They're Watching

Wedged in the angle where splintering wood met moist earth, I had nowhere left to go. My mouth cottoning, I looked around frantically.

Through a skein of dusty sumac, I spotted the section of sagging fence between our yard and the Millers'. A post had keeled over, leaving a break in the slats. I scrambled on all fours, gliding across the soft mulch.

The cop's boots knocked the fence, and I heard him grunting, trying to pull his weight up for a look. Across the lawn the SWAT officer kicked through the rear door, the knob taking a bite from the outside wall.

Behind me the cop landed on our side of the fence with a harrumph. I whistled through the gap onto the Millers' property an instant before our backyard lit up with intersecting flashlight beams. Rolling to the side, I found my feet in Martinique's flower bed. I scurried across the well-kept back lawn, crossed the stamped-concrete patio in a few strides, and swung into their kitchen through the rear door.

Martinique lowered the salad bowl she was scrubbing with ridiculous yellow kitchen gloves and regarded me, her mouth slightly agape. I'd frozen as well, my feet still on the outside step but my weight forward on the hand gripping the doorknob. Beyond her in the family room, his back to us, Don sat watching CNBC with the volume raised. The only movement was the financial pundit raving about the subprime crisis and the kitchen faucet going full blast, spewing a vibrating column of water. I barely dared to move my eyes to take in the room. To my right, their washer and dryer, the lids heaped with dirty clothes, the day's mail, and Don's laptop carrier. Five steps forward, the door to the garage.

Martinique turned her head, her mouth open to call to Don, but something stopped her.

I mouthed, Help me.

Car tires splashed water out front, and blue light came wavering across the sponge-painted ceiling. "The hell you think that jackass got up to now?" Don said, standing and dropping the remote onto the cushion. "I'll go upstairs, see what I can see from the den." He turned, draining his scotch. Not bothering to look up at Martinique and me, he set the glass on the sofa table, said, "This is dirty, too," and trudged to the stairs. Neither she nor I had breathed.

Finally her eyes swiveled to the window, the flashlight beams along the fence line now. For a moment I thought she was going to cry out for help.

But her voice came in a low purr. "I'm not getting involved." Her mouth grim, she set down the salad bowl, walked past me, wafting the scent of almond soap, and pulled open a cupboard above the washing machine. Jangling from a silver hook, the keys to Don's Range Rover. "I have too many dishes to clean to notice a goddamned thing."

She returned to the sink, dutifully pulled another bowl from the stack, and went to work on it, humming. I crossed the space, unhooked the keys, and stepped into the garage.

Then I came back and grabbed Don's laptop. Martinique didn't so much as glance over, but I swore I detected a hint of satisfaction in the set of her mouth.

The garage door opened smoothly, on well-greased tracks. A SWAT van and police cars clogged the street in front of our curb, and the house was inundated with uniforms. Our front and side yards were crawling with cops, too--a marksman had even climbed up to check the roof--but their main focus was bushes, shadows, and radios. The upstairs hall window framed Gable's face; he was glowering out as if picking a fight with the darkness, his gaze passing blankly over the lawn, the street, the black Range Rover creeping from the neighbor's garage.

Signaling like a good citizen, I pulled out and turned left down the hill.

Chapter 54

Parked in an alley behind a gas station, I looked at the items I'd carried out of the fray, aligned neatly on the passenger seat. Don's laptop. A sheaf of twice-folded documents, wrinkled from my pocket and moist from rainfall. And the real-life MacGuffin, a white-silver disc.

The golf hat from Don's backseat was tugged down over my scraped-up face, the pistol hidden in the back of my jeans. I'd switched out the Range Rover's license plates with those from a pea green Buick reposing in an apartment carport. I needed to buy time before the theft was noticed, and the Buick's plate frame--ZACHARY AND S AGE'S G RANDMA!--hinted that the owner probably wouldn't be heading out to trip the light fantastic at 9:30 P.M. Boosting cars wasn't bad enough; I'd been reduced to stealing from a granny.

With nervous anticipation I booted up Don's Toshiba and started to insert the CD. But I hesitated with it halfway in. Did I want to know what it contained? Once I did, could they let me live? Curiosity tormented me, but I fought it off, withdrawing the CD and placing it back on the leather, where it glared up at me. Whatever was on it would surely open up another world of trouble, and I couldn't afford to have any more distractions between me and Ariana.

The longer I delayed, the greater the likelihood that the cops would catch up to me. Or that Ariana's kidnappers would lose patience with her or find her inconvenient. The smartest move would be to call Verrone now and tell him I had the CD. He'd know I'd lied about the safe-deposit box, but as long as I had what he wanted, I couldn't see why he'd care.

The throwaway cell phone had run out of juice, so I turned on my trusty Sanyo. Jerry had said that calls a few minutes long were tough to track, so I'd keep it short. Rehearsing what I was about to say, I punched in Ariana's number. My thumb hovered over "send." But something wouldn't let me put the call through.

Maybe it was the image of Mikey Peralta laid out in that hospital bed, fist-sized dent in his forehead. Or the crimson halo spreading on the floor beneath Deborah Vance's hair. I wanted desperately to believe that as long as I didn't set eyes on whatever that CD contained, Ariana and I would be safe. I wanted to believe that if I gave the Ridgeline crew what they wanted, we could shake hands and walk away. But the truth I didn't want to acknowledge was what was freezing my thumb over that "send" button. And that reality made itself known now, like a punch to the gut: My wife and I had already crossed the point of no return.

With two dead cops, a pair of kidnappings, and RHD and SWAT gunning for me, everything had spun out of control for Ridgeline, as it had for me. There was no way they could still entertain the notion that they could rein this back into a simple frame-up and leave me holding the bag.

Before the plan had derailed, they had needed me alive to insulate Festman Gruber, their employer, from suspicion in Keith's murder. But now Verrone, DeWitt, and whoever else constituted Ridgeline seemed to have switched to full-blown damage-control mode. Their objective now was self-preservation. Which meant acquiring leverage. Covering their asses. And eliminating witnesses. Mikey Peralta's "car accident" and Deborah Vance's "revenge shooting" were pretty good indications of what they planned to do to me and Ariana once our usefulness was exhausted. We knew too much now. We'd seen too much. They'd keep Ari on the hook just long enough to lure me in.

Aside from those copied documents, the CD staring up at me was my only ammunition.

If I delivered it to Ridgeline, they'd kill me and my wife.

I looked down at the phone, those ten digits glowing on the screen. Then at the CD on the passenger seat. The phone. The CD. Phone. CD.

It was time to change the plan. To go on the offensive.

The only way to beat them was to outplay them at their own game.

With a renewed sense of purpose, I turned off the phone, fired up the computer, and slotted in the CD. A single PDF file popped up, which I double-clicked. Fifteen pages, charted by the right scroll bar. Tables and graphs. A CONFIDENTIAL stamp, conspicuous yet translucent, halved each page at a diagonal. The cover sheet stated, F ESTMAN G RUBER--INTERNAL DOCUMENT ONLY--DO NOT REPRODUCE, followed by a few paragraphs of dense legal threats.

I clicked from page to page, scanning numbers and columns, waiting for the data to take shape. A graph on the tenth page, labeled "Internal Study," spelled it out plainly enough even for my geometry skills, atrophied since sophomore year of high school.

Three lines charted sonar decibels across various months. The blue one, a steady horizontal, showed the existing legal limits. Another, flying high above the law, indicated the decibels reached by Festman Gruber's sonar system. They peaked north of three hundred decibels, well above even the figure Keith had thrown at me through a puff of clove smoke from his deck chair.

In other words, illegal activity.

A green line across the bottom of the page, far beneath the legal limits, puzzled me. The key labeled it simply NV.

The letters tugged at a memory, tripping an image I'd seen in the documents I'd pulled off the Ridgeline copy machine's hard drive. Grabbing the papers, I shuffled past the creepy picture of me, past Keith Conner's phone records, past those money order slips positioned like dominos, finally finding the surveillance shot of the older man with a silver goatee exiting a limousine. The next picture of him included the image I was looking for, a logo painted on the lobby window of the high-rise in the background. The logo was an elegant one: Encompassed by a ring, an N quarter-turned like a dial so the letter's diagonal and second upright suggested a V.

NV, all tied up in a neat little circle.

So it was a corporation.

I studied the gleam off the limo's wax job, the formidable building, the man's confident bearing. It all seemed to suggest that he was someone high up at NV. The fact that he'd been placed under Ridgeline surveillance, in turn, suggested that his company was a rival to Festman Gruber.

