The gray helicopter hovered next to the speedboat in the rain, so low that whitecaps were washing over its skids. A huge door slid back, opening a space big enough for a squad of marines to rappel through. At Dr. Tarver's signal a black man leaped from the helicopter into the speedboat.

"Load those cases!" the doctor shouted, pointing to the Pelicans in the stern.

While the newcomer hustled to the back of the boat, Tarver slashed the rope binding him to Jamie, then wrapped the end still tied to Jamie's waist twice around his hand like a leash. Alex got to her feet, waiting for a chance to do something, anything. Tarver jammed his pistol into his waistband, then pulled the high-powered rifle out of the ski locker and tossed it into the hovering chopper.

The black man had already loaded one case and was going back for the other. Dr. Tarver lifted Jamie into the crook of his arm, then planted his right foot on the gunwale of the boat and prepared to toss Jamie into the rocking chopper.

"Aunt Alex!" Jamie screamed, his face white with terror. "Don't let them take me!"

As Jamie flailed against Tarver, Alex lunged forward and grabbed for the pistol at the small of Tarver's back. Her fingers closed around the butt-

Then she was gazing up from the deck, the left side of her face numb. She saw a blurry image of a black man staring down at her with a gun in his hand. Sure that she was down for the count, the man made two more trips to the stern of the boat. As he stepped over Alex for the last time, the Kelty pack in his hand, she struggled onto one elbow, then to her knees. Looking over the pitching gunwale, she saw Tarver grinning from the chopper door while the black man secured the cases inside.

Jamie was nowhere in sight.

When Dr. Tarver turned away to help the loader, Alex saw the chopper pilot, and her breath caught in her throat. It was the gray-haired man who had visited Tarver's clinic yesterday. In that frozen moment, she realized he was also the army officer standing with Tarver and the blonde in the VCP photograph in Tarver's office. Then she saw Jamie strapped into a seat behind the pilot, his face a mask of fear. Alex saw the terrified eyes of Grace on her deathbed, dying with the awful knowledge that she was leaving her son in the care of a monster.

Alex looked frantically around the boat, but Dr. Tarver had left her nothing: not a flare gun, not an ax. He had even taken the key with him. When the helicopter lifted into the sky, she would be left alone in the roaring storm, and Jamie would be gone forever. She screamed from the depths of her being, a cry of utter failure and desolation.

As if on cue, the chopper dipped its nose and began to rise. Twenty feet, forty, sixty. As it rose, the pilot kept the open door facing the boat, and Alex soon saw why. Dr. Tarver had picked up the rifle and was now kneeling in the door, aiming at her chest. Some distant part of her brain screamed, Drop! Yet her body remained frozen. If she could not fulfill her promise to Grace, what did her own fate matter? She would watch Jamie until he disappeared, no matter what the cost. If Grace called her to account in some other world, she could at least say she had done that.

Waiting for the muzzle flash, she saw a blur of white descend in front of Dr. Tarver's face. The bedsheet? No, that lay discarded on the deck behind her. Then she saw Jamie, his face beside the flapping whiteness. He'd thrown his little arms around Dr. Tarver's neck. As the black man appeared in the door and grabbed for Jamie, one of those little arms jerked something tight.

A drawstring, Alex realized. The croker sack!

Tarver began flailing his arms, and the rifle flew out of the door. The doctor looked like a scarecrow being jerked around by a mad puppeteer. He swung back into the cabin, lurching into the pilot. The helicopter stopped ascending and began to pitch wildly in the air. Seventy feet above the lake, the chopper spun through 360 degrees. As the door came around, the yellow Pelican case flew out, followed by the black man. He turned two long somersaults in the air, then smacked the choppy surface of the lake.

When the helicopter came around the second time, Alex saw Dr. Tarver in the door again. He seized the white sack with both hands and tore it violently from his neck. A thick black rope hung from one of his cheeks. She shuddered as she realized it was one of the cottonmouths, attached to the doctor by its two-inch fangs. Tarver ripped the snake away from his face and flung it into space. The black serpent seemed to hang in the air, twisting wildly, then it fell.

As Dr. Tarver turned back to the interior, the chopper dipped fifteen feet, and Jamie shot from the open door like a cannonball. Alex screamed in horror, but as Jamie fell, she realized that his was a controlled fall. He wasn't flipping like the man who had gone before him. He was dropping straight down, feetfirst, like a schoolboy showing off at a swimming hole. He landed seventy yards from the boat, and Alex lost him in the chop.

She jumped behind the wheel, then remembered that Dr. Tarver had taken the key. Slamming her bound hands against the gunwale, she ran to the stern. Hope flooded through her. On the port side of the Carrera was an emergency trolling motor. Bill had used it to quietly propel the boat around fishing holes. A bracket allowed the electric motor to be lifted out of the water when not in use. Two cables connected it to a battery on the stern deck. Alex looked back toward the spot where Jamie had fallen. The helicopter was descending over it. Her first thought was Jamie, but then she realized they were after the fallen case.

She ran her hands along the head of the trolling motor until she found the power switch. Then she lifted the bracket so that the propeller emerged from the water and protruded just above the gunwale. She knew she could steer the boat with bound hands, but she would be useless once she reached Jamie. When she hit the start switch, the prop instantly spun into a black blur. She held her taped wrists over the whirring prop and yanked her forearms as far apart as they would go, slightly stretching the duct tape. With every molecule of her instinct rebelling, she lowered the tape onto the edge of the prop.

The ripping whine of a Weed Eater assaulted her eardrums, and a red mist filled the air. She tumbled onto the deck. The force of the prop had kicked her hands into her face, knocking her backward. But when she looked down at her bloody wrists, only a shred of tape remained intact. Yanking her arms apart, she got to her feet and thrust the spinning prop down into the water.

The speedboat slowly moved forward. Alex jumped behind the wheel and aimed the bow toward the spot where she believed Jamie had landed. Her left hand was covered with blood. The prop had gouged deep into that wrist, chewing up veins and exposing a radiant white carpal bone. She forced herself to look away. She didn't care how much blood she lost, so long as she had the strength to pull Jamie out of the water when she reached him.

Ahead and to her right, the gray helicopter had settled just above the surface of the lake. Dr. Tarver was straddling its left skid, trying desperately to pluck the heavy yellow case from the waves. Alex had reached the spot where she thought Jamie had fallen, but she saw no sign of him. Twenty meters away, Dr. Tarver heaved the yellow case into the belly of the chopper. As he did, a big wave sloshed inside the machine. Almost instantly, the chopper bellied, and another wave flung itself inside. Obviously panicked, the pilot dipped his rotors to the right, venting the water from the door and lifting the chopper six feet above the waves. This maneuver dumped Dr. Tarver into the lake.