He grinned in spite of himself.

"Yeah, lady, you've been doing all right. But no further."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean from here on out, I do it alone."

"Do it? "she echoed.

"Put it together and take it apart," he growled. "You've helped me a lot, Lana. I came into this wanting to take out Parelli, you came into it wanting to get something on Wallace, and we connected at Dutton.

"A Mob boss, a dirty politician and a scumbag you think is dealing wholesale in missing children. That group needs to be taught a few lessons."

"I can help you."

"You won't help me by getting killed. I've lost too many people I cared about because they wanted to help me. I don't want that to happen to you."

"It's my fight too, goddammit," she snapped angrily. "I knew how dangerous this was when I started. I didn't ask for this, but when I saw what I had and that the police weren't capable of doing anything about it, I couldn't put it down and you're not going to take the fight from me."

Bolan believed what she said because in her voice he heard fragments of his determination and beliefs.

He made his decision, knowing he could very well regret it.

"All right, up to a point, you're on," he told her. "Until the shooting starts, or until I think it's about to start. Then you do as I say, Lana. You have to promise me this."

"Is that so?"

"That's so. Take it or leave it. Decide now."

She saw that he wasn't joking.

"I'll take it," she said.

For a few moments Bolan remained silent, thinking.

His thoughts raced to the children whose faces he had never seen, who were in trouble, who had been torn away from those who cared for them.

And now some demons out of hell were masquerading as human beings and ripping that security and love away.

Bolan knew now with a cold certainty that he had at last identified the undercurrent of this Chicago setup that had been bugging him since this strange night began.

Not the dirty senator.

Not vague talk of a Mafia Godmother running the show.

Not even the elusive target of Mr. David Parelli, himself.

Every one of those angles combined to make this an unusually touchy operation for a man on the run from all sides, but here at last was the thread that tied all those diverse elements into one tight package marked for termination.

The warrior shook his head sadly.

Stealing children, the true innocents of the earth.

But there would be a reckoning.

And more hellfire and killing to back it up.

Tonight.

Sergeant Lester Griff had never found it easy to concentrate at the precinct office that he shared with other detectives. Somebody always had a radio playing or the officers sitting around at their desks were constantly yapping at the other guys or pounding their typewriters as they wrote up reports or questioning suspects.

Headquarters was a bitch.

Especially since he was supposed to have been off duty tonight. He could have been home with Kathleen, trying to relax.

Who was he kidding, Griff asked himself irritably. If he had been home, he might have been relaxed on the surface, for Kathleen's sake, but inside he would have been seething, just the way he was here.

It was all the fault of that bastard, Bolan.

That was what they called the guy and the name fit as far as Griff was concerned.

All of Chicago was in an uproar because of Bolan's sweep through the city. Everyone from the mayor on down was hollering, which was why Griff and the rest of the Org Crime Task Force had been called in to man the office.

Griff felt as if they were all hollering at him.

After Bolan left his house, Griff felt he was duty bound to turn Bolan in. So he placed an anonymous call to a different precinct where he felt no one would recognize his voice. The sergeant gave a description of Bolan's car and the clothes he was wearing, knowing full well that Bolan could have changed both of those things within minutes of leaving his house. But Griff had felt there was no other option open to him. He relayed the information to a distant precinct to cover his own ass.

No way was he going to let anybody know that there had been personal contact between himself and Bolan.

If he did that, he'd be under pressure from the Commissioner, Internal Affairs, maybe even the FBI, and with all of that coming down, he would hardly be able to do what he had to do.

For Kathleen...

He glanced around the squad room.

Everybody was busy, trying to get a handle on the seemingly nonstop, disconnected reports on Bolan and his latest campaign.

It seemed as if the whole city had turned into a war zone since the Executioner hit town, but nobody in the Org Crime unit was really accomplishing anything, Griff had realized shortly after reporting in.

He opened the middle drawer of his desk, took out a bottle of antacid tablets and started popping them into his mouth one at a time as he stared blankly at the dirty linoleum on the floor, wondering what he should do next. Griff shook his head, amazed at the ease with which everything in a man's life could turn to crap all at once...

Detective sergeant Harry Laymon sat at his desk, facing his partner, Lester Griff.

Laymon had reports spread out on the metal top of his desk but he was not really paying any attention to them. He was watching Griff eat the stomach pills as if they were candy.

Laymon was a short, stocky man with close-cut blond hair. He had been a cop for seven years, a lot less time than his partner, but he knew when something was wrong, like now, with Griff.

Laymon pushed the paperwork to the side and stood.

"I'm going to get some coffee, Les. You want some?"

Griff shook his head and threw another tablet into his mouth.

"No thanks." He chewed on the pill. "Bad for my stomach."

"Sure," Laymon grunted.

It wasn't coffee that was eating away at Griff's stomach, though. Laymon was certain of that.

A coffee maker sat atop one of the file cabinets in the corner.

He strolled over to it, got a Styrofoam cup from the stack next to the machine and poured a cup of strong black. He made a face as he sipped from it.

Cops had to make lousy coffee, Laymon thought sourly. It was part of their job description.

Across the room, Laymon watched as Griff lifted his desk phone and started to dial.

Laymon stayed where he was.

Griff seemed more nervous than usual, edgy. He had an almost furtive look on his face as he spoke quickly into the receiver, as if afraid he was going to be overheard.

Laymon wished he had seen the number Griff had dialed.

Holding his cup carefully so that the hot liquid would not slosh out onto his hand, he threaded his way back across the busy headquarters office, dodging some of the other scurrying Org Crime unit detectives.

Griff saw him coming and hung up the phone.

Laymon felt a surge of anger.

The guy was his partner, dammit, he thought. Griff didn't have any right to keep secrets from him. It wasn't like they were married, but when you worked with a partner for several years, the relationship was damn close to a marriage, at least as far as being honest with each other was concerned. A cop's life could and often did depend on his partner and that meant trust was the name of the game.

Maybe it was just some sort of personal problem, Laymon thought. He knew Griff's wife wasn't in the best of health; maybe she was having trouble again. But if that was the case, why was there such a guilty look on Griff's face, Laymon wondered as he found his seat again.

"This Bolan business is no damn good for a cop's sleep, is it?" Laymon said, trying to make conversation more than anything else.