Scavenger

1

Legs unsteady, Amanda obeyed the voice’s instructions and climbed the staircase. As Ray, Bethany, Derrick, and Viv entered their bedrooms, she went into hers. She’d been told to go to the closet and put on the clothes she found there, but first she went into the bathroom and relieved herself. She didn’t care if there were cameras. Urgency cancelled modesty. Suspecting that it would be a long time before she saw another bathroom, she pulled toilet paper off the roll and crammed it into her pocket.

Now that the fog of whatever drug she’d been given was dissipating along with her nausea, Amanda realized how empty her stomach felt. Her mouth was dry. After flushing the toilet, she went to the sink, then paused, frowning toward the toilet. The water swirled down. But the tank didn’t make the sound of water refilling it. She had a fearful suspicion of what would happen when she turned the knobs on the sink — or rather what wouldn’t happen — but she tried it anyhow. No water flowed from the taps.

Amanda’s mouth felt even more parched as she went to the closet and opened it. Blue coveralls hung on a hanger, a many-pocketed garment that reminded her of flight suits she’d seen in movies about military pilots. Waffle-soled hiking boots were on the floor. They, too, were blue, as were the wool socks and baseball cap next to them. Now she did feel modest. Trying to avoid the cameras, she stepped into the closet and hurriedly took off her jeans. In a rush, she stepped into the coveralls and zipped them over her white blouse. The coveralls were sturdy nylon on the outside with an insulating fabric. Briefly, the material chilled her legs. After transferring the toilet paper to the coveralls, she carried the socks and hiking boots to the bed and put them on. Everything fit her.

She glanced around the room, looking for anything she might be able to use to escape.

“Nothing here will help you,” the voice said from the ceiling.

It made her flinch. She heard footsteps in the corridor and left the bedroom, seeing Ray, Bethany, Derrick, and Viv come out of their rooms. All wore caps, coveralls, wool socks, and hiking shoes. Ray’s were green, Bethany’s gray, Derrick’s red, and Viv’s brown. Because of Ray’s pilot background, he was the only one who looked at ease in the jumpsuit.

“Well, at least I can tell the rest of you apart,” Derrick, the only black person in the group, tried to joke.

“I think that’s the idea,” Ray said, pointing toward the ceiling. “For him to tell us apart, especially at a distance.”

Glancing nervously around, they descended the staircase to the large open area in front of the door. Ray pulled out his lighter, opening and snapping it shut. Amanda tried not to let the sound get on her nerves.

“Now what?” Viv asked the voice.

“Go into the dining room,” the voice commanded. “Put on your radio headsets. Turn them on.”

“Wait a minute.” Bethany’s eyes looked fierce. “The sink in my bathroom didn’t work! I’m thirsty!”

“I’m hungry,” Ray said. “God knows how long it’s been since—”

“This is Monday,” the voice said.

“Monday?” Bethany’s voice dropped.

“But the last thing I remember…” Derrick shook his head. “My God, I lost…”

“Two days.” Viv looked stunned.

“So, of course, you’re hungry and thirsty. The fact that you weren’t active during the interval prevented you from expending energy. You still have strength. As I noted when telling you about Bethany’s experience on the ocean, you can survive for as long as three weeks without food.”

Amanda felt her lightheadedness return.

“Contrary to popular opinion, going two or three days without food is hardly life-threatening,” the voice assured them. “People have been known to hike great distances during that time.”

Obeying instructions, Viv went into the dining room. But she kept going into the kitchen.

Understanding, Amanda and the others followed, watching Viv put on the rubber gloves she used earlier. She opened the refrigerator. It was empty. She opened all the cupboards, but they too were empty. She tried the tap on the sink. It no longer worked.

She moaned.

“Fasting purifies,” the voice said. “Now go into the dining room and put on the headsets. Otherwise, I won’t let you outside.”

With no other choice, they did what they were told.

Amanda adjusted the headset, then put her cap back on. As she pulled her blond hair through the back of the hat, the sonorous voice through the ear buds was disturbingly intimate. “Put your GPS receiver into a pocket. Be careful to protect it. You’re going to need it.”

Again, the group obeyed.

“Now I’ll tell you about Scavenger,” the voice said. “In 2000, President Clinton signed legislation that allowed global positioning satellite receivers available to the public to receive signals that were accurate within ten feet, almost as accurate as military GPS receivers. Prior to that time, the public could receive GPS signals that were accurate only within twenty-five feet, reserving greater accuracy exclusively for the military. Almost immediately, someone in Oregon posted map coordinates on an Internet site, explaining that anyone who used a GPS receiver to search that area had a chance to find a hidden treasure. The treasure was only a metal box of dime-store novelties. That wasn’t the point. The objective wasn’t what was in the box but rather the pleasure of the hunt. Even with coordinates as accurate as ten feet, the box was difficult to locate.”

