“That’s your opinion.”

“Yes, it is my opinion, which is to say that I trust his judgment. Now, I’ve done the best I can to honor your wishes. I promise that Falcon won’t even know I’m in the neighborhood, unless Vince thinks it’s absolutely necessary.”

“No, not unless anything. You can’t talk to that lunatic.”

The desperate tone surprised her. It was almost irrational, certainly unreasonable. “I’m sorry. I can’t promise you that.” There was only silence on the other end of the line. “Papi, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Are we good then?”

He made a noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a groan. “I hate to be the one to point this out. But sweetheart, when you and Vince first started dating a year ago, you used to tell me how worried you were about him. You said yourself that he doesn’t exactly play by the book.”

“That’s not what got him hurt.”

“Maybe it didn’t. But maybe it did. I just don’t want to see the same thing happen to you. Can you understand that?”

“Yes, I can. But you have to understand my side of it, too.”

“I know. You do what you have to do.”

“Thank you. I will.”

“We both will.”

“We both will what?” she said, not quite sure what he was trying to say.

“Nothing. I love you.” He said good-bye and hung up.

FOUR O’CLOCK IN the morning. Had the night gone according to their original plan, Jack would have been in bed, only dreaming of the Bahamas or some other slice of paradise, and Theo would have been rolling in from the clubs on South Beach right about this time. Instead, Jack was going on his twenty-second hour without sleep, and he was reporting back to a hostage negotiator by telephone from the Nassau police station.

“What happened to the cash?” said Paulo.

Officer Danen, the City of Miami cop, had told Paulo about the missing money. Danen and Jack were now on speakerphone, as time was of the essence and Paulo wanted nothing lost in translation. Jack leaned closer to the squawk box atop the desk and said, “Someone beat us to it two days ago. The bank won’t give us a name because of the bank secrecy laws. Whoever it was, they cleaned it out.”

“But you still have a power of attorney from your client. Why won’t they tell you who opened the box?”

“Until their lawyers get out of bed and advise otherwise, the bank’s position is that the power of attorney is limited to a right of access. It doesn’t give me a blanket right to information protected by bank secrecy.”

“You’re not playing games with me, are you?”

“No way. You can ask your own man, if you don’t believe me. He was right at my side the whole time. We opened the box, and it was empty. Except for a note.”

“A note?” said Paulo. “What did it say?”

Jack told him. Paulo said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“NFI,” said Jack.

“NFI?”

“Sorry. That’s a Theo-ism: no idea,” he said, leaving out the colorful adjective.

“Did the bank let you keep the note?” said Paulo.

“I didn’t ask for permission. I just kept it.” Another Theo-ism, thought Jack.

“Good. Danen, make sure he doesn’t contaminate it. We’ll want to check it for prints.”

The Miami cop said, “I’m one step ahead of you. Bahamian police pulled a thumbprint from the front and an index finger from the back. We did an electronic scan and sent it off to the FBI and Interpol from the station here in Nassau. Everything’s in the works.”

“Good, but it could turn up goose eggs. Let’s keep the pressure on the bank to cough up a name. Do we need to involve the FBI?”

“Only if we want everything all screwed up,” said Danen.

Jack held his tongue, but he often found the turf wars in law enforcement to be nothing short of the Hatfields versus the McCoys. And people say lawyers have egos.

Paulo said, “Where does it stand now, exactly?”

“The only thing the bank will confirm is that someone definitely accessed the box between three and three-thirty p.m. last Thursday. I might be able to get beyond that in the morning, but in the middle of the night, we can’t get the machinery in motion to pierce the Bahamian bank secrecy laws.”

“Do they realize that we have a hostage situation here?”

“Of course. But no offshore bank wants to get a reputation for opening its secret records every time a U.S. law enforcement agency shows up in the dead of night and claims to have an emergency on its hands.”

“Especially if they screwed up,” said Jack.

“What do you mean?” said Paulo.

“I had a case once against a Cayman Island Bank that let my client’s ex-husband into her safe deposit box. The deadbeat took about a half-million dollars in jewelry that didn’t belong to him. Turned out to be an inside job. A bank employee let him in, even though the husband’s name had been removed from the approved access list long before the divorce. Then it was up to my client to prove there was actually that much jewelry inside the box. We couldn’t, of course. The jury gave us twenty-five thousand dollars just because they knew something was fishy. I suspect that the bank threw one hell of a Christmas party that year.”

“Are you saying that’s what happened here?”

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “But from my experience in the Cayman Islands, the bank isn’t going to tell us squat until they’ve lined up their own legal defense.”

There was silence on the line. Then Paulo said, “How soon till you hear back on the fingerprint check?”

“Could be within the hour,” said Danen.

“Good. Stay in Nassau and do the follow-through with the bank in the morning.”

Jack said, “You want me to stay here, too?”

“No,” said Paulo. “I have to start a dialogue with Falcon. It’s too damn quiet inside that motel room, so I’m going to make the call as soon as we hang up.”

“Be careful with that,” said Jack. “The more you talk to him, the sooner the battery on that cell phone wears out. And he warned us what happens then.”

“I know. But I’ve waited as long as I can. We’ve got to start talking, make sure he’s not freaking out on us. At the very least, I need to be able to reassure him and tell him that you’re on your way back from the bank.”

“All right,” said Jack. “I’ll see you before sunrise.”

T heo remained on the floor, his cheek pressed to the carpet. His head was throbbing from Falcon’s blow.

It had been a good half hour since Falcon had removed the pillowcase from the girl’s head, but her breathing was still shallow and rapid. It seemed that she just couldn’t get enough air. Fear could do that to a person. At least Theo hoped it was fear. This was neither the time nor the place for a real medical emergency.

Theo was still staring at those shoes on the bathroom floor. They had twitched once or twice, but the person behind the closed door was doing an impressive job of remaining absolutely still and quiet. Theo wondered if he should try to make contact with him-he assumed it was a him, based on the shoes.

Falcon continued to pace furiously, practically wearing a path in the carpet. Had he sat for just a moment, or taken a position at the window, that would have been Theo’s chance to slip a whisper through the slat beneath the door: “Tap your foot once if you’re alone. Tap twice if you have a gun.” Theo wasn’t the type to sit around and wait for someone else to solve his problems. But if he was going to make a move against Falcon, he needed to know who was on his side, whether they could be of any help, or whether they’d just be in the way. As it was, Theo could only wait for the right opportunity.

“Relax, why don’t you?” Theo told his captor.

Falcon ignored him. His lips were moving furiously. The guy was deep in conversation, perhaps rehearsing his lines, perhaps fighting off the demons in his head.