“I know,” I tell him bitterly. “I always knew.”

Weems reaches into a pocket, hands Missy a shiny silver disc. “Put that in the machine, would you, dear? Thanks.”

Missy obediently trots over to a flat-screen TV, happily punches buttons on a slender DVD player as she feeds in the glittering disc.

“In the end the choice has to be yours,” Weems is saying. “If you decide to call in the FBI, and manage to convince them that your son is being held somewhere in Conklin, and they stage a raid to try and recover him, we will not stand in your way. We will not impede you or the FBI. But first you better take a look at this.”

Weems points the remote and Noah appears on the screen, big as life.

Shane can’t help it, he keeps looking up. Not because he thinks the sky is falling-not at the moment, anyhow-but because there’s something about the wild roof that draws his attention. The architects who designed Denver International Airport call it a “tension fabric construction,” intended to echo the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, but to Shane it looks like the inside of a mad white circus tent.

As airport designs go, DIA is crazy and kind of cool, but he decides he wouldn’t want to be standing under that roof when a blizzard dumps a few million tons of snow on top, filling the gaps between the swooping peaks. If the fabric fails it would be like being trapped in a man-made avalanche.

“You’ll hurt your neck, big boy.”

He looks down to find Maggie Drew smiling up at him. That’s the first thing he notices, the warmth of her smile. The second thing he notices is the cane.

Today she’s using her cane.

“Little flare-up,” she explains, making light of it. “It happens. Touch of the old rheumatiz in my wee little ankles. Nothing to fret about.”

“You made it.” He bends to kiss her cheek. “All the way from D.C. as a favor for a friend. Thank you, thank you.”

“You said something about buying me a cup of coffee,” she says airily, nudging him with the knob of her cane.

He’d already picked out a relatively quiet little café on the mezzanine level of the concourse, overlooking the fountains, but now is worried she’ll have trouble on the escalators. “I’m fine, lead on. View’s better up there-closer to heaven.”

He pretends not to notice the twinges of pain that flicker across her face as she limps toward the escalator. It’s slow going, but eventually they’re seated in an out-of-the-way spot he scouted while awaiting her flight. The ambient noise of the fountain will make it hard to be overheard, supposing he’s been followed, which he’s certain is unlikely.

Old habits die hard.

Shane hands Maggie a menu-it’s self-serve-but she waves it off. “I ate on the flight, believe it or not.”

They both know that chronic pain kills the appetite, and she doesn’t want to talk about the relapse of her rheumatoid arthritis. Maggie is clearly determined to be brave, and Shane prays that it really is, as she claims, just a flare-up.

He drinks strong coffee, not having slept in two days, and she sips delicately at a club soda with lime, as if the fizz might burn her lips.

“Any luck?” she wants to know.

“Not really,” he admits. “They could have landed here-plenty of private charter jets use DIA-but I haven’t been able to confirm an incoming flight from Rochester, New York, within the time frame. They could have come into one of the other commercial airports, of which there are at least five within fifty miles of Denver. They could have landed at a private airstrip, of which there are scores, possibly hundreds. There are thousands of private flights into Colorado in any given time period. Rich folk come for the sights or the skiing or to tailgate the Broncos.”

“Tailgating on a fifty-million-dollar Gulfstream?”

“Hey, flaunt it if you’ve got it,” Shane says with a shrug. “Bottom line, the plane is a dead end. No way to walk it back. I have to assume my informant wasn’t fibbing and he really did overhear the perps say their destination was Denver. Which makes sense if the abduction was done by the Rulers.”

“You mentioned a name.”

“He mentioned a name. Missy. What he says the man called his accomplice. More than once. Missy do this. Missy do that. Missy be quiet. Possibly a nickname or a term of endearment.”

“I ran it. Nothing pops on the list of known Rulers. Not so far.”

“Like I say, possibly a nickname. You’ll keep trying?”

“Of course. Missy and her mystery man, headed for Denver. Possibly.”

Shane sighs. “I know it’s not much to work with.”

Maggie shrugs. “Hey, hey. We’ve started with less, as you know. Just so we’re on the same page, you remain convinced that Haley Corbin was abducted?”

“As opposed to being killed, you mean? Yes. The answer is yes. They went to too much trouble, luring her to the airport, knocking her out, loading her into the jet.”

“If your informant isn’t lying,” she gently reminds him.

“He was eager to share what he knew.”

“I’ll bet he was.”

“I’ve never done that before, Maggie,” he says, feeling ashamed in her presence. “I was desperate.”

“No lasting damage to the little cretin?”

“Nothing a change of underwear won’t fix.”

“And he won’t be pressing charges?”

“Doubtful. I impressed him with the need for silence, for both our sakes. Plus I let him keep the money. He wants to make a recording, thinks he can be the next big hip-hop star. Who knows? He’s ruthless enough.”

She pats his hand, smiles. “No worries, big guy. You did what you had to do.”

“It’s on me,” he says, feeling the need to explain. “If I’d been there, like I should have been, this never would have happened.”

“Or maybe you’d be dead and Haley Corbin would still be gone.”

“They took her alive,” he points out. “They could have shot her and left her by the side of the road, or made it look like an accident. A death, even a suspicious death, leaves fewer questions than a disappearance, so they’re taking a chance abducting her. There has to be a reason. My theory is, her little boy is alive and wants his mother, so they made it happen.”

Maggie says, “Not a bad theory.”

“Any word from your informants?”

She sighs. “Not a word about the boy, not a word about his mother. But ‘informants’ is too grand a term. Our contacts inside are strictly bottom of the heap. This will be happening at a higher level and the Ruler organization is structured in layers of secrecy. That’s part of their appeal. For Rulers, information is everything-the higher you go, the more you learn. All we know for sure is, there are rumors about Arthur Conklin’s health declining, and a succession struggle between factions. Which you already know.”

“Wendall Weems versus Conklin’s wife.”

“So the rumor goes.”

Shane finishes his coffee. At this point in his cycle of insomnia, the caffeine barely blips. “I’m going in. It’s the only way.”

Maggie shakes her head disapprovingly. “And I flew fourteen hundred miles to persuade you otherwise.”

“You can try,” Shane says.

Maggie opens her briefcase, slips out her laptop, taps it to life. “I’ve done a little more in-depth research on Kavashi, the security chief. Turns out that ten years ago he was on the short list of suspects in a couple of murders.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Remember the deal new members make? By joining they agree to ‘share-in’ twenty-five percent of any increase in their net worth? Well, every now and then somebody gets rich and decides it was all their own doing and they refuse to pay the percentage. The contract they sign with the Rulers isn’t enforceable, why give up such a big chunk of their newfound wealth? Blah, blah, blah. So they walk away. Or attempt to.”

“This Kavashi guy is the collector, is that it?”

“More like the enforcer. The Conklin Institute has a forensic accounting division that enforces collections from the members. They know where every penny goes, and who earned what, and therefore what they owe. But human nature being what it is, deadbeats were always a problem, right from the beginning. Refuse to pay and you were banned, shunned, thrown out. All personal and business connections were severed, loans were called in, and a full-court effort was made to ruin you by financial means. Lawsuits, mostly. Fail to pay and you get buried in shysters. Still, some of the deadbeats prevailed, got to keep all the loot. Until Kavashi came into the picture. Then things got untidy for a while.”