Tuesday, 8:04 a.m. PST

“HELLO? ”

Static. A beeping sound. Then a click as if the call had been disconnected.

“Hello?” Quincy tried again, voice more urgent, hand white-knuckled on the phone.

The call was lost. He cursed, tempted to hurl the tiny phone across the room, then it rang again. He flipped open the phone before the ring completed its first musical chime.

“… morning paper.”

“Rainie? Where are you?”

“She can’t come to the phone right now.” The voice sounded distorted, mechanized.

“Who is this?”

“You must read the morning paper,” the voice intoned.

“This is Investigator Pierce Quincy. I’m looking for Rainie Conner. Can you tell me where she is?”

“You must read the morning paper.”

“Do you have her? What is it that you want?”

“What everyone wants-fame, fortune, and a finely baked apple pie. Goodbye.”

“Hello? Who is this? Where are you?”

But the caller was gone. Quincy knew it before the first syllable left his mouth. He immediately returned the call, but on the other end, Rainie’s phone just rang and rang and rang.

“Who was it? What’d she say?” Kincaid was standing over him, looking as agitated and impatient as Quincy felt.

“It was a man, I think. Using some kind of voice-distortion machine. He kept saying I must read the morning paper. Word for word. ‘ You must read the morning paper.’ Quick-pen, paper. While it’s fresh, we need to write this down.”

Quincy fumbled around his desk, jerking open drawers, scattering a tray of pens.

Kincaid was behind him, rifling a second drawer in search of a notepad. “Why read the paper?”

“I don’t know.”

“Which paper?”

“I don’t know. ‘Read the morning paper.’ That’s what he said . ‘Read the morning paper . ’ ” Quincy finally got a pen. His hand was trembling so badly, he could barely grip it between his fingers. Too many thoughts were in his head. Rainie kidnapped. Rainie hurt. Rainie… So many things that were far, far worse.

Nine years ago, Bethie on the other end of the line. “Pierce, something’s happened to Mandy. You’d better come quick.”

Kincaid had found a spiral notepad. He thrust it across the desk, where it slid to a stop in front of Quincy.

But Quincy couldn’t write. His fingers wouldn’t hold the pen, his hand wouldn’t scrawl across the page. He was shaking. He’d never seen his hand tremble so much, not in all of these years. And then he suffered a surreal moment, where he stood outside his body, staring back down at this scene, and what he saw was a hand, old, thickened, soon to be age-spotted, grasping ineffectively at a pen.

He felt powerless. His wife was kidnapped, and for a heart-stopping moment, he didn’t know what to do.

Kincaid took the notepad away from Quincy. There was more sympathy in the sergeant’s eyes than Quincy was prepared to accept.

“You talk,” Kincaid said. “I’ll write.”

Quincy started from the beginning. There wasn’t much to document after all. A disguised voice on Rainie’s phone, ordering Quincy to read the morning paper and claiming to desire fame, fortune, and apple pie. Four lines spoken, a total of thirty-two words.

They started with the first instruction: You must read the morning paper.

“Local,” Kincaid declared.

“What? The call? It wasn’t a good signal, but that would put the caller anywhere in the coastal range. And pulling the records won’t help-it’ll just list a call placed to my phone.”

“No, no, not the call, the paper. Otherwise he’d say ‘morning papers, ’ plural. But he kept saying ‘ paper. ’ That’s specific. I’m guessing the Bakersville Daily Sun. ”

“Ah, the Daily Oxymoron,” Quincy muttered. “We don’t get it delivered. But…” He thought about it. “We should be able to find something online.”

“Screw that, we’re going straight to the source.”

“You have a contact?”

“Better. I have a public information officer. He can get straight through to the owner if we have to.” Kincaid pulled out his cell phone and punched two buttons. Seconds later he was talking to a Lieutenant Mosley, and a few seconds after that, he was gesturing frantically for the return of the spiral notepad.

“Is there a return address? When was it postmarked? No, no, no, I don’t want it handled! Listen, I’m sending over two scientists from the Portland lab right away, along with Latent Prints. Anyone who’s touched that letter needs to be sequestered now; I don’t care if they own the damn paper. We’re on our way.”

Kincaid flipped his phone shut and headed immediately for the door. The sergeant was already at a half-jog; Quincy quickly picked up the pace.

“What is it? What did he say?”

“Ransom note. Op-ed editor of the Bakersville Daily Sun just notified our PIO twenty minutes ago. They found a note in this morning’s mail. Says a woman has been kidnapped, and if anyone wants to see her alive again, it will cost ten thousand dollars cash.”

“Who sent it?”

“Not clear.”

“When?”

“Postmarked yesterday.”

“But that’s not possible.” They were at the car. Kincaid jumped in on the driver’s side, Quincy rounded the front.

“It is and isn’t,” Kincaid said, already firing up the Chevy. “It’s not possible that the man had kidnapped your wife yesterday afternoon. But then the ransom note didn’t mention a specific name, or provide a description.”

“Stranger to stranger,” Quincy filled in. “The guy didn’t know who he was taking. He just knew he was taking someone.”

“Exactly. Crime of opportunity.”

“Against a trained member of law enforcement?”

“Maybe he got lucky. Or maybe… We don’t know how he chose his target yet. Maybe,” Kincaid’s voice was quiet, “he started at a bar.”

Quincy didn’t say anything. Kincaid headed down the steep driveway at an unhealthy pace. Quincy grabbed the dash.

“Listen,” Kincaid was saying. “A letter’s a good sign. Guy’s making contact and every contact provides an opportunity. We started with the phone call to you. Now we’ve got an envelope, a letter, and a postmark all worth analyzing. All we need is a little saliva to seal the envelope, and we got DNA. A postmark close to home, and we have geography. Add the handwriting sample and we’ve nailed a suspect. This is a good thing.”

“I want the letter sent to the FBI lab.”

“Don’t piss me off.”

“Sergeant, with all due respect-”

“Our Questioned Documents unit is very good, thanks.”

“The bureau’s is better.”

“The bureau’s lab is all the way across country. We’d lose a day just in transport. My guys can handle the letter just fine, and they can get started this afternoon. You do understand the need for speed.”

“It’s always a matter of minutes,” Quincy said curtly. His gaze had gone out the window. “Always.”

“You ever work with a local you thought had brains?”

“Only the one I married.”

Kincaid arched a brow. He was still driving too fast, cutting S-curves and swinging around traffic. It was obvious to Quincy that the sergeant had once been a big fan of Starsky and Hutch.

“Give me thirty minutes,” Kincaid said abruptly, “and I think you’ll change your tune.”

“You can find my wife in half an hour?”

“No, but I can find out if the author of the note actually took her.”

“How?”

“The letter included a map. Follow the directions to the scavenger hunt and discover proof of life. Guy’s reaching out, Mr. Profiler Man, and we’re going to nail him for it.”

“I’m going with you,” Quincy said immediately.

Kincaid finally flashed him a grin. “Somehow, I never doubted that.”