Amanda was so accustomed to hearing the voice come from the ceiling that she felt disoriented now that it sounded inside her head.

“From Oregon, this version of a scavenger hunt spread rapidly around the world. It bore similarities to a similar scavenger hunt called letterboxing, but the GPS version is called ‘geocaching.” Players use an Internet site to learn the coordinates of something hidden — a cache — in an area they want to explore. They program these coordinates into their GPS receiver, then let the receiver guide them to the spot they need to search. Often, within a ten-foot-square area of trees or rocks, the object is so small or so disguised that it’s almost impossible to find. A cache might look like an insect, such as a grasshopper, for example. It takes a careful eye to notice that the grasshopper is made of rubber. Or the object might look like a rock, but when examined, it turns out to be plastic, containing a cheap ring or some other type of nominal treasure. The player who finds the object leaves something comparable in return, or sometimes just a note, and then reports the victory to a website like geocaching-dot-com. Players gain stature for the number of caches they discover. Only a few years after President Clinton signed that GPS legislation, there were a quarter of a million caches in two hundred and nineteen countries.“

Ray interrupted angrily. “Grasshoppers? Cheap rings? What the hell do you want with us?”

“No need to shout, Ray. The microphone next to your cheek will supply the proper sound level. What do I want? Step to the front door.”

Amanda tensed as she heard an electronic beep from the door. The lock made a clunking sound, the bolt sliding free.

“You can open it now,” the voice instructed.

“Not until I know I won’t get electrocuted.” Viv tapped a rubber glove against the door’s handle. Getting no reaction, she pushed down and pulled.

Sunlight streamed in, accompanied by a pleasant breeze.

“Damn, that feels good,” Derrick said. He went outside, as did Viv and Ray.

Hesitant, Amanda and Bethany followed.

2

The sun was warm. The grassy, sagebrush-dotted field was more open space than Amanda had ever seen. All her life she’d lived in cities, where the buildings permitted a view of only a portion of the sky. The trees in parks created a similar limitation. But here, the view was immense. Snowcapped mountains rose in the distance, but they made no impression on the sky. The canopy of blue was vast.

“As you see, you’re in a valley surrounded by mountains,” the voice explained in Amanda’s ears. She noticed everyone else concentrating to listen. “On your right, far off, there’s a break in the mountains. That’s the only exit. I don’t advise you to go in that direction.”

Amanda stared at it longingly.

The group walked farther from the building, which reminded Amanda of a log-walled hunting lodge she’d once seen in a magazine. She noticed Viv put the rubber gloves in a pocket of her coveralls. Good, Amanda thought. Save whatever resources we can get our hands on. But the farther she went from the building, the more insignificant she felt in the vastness around her.

“Please, take out your GPS receivers and turn them on,” the voice said.

Everyone complied.

Except Amanda, who was baffled by the unfamiliar object she removed from her pocket. “Where…”

“On the right side,” Derrick said. “Two buttons. The bottom one. It’s got a symbol of a light bulb.”

Amanda pressed the button and heard a beeping sound. The unit’s screen glowed, revealing a cartoon of a globe with satellite icons over it.

“Mostly because of the United States and its military requirements, there are a large number of global positioning satellites, twenty-six that the government admits to having,” the voice continued. “But your receiver needs only to establish a link with three. More is better for accuracy, but three is sufficient. In this valley, the usual number of links is five. The satellites are thirty miles above us, beaming signals at a mere fifty watts, and yet they’re amazingly precise.”

Amanda watched vertical bars appear on the bottom of her unit’s screen. Five of them darkened.

“These receivers work best in open spaces,” the voice said. “Buildings and dense forest restrict the signals. But now that you’re outdoors, your units have registered your current position. Pay attention to the following coordinates. They indicate your destination. North…” The voice dictated a series of numbers. “West…” The voice dictated other numbers.

Amanda was bewildered as Ray, Bethany, Derrick, and Viv pressed buttons on their receivers.

“Not so fast,” Bethany objected, adjusting her microphone. “Tell me the second set of numbers again.”

The voice repeated them.

“Okay,” Bethany said.

Amanda continued to be baffled.

“It’s easy.” Sounding annoyed, Viv took the receiver from her. “The buttons on each side cycle through the main pages and access the menus on them: a compass, an altimeter, a map.”

“No map on mine,” Ray said.

“Mine neither,” Bethany said.

