"The man who raped and killed my daughter was released from prison today," Eve had said, her dark eyes smoldering, her voice ice cold. "My daughter is dead, and now he's a free man." Until that moment, Perry Randall hadn't been aware that Eve Harris had ever had a child, let alone that the child had been murdered. But Eve anticipated the question before Randall could voice it. "My daughter didn't count," she said. "I was just another unwed mother, and she was just another black girl with no father. If my daughter had been white, the bastard would have been executed." Her eyes moved over the white faces surrounding her, daring any of them to argue. They all looked uncomfortable, but none of them spoke. "But she was my child," Eve went on. "And now he's back on the streets, going on with his life." Her voice dropped another notch. "You know as well as I do that he's already looking for his next victim."

Still Perry Randall said nothing, and then it was Linc Cosgrove who spoke. "It's not just my wife's daughter," he said. "It's the tenor of the times we live in. No one is being held accountable for their own actions. Everything is someone else's fault." He passed a photograph to Randall, and the Assistant District Attorney found himself looking at a man of about twenty-five, with narrow-set eyes, a weak chin, and a shock of dirty blond hair falling over a sloping forehead. The man's name was Leon Nelson. "I've read the transcript of his trial," he went on. "They didn't try him-they tried Eve's daughter instead. When they were through, they gave this man fifteen years." Linc Cosgrove's heavy brow arched and his voice took on an edge of sarcasm. "It was a murder, after all-they had to do something, didn't they? But the prisons are overcrowded, and apparently he has behaved himself. So he is now out, and, as Eve says, undoubtedly looking for his next victim."

Perry Randall's gaze shifted back to Eve, his unspoken question hanging in the air.

"I want justice," Eve said. "But not just for my daughter. I want justice for every powerless victim in this city." She'd outlined her proposal then, in the same dispassionate tones with which she now discussed whatever proposal lay before the City Council, to which she'd been elected three years after that first meeting. "I think of it as a club within the club," she'd said. "A club of fair-minded people who have the greater good of the city and its citizens at heart." What she proposed was not a lynch mob. Rather, it was an orderly system in which the worst elements of the city would be identified and dealt with. "Each of them will have a fair chance," Eve explained. "There will be a time limit-a statute of limitations, if you will. And should any of them prove themselves capable of finding their way out of the maze that exists under our city, then they shall have truly won their freedom. But it must be won-we have been giving too many people too much for too long. It's time people began earning their lives again."

Perry Randall had long understood that the coddling of the criminal element had to stop, and that the established system was unlikely to correct its own dangerous drift.

That was why The 100 Club had originally been established: to allow for society's elite to do what was necessary in private, without the necessity of convincing a seemingly uneducable public to find the spine to do the right thing.

Thus was the Manhattan Hunt Club born.

He and Linc Cosgrove had selected the original members themselves, and he could still remember that night when he, Linc, Frisk McGuire, and Carey Atkinson had first gone into the tunnels in search of the man who had murdered Eve Harris's daughter. Eve herself had organized the people living in the tunnels, those who had become the gamekeepers for the hunt, funneling money to them in payment for their work.

Carey Atkinson's people had discovered where the killer was living, and some of Eve's people escorted him into the tunnels, explained to him what was about to happen, and why, and had given him certain provisions.

Then they released him.

What Perry hadn't expected was the excitement that had run through him as he and the others moved through the special door that had been cut through from The 100 Club's subbasement-now the headquarters of the Manhattan Hunt Club-and began exploring the tunnels. That first hunt lasted nearly a week, as he and his team began mapping the tunnels, learning where there were hidden passages, and which passages led to dead ends. Eventually, they had trapped their prey in a storm drain on the fourth level down, backed up against a grating that opened onto the Hudson. Perry himself had shot Nelson, placing the red dot of his laser sight in the precise center of the man's forehead as he was silhouetted against the grate. The thrill he had felt as he squeezed the trigger, and the satisfaction of seeing Nelson's body slump into the muck covering the bottom of the culvert, had been better even than the sexual gymnastics Carolyn had taught him.

The thrill of the hunt had never waned for Perry Randall, and as he began tonight's adventure, he felt more alive than he had in weeks. He'd been anticipating this moment for months. From the moment Jeff Converse was arrested, Perry knew that sooner or later the young man who thought he might someday marry his daughter would become part of the hunt.

After the sentencing-the mere slap on the wrist the judge had inflicted-he knew the time had come. When Eve Harris called him to convene a meeting of the special committee that she herself chaired, he was prepared. Of course, Eve herself was going to have to be disciplined; it was inexcusable that Converse had been allowed to get his hands on a cell phone. But that could be dealt with later, after the hunt was over.

After Jeff Converse had been placed among the other trophies that lined the walls of the Hunt Club.

With senses made sharper by the adrenaline flowing through his body, his fingers tightened on the strap that held his rifle to his back. The gun was one of the Steyr SSG-PIs, to which he'd fitted a day-night scope with an infrared beam.

As he came to a place where a locked door led from the utility tunnel into the Fifty-third Street subway tunnel, he reached into his pocket and took out one of the numerous keys that had been supplied to the members of the hunt by one of their own, whose public responsibilities included overseeing most of the city's utilities. Randall fumbled with the lock as the key stuck, but then it turned and the door opened.

He glanced to his left and saw nothing but the distant glow of the subway station.

To his right, barely visible in the distance, a couple of derelicts-a man and a woman, judging by their size-were shambling off into the darkness.

By the time the rest of Perry Randall's team had come through the door and relocked it, the two figures had vanished.

Heather Randall's fingers closed on Keith Converse's arm. when he turned to look at her, he could barely make out her finger pressed to her lips in warning. She leaned forward and whispered into his ear. "I heard something-like a door closing."

Keith frowned in the darkness. They'd passed a door only a few minutes ago. He'd tried the handle, anxious to get away from the subway tunnel, but it had been locked.

He couldn't recall seeing another.

But he had found a shaft, a narrow one, leading downward, with iron rungs embedded in its walls. Until Heather's whispered warning, he'd been undecided about whether to take the shaft or not. Now his mind was made up, and with no hesitation at all he climbed down into the darkness.

A second later, Heather followed.

And less than a minute after that, Perry Randall and his fellow hunters came to the top of the shaft.

After conferring among themselves, they, too, began climbing down the rungs of the ladder.