“McQuarrie. His name is McQuarrie.”

“Whatever.”

Something I’ve never really understood, Fern not liking my friend Alex. It’s not that he’s gay—Fern has more gay male pals than Cher and Madonna combined. She thinks Alex is a terrible snob, and of course that’s true, but if I don’t find his snooty attitudes offensive, why should Fern? One of those unfortunate things about life—no matter how hard you try, not all your friends are friends.

“The detective called,” she’s saying. “Jay Berg? He sounds full of himself. Nothing to report from his end, just checking in—wanted to know if Kelly had made contact. I said no, was that okay?”

“That’s fine. I don’t want to start lying to the cops, not if we can help it.”

“Any news?”

“We just got here. How could there be any news?”

“You sound so stressed! Janey, listen to me, you need a shoulder to cry on, cry on his. Those are good shoulders.”

“Got to go. Thanks, Fern, you’re a saint.”

“Not if I can help it. Bye-bye. Love you, Janey poo.”

Janey poo. Fern is the only person in the world who can get away with calling me that. My playground name. I’m seven years old, fall on my bum in the mud. All the kids laughing, saying I pooed my pants, which seems so utterly unfair, since I haven’t even wet the bed in years and years—or months, at least. Fern, who loved being the playground hero, swooping in like the wonderful wicked witch, saying she’ll poo on them if they don’t shut their dirty mouths, and from then on it’s her secret sister name for me. A name that says we’re in this together, blood of my blood, best friends forever.

Thank God for Fern. Having her on my side makes an impossible situation just a little bit easier to take.

Randall Shane returns from the counter disappointed. No Lincoln Town Cars available. “I settled for a Crown Vic,” he says, handing me the paperwork. “You drive.”

On the short bus ride to the car lot he explains that he’s into his twenty-seventh hour without sleep and doesn’t trust himself behind the wheel.

“Are you sure you’re okay with the rest of it?” I want to know. “Can you do this?”

“I’m fine,” he insists. “Never felt better. The twenty-four-hour rule is my own personal thing. Like not driving if you have a glass of wine.”

“Lots of people drive with a glass of wine. I have, if it’s only one with dinner.”

“Not me. Never,” he says, very firmly.

End of discussion, obviously. Mr. Shane has his rules and sticks to ‘em, thank you, ma’am. What’s with him, anyhow? The so-called sleep disorder—did he have an accident, fall asleep at the wheel, is that what this is about? At some point I do want to know, but it’s not important enough to pursue, not at the moment. Certainly not worth surrendering my secrets.

Ancient history. There are bigger priorities.

Waiting in the Hertz lot is a big, dark green Ford sedan with tinted windows. To me it looks suspiciously like a cop car. Shane says that’s no surprise, lots of law enforcement agencies use the Crown Victoria, including the FBI.

“You’re thinking of the P71 Police Interceptor model. This is the rental version,” he says, sliding into the passenger seat. “Less power, smoother ride. Also shotgun, police radio, or on-board computer. Otherwise pretty much the same vehicle.”

“Feels like a boat,” I point out. “Drives like one, too,” he says. “Where are we headed, exactly?” Shane unfolds the Hertz map. “I want to find that cell tower,” he says. “We’ll go from there.”

3. Darkness My Old Friend

The mosquito is driving her insane.

Kelly knows she should conserve the battery in the lantern—her only source of light—but for the past twenty minutes a mosquito has been sucking her blood like a winged vampire. She’s decided she can take the confinement, the hunger, the worrying about what has happened to Seth, the toilet-in-a-bucket, but the goddamn mosquito makes her want to run into a wall, knock herself out.

Crazy thought. How can she find a way to escape if she’s unconscious?

Zzz-zzz-zzz, dive-bombing her ear. Stupid bug!

Kelly clicks on the feeble light. Catches a glimpse of something zipping around her face, then loses it. She crawls to a corner, hoping the bug will stay around the light, leave her alone.

The strategy works for less than a minute. Zzz-zzz-zzz. With her back braced to the corner, swatting air, she makes a terrible discovery: there’s way more than one mosquito. There are dozens, attacking in turn, and more are streaming in through the narrow air vent.

There will be no end to the biting, the buzzing, the swarming dots of madness. Sobbing frantically, she slaps at her ears, hair, neck.

Kelly remembers a kid in the hospital having a seizure, how scary it was to observe, and this is like that—uncontrollable, involuntary. Her limbs kicking out, her brain throwing sparks instead of thinking. And she hates it, not being in charge of her body.

As she continues to slap herself, the hate part gradually overcomes the fear. She concentrates on hating what’s been done to her. A hatred as white and hot as a knife to the brain. How dare they? Not that she has a clear idea of who they are. The mission was to deliver his father’s company plane to a location in Florida—a fabulous flight in a dream aircraft, with Kelly flying hands-on most of the way. Supposedly a favor to some business associate. Deliver the King Air, then return on a commercial flight, they’d both be home the same day, no big deal. But when she and Seth exited the aircraft, three men were waiting on the packed gravel runway. Dark, dangerous men—one of them darker and more dangerous than the others. Glossy black hair in a bowl cut—he’s the one who shot her, drugged her. Wait. Does she have that right, was she really drugged? Did he shoot her with some sort of dart or is that something from a bad dream, the nightmare of waking up in the dark?

Hard to sort out that jumble of images, decide what’s real, what’s imagined. Similar to how her memory got scrambled when they gave her anesthesia in the hospital. You come out of a black hole, can’t quite put it all together. Dazed and confused for sure.

Gradually Kelly settles. Takes control of her breathing, stops slapping at herself. Let the bastards bite, she’s got more important things to do.

Figure it out, Kel. Or, like her mom is always saying, use your noodle.

First thing, she turns off the lamp.

Darkness my old friend. Something from a song her grandmother used to play. An actual turntable album, probably still there with the stuff in the attic Mom can’t bring herself to throw out, although the turntable itself is long gone. Kind of a spooky-pretty song, high boy voices, and when Kelly had to go back into the hospital, face it all over again, the words resonated. Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to speak to you again. Made sense to her then, and it makes sense now: the darkness really can be her friend, if she can find a way to use it. She can’t break through the steel walls or fit through the ventilation slot. She has no knife, no gun, no secret karate moves. There’s only one way to escape: she has to think herself out.

Her weapon is her brain. Her brain and the dark.

4. Small Alligators

The road runs straight and true, a sliver of hot black tar straight into the middle of nowhere. This is my first experience driving in South Florida—with my mom we took shuttles and courtesy vans—but I seem to be doing okay. With Shane navigating, I manage to connect with a street south of the airport and follow it west until the endless stoplights gradually diminish and the flat, urban sprawl gives way to a sea of grass that stretches all the way to the horizon. Nothing but sunburnt grass, and low mangroves, and silvery glints of water under a bleached-out sky.

We’ve gone from the twenty-first century to some ancient, empty wilderness in less than forty minutes.