Tomas has been waiting for what seems like days and days. He’s managed to upend the chest of drawers and position it to one side of the door. Standing on the chest makes him over six feet tall. In a movie he’d have an iron pipe or something. As it is, the best he can manage is one of the wooden drawers to swing as a weapon. Started out fairly light, now it weighs a ton.

With no way to measure the passage of time, he has no clear idea of how frequently they check on him, but it seems like some sort of regular interval. They’ll come eventually.

Waiting is hard work.

He’s heard the phrase “sleep standing up” but never really believed it until now. Like he’s zoned out or hypnotized. Eyes open but not really seeing anything, like when you freeze-frame a DVD.

The click of the hasp unlocking is so soft he almost misses it. Then he hears a voice, a man mumbling to himself, and Tomas is fully awake, adrenaline pumping.

When the door opens, the boy swings the wooden drawer with all his might, aiming for head level.

Whacks the man full in the face. The man falls, stunned and groaning, and Tomas flies from his perch. He’s in a dim corridor, running like he’s stealing home, hands outstretched to the plate.

What he finds is another door. He grabs the handle, yanks, and discovers another padlock sealing the heavy door. Trapped. He’s kicking at the door in frustration, in a panic to keep running, to get away, when he hears the voice behind him.

The man hobbling, holding his face with one bloody hand. Reaching out for Tomas with the other. The growl of a maddened animal in his throat.

“You’re dead, you little shit,” the animal promises. “I’ll kill you with my bare hands. First thing, I’ll snap your neck.”

And then the angry hands are yanking him up, lifting him into the air, and he’s flying into darkness.

26 what have you done?

Approaching the exit for Fairfax, Cutter considers checking out Mom again. The delectable Mrs. Bickford. He knows where she’s holed up—the seedy motel on the circle, room 227, round the back—but decides there’s nothing to be gained by another drive-by, not at this time. Not with her uncanny ability to recognize him from a distance. Maybe later, if he needs to give her a tweak, or access the danger from the tall, bearded man who escorted her to Queens. Law enforcement of some sort. According to Vargas, a private investigator—the feds still assuming the position, thumbs up their butts. Which won’t last forever, they’ll eventually start putting things together. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut, given time. He knows this, and it doesn’t worry him. By the time the feds piece it all together, if ever they do, the deed will be done. Mission accomplished.

Cutter keeps the big SUV in the travel lane, with cruise control set just below the speed limit. Mr. Careful. Joe Commuter. Left arm cocked out the side, right hand firmly on the wheel, the very picture of a relaxed motorist. If travel isn’t too clotted in New Haven, he’ll be at his destination in less than an hour. Have to ditch the stolen wheels soon, tonight perhaps. Let Hinks take care of it, while Cutter concentrates on the next move.

Lyla floats into his thoughts, with her sad, mournful, beautiful eyes and her endless pleading. Where’s Jesse? She knows the answer to that one. The facts are buried deep in her addled mind, but she can’t accept it, so she invents her own reality. Maybe the increased dose of medication will help, maybe not. Nothing Cutter can do about it at the moment.

What have you done to our son?

The only tune she knows, poor thing. Cutter’s in charge of her world, has been for years, so anything bad that happens must be his fault. That’s her fractured logic. So if something happens to Jesse, it must be his fault, as if he’s responsible for every bad thing in the world. Nevertheless, if he can get their son back home, safe and healthy, maybe her condition will improve. It’s happened before, cycling in and out of sanity, but she’s never had to deal with a trauma like this before. The giant black hole of Jesse gone, sucking her sanity away.

He can fix it, though. He can make it happen.

My husband is a liar. He lies and lies and lies.

Unfortunately true. But only when necessary. Only when deception is part of the plan, the method.

A jackknifed truck on I-95 slows him down to a crawl for three long miles, makes him almost an hour late, and by the time he gets to the boat shed the shit has hit the fan.

Wald is out in the yard, dressed in his white painter’s overalls, sucking on a cigarette and looking extremely agitated. Swings around as the Explorer enters, quick marches to where Cutter parks, his bland features contorted with anger.

“Fucking brat!” he barks, flinging the cigarette to the ground.

Right away Cutter notices the spot of blood on the sleeve of Wald’s overalls. Makes him want to grab the man and slam him up against the Explorer, but Cutter forces calm upon himself. No sudden moves. The normally obedient Wald, whose intelligence is barely dull normal, is unpredictable and prone to irrational violence when angry.

“What happened?” Cutter asks as they make for the shed.

“Fucking kid broke Hinks’s nose,” Wald explains.

Rather than quiz him on the details, Cutter waits until they’re inside the shed, out of sight.

The shed. To all appearances a modest boat-repair facility, complete with a crappy, keel-rotten old Chris Craft that came with the lease. Their excuse for renting the shed, to restore the ratty boat to its classic condition. Six-month restoration, supposedly. Shed owner happy to have the lease paid in advance, doubtful that the project could be finished in a mere six months. Guys spend years on boats like this, he’d warned Cutter. Every time you take something off to fix, you find another thing needs fixing.

However long it takes, Cutter had said. This little sweetheart means everything to me, he’d said, gazing with love-struck reverence at the sagging plywood hull. She’s all I think about, he had added. What she’ll look like when we’re done. I even dream about her, isn’t that weird?

Shed owner didn’t think it was weird, a man dreaming about a boat.

As per Cutter’s instructions, the air compressor is on. The idea being that it will mask any sounds that came from the soundproof enclosure. High-pitched screams and whatnot.

Hinks crouches by the watercooler, a wet rag pressed to his face.

“—ucking kih oke my node,” Hinks manages, scowling behind the rag. Blood spatter on the front of his overalls, on the rag, everywhere.

“Where is he?”

Hinks nods at the padlocked door of the enclosure.

“Is he okay?” Cutter asks.

“Ooh the uck airs!” Hinks says through the rag. “Ill the ittle ucker, all I care.”

“Wald?”

Wald shrugs, his eyes shifting away. “He’ll survive.”

“He’ll survive?” Cutter says. Feeling his blood pressure spike. Wanting to coldcock both the morons, but keeping the impulse in check. “What happened, exactly?”

Hinks grimaces, spits a wad of clotted blood on the floor. “Hit me wid a roar,” he says.

“Kid hit him with a drawer,” Wald explains. “That dresser? He dragged it to the door, stood up on it and whacked Hinks with the empty drawer when he came through the door.”

“The inner door?”

“Of course the inside door. Hinks locked the outer door like you said. Otherwise the brat would have escaped and I’d have had to shoot him or something.”