“Great. So we still don’t know where we are.” Viv showed Amanda how each button worked. “With a little practice, you won’t have trouble remembering what they do. Here, I’ll enter the coordinates for you.”

Viv showed Amanda how it was done, then handed the receiver back to her.

“Excellent,” the voice said. “Team spirit.”

“Anything to get out of here,” Viv said.

“That depends on how everyone performs. The forty hours begin…” The voice paused, as if double-checking something “… now.”

Everyone frowned.

“I advise you not to waste time,” the voice warned.

They continued to remain in place.

“You’ll find something you need at the coordinates I gave you.”

“Water?” Bethany asked. “Food?”

The voice didn’t answer.

“Hell, if there’s water and food, let’s go.” Derrick glanced at his GPS receiver.

Amanda did the same. On the screen, a red needle pointed away from her. Above it, a box was marked DIST TO DEST and indicated one mile.

“In this mode, the compass doesn’t aim north but instead toward the coordinates we entered,” Viv explained. “Looks like we’re supposed to head toward that clump of trees in the distance.”

The trees were opposite the valley’s exit, Amanda noticed. She assumed that her thoughts were the same as the others‘. The moment she was far enough from the building that she couldn’t see it any longer, she’d watch for a chance to escape.

The guarded expression in everyone’s eyes told her that the rest of the group had the same plan.

They started walking. Dry grass crunched under Amanda’s boots. The sun’s glare pained her eyes. Despite its heat, she shivered. Staying behind the others, she couldn’t help noticing how unnatural the combination of their blue, green, gray, red, and brown jumpsuits looked. When she looked around, the expanse of the sky seemed overpowering.

A sudden movement attracted her attention. Ahead, something darted from a bush. A rabbit. It zigzagged away from them, racing toward the mountains.

At once, something else appeared, a larger animal bounding from a depression in the ground, chasing the rabbit. For an instant, Amanda thought it was a wolf, but then she realized that its markings didn’t match any pictures of wolves that she’d seen. It’s a German shepherd, she realized. The dog and the panicked rabbit disappeared down a hidden slope.

No one spoke. It struck Amanda as odd that when they were in the building, they hadn’t hesitated to talk, but now that they were in the open, a hush fell over them, broken only by the sound of their boot steps.

“Ever see Hitchcock’s North by Northwest?” Bethany asked unexpectedly.

Her voice came from two places — Bethany herself and Amanda’s earphones. A schizoid effect. Amanda didn’t know how long she could bear this. Frank, where are you? God, don’t let him be dead. I’ll go crazy if he’s dead.

You’re not crazy now? She was terribly aware that she addressed herself in the second person, something else that was schizoid.

The others, too, looked startled by Bethany’s question. It was as incongruous as the way Bethany’s expensive necklace, rings, bracelet, and watch contrasted with her jumpsuit.

Ray answered, self-conscious about being overheard. “Is that the one with Cary Grant on Mount Rushmore?”

“Yeah, the faces of four presidents are carved into the mountain.” Derrick sounded subdued. “I saw North by Northwest in a course in college. The bad guys chase Cary Grant and, what’s her name, Eva Marie Saint, across the faces.”

“In an earlier scene, he gets off a bus at a cornfield,” Viv said.

Amanda sensed a change of tone now, their voices less tentative, as if they hoped that a conversation about something familiar would help them feel normal.

“The cornfield,” Bethany said. “Yes. Grant gets off a bus in farm country. He’s been told to meet somebody and get information about whoever’s trying to kill him.”

Two large birds circled above them.

“Vultures,” Derrick said.

As the shadows passed over them, Bethany returned to the safety of talking about the movie. “After a long time, a car goes by, and Grant keeps waiting. The situation seems even stranger because Grant’s standing on this deserted farm road, wearing a suit.”

Hiking through the brittle grass, Amanda saw a gully ahead.

“Then a truck comes from the side of the cornfield,” Bethany said. “This is after about a minute of Grant doing nothing but stand there. A woman lets a farmer out. The truck leaves. The farmer and Grant nod to each other. We hear a drone in the background, a crop duster flying over a field. Then another bus shows up, and the farmer climbs aboard, but not before telling Grant how strange it is that the plane’s dusting crops where there aren’t any. Grant thinks about this. The bus drives away. Grant thinks some more, glances toward the crop duster, which starts flying in his direction, and suddenly Grant races toward the cornfield. The plane sprays machine-gun bullets at him.”

“Right!” Derrick said. “Grant dives among the corn rows. The pilot drops the fertilizer or herbicide or whatever his plane is carrying, almost suffocating Grant.”

They neared the gully.

