Robin checked her wristwatch for the thirtieth time. "Meg should have called by now."

"Whose apartment did you send her to?" Wolper asked.

"Mrs. Grandy. A neighbor in the building. Retired schoolteacher. I see her around all the time, but I don't know her phone number and I couldn't find it in the book amp;"

"I'll get it for you."

"I told Meg that if Mrs. Grandy wasn't there, she should go to another neighbor, Mr. Haver. He works at home."

"I'll get that number, too."

Wolper took out his cell phone and made a call. While he was talking, Robin dared another look inside the waiting room. The deputy had been taken away, but the misshapen pool of blood remained, thick on the carpet. It troubled her that she could think of the man only as "the deputy." He had delivered Gray to her on many occasions, but she had never looked at his nameplate, never learned his name.

"Okay, Doctor." It was Wolper, handing her a sheet of paper with two phone numbers written on it. "Use my phone," he said. "We'll keep the office line clear for now."

She punched in the first number, praying to hear Meg's voice. But the person who answered was Mrs. Grandy. "No, dear," she said in response to Robin's question. "I haven't seen her."

"Were you out? Did you just get in?"

Mrs. Grandy chuckled. "You know me better than that. With my arthritis and my bad hip, how often do I go out? I've been here all day. Is anything the matter?"

"Everything's fine. Thank you." Her hand was shaking as she entered the second number. Wolper watched in concern.

"Mannie?" she said when Haver answered. "This is Robin." She cut short his reflexive attempt at small talk. "Is Meg there?" She was not. "You haven't seen her?" He had not. He offered to go to her apartment and ring the doorbell. Robin almost said yes, but she couldn't drag another person into this. "No, it's okay, Mannie. Thanks." She hung up and looked at Wolper. "Not there. She's not there."

"Calm down. Call your home phone. Maybe she hasn't even left yet. In the meantime I'll have West LA send a squad car."

She made the call while Wolper talked to a uniformed officer, who got on his radio. The phone in her condo rang four times before the answering machine clicked on. Meg had recorded the message: "Cameron residence. Mother-and-daughter psychiatric consulting services available at an exorbitant fee." Then a beep.

"Meg, if you're there, pick up. Meg? Meg, pick up, please."

No answer. Robin ended the call.

"Patrol unit's on the way," Wolper said. "They have permission to enter the premises?"

"Yes, of course."

"That's what I told them. How long ago did Gray leave?"

"Twenty-five, thirty minutes."

"I doubt that's enough time to get across town."

"It's a straight shot on the freeway."

"The freeway's always jammed at this hour."

"Almost always. Maybe today he got lucky."

"Even if he did, you told Meg to exit the apartment."

"What if she didn't listen?"

"Why wouldn't she?"

"She's always on my case about being overprotective. And I didn't have time to explain what was going on. She may have thought I was being hysterical."

"You don't strike me as the hysterical type."

"Tell that to my daughter. I probably am overprotective, honestly. She's always telling me not to worry so much. Maybe she decided to ignore my phone call."

"Do you think she would do that?"

"No. But amp; where is she?"

"He hasn't got your daughter, Robin."

She didn't answer. She rose from the couch and paced the office, flicking glances at her wristwatch.

"What's taking so long? Shouldn't they have called in by now?"

"There's about a ten-minute response time," Wolper said.

She went on pacing, her heart beating in counterpoint to the ragged rhythm of her steps.

Her head throbbed. She had told the paramedics she was fine. She had assured Wolper that she hadn't blacked out. She'd lied. She was not fine. She had been struck on the head and had lost consciousness for an indeterminate time period. She was suffering from a headache, intermittent blurred vision, and amnesiathe moments before her injury were a blank. All of these were symptoms of concussion. She could be bleeding intracranially. But she refused to submit to an exam, because an exam would lead to hospitalization, and she could not be hospitalized right now. She couldn't sit still for a CT scan. Not until she knew about Meg.

Her mind went back to the young buzz-cut officers watching her from behind shaded lenses, asking her if she believed that the gang members who attacked her deserved rehabilitation. She'd said everyone deserved a chance. But where to draw the line? She had wanted to help Gray, but maybe she had only helped him to get loose. And now maybe he had Meg.

She could handle anything that affected no one but her. But if Gray had Meg amp; if he killed her amp;

Gray had already murdered a deputy, and now he might be running through his old, familiar MOthe drive to the desert, the slow crawl of hours, then the bullet to the brain. He had done it five times before, and now he could be repeating the same stereotyped behavior pattern, replaying the well-worn tape.

One of the uniformed cops, whose name, she had learned, was Beecher, stepped into the office, rover radio in hand. "A-forty-three's at the residence. They found the front gate jimmied open."

Robin sank onto the couch. "Oh, God."

"Why would he need to force the gate?" Wolper asked. "He took your keys."

"My car keys. Not the house keys. That's a separate set."

Beecher was listening as the dispatcher relayed communications from the West LA unit. Robin heard only screeches and squawks, but apparently the noise was intelligible to the patrol officer. "They've found the door to the unit ajar. They're going in."

She bit back a moan. There was an endless period of silence before the radio crackled again. "The unit is empty. No sign of your daughter, Dr. Cameron."

The words seemed hollow and unreal, like a line of dialogue in a movie.

"Was there a struggle?" she heard herself ask.

Beecher shook his head. "They haven't reported any indications of violence."

"They should talk to the neighbors," Robin said dully. "One of them may have seen something, heard something."

"They will, Doctor. That's standard procedure."

Standard. But there was nothing standard about any of this. She felt her control slipping.

She sank onto the couch, her lower body going numb.

Years ago, on a trip to Oregon, she'd been caught in a snowstorm while driving through the Cascade Mountains, and her tires had lost traction on the icy road. The sickening sense of the road surface sliding out from under her, the car yawing toward the guardrail, the steering wheel useless in her hands amp; that was what she felt now, as her world and her life spun away.

Some kind of barely repressed hysteria hiccuped inside her, threatening to break out in a flood of screams and sobs. She pressed down on it with the full force of her self-control, refusing to fall apart when Meg was in danger and needed her. Later there would be time for helplessness, but not now.

"Dr. Cameron?" Wolper's voice, from far away. "Robin?"

She didn't answer.

Her daughter was gone.