I needed a name.

Beneath the photo was a copy of a cell-phone bill that belonged to a Gordon Kazakov. Several of the phone numbers were underlined, but they meant nothing to me.

I drove off, searching for a Starbucks. In Brentwood that took four blocks. I tucked the Range Rover into the curb in front, close enough to pirate their wireless Internet signal, then neurotically slotted a few quarters in the meter, though it was well past the hours of operation. My eyes swept the window and caught on a wall clock over the espresso machine--10:05.

Less than sixteen hours until Ridgeline would kill my wife.

The light banter and scent of java from inside struck at my nerves, reminding me how far I'd skidded off the tracks. With the hat brim pulled low over my bruised face, I turned from all that light and warmth and scurried back to the vehicle. Door locked, laptop open, and voila--a Linksys Internet connection.

Google Images spit out a number of pictures for Gordon Kazakov, the man in the surveillance shot. A few clicks showed him to be the CEO of North Vector, NV of the nifty logo, a Fortune 1000 powerhouse specializing in--surprise--global defense and technology. In addition, he owned two football teams in Eastern Europe, a low-fare airline with a hub in Minneapolis, and a historic mansion in Georgetown. But the most interesting bit of news was hidden in a recent Wall Street Journal profile. Though North Vector had made no official announcements, the article suggested that it had a revolutionary sonar system nearing viability.

A competing system that--according to the smuggled document--functioned using not just legal but markedly reduced decibel levels. The comparison, judging by the graph, didn't look flattering for Festman.

The muscles at the base of my neck had tightened into knots so unyielding that they felt inanimate when I reached back to knead them. Closing my eyes, I ran through what I knew, searching out the hairline crack where I could drive in a wedge.

Ridgeline had been hired by Festman Gruber to do their dirty bidding--to make sure that nothing interfered with Festman's defense contracts until that Senate vote went through. But Ridgeline seemed to be growing increasingly distrustful of their employers. They'd started keeping backup records of the illegal activity they conducted on behalf of Festman. They'd even gone so far as to acquire a confidential internal study showing Festman's sonar system to be operating outside legal parameters, a document that, if leaked properly, could probably do more damage to Festman's pocketbook than a Keith Conner documentary.

I massaged my temples, considered the angles. I thought about something Ariana had told me the night we'd received that first menacing phone call and discovered the cameras in the walls. We were huddled out in the greenhouse, running through our lack of options, and she'd said in exasperation, We don't know people big enough to help us.

For a good time, I stared at Gordon Kazakov's cell-phone bill. Then I called the bold number in the header. Five rings. Seven. No voice mail?

I was about to hang up when a voice answered. Smooth as bourbon.

I said, "Gordon Kazakov?"

"Who is this?"

"The enemy of your enemy."

A pause. "Who's my enemy?"

I said, "Festman Gruber."

"I'd like a name, please, sir."

I took a breath. "Patrick Davis."

"I see that they've been busy on your behalf."

How could he know that? But I was eager to finish the call and turn off my Sanyo again before the signal could be traced. So I got to the point. "I have something you want."

"I'll meet you."

"That'll be difficult," I said. "Don't you live in Georgetown?"

"I'm in Los Angeles," he said. "I promised my wife she could meet Keith Conner. That was before, of course, but I'd booked some business the first part of the week."

My bewildered silence must have spoken volumes, because he said, by way of explanation, "The first day of production was to be Monday."

"Wait a minute," I said. "You were involved with the movie?"

"Son," he chuckled, "I was financing it."

Chapter 55

Hotel Bel-Air, tucked into twelve bucolic acres of priceless real estate, was of course where a Gordon Kazakov would stay. With their sheltering trees, private paths, and white-noise brook, the grounds were the embodiment of discretion. The hush-voiced staff had played host to royalty of every definition, from Judy Garland to Princess Di. Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio used to sneak off here to get away, and now I was doing some nonroyal sneaking of my own, past the dinner patrons trickling out with their eco-farmed furs and bloody lipstick.

Ari and I had come here for an anniversary meal once, though we couldn't afford to stay the night. Intimidated by the waiters, I'd overtipped, which was probably undertipping. We'd sidled out, thanking everyone too profusely, and I'd never been back. Until now.

Having parked up Stone Canyon, I took a path along the brook to dodge the valets. A foursome strolled over the bridge above me, and Keith Conner's name sailed from the low murmur of their conversation as if it were aimed at me. Lowering my face, I kept walking, and so did they. The rain had stopped, leaving the air clean and sharp with the scent of vegetation. Passing three floating swans and as many signs warning of their temperament, I headed under a nearly horizontal California sycamore, crossed a patch of lush grass, and regarded the private stairs leading up to Room 162. Tea lights flickered on each step, a romantic touch, but to me the shifting shadows felt merely ominous. In choosing to trust Kazakov, I'd placed my freedom and Ariana's life in his hands. For all I knew, he'd called LAPD already and they were all waiting for me inside, oiling their semiautos and sipping Campari.

There was much to gain and everything to lose.

Steeling myself, I headed up the stairs. I knocked twice, once, then twice again.

A dry voice came through the wood--"I was just kidding about that"--and then the door tugged open. I tensed, but there was no Gable, no SWAT, no hired muscle, just Kazakov in a white bathrobe and his wife across on a couch, dwarfed by the expansive suite.

He rubbed an eye. "Come in, please. Forgive my getup, but I don't dress for anybody after ten anymore." A handsome man, though he looked older than he had in the photos I'd seen, maybe closing on seventy. "Need something for that?"

He was so matter-of-fact that it took a moment for me to realize he was talking about the bruising on my face. "No, it's fine."

"Come in. This is my Linda."

She stood, smoothing her designer sweat suit, and offered a feminine handshake. She was around his age--noteworthy in this setting--with a graceful demeanor and sharply intelligent eyes. We exchanged a few polite words, preposterous under the circumstances, but she inspired etiquette. Then she glanced at her husband. "You need some tea, love?"

"No, thank you," he said. As she withdrew, he winked at me and reached into the minibar. "Forty-two years. You know the secret?"

"No," I said. "I don't."

"When we're at an impasse, I admit to being wrong half the time. No more, no less."

"I've got the being-wrong part down," I said. The thought of Ariana caught me by surprise here in this lavish suite. I flashed on DeWitt's broad, handsome face, those arms that barely tapered at the wrists, the shoulders that kept going. And Verrone, of the downturned mustache and the steady, lifeless glare. My wife in the hands of these men. Controlled by them. Breathing only as long as their mood or judgment held.

"You seem shaken," he said.

The time blinked out from the DVD player beneath the wall-mounted flat-screen--11:23 P.M.

Twelve hours and thirty-seven minutes until Ridgeline would kill my wife.

I said, "I won't argue that."

He gestured for me to sit. "Would you like a drink?"

"Very much."

He poured two vodkas over ice, handed me mine. "They play dirty pool, our friends over at Festman Gruber. I know their tricks, as they know mine." He sat sideways at the edge of the secretary desk and crossed his hands over a knee as if waiting for someone to paint his portrait. "It was very much in their interest for this movie not to happen. McDonald's stopped Supersizing after that documentary. If you can get McDonald's to do something, hell, sky's the limit. We needed a star of a certain status for the picture to get the kind of exposure we required. You know how it is. Given our time frame, it was tough to begin with. It's not like A-listers sit around waiting to be slotted into low-budget whale movies." He took a sip, squinted into the pleasure of the alcohol.

I followed suit, the vodka burning my throat, soothing my nerves.

He used his thumbnail to buff an imaginary spot off the lacquered desktop. "Keith Conner was not as much of a lout as you'd think."

"I'm starting to figure that out."

"Movie stars aren't killed quietly," he mused.

"They needed something failproof."

"And low-tech." He gestured with his glass. "Golf driver, was it?"

"I don't even golf."

"Don't understand the game myself. Seems like an excuse to wear bad pants and drink during the day. I did enough of that in my youth."

I looked down into the clear liquid, my hands starting to tremble. After so much menace, the human contact and our quick rapport had caught me off guard. It felt safe in here, which opened me up to what I'd been trying not to feel. The past hours were a jumble, one trauma bleeding into the next. I flashed on Sally, pinwheeling back, mouth open, eruption from her chest. "Someone was shot. Right in front of me. A single mother. There's a kid who right now is . . . is finding out . . ."