“I read somewhere,” Bethany said, “that Hitchcock made several movies with a lot of scary enclosed spaces, that spooky old mansion in Rebecca, for example, but in North by Northwest, he wanted to try the reverse — to make open spaces threatening.”

They paused at the top of the gully.

“So quiet.” Ray turned in a circle, surveying the expanse of the valley and the mountains that encircled them. “I’m used to the noise of jets and cars and cities. Activity. Lots of things happening.”

“It’s like being in that awful rubber boat.” Bethany sounded as if her dry tongue swelled in her mouth. “Nothing but sky and ocean around me. So damned quiet.”

“Not for Derrick and me,” Viv told her. “This sort of place is mostly where we spend our time. Under different circumstances, it would be paradise.”

“Yeah, right, paradise.” Bethany pointed. “How far do you suppose those mountains are?”

“Hard to tell,” Derrick answered. “Maybe fifteen miles. Maybe more. When everything’s open like this, our eyes play tricks.”

Ray pressed a button on his GPS receiver. “The altimeter says we’re at fifty-five hundred feet.” He looked at Bethany. “A mile above sea level. If you’re not used to it, the altitude would be another reason you’re thirsty.”

“No, I’m thirsty because the son of a bitch didn’t give us water.”

“Quiet,” Viv cautioned. “He hears everything we say.”

Bethany adjusted the bill of her cap, shielding her eyes. “The sun’s so bright, my contact lenses feel like they’re cooking. Hey, you out there! Are you listening?”

No response.

“At least, you could have given us sunglasses!”

Still no response.

“Maybe the bastard isn’t listening.” Bethany looked around. “Do you suppose there are cameras out here?”

Amanda took for granted there were. But before she could say it, Bethany asked, “Where? In those trees we’re heading toward? Or long lenses watching from the house? Or on posts somewhere, scanning the valley?”

They slid down into the gully. Dust rose under their boots. The gully was about five feet wide, higher than their heads. The shadow at the bottom cooled them.

“I used to love sailing, couldn’t wait to get on the water with nothing around me except the horizon.” Bethany shuddered. “It made me feel like something inside me was reaching out toward God or something. But after two weeks in that rubber boat, all that open space sucked the soul right out of me. I haven’t been near the water since. It’s hard to get people to buy sailboats when the thought of being on one terrifies me. ”

Amanda dug her boots into the slope ahead, raising dust as she climbed. The dust coated her lips and tasted bitter. Emerging into the heat of the sun, she looked back and saw Bethany peering up from the shadow of the gully.

“It’s nice and cool down here,” Bethany said.

“This isn’t the ocean,” Derrick emphasized. “At least, it’s steady under your feet. It doesn’t ripple.”

“Maybe not to you, it doesn’t ripple. But my legs haven’t felt steady since I woke up. At least, in that building, I had walls around me.”

“Think of the mountains as walls.”

Bethany looked bleak. “Mouth’s drier.”

“The voice said there was water at the coordinates we were given.”

“No!” Bethany objected. “The voice said we’d find something we needed. Whatever that means. He didn’t say anything about water. We added what we wanted to hear.” She pulled her headset from beneath her cap.

“Climb out of there,” Viv said.

“We’re not going to be any stronger than we are now.” Bethany stared at the headset in her hand. With disgust, she dropped it.

“No,” Derrick said.

“What can the bastard do to me?” Bethany spread her arms, making herself a target. “Shoot me? How? He can’t see me down here!”

Amanda looked around and felt a naked spot between her shoulders. Above the gully, everything was a potential sniper site: clumps of sagebrush, the row of trees they were headed toward, the rocks next to it. In the open, we’re all easy targets, she realized.

“Take your chance now,” Bethany urged. “If we all run in a different direction, how’s he going to keep track of us all? How’s he going to be everywhere at once to stop us? He can’t.”

The logic’s so tempting, Amanda thought. While we’re together, we don’t have a chance. She almost told Bethany she was right, almost slid down the dust to join her, but something made Amanda hesitate, a limbic suspicion that things weren’t as simple as Bethany believed, that escaping couldn’t be as easy as five people fleeing in five different directions.

Then Amanda did slide into the gully, not to join Bethany but to try to stop her. She put a hand on Bethany’s shoulder. “I’ve got a bad feeling. Don’t do this.”

“Hey, the voice said he wanted us to be self-reliant, didn’t he?” Bethany tugged Amanda’s fingers away, took a deep breath, and walked along the concealing gully. Her pace increased. If the gully maintained its direction, it would lead toward the exit from the valley, Amanda saw.

