Jeff felt numb. "And the people down here really help them?"

"Why wouldn't they?" Jinx asked, shrugging. "People die down here all the time and nobody gives a shit. Half the time nobody even knows who the bodies are. So if someone wants to pay us just to keep someone else from gettin‘ out, what's the big deal?"

Jeff eyed her warily through the gloom. She couldn't have been more than fourteen or fifteen, but there was a hard edge to her that told him she'd been on the streets for a while. "So why shouldn't I think you're just another one of the herders?"

Jinx looked at him as if he were stupid. "They only use guys for that. Big guys. Like I could keep you from doing anything? Jeez!" Then, out of nowhere, she asked, "What's your dad look like?"

"My dad?" Jeff echoed. "What's my dad got to do with-" And then it came to him. So much had happened since Tillie had thrown them out of the rooms she called the co-op that he'd almost forgotten the faint voice he'd thought was calling his name. "I thought I heard him," he breathed, almost to himself. "But-" He cut himself short, studying Jinx carefully. What could she possibly know about his father?

"There was a guy in the subway station," she said, eyeing him almost truculently now. "The one at Columbus Circle. He showed me a picture of you."

"What did he look like?" Jeff asked, his pulse quickening even as he told himself it couldn't possibly have been his father. Why would his father even be looking for him? And if somebody had seen him running into the subway, it was a lot more likely it was the police showing his picture around than his father.

"I guess he was a little shorter than you," Jinx was saying. "Kind of good-looking-blue eyes and blond hair." She cocked her head, studying his face in the dim light. "He looked kinda like you, I guess, except for your hair and eyes. Except your eyes are shaped the same. Just a different color."

"What about the picture?" Jeff asked, struggling to keep his excitement under control.

"It was you. Looked like you were younger-like maybe in college or something."

Jeff's heart raced at the description of the picture his father always carried in his wallet. "What did he say?" he asked, no longer trying to keep his voice steady.

"He just wanted to know if I'd seen you," Jinx replied. "I was telling him about the hunters being after you when-" Now it was Jinx who faltered, but then she took a deep breath and finished. "Well, the transit cops came and I had to split. They don't like me much."

Jeff barely heard her. If his father was looking for him, then who else was? His mind was racing now, trying to sort it out. How had his father known where he was? Could it have been the cell phone? But if Heather got his message, or his mother heard him before the phone went dead-

But if his father knew he was still alive, wouldn't the cops know, too? "What about the regular police?" he asked. "Were they in the subway, too?"

Jinx rolled her eyes. "They only go in the subway if they want to go somewhere, and they won't go in the tunnels at all. Bunch of chickenshits, if you ask me."

Jinx suddenly froze, and when Jeff started to speak, she grabbed his arm and put her finger to her lips.

From somewhere off to the left, Jeff heard a sound.

Footsteps.

Footsteps that seemed to be coming closer.

He glanced around. A few yards farther along there was a narrow passage he'd made his way through shortly after he'd left Jagger. If he led Jinx through it, he'd have no choice but to take her to Jagger as well. If she were lying, and working for the hunters, he would have led them right to the man who had already saved his life at least once. But if he didn't go through it-if he went in another direction and couldn't find his way back…

Then he would have abandoned Jagger completely.

Making up his mind, he signaled Jinx to follow him and started toward the passage, moving carefully so his feet made no sound. They came to the passage, and Jeff slipped into it, Jinx right behind him. He moved as quickly as he could, but the passage seemed endless, and now he thought he could hear the footsteps again, moving faster.

Coming closer.

He came to the end of the passage, turned left, and pulled Jinx after him. Both of them instinctively pressed their backs against the wall, struggling to control their breath as they listened.

In the distance they once again heard the sound of footsteps.

A pause.

On the wall opposite the end of the passage, a brilliant red dot appeared.

It moved over the wall, back and forth, working steadily downward until it reached the floor.

Laser sight, Jeff thought. He's got a laser sight on a night scope, and he's using the scope to look for me.

The crimson dot vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and then they heard the footsteps fading away.

As Jeff was about to move deeper into the tunnel, Jinx's hand closed on his arm, holding him back. "Listen," she whispered.

Once again Jinx's ears had proved better than his own. Off to the right, in the opposite direction from which he'd originally come, he heard the faint sound of water dripping.

A little more than fifty yards up the tunnel, they found it- water was steadily oozing from a crack in the ceiling, a drop forming and falling every second or two. His thirst suddenly overwhelming him, Jeff held his finger up to the drip, caught one, and put his damp finger into his mouth.

The water tasted clear and fresh, and he was seized with an almost overwhelming urge to put his mouth to the crack in the ceiling and try to suck the moisture out.

Instead he put the paper cup under the drip and forced himself to wait until the cup had filled.

He drank only enough to slake the terrible dryness in his mouth, then filled the cup once more.

"Aren't you going to drink it?" Jinx asked as Jeff started back down the passage, carrying the cup of water as carefully as if it were filled with gold or diamonds.

"Jagger needs it more than I do," he said. "After he's had a drink, I'll come back for more."

They weren't going to find Jeff.

Heather wasn't sure exactly when the thought first entered her head, but the deeper into the tunnels she and Keith ventured, the stronger its grip on her mind became.

She had no idea where they were. Though she'd done her best to keep track of every turn they'd made, every passage they'd crept through, every ladder they'd climbed or crumbling wall they'd scaled, she had long since lost any sense of direction. The semidarkness itself was disorienting, though it hadn't been too bad when they'd still been near the surface, when she'd actually been able to catch glimpses of daylight now and then. Even the few rays of afternoon sun that penetrated through the scattering of grates that appeared here and there over her head were enough to keep her from feeling utterly lost. But since they'd fled down the shaft after hearing the sound of a door closing-a sound that would have been perfectly ordinary on the surface, but had seemed alien to the strange world of the tunnels-she'd been struggling against a rising tide of fear that was now edging toward panic.

Stop it, she told herself. We'll be all right. We will find Jeff, and we will get out. But when Keith, leading her by half a step, stopped and put a hand out to keep her from moving forward, all the fears she had barely held in check nearly broke free. She might even have cried out if Keith hadn't clamped his hand over her mouth, then held his finger to his lips. Her heart pounding, she strained to hear whatever it was that had spooked him, and a moment later, when her pounding heart finally began to settle back into a normal rhythm, she heard it.

Footsteps.

Slow, irregular footsteps, as if whoever was making them was frightened of something.