I turned the wheel sharply and tried to make a U-turn on the path, hoping to find a foot trail on which to drive. The little machine lurched and threw me forward against the dashboard, stalled in place. I played with the ignition but there was not even a flicker of life. The cart had run off its charge. It was dead.

The blunt nose had bumped against the curb on the left-hand side of the road. I jumped out and looked around to get my bearings, and decided to run for cover in the opposite direction from which I had come.

The ground was firm when I stepped onto it. I was glad the snow had melted from its edges so that no tracks would be obvious to anyone heading along this way. I looked for a clear path between the trees, and set off racing when I found a narrow hiking trail. A small sign identified a grove of Himalayan white pine, and their flexible branches covered with long green needles gave as much protection as I could have hoped for. I ducked and took myself as far off the roadway as I could navigate without much visibility.

The pair of lights got closer to me now and came to a stop in what I assumed was the vicinity of my abandoned cart.

Certainly, Mike and Mercer would be searching for me. There was no point in my trying to peer out of the foliage and see who had approached. If he were friend and not foe, he would have been calling my name.

The headlights cut off. My pursuer had decided to look for me on foot. I didn't hear him getting closer-maybe he had been fooled briefly by the direction in which the empty cart had been facing and started his search on the far side of the paved road. But I took the moment to climb deeper and higher into the woods, certain I would find an egress on the far side of the trail I had entered.

Seconds later, the intense beam of a high-powered flashlight made a 360-degree arc from the roadway where the man-probably Phelps-was standing. I crouched behind one of the fat pines. My clothes were navy blue and black. There was nothing shiny or bright to catch the attention of a flashlight, so I tried to stay calm and motionless.

When the glare no longer looked like it was focused on me, I found the trail again and kept walking, up a hilly slope and into a denser plot of trees. I patted my pants for my cell phone, but realized it was back in Phelps's kitchen, in the pocket of my blood-soaked jacket.

As I climbed higher I thought of Mercer and Mike. They knew I was inside the gates of the Botanical Gardens and they would know I would not have left here without them. Mike had sworn to me at the hospital after my spell beneath the floorboards at Poe Cottage that he would never again leave me behind without a thorough search. I expected to hear sirens any minute, and I knew they could call in choppers with infrared lights that were capable of finding my warm body in the darkest forest if it came to that.

I stopped for a few minutes, still spooked by the total silence of the woods around me. A groundskeeper who had lived on this property for more than twenty years would know every inch of the terrain, while I was feeling my way around like a blind person. I could walk myself in and around trails that Phelps would be able to trace from memory until I dropped from exhaustion, or I could shelter myself in the warmest place possible and let the NYPD come to me.

The long green fingers of the pine needles seemed as likely a cushion as anything I would find in this wilderness. I pulled at a few of the low-hanging branches, knowing I'd infuriate the garden's high-rolling contributors for destroying their plants and counting on their forgiveness if I survived the chase.

I covered the surface of the ground with several fronds and then seated myself atop them, pulling others over me as further camouflage. But the frozen turf beneath them was filled with the residual dampness of the winter's earlier storms, and fifteen minutes of sitting still chilled me more than I could bear.

On my feet again, I traipsed down the far side of the hill, hoping to find some way back to civilization. Now I could make out two sets of headlights, tearing across the roadway like a pair of bumper cars at an amusement park. What if Phelps had called on his army of teenage bandits to ferret me out?

Time to get off a comfortable path, I told myself. I bent beneath the boughs of several trees and started traversing the hillside. I wanted to be in a place where I couldn't see lights, and nothing short of night-vision goggles could spot me.

My cheeks tingled with the cold, and I wiggled my toes to make sure they were still moving. I soldiered on between and among the thick pine trees.

About thirty feet ahead, a dark gray mass seemed to loom behind the green foliage. I worked my way toward it, dragging several branches behind me to serve as a blanket, wondering whether spaces between the large boulders would offer any better respite for me.

I held on to a tree trunk and pulled myself up the last few feet, leaning on the side of the first rock I came to, gulping in the cold air to catch my breath.

A series of huge stones towered over that one, so I stepped around it to see whether there was a niche in which I could lodge myself. I was standing at the mouth of a small cave, and without thinking twice I stepped inside the black hole to get shelter from the elements-and from my pursuers.

It was dry inside, and I felt immediate relief as I tried to adjust my eyes to an even darker field of vision.

Looking at the ground so as not to twist an ankle or stumble on a rock, I got about eight or ten feet back into the cave, so that even a strong light beam would not catch me at the edge of the opening.

I didn't look up until my forehead brushed against something large and hairy dangling from overhead. I knelt on the floor in a panic as dozens of bats let loose with a volley of high-pitched squeals, routed from their roosts by my unexpected invasion. Some dove directly at me with their bared little teeth and extended claws displayed to my horror. Others flapped around my ears, ominously flaunting their four-foot wingspan before taking off out of the cave, leaving me quivering on its filthy floor.

I was flying now, flying downhill as fast as I could move myself, with furry little mammals shrieking above me as their own fear forced them out of hibernation into the bracing shock of cold air. They blackened the sky beyond the treetops and swarmed like an angry army as they tried to organize into some kind of formation.

In what direction could I find safety? I brushed at the wings that neared my scalp, worried that a bat would become entangled in my hair. Worried also that the most aggressive ones were likely to be rabid.

Suddenly, I had a more important fear. Even if the detectives were scouring the park, a flock of brown bats would have no significance to them. Sinclair Phelps would know their seasonal habits, would know I had disturbed the roost, and would know exactly where on the property the bat cave was located.

As I approached the roadway from halfway down the slope, a minivan without headlights pulled into view and braked to a standstill. I doubled back and ran uphill to the boulders, climbing up on top of the lowest ones, rather than reentering the cave, as I heard heavy breathing and something charging up the underbrush toward me.

Panting at my feet were two dogs, German shepherds who barked furiously as they tried to scale the rocks. The bats that fluttered overhead made passes at them, too, and the dogs raised their snouts at the creatures that taunted them.

"Down!" shouted a voice a few feet farther down.

At the sound of Phelps's command, both animals squatted on all fours and impatiently waited for their master. The shrill screech of the bats, some beyond the range of human hearing, must have been disturbing to the canines, both of whom whined and growled as they lay in place.