Running now, raising dust, Bethany disappeared around a curve. Amanda heard the receding noise of her boot steps in the dust, then stared up at Ray, Derrick, and Viv, uncertain what to do.

“Are the rest of you going to join her?” the voice abruptly asked.

The intimate sound in Amanda’s ears made her flinch.

“There’s always a chance that she’ll succeed,” the voice said. “Do you want to take the same chance?”

No one replied.

“What about you, Amanda?”

“How the hell does he know what Bethany’s doing?” Ray murmured.

“In that case, keep moving,” the voice ordered. “Don’t waste the little time you have.”

Amanda turned toward the curve beyond which Bethany had disappeared.

“It’s unfortunate that she took off her headset,” the voice said. “That prevents me from trying to reason with her.”

“How does he know she took off her headset?” Ray demanded.

With a chill, Amanda picked up the headset and blew dust from it. She brought it close to her eyes, examining the headband, the ear buds, and the microphone stub. “The microphone.” Her words were filled with despair.

“Brava,” the voice said.

“The microphone?” Derrick asked from the top of the slope. “What about it?”

Amanda could hardly speak. “It’s not just a…”

Viv tore off her headset and stared at the microphone stub. “My God, it’s a camera.”

She dropped the headset and stumbled back.

“Derrick, tell your wife to pick it up,” the voice said.

Derrick looked paralyzed.

“Tell your wife to pick it up,” the voice emphasized.

“Viv, he wants you to pick up your headset.”

“No.”

“Everyone step back from her,” the voice said.

Derrick’s dark features tightened. “What are you going to do?”

“Teach you not to make me repeat myself. Step back.”

In a rush, Derrick grabbed the headset from the dirt and made Viv take it. “Put it on.”

Seeing the fright in Derrick’s eyes, Viv trembled and did what he wanted.

“Amanda, climb to the top of the gully,” the voice ordered. “Join the others. Look toward the east.”

“East?”

“The exit from the valley,” Ray said.

Amanda felt something cold squeeze her heart. “That’s the direction Bethany went.” She scrambled up the side of the gully. Dust crumbled under her hiking boots, but she kneed and clawed and reached the top. She straightened, focusing her gaze toward the continuation of the gully. Amid grass and sagebrush, the gully meandered toward the distant pass. Amanda saw glimpses of Bethany’s gray cap and the gray shoulders of her jumpsuit as she hurried.

The voice sounded too resigned, Amanda decided. “Wait! You said it’s unfortunate she took off her headset. You said you wanted to reason with her. If I can catch her…” A terrible premonition made Amanda breathe faster. “If I can stop her…”

“Yes?”

“Will you let me bring her back?”

The voice didn’t answer.

Before Amanda realized what she was doing, she ran. “Bethany!” she yelled. “Stop!” The vast openness swallowed her words.

Amanda charged across the brittle grass. She passed sagebrush, a knee-high boulder, and a stunted pine tree.

“Bethany!”

But Bethany kept racing along the bottom of the gully. Her gray cap and the gray shoulders of her jumpsuit were more visible. She never looked back.

“Stop!”

Amanda increased the speed and length of her stride. “Listen to me!” she managed to shout between hoarse deep breaths that burned her throat.

Ahead, the gully became less deep. Bethany was visible to her waist now, rushing toward the far-away gap in the mountains.

“Stop!” Amanda yelled. Sweat slicked her skin, making her jumpsuit cling to her. “He knows!”

Now the gully was so shallow that Bethany’s hips showed. The lack of cover increased her frenzy. She charged toward a sandy depression, where water presumably gathered during rainy periods. On the opposite side, another gully began.

“You’re not stopping her,” the voice said in Amanda’s ears.

“Trying.” Amanda fought to muster strength, to run even faster. A rock dislodged under her, making her stumble. “Bethany! Stop! Please!”

The urgency in Amanda’s words finally had an effect. Halfway across the depression, Bethany seemed to lose energy. She faltered and turned. Chest heaving, she peered back toward Amanda.

“He can get to you!” Amanda yelled. “I don’t know how, but he can!”

Bethany’s features glistened with sweat. She looked ahead toward the opposite side of the depression and the continuation of the gully. Abruptly, she ran toward it.

“Don’t!” Amanda’s plea was directed to the voice as much as to Bethany.

“She hates open spaces,” the voice said. “It was only a matter of time.”

Amanda strained to increase speed but found it impossible. Like the gap in the mountains beyond, Bethany seemed to recede.

“Better that it happened soon,” the voice told Amanda. “This way, the rest of you will learn not to waste time and strength on futile efforts.”

“No!”

“But I’m disappointed that she didn’t surprise me.”

