Twenty seconds later he’s wrapped like a mummy in silver duct tape, arms pinned to his sides, everything but his eyes and one nostril slathered in wraps of adhesive. Then he’s rudely flipped into the backseat, crashing faceup, unable to do anything but squirm in a writhing panic.

“My advice, don’t fight it,” suggests the big dude, looming over the seat like a neatly bearded monster, all angry eyes and flashing teeth. His big steely hands encased in surgical gloves. “All your air has to come through one little nostril. Concentrate on that. Fight it and you’ll smother.”

The big dude chilling next to the fat cop, didn’t say much. Big dude holding up the roll of duct tape.

“Love this stuff,” he says. “Better than cuffs. Way more effective. With handcuffs the victim can still scream, maybe even bite. Did you know the human bite can be more deadly than a dog bite? Fact. Comes to biting, your average human being is more dangerous than your average pit bull.”

G-Man bucks and shivers, getting nowhere. Strangled little yelps coming from deep beneath the duct tape.

“Gordon,” says the big dude. “Calm yourself. You have limited air. Just enough to keep your brain conscious, not enough for a struggle. Besides, the struggle part won’t work.”

The big dude tears off a strip of tape.

“See this? This is the final frontier. If you don’t stop squirming, I’ll tape up your last nostril and that will be that. The only remaining question, will they find your dead body before it freezes solid. G-Man, The Human Popsicle.”

Unable to control his fear, G-Man bucks and whimpers for a while. Then he stops. The stench of urine permeates the already rancid interior of the old Impala.

“It happens,” the big dude says with a shrug. “Sphincter’s next, if you don’t relax, concentrate on getting all the air you can through that one little nostril. Try it. See? Better already.”

G-Man weeps as he carefully inhales through a single, snot-encrusted nostril. It’s like sucking air through a too-small straw.

“Here’s the deal,” says the big dude, in words that fall like shards of ice. “You’re going to tell me what happened to Haley Corbin. The lady with the missing kid. The one you called. The one you set up. You’ll be giving me all the details. Every little thing.”

The big dude slips a hand around G-Man’s neck. “Are you ready? You’ll notice I have really big hands and you have a really small neck. Feel that? That’s me squeezing just a little. If you scream when I pull back the tape, I’ll squeeze a lot.”

The big dude peels back the duct tape. G-Man tries to scream.

The big dude pastes the tape back down over his gaspy little mouth, heaves a deep sigh of disappointment.

“I was hoping you weren’t a slow learner,” he says. “Oh well. We’ll just have to take our time.”

“Sorry about the dog kennel,” the woman says, not even pretending to sound apologetic. “It’s all we could think to do.”

My captor is a slightly built, extremely nervous female with a tidy little mop of curly, dyed-blond hair and small, darting eyes that never seem to settle on anything. She’s crouching at the locked grill of the kennel, exuding an air of ironic detachment, like isn’t it faintly amusing that we, two women of the world, find ourselves in this position, you inside the cage and me outside laying down the rules?

Me, I’m not feeling ironic. More like enraged and terrified and helpless and more enraged, that combination, in that order. Keenly aware of how a trapped animal must feel, caged and in motion, unable to see where its tormentors are taking it. When the bumpy acceleration first threw me to the back of the kennel, I assumed I was in a runaway van, about to smash into something at high speed-as if my captors were staging a fatal accident. Then, abruptly, we were airborne and rising rapidly, and my trip-hammer heart began to ease.

I was in a plane, probably in the cargo compartment. I had assumed it must be a commercial airliner, something big enough to have a special place to stow pets, but when Miss Ironic crawled in and turned on the lights, it became obvious that I was aboard a relatively small aircraft.

“Gulfstream G- 450,” she tells me. “Owned, not leased. In this configuration we can carry six passengers, three crew. Tonight all we’ve got is me and Eldon and the one pilot, with the cockpit door sealed from the inside. So if the pilot has like a stroke or something we’re all screwed. Eldon thinks he could fly the thing, because he helped develop this flight simulator software? But really he couldn’t. And besides he can’t get through the cockpit door with the pilot down, can he? No way.”

Still not quite looking at me as she chatters away, naming various options on their aircraft, as if it were a luxury automobile. Leather seats, individual climate control, exotic hardwood trim, even “a totally amazing wine chiller that also works on champagne bottles.” Mostly staring at her shoes as she babbles on. Blahniks, slightly scuffed, which is probably a crime in her zip code.

“Who the hell are you?” I finally demand, hooking my fingers in the cage door. Resisting the impulse to bare my teeth like some rabid canine. “Where are you taking me?”

My captor studies her nails and sighs. “Colorado. Ever been? They have these mountains, really serious mountains. Eldon likes to conquer mountains. Me, I could care less.”

Colorado.

“You’re Rulers,” I suggest.

My captor giggles nervously. “Well, duh! Where else would we get fifty million bucks to buy a little old airplane? Not that it’s old. You know what I mean.”

“Let me out of here!”

My captor runs a frail hand through her mop of curls. Looking like an elfin version of Harpo Marx. A female Harpo who can’t stop running her nervous mouth. “Yeah, well that’s what I’m here to discuss. Maybe letting you out if you’re cool with it. Eldon thinks I should negotiate, you know, girl-to-girl or whatever. Did I mention the really comfy leather seats? If you’ll promise to behave you can come into the cabin, which is way better than first class. You can even have a glass of wine if you want.”

“I promise.”

“Yeah, but you would, wouldn’t you? Promise anything to get out of this doggy thing? I know I would. It must suck in there, you don’t have any legroom at all. The thing is, we’re like totally on your side.”

“You’re on my side?” The woman must be deranged. They drugged me, jammed me into a dog kennel, and they’re on my side?

She nods, serious as a heart attack. “Totally. We’re trying to facilitate the situation.”

“What does that mean?”

“The whole succession thing, it’s gotten totally out of control. The whole point of being a Ruler-well, one of the points-is we don’t attract attention from government drones. Like we make tons and tons of money-Eldon made almost half a billion last year, isn’t that amazing?-but we always pay our taxes. So they leave us alone. But this,” she adds, indicating my cage, “stuff like this, they might get the wrong idea.”

I’m speechless. The wrong idea?

“Because the thing is, we’re going to help you get your son back,” she says. “That’s what you want, right?”

“Oh…my…god,” I gasp, convulsing.

“You knew he was alive, right?” she says, sounding concerned. “Oh wow, I guess maybe you didn’t know for sure. Well, he is. I haven’t seen him myself, but everybody says he’s really cute and smart and everything. Are you okay? You’re not going to puke are you? You need to like, take a breath or something.”

She unlocks my cage.