He sat there, patient as a sniper. I wasn't sure what I was trying to convey, so I drained my glass and handed him the CD. His eyebrows lifted.

He took the disc, circled the desk, and popped it into his laptop. He clicked and read. Read some more. I sipped and sat back, cataloging everything I was going to do differently if I got a chance to be with my wife again. That last night we'd been together, my thumb drawing a bead of sweat through the dip between her lovely shoulder blades, the quick urgency of her mouth against my shoulder--what if it was a final memory?

His voice startled me from my thoughts. "This internal study shows very different results from those that Festman released publicly and put into evidence before Congress. Three hundred and fifty decibels? That's well into illegal territory."

"The figure surprises you?" I asked.

"Not in the least. We all know it. This just proves that they know it." A glance back at the screen. "They stole our data, too. We must have a mole. That will be handled." He was talking to himself; I just happened to be there. His gray eyebrows furrowed, holding an anger he'd so far concealed. "At least they stole accurate data." He seemed to notice I was there again. "We have a superior product," he told me. "But innovation takes time. Change is hard. There are alliances. Partnerships. Inertia. We needed to raise awareness, apply the right pressure at the right time. The documentary was a way of doing that. Business can make for strange bedfellows."

"And by 'product' you mean the sonar system that you're developing?"

"More or less. We design transducers and sonar domes for submarines and ship hulls. Just like Festman Gruber."

"Why are yours superior? Because they don't harm whales?"

He chuckled. "Don't mistake me for some manatee hugger. We have a lot of motivations. Saving Shamu certainly isn't at the top of that list. But our system is less disruptive to the environment. That's a PR benefit, you see. Which makes it good business. And a good advantage to press. How's your physics?"

"Paltry."

"Okay, here's the shorthand: Festman Gruber's is a traditional sonar system. Low frequency but high output power--think of it as high intensity. The high intensity is what screws up whale migrations, blows out their ears, all that Greenpeace stuff. Of course, Festman denies any link."

"Like cigarette companies and cancer."

"Like smart businessmen. You can't please shareholders airing your dirty laundry all the time. The key is"--he pointed to the laptop screen--"not to get caught with your pants down."

"How can your company's sonar work in such a low decibel range?"

"Because North Vector has developed a low-frequency, high-pulse-rate, low-intensity sonar, based on the type used by whispering bats. We overlap signals correlating from multiple sources to increase propagation distance without raising intensity. This offers a huge strategic advantage, because even though it's active, it's hard to detect, record, or source, even with specialized acoustic equipment."

"And what could a little arts-and-crafts project like that be worth?"

"About three point nine billion. Annually. For five years." He uncrossed his hands, held them out like Vanna White. "But can we really put a price tag on the well-being of our seafaring mammals?"

I wanted to make a smart reply, but I thought of Trista sitting in her bungalow with those autopsy photos, Keith lingering in the shadow of the Golden Gate to rest a hand on the side of that gray whale, and decided to keep my mouth shut.

He continued, "NSA has an essentially unlimited budget. They need more money, they print it. But they don't like paying twice for the same thing, not in these amounts. Looks bad to the Senate Appropriations Committee. And Festman, see, is in the middle of a long-term naval sonar contract. So despite all our advantages, we're next in line. And this document"--another adoring glance at the laptop screen--"or more specifically the threat of this document, is the kind of thing that will accelerate certain processes."

"They can't just say it's doctored?"

"It won't come to that. This battle has to be over before a single shot is fired."

"How?"

"I make sure that the right people in the right positions are aware that if they support Festman, they will be on the losing side. Senators. United States Attorneys. Cabinet members."

"How do you do that?"

"There is no greater power--not bombs, not laws, not parliaments--no greater power than picking up the phone and having the right person on the other end."

"Won't the government push back?"

"I am the government."

I said, "You're a private company."

"Exactly."

I nodded slowly. "I keep finding I'm not cynical enough to live in this country."

"Try living in other countries," he said. "It won't convert you to an optimist."

I jabbed a finger in the direction of the laptop. "Can you use that internal study to nail Festman's hide to the wall?"

"That's not what we want."

"After what I've been through, Mr. Kazakov, I'm not sure you can speak for what I want."

"You came to me for a reason, Patrick. I know how to swim in these waters."

I tapped the empty glass against my thigh.

"You never want to humiliate a rival," he continued. "Because then you don't get what you want. You flash your hand, give them a way out. Avoidance of shame is a vastly effective and underutilized motivator. We bury the study. Arrange to clear your name for whatever charges they've drummed up. It all happens quietly, behind the scenes, and we agree on a headline or two that we can all sell and live with. The higher-ups at Festman Gruber won't be imprisoned. They'll just lose. This round."

"And you'll get the defense contract."

"How much," he asked, "do you want for this CD?"

"I don't want money. I want my wife."

"Then let's get you your wife."

"It's not that easy." Standing, I pulled the folded documents from my pocket and tossed them on the desk before him, all those phone bills, wire transactions, bank accounts, and photographs linking Ridgeline to Festman Gruber. "There's much more at stake. And I've got a lot more than just an internal study."

I explained to him about Ridgeline and what I'd determined about their relationship with Festman Gruber. When I told him about Ariana's being taken, his eyes burned with forty-two years of empathy and his hand tightened angrily around the arm of his chair. His wife emerged silently, ostensibly to return the tea service to the counter, but her timing suggested she'd been listening to our conversation. She made sure to catch her husband's eye, and his expression of marital resignation made clear the decision was no longer in his hands. When she retreated to the bedroom again, he nodded at me weightily.

"This," he said, "changes everything." He sank back, rubbed his temples with his fingertips. His silver goatee looked gray in the glow of the banker's lamp. "If Ridgeline so much as catches wind of the fact that you're making a play, they'll clean up, understand? That's what they've been doing. Cleaning up."

I fought off dread, the endless wrong-turn scenarios, the crimescene imagery.

"I need to know how it works," I said, "if I'm gonna help my wife. Who's involved and at what level? Does Festman's CEO make the call to hire Ridgeline?"

"The CEO?" He waved a dismissive hand. "The CEO isn't even aware of this. It's not like in the movies. He lists corporate priorities. Makes a directive. 'Stop that fucking Keith Conner documentary.' That's all. The rest gets brainstormed and implemented."

"By whom?"

"Security."

"Who's Security report to?"

"Legal. Insert lawyer joke here. But that's how it's done."

Kazakov's neutrality--his casualness--was chilling.

My voice shook. "So they're the ones who laid the plan? To fuck with me and my wife? To murder Keith? To frame me and take away my life? Lawyers?"

"I don't know that Legal would have come up with the plan. But that's who would have approved it."

"Once they'd hired Ridgeline."

"That's right."

"How do I know who's at the top of this particular food chain?" I asked. "Legal?" I spit the word.

"You show up with some information and see who comes out to talk to you."

"Show up? Aren't they in Alexandria?"

"You bet your ass whoever's running things is on this coast overseeing this little imbroglio."

"Won't they just call the cops on me?"

"Maybe," he said. "You'll be betting that they'll want to talk to you first."

"Betting my life and Ariana's."

"Yes."

On the leather blotter rested a satellite cell phone. Distractedly, he reached over and spun it. The Glock was digging into my kidney, so I pulled it free and set it on the coffee table.

He eyed the pistol, unimpressed. "That's useless. This is a power and intel game. You're not going to win it with that. You'll probably just shoot your kneecap off."

I picked up the glass again, as if it had magically refilled with Stoli. "I want Legal to go down. And I want Ridgeline. The business stuff you can handle however you see fit."

"You've got a long row to hoe."

"That's why I need your help. The only benefit to being stalked by a global defense and technology company is that their rivals are also global defense and technology companies."

"That we are. Fire with fire and all that, sure. But what do you expect us to do?"

"They stitched a tracking device into my wife's raincoat. They don't know we know about it. My wife managed to grab her raincoat as they snatched her."

"Resourceful woman."

"Yes, you two would get along just fine. Is there any way to track that device?"

"Not unless you had the signature of that particular signal."

"Like its characteristics?"

"Yes, radio frequency, period, bandwidth, amplitude, type of modulation--all the usual suspects."

"An acquaintance of mine swept our house for us, and he found the thing using a signal analyzer. Would that have recorded the signature?"

"Any signal analyzer worth a damn would have saved the signature in its library. Can you get the analyzer?"

"I have an idea how I might. But I . . . uh, I might need you to offer the guy a job."

"He get fired?"

"Not yet."

