She shrugged but accepted the cloth.

Every time he moved his head much, the narrow room dipped and swayed. At one point, it was so severe, he thought he might get sick, but the notion of doing that in front of this girl was too humiliating-he forced himself to wait out the sensation. It seemed to subside, and he took that opportunity to try to take stock of his surroundings. A storage room of some sort, he thought. The only source of light was a long, narrow window. He stood up and moved toward it on unsteady legs. She followed, dabbing at her mouth with the cloth. “It’s a long way down,” she said.

They were high in a tower, it seemed. He couldn’t see much of what was below-trees, mostly. A group of buildings. His vision doubled again, and he felt another wave of nausea. Dizzily, he moved back from the window.

The place seemed familiar to him, but he wasn’t quite sure why. His mind wasn’t working right.

He saw Emily move quietly to the door and try the handle. To his amazement, it was not locked. The door opened a crack. “Be careful!” he warned.

She eased the door farther open but hesitated on the threshold. Beyond was nearly complete darkness. He waited until he was a little steadier on his feet, then moved next to her. He allowed his eyes to adjust to the small amount of light coming from what appeared to be an opening in the ceiling above. He still could not see more than that opening’s square edges. He heard pigeons somewhere above it.

He quietly moved out a step, and listened. Nothing.

He looked back at Emily, then stretched a hand along the wall outside the door. He took another step. Emily followed him. He reached back in the darkness and took her hand. He felt her jump a little, but then she held on tight. They edged along the wall.

Suddenly he found himself stepping out into space. Emily must have felt his loss of balance-she pulled back hard. That was all that saved him from falling some unknown distance into the darkness.

He tried to keep the panic out of his voice when he said, “Thanks. I guess we’d better go back.”

“Wait here,” she whispered, and lay down flat by his feet.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting a match.”

“You have matches?”

“Always. I have them hidden in the hem of my jeans.”

“Why didn’t you light one earlier?”

“I only have three left.”

“Wait-if you’ve only got three, maybe we shouldn’t waste one now.”

But she lit it anyway. For the brief time that it burned, they saw that they were at one edge of a platform that ran along the walls of a tower-a bell tower, Chase thought. There were rails everywhere but at the place he had nearly fallen from. Wooden stairs led up from the opposite wall, toward the top of the structure, but the stairs leading down and the platform that would have been just below them had been dismantled, leaving a long drop before they resumed again. For all he could tell, they were alone. A set of ropes hung through the center of the tower, out of reach.

The match died out just as his surroundings seemed to whirl before him.

Emily reached into a pocket, found a few coins, and pitched a quarter over the edge. It seemed an eternity before they heard the sound of it striking bottom.

He heard Emily get to her feet. “Are you dizzy?” she asked.

“A little.”

She took hold of his hand again and carefully led him back to the storage room.

They sat next to each other. His headache hammered at his skull. He felt as if the pain was derailing his thoughts, keeping him from coming up with any sort of plan.

After a time, he said, “I guess we’ve been kidnapped.”

She nodded. “They took me from a restaurant. Two of them. They gave me some kind of shot. You?”

“Ran me off the road while I was on my bike. I think-I kind of remember someone giving me a shot. I don’t know. I hit my head.” He rubbed a hand over his scalp and winced as he touched a good-sized knot.

“Why do you think they took us?” she asked.

He felt sleepy and lay back down on the floor. “I don’t know.”

“Are you going to sleep? How can you sleep at a time like this?”

“Sorry. I can’t help it. Maybe I have a concussion.” He yawned. “I don’t know.”

“‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know…’ Is that all you can say? Besides, if it’s a concussion, you’re supposed to stay awake, right?”

“I don’t-”

“Know.”

He smiled a little. “No. I don’t.”

“Think! Why did they do this?”

He frowned, trying to concentrate. “Maybe because-maybe because my parents have a lot of money. I don’t think my dad will pay to get me back.”

She thought this over. “Maybe they think Kit will pay them, too.”

“Kit?” He struggled to keep his eyes open.

“My brother. He’s my guardian. He’s got a lot of money, too.” She was silent for a long time. Then she said, “Kit would pay them. He would pay anything.”

As he drifted off to sleep, Chase wondered why that made her look as if she might cry after all.

Manhattan Beach, California

Thursday, May 22, 6:21 P.M.

“I thought you said he was here.”

John O’Brien didn’t bother to hide his impatience. “I left that message over an hour ago, Alex. And thank you very much for taking your sweet damned time.”

Alex saw Rusty try to hide himself under the coffee table. “You’re scaring the dog.” He sat on the couch and tried to coax the dog out. Failing that, he said, “Look, I don’t know when I’ve had a more hellacious day. Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. So tell me what happened. You say an old army buddy of yours vouches for Kit Logan?”

“Never mind all the details of why I trust this kid. You don’t have time for that. Enough to say Kit Logan came here, and he’s hoping he can trust you. I told him he could. He wants to talk to you about Gabe Taggert. And he thinks his ward has been kidnapped.”

Alex sat up straight. “He knows where Taggert is?”

“Yes. He says Taggert’s alive, and he wants to make sure he stays that way. Turns out he became good friends with Taggert when they were in school together at Sedgewick.”

“Sedgewick…”

“But he thinks someone in the sheriff’s department or the FBI is working with some old rivals of his. It’s complicated, but mainly it boils down to a couple of guys who were good buddies of your supposed suicides up on Mulholland.”

“Everett Corey and Cameron Burgess.”

“You know their names?”

“While I was taking my ‘sweet time’-as you call it-I was going over everything I could lay hands on about Whitfield and Addison. Anyone that knew the two of them very well mentioned that the four of them had been nearly inseparable since high school-at Sedgewick. In fact, even though neither set of parents seemed to pay much attention to their sons, they mentioned those two.” He paused, then said, “I know Corey and Burgess.”

“How? From living in Malibu?”

“No. When I was first in detectives, I busted Everett Corey on an assault case. He was only about fourteen, but he had nearly killed this other kid. His father tried everything he could to prevent the case from going forward-even a not-so-subtle attempt to bribe me. That nearly got his own ass thrown in jail.”

“I remember this one now. Made you twice as determined to see the kid convicted.”

“Money still talks, though. He had a good lawyer. That’s how he ended up at Sedgewick instead of with the California Youth Authority. His father carried on as if I had ruined the kid’s future. He’s the one who ruined that kid. That wasn’t our last run-in, either. He was a real asshole.”

“Oh? You had other problems with him?”

“Later on, I caught another case up there-Everett’s friend, Cameron Burgess? His father was found dead. He had been strangled, supposedly by an intruder. I thought both boys might have been involved, but I didn’t have much more than a gut feeling to go on. Corey’s old man-who never forgave me for arresting his pride and joy the first time-swore both boys had been at his place all night when Burgess died.”