"Open the door!" shouted Tarver.

She'd reached the boathouse. Alex pushed through the door into fetid darkness. The gleaming white Carrera had already been lowered into the water. It rolled on the waves that crashed under the mildewed walls.

"Load the cases into the stern!" shouted Tarver. "Go!"

Alex set down the larger Pelican and climbed carefully into the pitching speedboat. She stowed the white case back near the huge twin outboard motors.

"Now the other one!"

She climbed out and retrieved the yellow case. As she stowed it, she reflected on how well-planned this escape had been. They had ordered these watertight cases long ago, preparing for an eventuality just like this one. Even if the heavily laden Pelicans went into the water, they would float, and in yellow and white, they would be highly visible from the air.

"Move up into the bow," Dr. Tarver ordered, still under the sheet with Jamie.

Alex unslung the Kelty, then walked forward to the cushioned area where people usually sat to drink beer or sunbathe while others water-skied. A big hand shot out from beneath the sheet and jerked one of her wrists over the other.

"Hold them together!" Tarver shouted.

Two seconds later, he whipped a long strip of duct tape around her wrists. Once they were restrained, he used both hands and wrapped them so tightly that she feared they would go numb.

Her cell phone was ringing again.

This time Tarver answered. "Change of plan, Kaiser. I'm going for a cruise. If your chopper moves within three hundred meters of my boat, I'll kill the boy without hesitation."

Still under the bedsheet, Dr. Tarver got behind the wheel and cranked the Carrera's massive engines. The entire craft shook with their power. The bedsheet covered the throttle, and then the boat was moving forward, steadily gaining way as it moved out of the boathouse into the slashing rain.

The boat shuddered from the impact of waves against the bow, but as the engines gained power, the sharp craft began to leap from crest to crest. Alex tried to think clearly, but no hope came to her. Kaiser probably thought Tarver was making a fatal mistake. Alex knew better. There was a helicopter out here somewhere, waiting to swoop down and carry the doctor to freedom. She wanted to signal Kaiser-there had to be a sniper watching her through a scope-but Tarver was looking right past her through the eyeholes of his ghost costume.

As naturally as she could, she faced the windshield and hunched over as though shielding herself from the rain. She saw the Bell 430 rise above the Fennell house. It climbed and climbed, then banked and arrowed out over the lake, tracking them steadily from six hundred meters out.

When Dr. Tarver turned to look at the pursuing chopper, Alex pointed at him, then stabbed her hand skyward and twirled her finger in a wide arc to indicate the motion of a rotor. She prayed that a sniper was watching her through a scope, but even if one was, what were the chances that he'd read her signal correctly? He'd probably think she was asking for aerial rescue by the FBI chopper.

Dr. Tarver was bearing for a small island that lay a few hundred meters offshore. Only about forty meters long, it was heavily wooded. Alex remembered fishing from it once, with Jamie and her father. Could it conceal a helicopter?

Tarver gunned the throttles, and the boat began to spend more time in the air than on the water. When the little island was dead ahead, he swerved to starboard, circled to the far side, and pulled underneath some overhanging trees.

"Hit the deck!" he shouted, throwing off the bedsheet and pointing his pistol at Alex. "Do it!"

She did. Soon she heard the whup-whup-whup of the FBI helicopter over the Carrera's idling engines. Kaiser was moving closer. She knew he was torn between hanging back for safety's sake and fear that Dr. Tarver would execute his hostages while Kaiser stood helplessly by. The rotor noise increased. Alex couldn't make out anything through the limbs above her, but she knew Kaiser was easing still closer. Her cell phone began to ring.

"Stay down!" Tarver shouted.

Alex flattened herself between the boat seats. A moment later, two gunshots crashed against her ears. Terrified for Jamie, she looked up and saw Dr. Tarver fire a third shot into the choppy water beside the boat.

What the hell is he doing?

Dr. Tarver crouched and opened a long, narrow compartment in the deck of the boat. It had been put there to stow skis, but Tarver pulled a high-powered rifle out of it. From the ornate engraving on the stock, Alex recognized it as another weapon from her dead brother-in-law's collection.

What happened next occurred with the terrible inevitability of nightmares. The FBI chopper dropped into sight a hundred meters from the boat. Dr. Tarver smiled, then jumped up like a hunter coming out of a duck blind and fired five shots in quick succession.

Black smoke billowed from the Bell's turbines even before the final shot struck home. The ship began to yaw wildly in the air. Alex heard an explosion, and then the chopper began dropping toward the water. Its rotors were still spinning; the pilot was using their stored energy to try to reach the surface without shattering the spines of the agents seated behind him.

"It's too fast," Alex murmured, picturing Kaiser bracing himself in the doomed craft. "Oh, God-"

The chopper slammed nose-first into the whitecaps, sending a column of spray high into the air. Mercifully, there were no more explosions. Alex stood up to look for survivors in the water, but she was thrown to the deck when the Carrera sped from beneath the trees. Tarver had his cell phone in his hand, and he was yelling over the roar of the engines.

"There's an island just east of the rendezvous! It's small and oblong. There's a downed chopper on one side. I'll be on the other. Stay clear of that chopper!"

Tarver hugged the perimeter of the island, and soon they were idling in its lee. The island shielded them from the wind, but the rain still stung Alex's face as she searched the dark sky. Jamie crouched on the deck, holding his hands over his ears as though afraid that the madman he was tied to might start firing the rifle again. Alex hunted for something she could use to cut the rope that bound them together. Jamie was an excellent swimmer, and she wouldn't hesitate to throw him overboard if she could. But there was no blade in sight.

The whup-whup of rotors reached her again. She froze. Was this Tarver's accomplice? Or had Kaiser summoned aerial reinforcements? The Highway Patrol and the DEA almost certainly had helicopters based in Jackson, not to mention the sheriff's departments of the surrounding counties.

She could hear the chopper descending through the black sky, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't see it. The rotor noise grew to a roar, and then a group of lights flashed on fifty meters above the boat. No wonder she hadn't seen the damned thing! It was dark gray, almost indistinguishable from the sky. As she watched the chopper descend, hope died within her. Dr. Tarver was talking to the pilot on his cell phone, carefully guiding him in.

The rotor blast drove her to the deck, and static electricity crackled around the boat. As Dr. Tarver shouted above the thunder, she suddenly realized why he hadn't cut the rope binding him to Jamie. With the FBI so close, simply escaping was not enough. Tarver needed insurance to guarantee his survival.

Jamie was it.