The moment Bethany reached the continuation of the gully, Amanda felt a shock wave. Amid a roar, Bethany’s gray-covered torso erupted in a spray of red. A hand flew one way while her skull flew another. The vapor of her blood misted the air as parts of her body pelted the ground.

Amanda staggered to a halt, her ears in pain from the explosion. She wavered in shock at the sight of the blood vapor spreading in a sudden breeze. Then the vapor drifted down, speckling the sand.

Amanda felt as if someone kicked the back of her legs from under her. She dropped to her knees. Tears streamed down her face, burning her cheeks.

3

It is a wonderful place, the moor.

Hunched in the back seat of a taxi, Balenger studied the photocopy in his hand, wondering what the hell the paragraph on it meant. A faded copy of a stamp read NYPL HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCES LIBRARY. Given the context, he decided that NYPL stood for New York Public Library. He used his cell phone to call information and learned that the Humanities & Social Sciences Library was at 42^nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

The Avenue of the Americas was the nearest uptown route from Greenwich Village. Stop-and-go midday traffic slowed the taxi. Frustrated by blaring horns and the lurch of the vehicle, Balenger told the driver to let him out at 40^th Street. He paid and ran, relieved to be moving, to find an outlet for his tension.

But impatience wasn’t his only reason for leaving the taxi. He continued to feel shocked by the fire. Someone wanted to stop him from finding Amanda, and that person would almost certainly keep trying.

He ran faster. Feeling exposed on the crowded sidewalk, he glanced behind him, wanting to know if anyone got out of another taxi and hurried in his direction. No one did. He looked ahead just in time to avoid crashing into a man with a briefcase. Veering, he charged through the intersection of 41^st Street. A truck beeped and passed close enough for Balenger to feel a rush of air.

Ahead, he saw a crowd on benches amid the trees of Bryant Park. He glanced over his shoulder again and still didn’t see anyone coming after him. Traffic remained motionless.

Turning right, he sprinted to Fifth Avenue and reached the library, a massive stone building, whose wide steps and pillared entrance were guarded by two marble lions.

He hurried through a revolving door and entered a massive hall, where people waited for a guard to examine their purses, knapsacks, and briefcases. As he wiped sweat from his forehead, he got curious looks from some of the people in line. He moved forward, glancing over his shoulder. Feeling seconds tick away, he worked to catch his breath. The high ceiling and stone floor had the echo of a church, but he paid little attention. His sole focus was on people coming through the entrance.

The guard waved him through. After asking directions, Balenger climbed two flights of wide stairs. Off another huge hallway, he reached an information desk.

“May I help?” a spectacled woman asked.

“I hope so.” Balenger gave her the photocopy. “Do you have any idea where this comes from?”

The librarian peered over her glasses, studying the passage.

“It is a wonderful place, the moor,” said he, looking round over the undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite foaming up into fantastic surges. “You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious.”

She sounded puzzled. “Everything else has been blanked out.”

Trying for a simple explanation, Balenger said, “It’s kind of a game.”

The librarian nodded. “Yes, we get that on occasion. Last week, somebody came here with a list for a scavenger hunt. She needed to find a particular novel, but the only clue she’d been given was, ”The sun goes down.“ We finally decided it was Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.”

The thought occurred to Balenger that the paragraph might indeed be part of a game, one of the crudest anyone ever imagined.

“The problem was, even though people often call us the main branch of the New York City library system, actually we’re a research facility,” the woman said. “We don’t lend books. Patrons can study them only on the premises. I needed to send the game player over to the branch on Fortieth Street.” The librarian continued to study the paragraph. “ ‘It is a wonderful place, the moor.” Interesting.“ She debated for a moment, then motioned to a man at a computer next to her.

He approached.

“Bronte or Conan Doyle?” the woman asked.

After reading the passage, the man nodded. “Those are the two that come to mind.”

“I don’t think it’s Bronte,” the woman said.

“Exactly. Her style is more emotional.”

Balenger gave the woman a quizzical look.

“Mention a moor as a setting, and two novels stand out. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights takes place on the Yorkshire moors in northern England. It’s very atmospheric, Heathcliff talking to Cathy’s ghost as he wanders the moors, that sort of thing. In contrast, the description here is compressed into one sentence: ‘… undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite’… It gets the job done, but what the author seems really to care about are ‘the wonderful secrets’ the moor contains: ’… so mysterious.” That’s the author’s focus. I’d be very surprised if this person didn’t write mysteries. I think this is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Hound of the Baskervilles.“

“The Hound of the Baskervilles?”“

“Dartmoor in Devon, England. That’s where most of the novel takes place. In fact, it’s one of the most famous settings in any novel. As I mentioned, we don’t allow books to leave the building, but if you go to the reading room—” She pointed behind her. “—someone will bring you a copy.”

