“Let me guess. He didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Maggie nods. “In both cases we know about, explosives were used. First victim was a car salesman from Montclair, New Jersey, who joined the Rulers and within a few years owned a chain of luxury dealerships. In his TV ads he was ‘Mister Mercedes.’ Until one fine day he went to start up his S600 and got blown to smithereens. That was bad. The second victim was way worse. Started up a wholesale jewelry business in Arizona, took it online, eventually sold it to Amazon or eBay, I can’t remember which. Anyhow, he walked away with something like fifty million dollars for his final payday, and decided the Rulers didn’t deserve their cut on this one. So he got necklaced. Cute, huh, a jewelry guy gets necklaced? Maybe you recall the one where the victim walks into a Sedona police station with a note begging the police to shoot him because he’s got this ring of plastic explosive molded around his neck, with a ticking detonator attached, and he hates the idea of his head getting blown off? Parts of the video were all over cable news for a few days.”

“Rings a bell,” Shane says. “The cops put him in a vacant lot, evacuated the area, and sent in a robot. But the bomb detonated anyway, right?”

“It did. And somebody tapped into the video feed from the robot, put it all over the net. The uncensored, not-for-cable-TV-version. My guess is, nowadays when any Ruler decides not to pay, they suggest he or she check out the necklace video. It’s very, very gruesome, in a head-goes-into-orbit kind of way.”

“And these crimes were tied to Kavashi?”

“Tied is too strong a word. He was a person of interest in the investigations. Frankly the investigators knew he did it, or arranged to have it done, but there was no physical evidence linking him to the bombs, and nobody was willing to testify. Therefore no case. Word at the time was that Arthur Conklin wanted Kavashi thrown out of the organization, but that Evangeline backed her buddy Vash and prevailed. In any case, he handles Ruler security and remains as dangerous as ever.”

Shane smiles. “You’re worried he’ll blow me up.”

“I am, yes. Or just have you shot. So you should be worried.”

“I hate getting blown up. Therefore I’ll be very careful.”

“Don’t be flippant, Randall!” she says, fiercely. “I don’t worry easy and you know it.”

He grimaces. “Sorry, Mags. But I’m worried, too, and I don’t see any alternative. The FBI won’t send in the HRT based on my hunch about what might have happened to Haley Corbin.”

“The Hostage Rescue Team? That’s pretty elite. What’s wrong with a field-office SWAT team?”

“Nothing. They’re good, but the HRT is better, and something tells me taking on this bunch of nut bars requires the very best. But even the field-office SWAT needs some sort of verifiable evidence before they can obtain a warrant. Therefore someone has to go in there and find evidence, help make a case. In this case a civilian. Me.”

“What about Colorado Social Services?” Maggie suggests eagerly. “Concern for an endangered child usually rings the right bells.”

“In Texas, maybe, when the suspected abusers are a known polygamist sect. I spoke to the DSS supervisor in one of the adjoining counties, just to see what it would take to initiate an investigation, and she said there has never been a child-endangered complaint filed against the Rulers, not as an organization, anyhow, and not in Conklin County. They’re simply not on the radar. And the DSS is very, very leery of taking on the Rulers without evidence that will stand up in court. They want something solid, something actionable. At the very least I need a credible witness from inside the compound. Which is what I intend to find, once you get me inside.”

“There has to be a better way.”

Shane leans back in his chair, making the legs creak ominously. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“Come back with me to D.C. We’ll work it from there. We’ll make a case. We’ll get you the HRT.”

Shane smiles wearily. “I’ll bet you could. But how long would it take to work through channels, convince the ’crats that my hunch is good, that their butts won’t be on the line, careers ruined? You’re good, Maggie, the best. But even for you, it would take weeks. Weeks that Haley and Noah might not have.”

“You’ve made up your mind.”

Shane nods.

Maggie sighs. “There might be a way to get you inside.”

“I’m all ears,” he says, wide-awake.

Snow is falling. I know that snow is falling because there’s a skylight in one of the many bathrooms, and the fat white flakes are starting to accumulate, blocking out the slate-gray sky. The skylight is the only window not obstructed by storm shutters. My only view of the world outside, and soon it will be covered.

For all I can see, I might as well be confined in a million-dollar igloo. Although, come to think of it, a home of this size and quality-the kitchen alone has more square feet than my entire farmhouse-probably goes for a lot more than a million.

Missy says that it snows frequently, because of the elevation, and that’s one of the many things they love about Conklin, the perfect snow. She says the village is like a ski resort without the lifts or the lines, and she should know because she and her husband own homes in Vail and Park City, for when they want to actually ski. They also own homes in Silicon Valley, Manhattan, Nantucket, and Key West, and, oh yeah, she almost forgot, this adorable little mews in London.

The Barlows are filthy rich and, from what I can tell, about as shallow as the manufactured celebrities they seek to emulate. Missy tells me that Eldon is brilliant-and I suppose he must be, on some level-but I haven’t seen it. In my presence he seems more keenly nervous than intelligent. Frightened, actually. As if terrified that complicity in my abduction will come back to haunt him.

Which it will, if I have anything to say about it.

For now I’m biding my time, holding my tongue. The strange, ugly little man with the beautiful eyes convinced me, for the moment, that calling in the authorities would put Noah’s life at risk. But watching that DVD of my little boy being tutored by that snake-in-the-grass Irene Delancey very nearly drove me over the edge. On one level I was intensely relieved to see him looking healthy, if not happy. On another level I’m outraged that they’ve stolen nearly two months of his childhood, two months that I didn’t get to share, two months I’ll never get back. How dare she! How dare they! To make it worse, there’s no sound on the DVD, so I’ve no idea what poison Delancey is spewing, or how much my little boy knows about what’s really going on.

Does he know I’m searching for him, that I won’t give up until he’s back in his mother’s arms? He must know. He’s his father’s son, and he knows the most amazing things.

Wendall Weems, my real captor-abducting me was his idea, obviously-claims he knew Jedediah as a child. “He was still in diapers when Arthur bought back and republished his book,” he says. “Quite a handsome baby, as I recall, but given to crying when he wasn’t being held. Colicky, I think they call it.”

Weems is musing, trying to be friendly, and I can only stare at him in disbelief.

“Colicky? I haven’t read that horrible book, but Jed did show me the chapter on child rearing. Unbelievable! His father thought it a worthy experiment to leave a three-month-old baby unattended in a dark room for twelve hours. He calculated an infant would not actually die of neglect in that time period, and that it might, quote ‘learn the futility of crying.’”

Weems nods solemnly. “Barbara-she was Jedediah’s birth mother-as I recall she was perfectly frantic at the time. Arthur insisted on the full twelve hours. The exercise was really as much about Barbara as it was the baby, of course. Arthur firmly believed that the mother-child bond often does more harm than good, in terms of self-actualization. He’s a man of immense, unshakable willpower. Or he was until recently.”