The young woman took a deep breath.

"And I know yours, Mack Bolan. Your fame precedes you. When you were in the hotel tonight, did you see a man named Wallace, Floyd Wallace?"

Bolan nodded.

"I saw him. He was sitting at the podium with Dutton. Is he mixed up in this?"

On the face of it the possibility seemed farfetched to Bolan. He remembered the mild-looking Wallace.

"He's involved somehow," Lana said slowly, staring straight ahead through the windshield at the city lights as she spoke. "I'm just not sure Wallace ties in with the rest of it... or even what the rest of it is, if you want to know the whole truth."

"I want to know nothing but," Bolan told her.

"Until four months ago, I worked for Floyd Wallace," said Lana Garner. "I was the manager of one of his day-care centers."

Bolan's eyes narrowed. He rolled down his window several inches, letting the cold night air blow into the car. It felt good.

"What happened four months ago?"

She hesitated before answering.

"Three of the children at the center... disappeared," she finally went on. "It was terrible, having to face those heartbroken parents and tell them that their kids were just... gone."

"Wait a minute," he cut in. "What happened, exactly?"

She seemed to be staring into the past, upon that day again, as she spoke.

"The children were having their naps. I was watching them. We were a little shorthanded then, so I was the only one there. The phone in the office rang. I went to answer it. It was Mr. Wallace, and when I told him I was by myself, he told me to go back and watch the kids, that he would call again later. I went back into the other room, where the children were, and... and three of them were gone. Two little boys and a little girl."

Her voice broke, racked with emotion.

"It was horrible. I woke up the other children, but of course they didn't know anything. Whoever it was who came in there and got those kids, they knew what they were doing. And the worst part is I'm sure that wasn't the first time. I'm positive they'd done it before I came there!"

A coldness grew inside Bolan that had nothing to do with the icy night.

"What happened then?"

"I called the police, but then... they seemed to think that I had something to do with it.

"Mr. Wallace showed up and he was suspicious, too. He pretended to be sympathetic but he said that under the circumstances he'd have to let me go. He said he couldn't keep me on or all the other parents would pull their children out of the center. He was probably right about that. There was news coverage of the disappearances and my picture was on TV and in the papers."

She began to cry quietly to herself.

Bolan could not afford himself the luxury of comforting her, not when there were demons driving him and precious time lost by the second.

"What makes you think that other kids have disappeared from Wallace's facilities, besides the professionalism of that one job?"

Lana brushed her eyes with a finger.

"You've got to understand, I couldn't just leave things like they were. I've been working in the child-care field for years. The police lost interest in me soon enough, and that was virtually the end of it. So when I saw that the authorities weren't going to do anything, I started investigating on my own."

Bolan kept quiet, knowing it would be better to let her work her way through the story on her own.

"I started with Mr. Wallace. I don't know why exactly, but I just felt that something was wrong with his operation.

"I went down to the Hall of Records and started trying to trace the deeds on his properties. I found out that Mr. Wallace doesn't really own them."

Bolan raised an eyebrow. "Who does?"

"Some corporation I'd never heard of. A post office box operation called Tri-State, Inc. I did some more digging and came up with some interesting information on them. The corporation has more than a few underworld connections. It's just a front, in my opinion, for the Mafia.

"This corporation owns the buildings where Wallace operates. The day-care centers, the orphanage, everything. What does that tell you?"

"Nothing good," Bolan growled.

The dark-haired woman nodded emphatic agreement.

"That's not all. Tri-State, Inc. also happens to own the New Age Center and several other profitable business concerns. The principal stockholder and chairman of the board is none other than David Parelli.

"That's how I got interested in Senator Dutton. He's on the board of directors of the New Age Center."

"You were on the right scent," Bolan told her. "Dutton is in Parelli's pocket. Parelli's got an ironclad hold on him."

And not only that, Bolan thought, but Dutton had lied to him about simply being a member of the health club. Dutton was in this whole thing a lot deeper than he claimed to be. Maybe giving the guy a break had been a mistake...

"I won't ask what that hold is," Lana said. "I don't think I want to know. To get back to Wallace, once I uncovered all of this, I went after something even more concrete."

"You live dangerously," Bolan noted.

"I live honorably," she countered. "After tonight, I know how careful I'll have to be."

"What about Wallace?" he pressed.

"His main office is at the orphanage," she went on. "I used to work there sometimes, filling in when somebody was sick or on vacation. When Mr. Wallace fired me, he forgot to get the key to that office and the one to the side door back from me."

"You went right into his office?"

"Maybe it was dangerous. I was mad, I was out of a job and there were three kids missing.

"Anyway, I ended up walking out of there with an armload of files, enough to tell me what was really going on. Up to a point, anyway. There were all these kids, dozens of them, unaccounted for. It was like they were just systematically dropping off the face of the earth!"

Bolan felt fear gnawing at his gut.

Not fear for himself.

Fear that he stumbled onto the most repulsive form yet of Cannibal Man in all his savagery.

"Could there be any other explanation?" he asked.

"I... don't know. My instinct says no. Those kids are being kidnapped and Wallace is part of the scheme. He knew I was at the day-care center by myself. He called to get me out of the room where the children were sleeping, out of the way. That's why I said the kidnappers had done it before; they've been working with Wallace."

"It all hangs together," he said softly, half to himself. "I wish it didn't, but it does. Who's going to report orphans missing? It would have to be a big operation, then they got cocky and got you suckered into it. What did you do when you put it all together? Whey didn't you go to the police?"

She emitted an unladylike snort.

"You saw Wallace at that banquet tonight. I'd be the sour grapes out to smear the good-hearted employer who had to let her go, and even if the police did follow through, Wallace would have enough connections to know what was coming and doctor the records, and I'd be left there looking like a bigger fool than before.

"At the first sign of an investigation he could play enough tricks with his computers to cover up anything, even something this bad. Phony adoptions, you name it. He'd find some way."

"So you went after Dutton, trying for another angle of attack."

"It seemed to be the only thing I could do. I knew if I could find some weak point somewhere in the puzzle, I'd have a good chance to put together something the police could really use, maybe even pressure the senator into helping me."

Bolan shook his head.

"He's been pressured by experts. You wouldn't have gotten anything but dead. You've been playing out of your league, Lana."

She turned to him.

"But I've been doing all right, haven't I?"