Time, Balenger kept thinking. He made himself appear calm when he thanked her. His experience with Conan Doyle’s detective story was only through an old black-and-white film starring Basil Rathbone. He remembered it as dark and moody with plenty of fog over rugged, sometimes swampy terrain.

The spacious reading room had the rich, warm tones of wood that had been polished for many decades. A guard stood at the entrance. Next to him, a sign warned Balenger to turn off his cell phone.

Balenger complied and went to a counter, where he requested a copy of the novel. His nerves calmed only a little when he noticed the reading room’s computer area. After receiving an access card, he found an empty computer station. He concentrated to keep his breathing under control and felt a persistent urge to massage the nagging ache in his left forearm. When he pushed up his jacket and shirt sleeves, he saw that the punctured area was more red and swollen. It looked infected.

But that was the least of his troubles. As he stared at the computer keyboard, his fingers trembled. Amanda, he thought. Where did they take you?

He didn’t know why Karen Bailey left the quotation for him or how reading the novel it came from (if it indeed came from The Hound of the Baskervilles) would help him find Amanda. He fought to think, to focus on what the quotation was supposed to tell him.

Maybe it’s about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he thought desperately.

Then why was everything else on the page, including the author’s name and the title of the book, removed? Why single out the quotation? What was special about it?

The moor.

Balenger reached for the computer keyboard. With shaking hands, he accessed Google and typed DARTMOOR. Several items appeared.

Balenger learned that Dartmoor National Park covered 250 square miles of low rocky hills that were described variously as bleak, forbidding, and primeval. Mist frequently covered the mostly uninhabited area. The frequent moisture collected in boggy mires, which explained the need for a Dartmoor rescue group.

Am I supposed to conclude that somebody took Amanda to Dartmoor, England? he thought. Why? What would be the point? This isn’t getting me anywhere.

Why did Karen Bailey arrange for me to receive the piece of paper?

A thought made Balenger straighten. She could have mailed it to me, but she added a complication. I wouldn’t have known about the passage if I hadn’t gone to the theater. She told the man who pretended to be the professor to give me the paper only if I showed up.

His temples throbbing, Balenger stared at the other Google references to Dartmoor. He now realized that he needed to look harder. He couldn’t assume anything was irrelevant.

Preoccupied, he was about to skip to the next item when the subtext of the LETTERBOXING item caught his attention.

The description jabbed Balenger’s memory. He suddenly remembered the time-capsule lecture, during which the fake professor had said that communities who lost time capsules were engaged in a hide-and-hunt scavenger game. In a rush, Balenger clicked on the item. The text that appeared, with photographs of low hills studded with granite outcroppings, set his brain on fire.

Balenger stared at the screen for a long time. The reference to a “long-lost container that conceals a message left by someone many years earlier” took him back to the time-capsule lecture. One of the last things he remembered before lapsing into unconsciousness was the fake professor saying that more time capsules had been lost than had been found.

Balenger’s heart seemed to stop, then start again. Coincidences? he wondered. Or did Karen Bailey intend for me to find this article? Why else would she have wanted me to read the paragraph about Dartmoor?

His hands continued to tremble, but now part of the reason for that was an increasingly chill suspicion about why Amanda had been taken from him. He thought of what the librarian had said about clues to a scavenger hunt. A game? he thought. Is this really a damned game?

Breathing faster, he went to the request counter.

“Yes, sir?” a woman with streaked hair asked.

“My name’s Frank Balenger. I asked for The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

“Of course, sir. Let me see if…” She smiled. “Here it is.”

The book was an old, musty hardback with dented corners. Balenger found an empty chair at one of the numerous tables. He opened the novel and skimmed its pages, concentrating on the first sentence of every paragraph, searching for “It is a wonderful place, the moor.”

Balenger exhaled sharply when he found it. Page forty-six. Two-thirds of the way down. But that wasn’t all he found. Someone had used a stamp to put words in the margin: THE SEPULCHER OF WORLDLY DESIRES.

The room seemed to tilt. Balenger was eerily reminded of the unusual name for one of the time capsules the “professor” had lectured about: the Crypt of Civilization. The Sepulcher. The Crypt. Another coincidence? he wondered. He needed to convince himself that he wasn’t grasping at imaginary connections. One way to be sure was to look at all the copies of The Hound of the Baskervilles the library had. This branch didn’t allow books to be taken from the building. Because there was no way for Karen Bailey to control which copy of the novel he was given, the only sure method to guarantee that Balenger got the message was to stamp THE SEPULCHER OF WORLDLY DESIRES in every copy the library owned.

