LAURA WINSTON HAD DRIED most of her tears with a chic red silk scarf she’d removed from her jacket pocket and was quietly thanking Eugena for her kindness when there was a loud commotion up toward the altar.

Somebody was standing up!

From the tangle of blond hair and black mini, Laura could tell it was the haute-trash pop singer Mercedes Freer.

Marble rang as she clicked in her six-inch stilettos toward the rear of the chapel.

“Sit the hell down!” one of the hijackers yelled at her immediately, and very loudly.

“Could I fucking talk to someone, please? I need to talk to your boss, if you don’t fucking mind,” the diva said, her foul language echoing off the walls of the church. “Just let me talk to somebody in charge!”

Laura and Eugena craned their necks to watch the spectacle along with the rest of the hostages. What the hell was this crazy woman up to?

The lead hijacker arrived on the scene a moment later.

“What is it?” Jack said. “Talk to me. I’m a fan, after all. How can I help?”

Mercedes plucked first one, then the other of her diamond earrings off and offered them to Jack.

“These are Cartier,” she said in a loud whisper. “I paid, or whatever, a quarter of a million dollars for them. Now, I’m supposed to be on Leno tonight, and he tapes at six, LA time, and I’m already running late. You know what I’m saying? I’m not political or religious, nothing like that. My label arranged for me to sing ‘Ave Maria’ and jet. Please take ’em. They’re real, and they’re yours. They’re not enough, I’ll get my manager on the phone. Say the word. Let’s make a deal, sugar.”

Eugena winced at the white girl’s attempted inner-city speak. After booking her on the show a year ago, Eugena remembered reading in her bio that she’d been born in white-bread New Canaan, Connecticut. Eugena thought about all the elocution books she’d gotten out of the library to get the sound of poor out of her voice. What a sorry state this upside-down world had come to.

The hijacker held up the earrings as if appraising them. Then he flicked them one after the other right into the girl’s face.

“How about instead,” he said slowly, “you sit your slutty ass down.”

Mercedes’s face darkened. Then she snapped her fingers in the hijacker’s face. “Slutty what?” she said angrily. “Who you think you’re talkin’ to, shorty?”

The hijacker immediately pulled out a spray canister from his pocket. He grabbed the singer by her hair and emptied it into her face. Mercedes’s face looked like it was blistering as she screamed through the pepper spray.

As she fell to her knees, Jack calmly dragged her across the marble center aisle by her hair, right to the door of a confessional on the north wall. He opened it, threw the girl in with force, then slammed it shut.

“Little hot shit for the hot shit,” he said to the wide-eyed hostages. “Anybody else want to discuss their travel plans?”

Next, Jack tapped his foot in the silence.

“Guess not,” he finally said. “Well, listen up, kids. We need to start an individual interview process, so I’m going to have to go ahead and ask everyone to line up in front of the first door to the right at the back of the chapel. Now!”

Eugena stood and turned meekly around along with the rest of the hostages. As she came out into the aisle, she could hear Mercedes whimpering inside the confessional.

She almost felt sorry for the girl, but what good was it to antagonize these men? What did she think was going to happen? What was she thinking? She probably actually thought he would let her go, Eugena decided. When was the last time a human being had said no to the spoiled-brat music star?

As Eugena got in the queue behind the others, she decided that out of everyone in here, she was the one to speak to their captors. No one had a better chance of success than she did. For better or worse, it had always been that way.

She glanced at the golden, glowing rows of flickering candles. Maybe that was the reason she’d been put here, Eugena thought.

To try to talk her way out of this.

CHARLIE CONLAN waited on line for his “interview” in front of one of the purple-draped confessionals along the south walkway.

Sounded a little melodramatic if you asked him, more cheesy scare tactics like the masks and robes. It seemed like the hijackers were trying to play off the gothic mood of the place, get people afraid, keep ’em off balance at all times. Fairly intelligent tactics, actually.

Conlan knew most over-the-hill rock legends like him were pretty soft. But few had his background. What growing up poor on the downtown streets of Detroit had failed to teach him, an extended stay at the Hanoi Hilton for most of ’69 had filled in pretty well.

Conlan steeled himself as the dark wood door finally opened and a woman, Marilyn Rubenstein, emerged from her “interview.” He saw that the young actress looked shaken as she came closer to him. Her blond hair was plastered to her scalp with sweat, and her glazed-over eyes looked as if she had just been forced to witness something grossly wrong.

She caught Conlan gaping at her as the guards led her past. “Do what they say,” she advised in a whisper.

“Next,” the hijacker at the door called in a bored voice. “That means you, hotshot.”

Conlan hesitated; then he stepped across the marble entryway and into the room.

It wasn’t a confessional, Conlan realized immediately. It was a little security room. Some folding chairs, a table. A coffee machine and a row of charging walkie-talkies on a metal desk along one wall.

Sitting at the metal table in the middle of the room was the lead hijacker, Jack. He motioned to the empty metal chair on the opposite side of the table.

“Please, Mr. Conlan, have a seat. I’m a big fan, by the way.”

Conlan sat. “Thank you.”

On the table between them were two items. A pair of handcuffs in a clear plastic bag and a roll of duct tape. Conlan eyed the items, trying to keep the fear in his belly from rising. Don’t show ’em anything, Charlie. Everything close to the vest.

Jack lifted a clipboard from his lap. His pen clicked.

“Okay, Mr. Charlie Conlan,” he said. “In order to facilitate things here, I’m going to have to ask you for the names and numbers of your financial people. Any kind of pin or access codes that are needed to get to your funds, passwords, that sort of thing, would be most helpful.”

Conlan forced himself to smile as he made eye contact with Jack.

“So all this is about money?” he said.

The hijacker tapped the pen against the top of the clipboard and frowned.

“I don’t have the time for idle chitchat, Mr. Conlan,” Jack said. “Are you going to cooperate or not? Last chance.”

Conlan decided he needed to push the envelope some. See exactly what they were dealing with here.

“Let me think about that for a second,” he said, rubbing his chin with his fingertips. “Agghh. Ummmm. Fuck, no?”

Jack slowly took the cuffs out of the plastic bag, and then he stood. He walked behind Conlan and quickly, expertly cuffed his wrists behind his back.

Conlan clenched his jaw as he waited for the first blow to come. He’d had teeth pulled out with pliers. He hoped the little Napoleonic bastard had brought his lunch.

But the first blow didn’t come.

Instead there was a quick rustle-and the plastic bag was plopped over Conlan’s head.

Tape shrieked, and then a nooselike pressure encased Charlie Conlan’s neck, closing the bag with an airtight seal. Sweat immediately began flooding out of his pores. The plastic clung to his skin like grease, rattled in his mouth and nostrils as he took a panicked breath.