Kazakov nodded. "I see."

"I need to make a call. If I turn on my cell phone, can Ridgeline source where I am?"

"This isn't 24. It takes a good amount of time to track a signal. If they're looking. Keep it to a few minutes and you'll be fine." He gestured to the balcony, but his eyes had already moved back to his copied cell-phone bill, the one I'd used to track him down. As I stood, I noticed that his stare had caught on some of the underlined numbers.

"Whose numbers are those?" I asked.

"Advocates," he said, not elaborating. "May I copy this as well?"

"You can have it."

"You've done me an enormous service. Now I need to do a bit of damage control." He gestured to the sliding glass door again, and I left him to his vodka and satellite phone.

"Help you?" The weak cell-phone connection did nothing to stifle Jerry's indignation. "Jesus, don't you learn?"

"Not quickly."

"I'm hanging by a thread over here after Mickelson found out I swept your house. I told you this shit better not come back on me with the studio, and here I am--an ass hair from fired."

"You said you wanted to get back to real security anyway. I have a job lined up for you with North Vector."

"Everyone's looking for you, Patrick. Cops, press, not to mention whoever you're tangled up in. Forget fired. How 'bout aiding and abetting?"

"You haven't watched the news today," I told him. "You don't know I'm on the run."

Beyond the closed sliding glass door, Kazakov sat in his plush white bathrobe, satellite phone tucked between ear and shoulder, gesturing with aggressive precision. I set my hand on the balcony rail, looked out into a tangle of branches. I closed my eyes, breathed in rain and mud, waited for Jerry to decide my wife's fate.

"No," he said slowly. "I guess I haven't. What kind of job?"

"You can sit down with the CEO and pick one."

"The CEO?" He was breathing hard. "This better not be a ruse."

"They have my wife," I said. "They have Ariana."

He was silent. I checked my watch, eager to turn the phone back off.

"Tell me what you're asking for."

We talked through the details, made arrangements, and signed off.

Immediately after I hung up, an Asian chime sounded. With dread, I clicked to open the cell-phone message.

BY NOON TOMORROW, YOU WILL LEAVE THE CD WITH THE VALET AT STARBRIGHT PLAZA.

The screen opened to a live shot of Ariana, bound to a chair. The background was blurry, but it looked like a small room. Her hair was loose and wild, one eye was black, and blood trickled from the edge of her lips. There was no sound, but I could tell she was screaming my name.

The feed vanished, replaced by block letters: TWELVE HOURS.

Then darkness.

I turned off the phone. My mouth was dirt dry, and I had to clutch the balcony rail until I could feel my legs back under me.

A memory came, vivid and unbidden--that first time I'd met Ariana at the freshman-orientation party at UCLA. Her lively, clever eyes. How I'd approached on nervous legs, gripping that cup of keg beer. My lame line--"You look bored." And how she'd asked if I was making a proposition, an offer to unbore her.

I'd said, "Seems like that could be the challenge of a lifetime."

"Are you up to it?" she'd asked.

Yes.

Out on the balcony, the midnight cold had found its way through my clothes. I was shivering violently. Inside the hotel room, Kazakov set down his satellite phone and beckoned me.

I pried my hands off the balcony rail and started in.

Twelve hours.

Chapter 56

The lobby was spotless and gleaming. Even the marble ashtrays, standing obediently at the elevator doors containing nary a butt, looked as though they'd been polished with a silk handkerchief. It could have been a hotel or a country club or the waiting room of a Beverly Hills dentist. But it wasn't.

It was the Long Beach office of Festman Gruber.

The elevator hummed pleasantly up fifteen levels. A floor-to-ceiling wall of thick glass--probably ballistic--rimmed the lobby, funneling visitors to the bank-teller window of the reception console. The security guard behind the window had a sidearm and an impressive scowl for 8:00 A.M. Behind him was a beehive of offices and conference rooms, also composed of glass walls, with assistants and workers scurrying to and fro. Aside from the dollhouse view, it looked just like any other business, depressing in its sterility. The front barrier muted everything beyond to a perfect silence. All that classified work, taking place right in the soundproofed open.

It didn't seem that the guard recognized me, but the bruising on my face said that I was out of place here among the Aeron chairs and plush carpet. My palms were damp, my shoulders tense.

Four hours until Ridgeline would kill my wife.

"Patrick Davis," I said. "I'd like to speak to the head of Legal."

He pushed a button, and his voice issued through a speaker. "Do you have an appointment?"

"No. Just give my name, and I'm sure he or she will want to see me."

The guard didn't say anything, but his face showed he thought that to be improbable. I prayed that the cops wouldn't be summoned before I had a chance to talk to someone.

Of course I'd yet to sleep. I'd picked up Jerry's signal analyzer from a drop point in the wee hours, and some of Kazakov's unnamed associates were rigging it to plug in to a standard GPS unit so I could zero in on Ariana's--or at least her raincoat's--location. After that I was on my own. I'd have to source that tracking signal and catch up to the Ridgeline crew wherever they were hunkered down before they headed out to our meet point at high noon. Right now I needed something to drive that wedge deep and hard between Festman Gruber and Ridgeline, something to arm myself with to take in to the men holding my wife. There were more variables than I could wrap my sleep-deprived mind around, and if any one of them tilted in the wrong direction, I'd be making funeral arrangements, standing trial, or filling out a casket.

As I waited for entry or arrest, treated to a little piped-in Josh Groban, I watched an assistant walk down a glass-walled hall and enter a glass-walled conference room. Men in suits rimmed a granite table the length of a sailboat. One man, identical to the others, rose from the head abruptly when she whispered in his ear. He glanced through the walls at me, Ariana's life hanging in the balance of his decision. Then he walked briskly into an office next door. Waiting breathlessly for his verdict, I was struck that all the glass wasn't some pretense of feel-good corporate transparency; it was an embodiment of the ultimate paranoia. At any time everyone could keep an eye on everyone else.

To my great relief, the assistant, an Asian woman with a severe bob cut, fetched me and led me back. I passed through a metal detector, dropping Don's car keys to the side in a silver tray that passed them through a scan of their own. But I kept my sealed manila envelope in hand.

Now came the real challenge.

The man waited for me in the middle of his office, arms at his sides. "Bob Reimer," he said, not offering his hand.

We stood centered on the slate rug, regarding each other like boxers. He seemed to fit with the total ordinariness of the setting, a mover and shaker who left nary an imprint on the retinas, as bland as a watercooler in a bomb factory. He was older--fifty, maybe--of a generation that still wore tie clips, carried through on their side parts, said "porno" instead of "porn." I couldn't help but think of those replicating G-men from The Matrix--Midwest white, neat suit, not a hair out of place. He was Everyman. He was nobody. Blink and he'd been replaced by an alien, simulating human form. A crushing disappointment, after all the fear and loss and menace, to be confronted with such banality in an air-conditioned office.

He crossed behind me and tapped the glass wall with his fingertips, and it clouded instantly, blocking us from the rest of the floor. Magic.

He went to his desk and removed a handheld wand, which I supposed, in light of my continuing spy education, to be a spectrum analyzer. "Given circumstances, I assume you won't object," he said.

I held my arms wide, and he ran the wand up and down my sides, across my chest, my face, the manila envelope. I resisted an impulse to drive the point of my elbow down through his nose.

Content that I wasn't emitting any RF signals, he slid the wand away in a well-oiled drawer. A framed photograph of an attractive wife and two smiling young boys was on proud display. Beside it sat a coffee mug picturing a cartoon fisherman that said WORLD'S BEST DAD! I realized, with revulsion, that he probably was a good father, that he likely carved his life into neat little compartments and managed them with a despot's efficiency. This compartment had all the trappings and symbols of an ordinary family man, but I had the sensation of being in a well-appointed viper's nest, designed to imitate human surroundings.

"You're a fugitive from justice," he said, not unpleasantly.

"I've come to deal." My voice sounded level enough.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Right," I said. "Clean hands up here on the fifteenth floor."

"Why did you come here?"

"I wanted to look you in the face," I said. Though fury had edged into my voice, his expression remained amiable. I took a half step closer. "I can connect you to Ridgeline."

If there was shock at hearing the name, he concealed it beautifully. "Of course you can. Ridgeline is a security company. They handle our international executive protection."

"We both know they've been handling a lot more than that."

"I'm uncertain what you're referring to." But his eyes stayed on the envelope.

The phone on his desk bleated. He crossed and punched a button. "Not now."

