vance Hofer waited in his car, hidden off the dirt road that led to the trailer. He kept his car lights off.

  There were two vehicles parked in front. One was a beat-up, red pickup he had seen around his house a dozen times, which he knew belonged to Wayne, the waste of good spit Amanda thought of as her boyfriend. The other was a silver Kia with an “I Heart Daughtry” decal on the back and a pair of pink felt dice dangling from the inside mirror.

  For a while Vance had heard sounds of laughter coming from inside. Music. A party going on. Something crashing onto the floor. More laughter. It made his blood curdle.

  Then, for the longest time, he heard nothing at all.

  He sat there, feeling his life’s futility coursing through his body, to the tips of his rough, workman’s hands. How things hadn’t quite worked out the way he planned, yet he smiled, thinking the story wasn’t quite over yet. He needed only one thing—something clear and fixed in this world of uncertainties—and that one thing was that someone take responsibility for what had gone down. At the end of the line, someone had to pay for what had happened to that poor girl and her baby, not to mention Amanda, and what was happening tonight might only be the first step. When it was all over, the person he would likely find would be the one who had profited the most.

  From what had befallen his little girl.

  That was what was wrong with life, Vance thought, how no one ever did . . . p
ay. The ones who bore the guilt. Those people always squirmed their way out, with reams and reams of legal arguments, hiding behind oily lawyers. The banks, who had taken his home; the functionaries who had pushed him out of his job; the fools in Washington and on Wall Street, even those people out in Hollywood—they did just fine, while the rest of us had no career, no home, no insurance. You were just a cipher, left with nothing. Just silt running through your hands. Only the little people had to pay. While the rest went on . . .

  And for a man who was brought up knowing what happens when right and wrong collide, this was a heavy cost.

  There is wheat and there is chaff, the Bible says. Wheat and chaff.

  And it was simply a matter of separating the one from the other: those who had been harmed from those who were responsible. You didn’t need no fancy degrees or badges or fitness hearings.

  Someone just had to own up. That’s all he was saying.

  His little Amanda was just at the end of the line.

  Vance just kept his eyes on that trailer, knowing pretty soon the door would open.

  Wheat from chaff. He flexed his fingers. Someone had to own up and it would start right here.

  That’s all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I pulled into a McDonald’s off the highway certain that after fleeing the Hyatt half of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department that hadn’t been actively looking for me before was probably looking for me now.

  I felt Mike’s phone vibrate.

  I dug it out and looked at the screen. It was Liz. Thank God. She sounded off the planet. I figured I knew why.

  “Henry, I just heard on the news. What the hell did you do up there?”

  “Someone set a trap for me, Liz. I don’t know if you heard the whole story, but—”

  “Henry, I told you to give yourself up if they found you again! Not to resist.”

  “I couldn’t give myself up! Liz, I have something bad to tell you. Don’t freak out. Have you heard from Hallie? In the past few hours?”

  “Hallie? No. Not since lunch yesterday. She was going riding.” I could hear her grow nervous. “Why are you asking about Hallie?”

  “Because I received a call. In the lobby of the Hyatt, Just before the cops there spotted me. Liz, don’t freak out. Hallie’s been taken.”

  “Taken?” I could feel tears rushing into her eyes. “What do you mean taken, Henry? By whom? How do you even know?”

  “Because I heard from her, Liz. It’s the person who did these things today. Who killed Mike and that cop on the road. He called me at the Hyatt before the police found me. He has her.”

  “Has her? Oh Jesus, Henry, no . . .” I could almost feel the blood rushing out of her face. Knowing that someone who was fully capable of cold-blooded murder had taken our daughter. I heard her sniff back sobs. This was awful. One minute she was just trying to help me out of a mess. Now she was in it herself. Up to her eyeballs. Same as me. Then she said the only rational thing she could say. “We have to go to the police. You got a partial ID on that car. They might be able to trace it!”

  “No, Liz. There are things I have to tell you. That’s exactly what we can’t do. We can’t go to the police.”

  “Henry, I’m sorry about what’s happening to you, but some madman has our daughter . . . !”

  “Liz—listen! Hear me out! I went to the Hyatt because I knew someone there who I hoped could get me off the streets until you negotiated some kind of deal. But I got a call in the lobby, just before the police saw me there. He put Hallie on and she sounded okay. Scared out of her mind, but I got the sense she hadn’t been harmed. But the guy who took her, who’s doing this, he said if I went to the police on this—if I turn myself in or even if I get caught, or if he hears on the news that Hallie’s missing, he’s gonna kill her, Liz. Just like he did Mike. And Martinez. I won’t even tell you what he said he’d do. Just that the longer I stay out, the longer she lives . . . That’s why I had to run. It was one in a million that I even got away. That’s why we can’t go to the police!”

  Liz was silent. I needed her to be rational, yet I knew that what I’d just told her violated every rational instinct she had. Her daughter had been abducted and we couldn’t even report it to the police!

  It was killing me too.

  Liz lashed out. “What have you done, Henry? What have you done to put our daughter’s life in danger this way?”

