Tarver stepped forward and laid the pistol barrel against her forehead. Clearly, he was not convinced. If he shot her now, Alex realized, then somehow slipped away in the storm, his tale of domestic tragedy might still play at FBI headquarters. But time was his enemy, time and the men gathering outside.

The Beretta slammed into her face with blinding force. She collapsed onto Jamie. Pounding footsteps receded, then returned. Dr. Tarver jerked her to her feet. As her vision returned, she saw he was carrying a coil of rope and a roll of duct tape. His backpack lay at his feet.

"That's FBI SWAT out there," Alex said. "You don't have a prayer of getting away."

Tarver cut a length of rope, bound Jamie's legs together, then tied him to the heavy leg of the nearby sofa. "Tell me who's in charge."

"I'm the negotiator. You talk to me."

He hit her again, this time on the bridge of the nose. A river of blood gushed over her lips and chin. Coughing blood, she dug her cell phone from her pocket and handed it over. "Speed dial four. John Kaiser."

Dr. Tarver ripped off some duct tape and bound her wrists as though he did this every day. Then he put her phone in his pocket and pulled his own cell out of the other. He pressed one button and waited. Alex knelt and hugged Jamie as best she could. The slap of beating rotors had diminished, but she could still hear them from the rear of the house. Had Kaiser landed between the tennis courts and the infinity pool? She prayed that the SWAT agents were already dispersing across the grounds.

"Edward?" Tarver said into the phone. "How close are you?…Ten minutes or less. Stay at altitude until I give you the final position… Right."

Altitude? Alex thought. Does Tarver have an aircraft nearby?

Now the doctor took out Alex's cell phone, opened the clamshell, and pressed a button. "Is this Agent Kaiser?…Good. These are my demands. I want an FBI Suburban with its windows spray-painted black driven to the rear door of this house and left there. That's the side where your helicopter is. I want a Cessna Citation fully fueled and waiting at the Madison County Airport with one pilot and its engines running. An FBI pilot is acceptable. Don't attempt to block the driveway when we leave. Don't ask to exchange FBI agents for my hostages. The Suburban should be here in twenty minutes or less-Stop talking, Agent Kaiser, you have nothing to tell me… No, I'm not going to make any threats. Listen very closely, and you'll see why. When the back door opens, do not fire. The Fennell boy will be in front of me. Remember, twenty minutes for the Suburban."

Tarver hung up the phone and shoved it deep in his pocket. Then he picked up Bill Fennell's shotgun from behind the sofa and fired it into the floor.

Jamie cringed into Alex's chest when the weapon roared.

Tarver took hold of Bill's corpse by the ankles and dragged it toward the back of the house. Alex crawled to the sofa, shoved her bound hands under it, and lifted with all her strength. She heard the back door open, then a massive grunt, which told her that Tarver was trying to lift Bill Fennell's corpse, a nearly impossible feat with dead weight. "Yank the rope loose!" she told Jamie. "Hurry."

She heard another grunt, this one like the sound of a shot-putter making a heroic heave, and then the back door slammed. Jamie had almost gotten the rope loose from the sofa leg when Tarver marched back into the room. Alex shook her head, and Jamie lay back down.

"You see why I don't make threats?" Tarver said into her cell phone. "The boy's next, Kaiser. You have nineteen minutes."

Alex saw that he'd brought a bedsheet from the laundry room, one of Grace's five-hundred-thread-count Egyptians. Tarver shook it open, then took a pair of scissors from his back pocket and cut two holes like ghost's eyes near the center of the cream-colored sheet.

"What are you doing?" Jamie asked from the floor. "Making a Halloween costume?"

Tarver laughed. "That's right, boy. And it's going to scare the hell out of some people."

He bent and cut the rope that bound Jamie to the sofa leg, then cut a longer piece and tied Jamie to his own body by tying them both around their waists. He left less than three feet of slack between them.

"Please don't do this, Doctor," Alex begged. "Send Jamie outside. I'll go with you anywhere you want to go. I'll shield you all the way out."

She might as well have been talking to a statue.

"Put on my backpack," Tarver said to Alex, pointing at the blue Kelty on the floor.

"That's where the snakes are," Jamie said quietly.

"There's more than snakes in there," Tarver said, cutting the duct tape from Alex's wrists.

She hesitated, making sure the pack was fastened shut, then carefully shouldered it. The pack was heavy, but to her relief she felt no movement inside.

"Get ready to carry those cases," Tarver said, his eyes on the front door. "Both of them."

Alex suddenly realized that Tarver had made his demands only to put Kaiser and his men at the maximum tactical disadvantage. At this moment, they would be setting up interlocking fields of fire to cover the few feet of porch space between the back door and the spot where the FBI Suburban would pull up in fifteen minutes. They were rehearsing for a scene that would never be played. And they were doing it on the wrong side of the house.

Dr. Tarver picked up Jamie as easily as he would a sack of groceries, then pulled the king-size bedsheet over both of them. Alex could no longer tell where Dr. Tarver stopped and Jamie began.

"We're going to the boathouse," Tarver said in a slightly muffled voice. "Listen to me, Alex. If you drop those cases, I'll shoot him in the head. Tell her where the gun is, Jamie."

Alex saw a jerk under the sheet.

"Under my chin," answered the small voice.

"You walk ahead of us all the way. If you jump off the pier, I'll shoot him. I know there's damn little chance of you abandoning him, but people do crazy things under stress. Remember your gray-haired friend on the porch."

Alex would never forget him. She picked up the heavy cases.

As Dr. Tarver reached for the doorknob, Alex's cell phone rang beneath the sheet. She saw movement, then Tarver said, "I assume you're calling to tell me that everything I asked for is being done, so you don't need to talk. I'm watching the clock. Good-bye." He opened the door and gestured for Alex to exit first. "Straight to the boathouse. If you slow down, Jamie's gone."

Alex set off across the grass, marching into the teeth of the rain. She tried to make out SWAT agents among the shrubs and trees, but she saw none. She started to look back, but Dr. Tarver shouted, "Faster!"

She was almost jogging now. Kaiser had to be panicking; Eldon Tarver had turned the tactical situation inside out. Reinforcements could not have arrived yet, so Kaiser was limited to the agents he'd brought in the chopper. He'd probably posted one or two on this side of the house, no more. Right now, they would be describing the strange parade: a baggage-laden woman leading a ghost toward the lake.

She was on the pier now. The impact of her feet echoed up from the whitecaps beneath the wood, despite the hissing patter of the rain. Barring a mistake by a nervous sniper, they would all reach the boathouse alive. Dr. Tarver had already proved that he would kill without hesitation, and even if Kaiser believed one of his men had a decent shot, he wouldn't give the fire order. From his point of view, Dr. Tarver had nowhere to run. Fifty square miles of water might seem like a lot of running room to a man with a speedboat, but when you had a Bell 430 full of SWAT agents at your command, it was nothing.

"Move your ass!" Tarver shouted from behind her.

Alex heard her cell phone ringing faintly as she ran, but Dr. Tarver didn't answer. One of his earlier phrases replayed constantly in her mind: Stay at altitude until I give you the final position. Who could be coming to rescue Tarver by air? A foreign intelligence service? That would be an act of war.