The Asian assistant: "There's an investigative reporter team here from CNBC. They say they want a statement on a breaking story."

He crossed his office in four steps, knocked the milky glass with a knuckle, and it grew clear again. More magic.

Across in the lobby stood two men in windbreakers, one toting a massive video camera with CNBC TV emblazoned on the side next to the familiar peacock rainbow flare. "Get rid of--" Reimer's jaw flexed out at the corners, and his gaze swiveled to mine.

"I haven't leaked this yet," I said. "Obviously, or I wouldn't be here. But I can't speak for what Ridgeline's doing."

"Why would you think Ridgeline's making a move against us?"

I didn't answer.

The assistant again, through the phone: "Would you like me to have them wait out here?"

"No." He shot his watch from the cuff of his jacket. "I don't think we should keep investigative reporters in the lobby to hobnob with the Jordanian contingent due here ten minutes ago." His sarcasm was understated, and all the more biting for it. "Put them in Conference Four, where I can keep an eye on them. Offer them coffee, Danish, whatever. I'll be in with Chris to see them shortly."

His mouth pulled to the side in a straight line, no curl--his version of a smile. "Perhaps we could speed this along? What's this about, exactly?"

"As I said. Ridgeline."

"I don't know what stories you think you've caught wind of, but you should know that companies like Ridgeline are a dime a dozen. They're given an assignment, and off they go. They don't even know why they're doing what they do half the time, so it's easy for them to misinterpret instructions, overstep their bounds. They're composed of former Spec Ops guys, and let's just say that type has been known to get a little . . . overzealous on occasion."

The breezy tone, nary a stutter--to him this was all just business as usual. And being here behind the scenes where levers were thrown and accounts brutally balanced, I felt naive and sickened. I watched his pink lips moving and had to check my disgust to focus on his words.

He continued, "That's why Festman Gruber is very careful to limit its dealings with companies like Ridgeline to specific contracted services, such as executive protection. You need a junkyard dog sometimes, but you also have to make sure that you're holding the leash."

"It would be unfortunate if that junkyard dog maintained records of all its transactions with Festman Gruber." I held up the manila envelope.

I looked at him; he looked at it. He took the envelope a bit more hastily than suited his demeanor, breaking the seal and sliding the sheaf of papers into his hand. A complete set of those documents I'd pulled off the Ridgeline copier's hard drive--payments, accounts, and phone calls tracing the connection from Ridgeline back to Festman Gruber.

His tie, set neatly to his Adam's apple in a broad half Windsor, appeared suddenly too tight. His face colored, accenting the stubble pinpoints beneath that close shave, but he needed only a moment to process the surprise and regain his composure. When he looked back up, he was completely in control again. "Whatever Ridgeline elected to do on their own time, they will answer for."

I just looked out across the floor, giving him rope. There was plenty to behold, a whole world contained in the glass walls--all that respectable industry in constant, efficient motion. The reporters had been ushered into the conference room across the hall. They sat slurping coffee, the large camera with the CNBC logo resting on the table between them.

"We do a lot of business in the international community, Mr. Davis," he said. "We have dealings with over two hundred thousand individuals, last I checked. Many of them in the aggressive professions. We can't account for the temperament of each one."

"But these individuals answer to you," I said. "Or they did. You're the top dog, at least when it comes to this little scheme. It stops with you, so everyone above remains nicely insulated from the truth."

He didn't refute the point, which felt an awful lot like confirming it.

"You can reach Ridgeline," I said. "You can make them stop."

His bottom lip bowed in just barely, as if he'd tasted something repulsive. "It's safe to say that contact--and loyalties--between our companies has frayed."

"You're not in touch at all?" I asked.

From what Kazakov had told me about the workings of such arrangements, I'd assumed as much. And given the aggressive moves Ridgeline had taken against their omniscient employer, they'd need to stay off the grid as much as I did. But I wanted to confirm the communication breakdown, and I needed to draw Reimer out.

"Regular communication can be a detriment when it comes to matters where both sides require"--a pause as he selected the right word--"prudence. All the more when dealings achieve a heightened level of complication. And now this." He sighed, disappointed. "These documents make clear that Ridgeline isn't interested in upholding their agreements. But that cuts both ways. We are no longer obligated to offer them the customary protections."

I nodded at the papers in his hand. "Looks like they read that one coming."

"This"--he raised the sheaf--"this can be explained away in a few phone calls."

"If your bosses are willing to make them for you. Ridgeline is expendable. My guess is you might be, too. You know what they say: Never be the senior man with a secret."

A cough of disbelief. "Documents can be altered. Put into context. The news waits for us." He gave an almost unconscious nod to the reporters sitting patiently across the hall. "You think a few pieces of paper are enough to make my bosses want to hang me out?"

"Combined with the story I can tell."

"You?" He smiled. "We can erase you. Not kill you. Erase you. From all consideration. It's not just us, it's whose shoulders we're standing on, which databases we plug in to, which institutions are reliant on our continued success."

"Is this the 'I am the government' speech? Because I've heard that one already."

His lip curled, almost imperceptibly. "Ridgeline, like everyone else"--he waved a hand around--"they're just fish in our aquarium. We tap a little food into the tank, and they come swimming." A faint grin. "But I'm sure a grounded college instructor like yourself can't relate to that."

The words cut deep. My mind moved to Deborah Vance in her apartment, the vintage travel posters and antique furniture and spot-on style, all selected with painstaking desperation to transport her to another age. Roman LaRusso, agent to the washed up and disabled, hunkered down in his stacks of dusty paperwork, his view of a brick wall offering barely a craned-neck glimpse of billboard and blue sky. All those faded dreams hung framed on his office walls, head shots with signatures and stale advice from would-bes and also-rans no more qualified to proffer it than I: Live Every Moment, Don't Stop Believing, and yeah, Follow Your Dreams. I thought of who I'd let myself become by the time this had all started twelve endless days ago--a has-been almost-screenwriter with a marriage on the rocks. Impatient, gullible, desperate for attention, eager to be exploited, to be noticed, to hasten whatever was coming my way. I'd been out of the spotlight, off the stage, consigned to the real world, where I was unwilling to deserve what I already had.

Reimer was watching me expectantly, his words still lingering: I'm sure a grounded college instructor like yourself can't relate to that.

"Not anymore," I said.

"No?"

"I don't care about movies or writing or whales or sonar," I said. "I care about my wife."

"They have her?"

"They do."

"Looks like they read you coming, too," he said with a measure of satisfaction. "They're trying to clean up their mess. They will do what they have to do, and they will invent stories and defenses later. I'm afraid that doesn't bode well for you and your wife."

"So you and I are in the same boat."

"The difference is, we can scrape a company like Ridgeline off the bottom of our shoe, and we can use a nuclear warhead to do it. It's all about allies, who's on the other end of the phone. Ridgeline thinks they've built an insurance file in this"--he shook the papers, the first little show of emotion--"but they've done nothing more than arrange for their funerals. You--and they--know next to nothing about something that never happened. They've compiled proof of our dealings, but proof is relevant only if there's a legal inquiry, an arrest, a jury. We will make calls. We will rewrite this. That's what all you fish--circling in your glass bowls, captivated by your own reflections--never grasp. Companies like Festman Gruber, we decide which stories get told. Festman Gruber doesn't answer to a bunch of copied documents or a crusading murderer with a bone to pick. Everything will be hung on you. And the fallout will land on Ridgeline."

"Unless," I said, "you've been good enough to give me what I came for."

His eyes darted back and forth, scanning my face. "As in this is being recorded?" He barked a one-note laugh. His grin looked stuck to his teeth. "Bullshit. You went through a metal detector."

"There are cutting-edge devices," I said, "that function using tiny amounts of metal."

"I scanned you myself for RF."

"It wasn't transmitting then. In fact, you turned it on yourself."

He looked down at his arms, his hands, finally focusing on the envelope he still grasped. With dread, he lifted the loose flap. A razor-thin clear square, the size of a postage stamp, remained inside on the gummy strip. Its transparent contact, which had been pulled open to activate the device when he'd raised the flap, was stuck to the envelope. "There's no"--he paused for a breath--"power source."

"It vacuums RF out of the air and converts it to power to run itself."

His gaze moved through the walls, all those cell phones strapped to belts, assistants tapping on iPhones, routers blinking from bookshelves, all that free RF floating around, waiting to get grabbed out of the air he breathed all day up here on the fifteenth floor. A single bead of sweat emerged from his sideburn and arced down his cheek.

