As the SUV draws even, a strange thing happens. The tinted side window slides down. From the dark interior an arm slowly extends. For one horrifying instant it looks like the arm is holding a gun, cocking a trigger. Shooting me between the eyes. But the hand is empty, the barrel of the “gun” is an index finger firing icy slugs of terror into my brain.

The SUV glides away, accelerates around a corner, and is gone.

Total duration, no more than a few seconds on the clock. An eternity in my heart.

Cutter merges the stolen Explorer into the traffic on Queens Boulevard for a few blocks before finding his way to a less congested parallel street. If an alert goes out for a silver Ford Explorer, good luck, he’s counted ten similar vehicles in three blocks. Besides, any responding cops are likely to assume a fleeing perpetrator would use one of the Long Island expressways. Whereas he has an appointment in Manhattan and will proceed in that direction at a leisurely pace.

Tooling along with his left arm in the window, catching the summer air, he reflects upon his encounter with Mrs. Bickford. She had caught him by surprise. He’d not expected her back in the garage so soon, and certainly had not anticipated being recognized. What was it that gave him away? His profile? General size and weight? Something about the way he moved? Whatever, it hadn’t been his face. He’d never been unmasked in her presence, and she could no more have made out features than he could. Indeed, at first he hadn’t realized who was hailing him. Thought it might be a woman looking for help—dead battery or whatever. Not that he could have stopped to render assistance at that particular time.

’Scuse me, miss, I’d help you but I just killed a man and have to make a getaway. Cutter smiles to himself. Amazing how effective an ice pick can be as a means of execution. Quiet and effective, but particularly useful when it comes to eliminating the splatter effect. Slice a target’s throat and you get covered with DNA markers. Whereas an ice pick to the brain stem is remarkably clean, if considerably more difficult to execute correctly. In that sense, mission accomplished. Not that Cutter had taken any pleasure or satisfaction in executing the lawyer. It was a thing that had to be done, to keep the plan on track. Vargas hadn’t known all that much, no more than a suspicion that the custody petition was somehow bogus, and the ability to identify Cutter by face, if not by name. That was enough to seal his fate. Mrs. Bickford’s actions simply made the inevitable happen sooner rather than later.

Good old Mom. Still in there swinging. In the end, all she’ll accomplish is digging herself deeper and deeper into his trap, until the authorities have no choice but to charge her, even if some of the planted evidence looks, well, planted. By then it will be too late—his mission will have been accomplished. Still, you have to admire her nerve. First thing she does when she gets out of the clink is hire a freelance heavy to put the screws on witnesses. Tall, rangy-looking dude with a cool, confident way of moving that gives Cutter pause, but not so much that he’s prepared to alter his plan. No need at the moment. If they get close, ice picks are available at any hardware store. Not that he’ll need to make an additional purchase, since he already has another just like it in his possession.

Always be prepared—he learned that in Boy Scouts. Except he wasn’t prepared to silence Mrs. Bickford, not yet. Not while she’s useful. Tells himself there’s no sentimentality involved, it just makes sense to keep her front and center as a suspect. And yet, to be truthful, there’s something admirable about the woman. She’s braver than she thinks she is, frightened but still able to function, which is the battlefield definition of courage. Also, he’s grateful that she’s done such a fine job of keeping her adopted son in good health. Sickly boy would have been no use to him. Tomas will need his strength for what comes next.

We’ll all need our strength, Cutter thinks. Me, Lyla, the boy. Very soon the next phase of the operation will be put into motion, and that’s when things are likely to get a little dicey, a little edgy. No way to predict exactly what will happen next. He does know the ultimate goal—it burns in his brain like a hot gold disk—but how exactly he’ll get there has yet to be determined. At this stage it’s crucial that he remain flexible, not get locked into any particular scenarios or details.

All of his training has taught him the importance of flexibility, of being able to think rationally in irrational, unthinkable situations. What he has in mind is not so far removed from war, after all. In a battle the only thing certain is uncertainty. You have to accept that—accept that things will change, that events may spiral out of control—and go with the flow, always keeping your goal in mind.

Cutter’s goal is simple enough. He wants his family back.

Considering what has transpired, the tragic events that have clouded poor Lyla’s already delicate mind, the task of reassembling his little family is more than merely daunting. Some might conclude it impossible. Not Cutter, though. He doesn’t know the meaning of impossible. He’s incapable of accepting defeat. He’ll win at all cost.

Hooah and all that clichéd, chest-pounding shit. The point is, he’ll never give up.

That’s what Cutter learned in the Boy Scouts, and later in service to his country. No matter what crap the world heaps on you, never, ever give up.

That’s what he keeps telling himself now, in this desperate hour. And at the core, in the animal parts of his brain, in the marrow of his bones, in the muscles of his heart, he believes it.

24 in the white room

Tomas has a plan. He has no idea how long he’s been here, in the white room. At least a day. Maybe longer. He’s tried to figure out what time it is from the TV, but the tuner doesn’t seem to have a timer, at least not one he can find. And there’s no cable or satellite access, just a stack of DVDs and a player. Mostly lame-o family-rated fare like Finding Nemo and Agent Cody Banks, and a dumb but fun movie called Faster that Mom would never let him see because of the R rating. Hot cars and girls with big butts. He’d seen it three times so far and it still doesn’t suck, although he thinks it’s really stupid how the guys keep doing stupid things to impress the girls. Making cars leap over cliffs and stuff, this one guy actually paragliding from his flaming car just before it smoked into the ground like a guided missile. Wicked good explosion though.

It was a scene in Faster that gave him the idea for his plan. It wasn’t the same because there were no heavy glass vases in the white room, but he’d come up with his own variation. Tomas has no real confidence that his plan will work—these are big strong adults and he’s a kid—but it gives him something to do, something to think about other than how his mom must be worried, and what the man in the mask will do to him once he stops pretending to be nice.

Tomas concentrates on imagining his escape. Picturing himself outside the white room. Getting away and being celebrated as a hero. Standing up on a podium with all the cameras strobing and the big-butt girls hugging him and stuff. “The Boy Who Got Away.” “Star Short-stop Defeats Kidnappers.” He’ll have a scrapbook, other kids will want his autograph.

What will it look like, outside the room? Is this a regular house? The white room has no windows, so it must be in the center of the building, right? Or it could be in a warehouse, like in Faster where the gang is cutting up stolen Ferraris and turning them into super-cars that can run on train tracks down in the subway tunnels.