“A few moments ago I spoke with Ruler Weems. Our conversation was cordial. He will be convening a special meeting with his people, and I with mine. There is no profit in fighting amongst ourselves. Between us, we will come to an equitable solution. Rest assured that we will find a way to face the new day with a new mind.”

Evangeline shuts off the camera and exits the studio, heading for her war room. Her plan is falling neatly into place. Within the hour she will have solidified her grip on the organization. Wendy and his people will follow Arthur into the next world, wherever that might be, and trouble her no more.

“Vash!” she calls out. “Is everything ready?”

He’s been busy in the war room, calmly programming a complex portion of the system’s software. He looks up, his expression betraying no emotion.

“Is good,” he says. Then he smiles, his cool eyes warming up, drinking her in. “Bad for them. Good for us.”

When the flat-screen TV came to life in Irene Delancey’s empty bedroom, announcing the death of Arthur Conklin, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Not just because it startled me, but because of what the announcement might mean. When a cult leader dies-excuse me, is “removed to the next level”-“outsiders gather”-that must be Shane’s FBI friends-it can’t be good. An organization in crisis, factions fighting for control, the whole place in lockdown, it all sounds as if it’s spiraling out of control. That can’t be good for us.

The woman making the announcement had seemed serene in tone, but I don’t believe her for a second. Something about her is off, way off. She has the look of madness; confident, chilling madness.

As soon as the screen goes dark again, Shane tries to make a call, but with no view of the sky, not to mention all the concrete and steel between us, the fancy satellite phone can’t get a signal. No phone, and therefore no way to know how long it will take the FBI to find a way inside. And in my mind at least, if we don’t locate Noah in the next few minutes, something terrible is going to happen. Call it mother’s instinct, or plain anxiety, but there it is, the absolute need to find my son now rather than later.

“Two possibilities,” Shane says, surveying the empty bedroom. “Either she heard us coming, or something else frightened her. Same result, whatever the cause. She’s hiding and she took your son with her.”

“How do you know that?”

He holds up the book left on Mrs. Delancey’s bedside table. “Noah told me,” he says with a gleam in his eye. “He left a message.”

“Oh my god! Let me see!”

The book is, no surprise, Arthur Conklin’s The Rule of One. Apparently the true believers keep it close at hand, like the Bible. The surprise is the scrap of paper tucked into the book, hastily scrawled in pencil:

WE ARE HIDING.

NOAH CORBIN, AGE 10

P.S. TELL MY MOM

I know that handwriting! No question, it’s Noah, and aside from the brief glimpse of video provided by Ruler Weems, the first real tangible proof that he’s not only alive, but well. Despite whatever poison they’ve been feeding him, he knows his name is Corbin, not Conklin. Plus he wants his mother to know where he is. That’s a good sign, right? Right?

“S-sorry,” I blubber, totally losing it, clutching the little note to my heart.

Doubtful a big strong shoulder would help, but there’s no way of knowing, because Shane isn’t offering. He’s not being unkind or uncaring, but neither is he offering to comfort me. It’s clear that he shares my concern about finding Noah right away, and that must take precedence. No time for emotional meltdowns, save the tears for later.

“I suspect she hasn’t gone far,” he says, waiting for me to get it together. “If she wanted to hide, her options would have been limited.”

“But we checked all the rooms on this floor,” I say, frantic.

“No,” he says firmly. “We didn’t. You looked in the doors, saw the dustcovers, and backed out. Very quietly, too, I might add.”

He’s right, of course. We’d been searching for rooms that were lived in, not places to hide. Stupid! In an instant I’m back in the hall, racing for the next suite, housekeeper disguise forgotten. Bursting through the door, I run to the adjoining room-all the layouts are the same-and find it just as empty. Dustcovers, stillness. My instincts telling me the air in here has not been disturbed recently, that the mustiness has been honestly come by.

Check everything. Look everywhere. Bathrooms, closets, under the bed.

Whipping back a shower curtain, I come face-to-face with a madwoman. Her hair is a mess, her eyes are red, she looks as frantic as me. She is me.

What kind of place is this, putting mirrors behind the claw-foot tubs?

By the time I get to the last of the guest suites, every door has been opened, every closet looked into, every shower curtain whipped back, and still there’s no sign of Noah, no clue as to where he’s been taken.

My head is light with the pounding of my heart. In despair I fall to my knees and cover my face as it all comes crashing together. The conflicting tides of fear and frustration and just plain old need, the need to have my child in my arms at last. I’ve come this far, the madwoman of Humble, the crazy mom who won’t give up, because somehow I can feel that my child is alive, and where he might be, but whenever I almost get there somebody moves him farther away.

I can’t take it anymore. This ends now, or I really will go stark raving mad.

“Noah!” I scream. “Where are you!”

Shane, startled, reaches out to caution me, but I duck under his hand and fling myself out into the hallway, bellowing at the top of my lungs, “NOAH! NO-AHHH! IT’S MOMMY! NOAH! NOAH! NOAH!” chanting and screaming with all my strength, with everything I’ve got, and to give him credit, Shane doesn’t really try to stop me.

“NO-AHH!” I cry, running back and forth, doing my best to shout the walls down with the sound of my voice. “NO-AHHH! NO-AHHH! NO-AHHH! I WANT MY SON! GIVE ME BACK MY SON! NO-AHHH! NO-AHHH!”

I scream his name until my throat is so raw I can’t get out a sound, until the air is out of my lungs, until the strength is fading from my body, and hope from my heart.

And then I hear it. Very faint. Not Noah, not his voice, but something. A tiny thump no louder than the thudding of a single sparrow wing. But it’s enough to get me flying down the hallway, through the open door, and into one of the empty guest suites that we’ve already checked twice. And exactly as I enter the room, there’s the faintest flutter of movement under one of the dust sheets, a simple white cotton sheet covering an unused desk.

Hands extended like eager talons, mama bird zeroing in, I rip away the dust sheet and there under the desk is Irene Delancey, who looks almost as terrified as I do. Struggling in her arms is a desperate little boy. She has her hand clamped over the boy’s mouth, and her face is bleeding from where’s he’s scratched her, and his feet are kicking.

That’s the thump I heard, that’s what made the dust sheet flutter. Noah, my son, my beautiful true-blue boy, responding to his mother’s cry.

“Let him go,” I tell her, my voice hoarse and croaking.

“I saved him,” she whimpers, pleading for forgiveness. “They want to kill him and I saved him. You’ve got to believe me.”

“Let him go.”

She does, she lets him go, and then he’s in my arms, hugging me as if his life depends on it, crying Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, clinging with all his might, and everything is good. I am made whole again and everything is right in the world.

Except for one thing. Cradling Noah with my left arm, I lift my foot and stomp Mrs. Delancey right in the nose.