"A . . . a transmitter that small, it would need its receiving equipment close by"--he tried on a shrug--"or . . . or there's no way this tiny signal could transmit beyond our front barrier." He pointed to the wall of ballistic glass that framed out the lobby and the outside world.

I knocked on the wall, the glass clouding. My second knock brought it clear again. Across the hall, in Conference Four, the CNBC reporters sat cocked back in their chairs, feet on the table, eating crullers. The guy at the head of the table nodded at me, sucked glaze from his fingers, and made a ta-da gesture at the massive camera.

"Hidden in the camera," Reimer said hoarsely. "That's the receiving equipment." His voice was flat, but I thought it was a question.

"Receiving," I said, "and relay. To a safe off-site location."

"I don't believe it. Besides us, there's maybe a handful of places in the world with that kind of teeth in the surveillance arena. You . . . Where would you get technology like that?"

"Where do you think?"

His face shifted, and I believe he understood what fear was for the first time in a very long time.

In Conference Four the fake reporter leaned forward and peeled the magnetic CNBC peacock sign off the side of the camera, revealing the North Vector logo beneath.

Reimer made a noise--something between clearing his throat and grunting.

I said, "There's an internal study on relative sonar levels I managed to get into the hands of North Vector as well."

He blanched.

"That junkyard dog you hired seems to have slipped the leash," I said. "Some of those important calls you were talking about? They're being made right now. I understand that the contract at stake is worth twenty billion dollars, give or take a few billion. I'm guessing a figure like that might go a certain distance toward eroding your bosses' devotion to you."

"Okay," he said. "Okay, let's talk about this. We can still rein this in, get everyone what they need. Listen--" He put a hand on my shoulder, leaving a sweat stain. "You'll need us to mediate this situation with your wife. We're the only ones who have an angle in to Ridgeline. We can hurt them."

"You already told me. You don't know how to contact them."

"But when they emerge." His words were adamant, compacted into hard little syllables. "You need us in the mix. We can undo all this. You need me. Even if you could convince the cops to jump off your trail and onto theirs, you don't want law enforcement crashing into a hostage house. Not with operators of this caliber dug in. There'll be nothing left of your wife but a bloodstain."

Through the clear walls, I could see the clock in the neighboring office--8:44 A.M.

Three hours and sixteen minutes until--

"No cops," I said. "No force."

A puff of disbelief parted his lips. "Then how?"

"I'll worry about that. You'd better worry about what to tell your higher-ups in Alexandria. And you'd better pick your words carefully--I've found Festman Gruber's corporate culture to be a bit unforgiving."

I left him standing on the rug, a droop in that square posture. When I reached the door, his voice came over my shoulder. It sounded less vengeful than weary, resigned to the carnage to come. "You are way out of your depth," he said. "You can't begin to imagine what kind of men these are. If you take them on alone, you might as well put the bullet in your wife's head yourself."

My hand resting on the door lever, I closed my eyes, reliving that grainy feed that Ridgeline had sent to my cell phone at midnight. Ariana roughed up, screaming my name soundlessly. The thin line of blood at the edge of her mouth. What else had they done to her? What else were they doing to her right now? He was right, at least in part: I was way out of my depth. Was he also right about where this would all end?

I pushed out into the hall. The North Vector operators stood waiting. As we threaded through the glass labyrinth, workers rose from various workstations and watched us leave. At the elevators I looked back, but Reimer had turned the glass walls of his office opaque, a dark knot at the core, a symbol of my own quickening dread.

Chapter 57

I parked Don's Range Rover in a driveway at the end of a perfectly normal residential street in North Hollywood. I called 911 from my cell, told Dispatch I was ready to give myself up and seek their help for Ariana's recovery. I couldn't see any other choice, I said. Not with my wife held captive, due to be executed in fifty-three minutes.

Sitting, sweating, I watched the SWAT van roll up, then the black-and-whites, then Gable's sedan.

Leading with their submachine guns, the SWAT officers came fast and hard, closing on those tinted windows from all sides. A gloved hand yanked open the driver's door, and then MP5 barrels crammed the interior. But I wasn't there.

I was a mile and a half away, parked on a dirt overlook, watching through a military scope that seemed like something out of science fiction, with magnification suited to a NASA telescope. Can see the whites of birds' eyes, Kazakov had bragged.

I could even make out the address on the Post-it I'd adhered to the steering wheel. The address of the single-story clapboard two blocks up the slope from me.

I hustled back toward the boosted Dodge Neon that an anonymous friend of North Vector had helped arrange for me--Kazakov's final favor. North Vector wouldn't accompany me from here on out. Providing tech support to help take down a rival company was one thing. Saving my wife was another. Bullets, exposure, and liability--the risk of coming out on the wrong side of this one was too high.

But I had no choice.

I dialed my cell phone again, and my favorite paparazzo, fresh out of hiding, picked up.

"You in position?" I asked.

"Yup." Joe Vente was wired, smacking his gum.

I'd called him last night, and in return for an after-the-fact exclusive if I lived to give it, he'd agreed to put out the word to his grapevine of colleagues. They'd get to the block just before I did and remain hidden until I arrived. I'd made clear to Joe: The timing had to be just right. I'd go to the house first, before the photographers made themselves known and before the cops arrived. I'd lay out the situation to DeWitt and Verrone, mention that the house was surrounded with recording equipment of every type and law enforcement of every stripe, then pray that would be enough of a deterrent to negotiate Ariana's and my way out of there.

"But," Joe added, "we've got a problem."

The words knocked the breath out of me. Everything had to go like clockwork. If the Ridgeline crew caught wind of anything before I knocked on that door, they'd likely kill Ari and bolt.

Reimer's words floated back to me: If you take them on alone, you might as well put the bullet in your wife's head yourself.

If they hadn't put it there already.

"Problem?" Fear thinned my voice. "What problem?"

"Big News caught the story. I don't know how they got onto it, but they're sending crews. And once crews show up, my ilk ain't gonna hold back. You know how we are."

I was running toward the car. "How the hell did that happen, Joe?"

"How's it always happen? Someone paid someone for a tip, probably. You're a cop killer, too, now, so this thing's bigger than the white Bronco. Patrick Davis and the Big Showdown."

I jumped into the car, turned over the engine, and peeled out. On the passenger seat was the fat laptop of Jerry's signal analyzer, the pulse from Ariana's raincoat represented in oddly pretty amplitude waves. A handheld GPS unit was plugged in to the side, the blinking dot laid down on the street beyond the turn I could see just ahead through the dusty windshield.

"Hold everyone back," I said. "You told them it's dangerous? A hostage situation?"

"Of course, but look, the block is crawling. The natives are getting restless, inching in for a peek. It's only a matter of time before someone's spotted."

I floored it, fishtailing on gravel. "Any sign that you've been seen?"

"No, man. All the curtains are drawn. Silence." A beat. "Shit. Here we go. This thing just went live."

"What hap--"

I screeched around the corner in time to see a news helicopter roar up over the ridge, blowing specks of dirt across my hood. Channel 2 News. Up ahead, paparazzi had gone on the move, shuffling from front yard to front yard, high-stepping hedges, and clutching cameras. A few news vans came gunning toward the house from the opposite direction. A second chopper joined the fray above the house. Way below I could hear the faint wail of sirens, the cavalry en route.

It was all going down too fast.

I could barely hear Joe above the commotion: "--movement at the windows. You'd better get here."

"Do you see Ariana?"

"No . . . nothing. . . ."

Guys were running beside my car, snapping pictures of me. TV cameras up ahead, well back from the curb. Joe coming in and out in my ear. ". . . directional mike . . . hear them inside . . . freaking out . . ."

Confused reporters blended with the freelancers, swarming the car. A few houses away, I threw open the car door and shoved out, yelling, "Stay away from the house! There are armed men inside."

A ripple of panic. Shouting. Questions.

Their fear only compounded mine. What if they saw the cameras, killed Ariana, and shot their way out?

I sprinted forward, breaking from the throng, the numbers dwindling as I neared the house. Even paparazzi weren't eager to get in the line of fire. But a few had pushed out into the danger zone. A scrappy woman with hippie hair aimed a camera from behind a telephone pole. A guy in fingerless gloves crouched by the mailbox. His lens had rolled out into the driveway, but he looked too scared to go for it.