  “I haven’t done anything, Liz. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “So what do you want me to do? You tell me this insane story about cops pulling you over and putting you in cuffs. Then everywhere you go people are being killed. And now our daughter’s been taken by this . . . this person who’s got some vendetta against you. Who’s killed people! Goddammit, Henry, why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

  “Please, Liz, don’t go there on me. I need you to understand. I need you now too. You know damn well I’m not capable of anything they said I’ve done. I don’t know why this is happening! I’m up here for a conference. I’m supposed to deliver a speech tonight. I got pulled over for a traffic violation I didn’t commit. The rest . . .” My voice started to crack. “I don’t know what’s happening, Liz!”

  “And you’re saying we can’t even do the one sensible thing that could save our daughter’s life! You can’t be serious, Henry! What do you expect me to believe? What else should I believe?”

  “I am serious, Liz. Deadly serious. I heard him. He’ll do it, Liz. He’s already done it. We can’t.”

  I just let her sob it out for a while.

  Finally Liz said, “He’s doing this for a reason. What does he want from you, Henry? Money? There’s got to be something he wants.”

  “I don’t know what he wants yet—other than to watch me suffer. Other than to enjoy seeing me completely trapped.”

  “So what are you saying? We just let him keep her and do nothing. I don’t know if I can do that, Henry . . .”

  “You have to, Liz. For Hallie’s sake. I don’t know who this person is or what he thinks I’ve done, but he’s targeted me. I think Hallie will be okay, for a while, crazy as that sounds. He needs her to get to me.”

  “You’re willing to put our baby’s life on the line . . . I’m not.”

  “We have to, Liz. I don’t see any other way. I can try to find that car . . .”

  “You don’t even have a clear memory of it, Henry. A blue car. From South Carolina. You don’t even remember the plate number! It could be chopped up to parts, repainted, hidden in some garage for months for all you know.”

  She was right. “But there’s that gamecock thing . . .”

  “Gamecock?”

  “The image I saw on the shooter’s car. The mascot. From the University of South Carolina. I saw one on the back window of Mike’s car too.”

  “Mike’s car?” Liz paused. “Do you think your friend is connected to this?”

  “I don’t know.” I had run the idea around in my head. But no one knew Mike and I were even getting together. Only my assistant, Maryanne. And she’d been with me for fifteen years. I’d trusted her with much bigger things than this. “I don’t see how. We have to come up with a cover, Liz. For Hallie. In case people worry at school. We have to say she came home . . .”

  She sucked in a harried breath. “All right. All right.”

  “At least for a day or two . . .”

  “Okay, I’ll think of something. Henry, I’m scared. We don’t even know what we’re doing. Hallie’s life is on the line. What do we do if he just kills her and we’re . . . I don’t know if I can live with that.”

  “Liz, if you break down, they’re just going to use it as a way to get to me. The guy’s not going to do anything now. He won’t. I’m telling you, he wants me. He told me to get a disposable cell phone so he can contact me again. Maybe we’ll know more then. In the meantime, don’t contact me. The minute they find out about Mike . . . this phone will only lead them to me.”

  “I know.
” I felt her about to start weeping.

  “You just stay strong, Liz. I’m gonna find our girl, Liz, and bring her home. He’s not gonna hurt her until he can get to me.”

  “This is bad, Henry. Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, Liz,” I said. I was trying not to think of it. “Let’s not pretend any other way. It’s bad.”

  Hanging up, I suddenly felt about as alone as I’d ever felt in my life. In spite of trying to pump up Liz, I really didn’t know what my next step was going to be, other than finding that car.

  That car was the only thing that could save my daughter’s life.

  And Liz was right. We were way, way out of our league. What resources did I possibly have? On the run. In a stolen car . . .

  I flipped on the car radio, and it didn’t take long to hear the account of my escape from the Hyatt.

  They had my name, but I didn’t hear any description of the car I’d escaped in. Which was good. With any luck, the owner might be on the golf course for a couple more hours, so for the near term I could get around.

  But what I did hear, which suddenly seemed like a path for me, was a public hotline number to call with any tips related to the crimes.

  Chapter Fifteen

  At the sheriff’s office downtown, Carrie was manning the tip line.

  She’d taken six or seven calls. A couple of them were clearly bogus. One had Steadman held up in a high school with a cache of ammo. Another had seen his Cadillac speeding away and caught his plates, info they already had. A cabbie had called in, saying he’d dropped off someone resembling Steadman at an unspecified street corner in Avondale. That one they sent a team to check out. Several others called in from the Hyatt, having witnessed the shooting in the lobby. One caller had Steadman going from room to room on the thirty-third floor, terrorizing guests. Another had him sneaking away, dressed in a waiter’s uniform.

  When the lines went quiet, Carrie logged online and checked out Steadman’s website. She watched a clip of him from Good Morning, South Florida describing the pros and cons of Botox. Steadman was handsome. Sharp cheekbones. Intelligent blue eyes. Stylishly long brown hair. He had a successful business. And a fancy Palm Beach address.