Balenger stood so fast that the screech of his chair made the other readers at his table glare. But when he hurried toward the request area, he had a nervous feeling that someone stared at him. He turned toward the entrance to the reading room.

Someone indeed stared at him.

A matronly, fortyish woman in a plain dark dress. Her brunette hair was pulled back in a bun.

Karen Bailey.

4

The moment Balenger noticed her, she ran toward the corridor beyond the reading room’s entrance. Balenger’s urgent footsteps startled people at the other tables. He charged past the guard, who scowled at the commotion.

In the corridor, Balenger looked in one direction and then the other. No sign of Karen Bailey. Other people scowled as he ran to the stairway. Again, no sign of her.

“Hey,” he said to a man with a nylon book bag, “did you see a woman in a navy dress? Prim? Around forty? Her hair in a bun?”

The man looked at Balenger’s distraught appearance and stepped back, suspecting he was dangerous.

“All of you!” Balenger called to the half-dozen people in the corridor. “Did anybody see a woman in a navy dress?”

The guard came out of the reading room. “Keep your voice down.”

Balenger rushed along the corridor, checking various exhibition rooms. He reached a women’s room and didn’t think twice about shoving at the door, hurrying inside. At a sink, a woman turned and gaped. Balenger peered under the doors to the stalls. Jeans. Slacks. Nobody in a navy dress.

He bolted from the women’s room and dodged past the guard who tried to grab him.

“Karen Bailey!” Balenger yelled. “Stop!”

Pursued by the guard, Balenger reached the stairs and leapt down two at a time. The next level had closed doors to what looked like offices. Hearing the guard chasing him, Balenger continued to rush downward, only to stop at the sight of Ortega climbing toward him.

“I saw her!” Balenger exclaimed. “Karen Bailey! She’s in the building!”

The guard reached Balenger. “Sir, I need to ask you to leave.”

Ortega pulled out his police identification. “He’s with me.”

“I saw her at the entrance to the reading room,” Balenger said. “The same navy dress. Hair in a bun. Then she ran.”

“I didn’t see anyone who matches that description when I came into the building.” Ortega turned toward the guard. “Tell your security staff to block all the exits. Be careful. She might be dangerous.” He pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll call for backup.”

As Balenger and Ortega ran down the stairs, Ortega blurted instructions into his phone. Then he glared at Balenger. “Ducking away from me in the crowd. Leaving me to report to the fire team on my own. Maybe you’d like to get arrested for obstructing an investigation.”

“I didn’t have a choice. I told you there wasn’t time. I couldn’t wait.”

“I was forced to lie and claim you’d gone for medical treatment.”

“Thanks. If I can ever repay you—”

“You made me feel like a damned fool. Don’t play games with someone who’s trying to help.”

“I think that might be what’s going on. A game.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Karen Bailey leaves a piece of paper for me at the theater, but I need to find the theater before I get to read what’s on the paper. A stamp on it leads me to this branch of the library, where I need to pass another test and learn where the paragraph on the paper comes from. It turns out to be from The Hound of the Baskervilles. When I get a copy of the novel, I find words stamped next to the paragraph.”

“Words?”

“The Sepulcher of Worldly Desires.”

“The what?”

“I think I’m supposed to find out what it is. This branch of the library doesn’t lend books, so she could be sure I’d find the message on the page. Step by step, I’m being led through some kind of game. The moor the paragraph refers to is Dartmoor in England. When I Googled Dartmoor, I learned about a hide-and-hunt game invented there a long time ago, a game called letterboxing that sounds like the game I’m being made to play — hidden messages leading to other hidden messages. Some aspects of letterboxing even sound like time capsules. Everything’s related.”

“But why would anybody do this? Do you have enemies? Someone who hates you enough to put you through this?”

“I told you before, the only person I can think of who’d be sick enough to do this is dead.” Balenger hesitated. “Time capsules.”

“Something occur to you?”

“When I was a kid, I found a time capsule in part of a school that was being torn down. The local newspaper made a big deal about it. My photograph was on the front page. It showed me holding the rusted metal box.”

The skin tightened around Ortega’s eyes. “You’re saying someone went to the trouble of researching your past all the way back to when you were a kid? To find the bait that would make you go to the lecture at that house?”

“In the attic, we found two video game cases,” Balenger said. “One was for Grand Theft Auto. You told me you’d never heard of the other one. Do you remember its title?”

Ortega thought for a moment. “Scavenger.”