I confronted the house. Peeling cornflower blue paint, a broad porch, the rental sign still hammered into the front lawn. It seemed a fiction that the clapboard walls contained such menace inside. Then again, what did I expect? A dungeon with dripping pipes? This is where quiet horrors happened--every day in perfectly nice neighborhoods like this one, behind closed doors and cheery suburban facades.

To my right, Joe was bellied down in a stand of lavender, sneezing and pointing a directional mike, earpiece in, to pull sound vibrations off the front windows. I'd barely noticed him in my dash to the walk.

"What are you picking up from inside?" I asked.

Keeping his face to the dirt, he repeated flatly, " 'What the fuck what the fuck oh Jesus God we're fucked.' "

Sirens came screaming up the hill.

A shadow at the curtain ahead. And then the dark oval of a face. It stared at me. Frozen, I stared back.

"Hang on." Joe cleared his throat, listening. " 'Let's do her and get the fuck out of here.' "

I had the sensation not of running but floating up the walk.

You can't begin to imagine what kind of men these are. There'll be nothing left of your wife but a bloodstain.

I banged on the door. "Wait!" I shouted. "It's Patrick! I have information you need!"

Silence. Locked. I banged away, kicked. "Wait, wait! You need to talk to me!"

The door opened, and then a giant hand shot out, grabbed my shirt, and hurled me inside. I pinwheeled across the slick tile, DeWitt's face leering down at me. Verrone was at his side, and two other men with military builds shouldered to the front windows with short-barrel shotguns at the ready. One was red-faced, his knee jittering back and forth. He swung the barrel, sighted on my head. "Let's do him and hot-ass it out of here."

I recoiled from the dead stare of the muzzle, shouting, "You need to know what I've got!"

The sirens, almost on top of us.

A closed door led back to a bedroom. Ariana. I had to tear my eyes away. "Is she back there?"

No answer from the Ridgeline crew.

"Is she okay?" My voice shook.

Sweat beaded DeWitt's forehead. He said, "What the fuck did you do? What the fuck did you do?"

I pulled a manila file from inside my jacket and threw it at him. The pages scattered across the floor. Money orders, surveillance photos, all those banking and phone records, the payments for the murders of Mikey Peralta, Deborah B. Vance, and Keith Conner.

"No," Verrone said. He took a wobbly step back. "How?"

"The hard drive on your copy machine."

Verrone shot a furious glare at one of the men by the window, who said, "You didn't tell me anything about a fucking hard drive."

I spoke quickly. "Those documents blaze a trail back to Festman Gruber. But they also blaze a trail forward to you."

"Who cares?" Verrone said. "We've got the leverage to make Festman throw their weight around on our behalf. They'll have to. Or they'll go down, too. And these aren't the types of guys to go down."

"Right," I said. "Mutually assured destruction. But guess what? I'm not part of the 'mutually.' "

"What does that mean?"

"I'm holding the cards. I've got the disc, too--those illegal decibel levels. And I know what it all means to the parties involved."

"How?"

Very slowly, I retrieved the digital recorder from my pocket. When I punched the button, Bob Reimer's voice filled the room: "These documents make clear that Ridgeline isn't interested in upholding their agreements. But that cuts both ways. We are no longer obligated to offer them the customary protections."

DeWitt said, "Reimer knows? Festman fucking knows already?"

The man by the window said, "This piece of shit brought it to them?"

The other: "We've gotta clean up and split. Now."

Verrone paced a tight circle, grabbing at his hair, his yellow face gone gray. He pulled out a sidearm, aimed at my face, the skin fluttering at his temple. I flinched, waiting for the crack.

"You can't manipulate Festman into doing what you want," I said. "Your leverage is gone. I gave it away. And they know it. You're finished. There is no move. This is checkmate."

Bob Reimer's recorded voice continued, "Ridgeline thinks they've built an insurance file in this, but they've done nothing more than arrange for their funerals."

The Ridgeline men exchanged a round of glances, eyes darting frantically from face to face, reading the angles, weighing options and loyalty. I could hear the click in DeWitt's throat when he swallowed. Both men at the front windows stepped back from the curtains.

"Cops are here," the jittery one said. "They're gonna set up a perimeter. We can still run and gun. But it's gotta be right now."

From behind his gun, Verrone considered. He took a step forward, placed the cool metal against my forehead, pushed until I sank to my knees. I dropped the digital recorder, but it kept playing. My back-and-forth with Reimer in that air-conditioned office seemed like a game of badminton compared to this.

"You think you're in charge?" Verrone said. "You think you're writing the script? So you made some moves. Put us in a bind. But right now it's just us and you in a room. Why are you calling the shots?"

"Because I'm the guy with the cameras on him."

"A couple reporters--"

"No, not a couple reporters," I said. "There are news helicopters in the air. Paparazzi for blocks. SWAT all over. Everyone's watching, documenting. You can't get away. You can't do anything without them watching and knowing."

Play the hand you're dealt.

More sirens neared, then cut off. The rush of news helicopters overhead. The curtains blocked out the mayhem, but we could hear the cries and footsteps and vehicles, the photographers yelling, someone shouting orders to reposition the cars.

I said, "You don't want to add another murder to what you're facing."

DeWitt looming over Verrone. "The hell we don't."

The barrel shoved harder into my face. I steeled myself, fighting off terror, praying that I'd be alive for the next breath and the one after that, praying that my wife's heart was still beating behind that closed door.

My first word came out a yell--"Just . . . just stop. Think. What's the only play? Talk to the cops. Cooperate. Turn state's evidence against Festman Gruber. Think of the pull they have. It's your only prayer against those guys. And it starts right now. This instant."

Reimer's voice from the recorder: "Everything will be hung on you. And the fallout will land on Ridgeline."

The men had moved in to surround me. My knees ached. My head throbbed. My heart was moving blood so fast I felt dizzy. They towered over me, blank-faced executioners. Verrone's arm was as steady as a statue's. His finger, curled around the trigger, was white at the creases.

I closed my eyes, alone in the dark. There was nothing in the world except the ring of steel against my forehead.

The pressure lifted.

I opened my eyes. The pistol was lowered at Verrone's side. The men parted unevenly. DeWitt's lips bunched around his teeth. It looked like he was biting down hard. One of the others abruptly sat on the floor, and the fourth went back to the window. It was as if a spell had been broken, leaving them dazed and dumb.

I came up, wobbly, to my feet. It hit me that I hadn't heard a sound issue from that back room--not a single shout or cry. "Is my wife behind that door?"

But they all just stood there, guns lowered, stunned.

I blinked back tears. "Is she alive?"

Verrone nodded to the man by the window, who reached over and tore the curtain from the track. Light flooded in, striking us. A bleached-out view of camera lenses and tactical goggles and windshields and gun muzzles--the whole world, perched out there, trained on the sudden spectacle. And us, staring through the glass right back at them.

Squinting into the brightness, Verrone put his hands up. DeWitt, and then the two other men, followed suit.

When DeWitt raised his arms, I noticed a streak of crimson running along the underside of his forearm. A drop snaked down, dangled from his elbow.

All at once the shouting from outside was gone, and the thrumming of the helicopters. Through the window I saw a cop at the perimeter yelling into a bullhorn, his mouth partially in view, the cords of his neck straining but no sound at all issuing forth.

I could hear nothing but my heartbeat, the muffled echo of my shouted words. "What did you do? What did you do to her?"

And then I was barreling for that closed door, moving in hateful slow motion. SWAT blew in--I sensed the vibration, the shrapnel spray from the splintering front door peppering the back of my neck, the wood panel flying past my head. I was feet from the closed door, yelling my wife's name. I heard the officers behind me, felt the heat of their bodies, the air moving from their limbs, their shouts. Each strand of the carpet stood out, a sea of fibers stretching between me and my wife. My arm was ahead of me, reaching, veins splitting the back of my tensed hand. Someone struck me low at the calf, knocking me off balance, but I righted myself, still hurtling forward, almost there. The officers hit me at once, high and low, wrapping me up and hammering me down into the floor. My head collided with someone's heel, sending me into a spin, darkness coming on to blot out my last glimpsed image--that door, still closed to whatever bloody sight lay beyond.

Chapter 58

I step out of the headmaster's office at Loyola High, walk across the verdant front lawn, and tip my face to the sun. It's July, my favorite month. The gloom has finally burned off. For such an impatient town, Los Angeles likes its summers to come late.

In my hand flutters an offer to teach tenth-grade American literature. I will certainly accept, but I didn't want to do it in the room; I wanted to draw out the sweetness of anticipation, like putting off the bottom half of an Oreo to drink more milk.

I am free of legal trouble. After literally days of grueling interrogation, and with the help of some of those well-placed phone calls Gordon Kazakov is so fond of, I managed to untangle myself from all charges. As Detective Sally Richards might have pointed out, I did have justice, truth, and all that crap on my side as well. Excessive scrutiny actually helps when you're innocent.

Even the lawsuit against me for not punching Keith Conner was dropped. With no more Keith to protect, Summit Films wanted to get as far away from me as possible. You know you're in dire straits when no one wants to sue you anymore. At final tally my legal costs were almost precisely what I'd netted from my screenwriting deal for They're Watching.

The movie opened last month, not with a bang but a whimper. On its second weekend, I finally worked up the nerve to go see it. Feeling like a self-abusing pervert in a pussycat theater, I watched from the back row of an empty Valley cinema. It was worse than I could have imagined. Though Keith was afforded some respectful deference, the reviews were understandably blistering. Predictable plot, trite dialogue, bled-dry characters, the pacing pumped to a steroid-rage confusion of edits. It was, in its own way, masterful in its incompetence. Kenneth Turan suggested that the script might have been generated from a software program.

As my name flickered during the closing credits, it struck me that--like so many of those first-round wailers on American Idol--I was never really very good at this. Getting fired off They're Watching was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I'd come close to throwing away everything that I'd built because I had never bothered to reexamine a childhood dream that I didn't even want anymore.

I'm happier watching movies than writing them.

I'm happier teaching.

Standing on the front lawn, I open my eyes again. I turn and look at the school, and in the reflection of the chapel window I see myself. Khaki trousers and a button-up from Macy's. Battered backpack in hand, dangling at my side. Patrick Davis, high-school teacher. After all this I'd wound up where I'd started.

But not really.

I climb into my Camry. The interior is a bit scorched from the stun grenade, but not too bad, since my face had been good enough to absorb most of the blast. I can't afford a new car yet, but I did have the dashboard buttons and dials fixed, and I've vowed not to punch them anymore.

I hide the job offer in the glove box like treasure and head home, running the 10 west, then cutting up to Sunset Boulevard so I can surf the curves. The air blows through the open window, riffling my hair. I watch the mansions roll by behind their gates, and I don't wonder or care what it would be like to live in them.

My life isn't like Enemy of the State anymore. It's not Body Heat or Pay It Forward either.

It's my life.

I stop off and pick up dry cleaning, nodding to the clerk, whose eyes linger a beat too long on my face. People look at me differently now, but less so every day. If fame is fleeting, then L.A. infamy is the blink of a firefly. But still, things are not back to what they were. They never will be. There are night terrors and waking panic and from time to time I still break a cold sweat checking the mailbox or opening the morning paper. And most days, when it's too quiet or not quiet enough, my thoughts drift to my wife, bound and held in the back room of a clapboard house. How she'd tried to fight her captors. How she'd sunk her teeth into DeWitt's arm when he'd gagged her. How, in the grip of blind fear, she'd felt in her heart of hearts that she was going to die.

Sally was honored as a hero at her funeral. Which she was. More and more I think of heroes as ordinary people who decide to give a damn about what they do, not what they might get. Watching her casket descend, I felt heartsick. I doubt I'll encounter her combination of composure and wry incisiveness again. Her son is being adopted by a cousin. The pension board is reviewing Valentine's case, and it seems unlikely his four boys have as straight a road ahead.

The four men in that clapboard house--none of whom were actually named DeWitt or Verrone--all copped pleas. In return for offering testimony against Festman Gruber, they'll avoid the needle, but they all had to agree to life without parole. I think of Sally and Keith, Mikey Peralta and Deborah Vance, and I am pleased that those men will be eating off trays and looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.

If they can be believed, they were the entire team for this job. Ridgeline and the numerous shell companies enfolding it are being vigorously investigated, but from what's trickled back to me, it's been tough sledding once that paper trail hit Bahrain.

Bob Reimer, the face of the scandal, has not fared well. His pretrial motions drag on, and he's looking at special circumstances, which could mean the death penalty. As he forges forward with gray-miened unflappability, prosecutors and media continue to dig into the Legal Department at Festman Gruber. Reimer's well-heeled colleagues are wading through a sea of lesser indictments, and some of them may likely join him in lockdown someday if he isn't executed.

Festman's higher-ups were predictably outraged at everything that had transpired. Their stock price has plummeted, and I bet that hurts the bastards most of all. Without a single public volley being fired, the naval sonar contract moved from Festman Gruber to North Vector. That Senate vote on decibel limits is fast approaching, and Kazakov seems to have a pretty good sense of which way it'll go.

Thank you, Keith Conner. Your life for a cause. James Dean never saved the whales. But in a weird way, you did.

Trista Koan got another movie greenlit. It's about frogs in the Amazon being killed off by global warming, and they have some new kid, a crossover pop star, doing the voice-over. He's not supposed to be half bad. When his last album went gold, he replaced Keith on that billboard outside The LaRusso Agency, and maybe, if he's lucky, it'll still be there next month.

I turn at Roscomare and drive up the hill, passing couples walking dogs, gardeners loading pickups, that McMansion with Tudorbethan mock battlements. Paul McCartney whispers words of wisdom from my banged-up speakers, and then the on-the-hour news breaks in. One of the Lakers got caught with a transvestite in a Venice Beach bathroom stall. I turn off the radio, let the breeze blow past my face and clear all that scandal and prurient interest from the air.

I stop off at Bel Air Foods and walk the aisles, checking items off my mental list, whistling a tune. I'm almost at checkout when I remember. I go back and grab some prenatal vitamins.

Bill rings me up. "How you doing today, Patrick?"

"Great, Bill. You?"

"Never better. Working on the next script?"

"Nah." I smile, at ease in this moment with myself, the world. "I love movies. That doesn't make me a screenwriter."

His gaze lingers on the vitamins as he slides them across the scanner, and he looks up and gives me a wink.

I drive home, pull in to the garage, and sit for a time. To my left, up on the shelf, Ariana's wedding dress is visible through the sealed clear-plastic bin. I open the glove box, remove the job-offer letter, read it again to make sure it's real. I think about our venerable and flawed kitchen table, the freshly painted baby blue walls of my former office, and, flooded with gratitude, I cry a little.

Juggling the grocery bags, I walk out front to the mailbox. A jolt of apprehension strikes me as the lid drops, but the mail today--like yesterday and the day before--is just the mail. I tuck it under my arm and stand, regarding the house I have fallen back in love with.

Next door there is a Realtor's sign in the Millers' front lawn. They are liquidating their assets to make the paperwork easier. Beyond Martinique's silk drapes, I can see a young couple inside being shown around. Their whole lives ahead of them.

Near the fresh-turned soil beside our own front lawn lie a pair of slender gardening gloves and a trowel. I start up our walk, a baguette sticking out of one of the grocery bags like in a postcard of France. I think about all the things I used to chase for all the wrong reasons. And how by standing still I now hummed with a vitality I'd never known.

On the porch I set down the bags and pull from one the bouquet of mariposas. Lavender. I step forward and ring the bell like a suitor. Her footsteps approach.

Ariana opens the door. She sees me, sees the flowers, and extends a hand toward my cheek.

I step across the threshold, into the warmth of her palm.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I'd like to thank my splendid editor, Keith Kahla; my publisher, Sally Richardson; and the rest of my team at St. Martin's Press, including but certainly not limited to Matthew Baldacci, Jeff Capshew, Kathleen Conn, Ann Day, Brian Heller, Ken Holland, John Murphy, Lisa Senz, Matthew Shear, Tom Siino, Martin Quinn, and George Witte. My UK editor, David Shelley, and his gifted crew at Sphere. Uberagents Lisa Erbach Vance and Aaron Priest. My beloved attorneys, Stephen F. Breimer and Marc H. Glick. Rich Green at CAA. Maureen Sugden, my copy editor, for improving my grammar, my diction--no doubt even my posture. Geoff Baehr, my technology guru who at times feels like the technology guru. Jess Taylor for early remarks. Philip Eisner, who lent me his considerable reading talents. Simba, my faithful Rhodesian ridgeback, the perfect underfoot writing companion. Lucy Childs, Caspian Dennis, Melissa Hurwitz, M.D., Nicole Kenealy, Bret Nelson, M.D., Emily Prior, and John Richmond for performing various invaluable tasks. And finally Delinah, Rose Lenore, and Natty--my collective heart.