"Up there," the man behind them said as they came abreast of an alcove. Jeff, followed by Jagger, scrambled up onto the small platform.

Though it was nothing but a dying fire in a trash barrel, the guttering blaze seemed as welcome to Jeff as a Yule log burning on the hearth of a New England inn on Christmas Eve.

The halogen beam suddenly vanished, momentarily blinding Jeff once again. When his vision cleared, the man who only moments ago had threatened to kill him stood revealed by the flickering firelight. Thin to the point of emaciation, his eyes were sunk deep into their sockets and his complexion was pasty. There was a feral quality to his face. Though he wasn't more than five feet six and couldn't have weighed more than 140 pounds, he didn't look the least bit intimidated by Jagger, let alone him.

And he couldn't have been more than twenty years old.

"You kill me, and you'll never get out of here," he said.

Jagger seemed to consider his options for a moment, then his eyes swept the alcove. "You got any food?"

The scrawny man nodded. "You like track rabbit?"

"I like whatever you got," Jagger growled. "So where is it?"

The man tilted his head toward the corner. "Behind the barrel." He smiled, revealing a row of broken teeth. "Got three today-guess I musta known you were coming." He moved around the barrel, picked up a dented and charred coffee can, and handed it to Jagger. "You want to clean ‘em?"

Jagger looked down into the can and made a choking noise as it clattered to the floor. It rolled toward the tracks and its contents spilled out.

Three dead rats, their heads crushed and matted with blood, lay on the filthy concrete.

The scrawny man's grin widened as Jeff backed away. "What's the matter? You don't like rabbit?" Pulling a knife from his pocket, he opened its blade, squatted down, and picked up one of the rats. The tip of the knife disappeared into the rat's belly. With a quick flick of his wrist, the man slit the rodent's hide all the way up to its mouth. He dropped the knife and the fingers of one hand disappeared under the creature's skin. A moment later he jerked the skin loose so it hung, inside out, from the rat's feet. Using the knife, he cut the feet and tail away and tossed the skin out onto the tracks.

Immediately, another rat scurried out of the shadows, snatched the bloody skin and disappeared.

The man disemboweled the carcass, dropped it into the coffee can, then went to work on the next one. In a few more minutes the job was finished-all three of the rats had been skinned and cleaned, the discarded skins and guts disappearing almost as soon as they hit the tracks.

"They're not so bad, once you get used to them," the man said as he laid a rusty piece of grating over the barrel. He set the coffee can on it. "Tastes like chicken." He glanced from Jeff to Jagger, then back to Jeff. "You don't have to eat it. Nobody does when they first come down here. But like I said, you get used to it." His cold, broken-toothed grin once more flashed across his face. "After a while, you get used to everything down here."

CHAPTER 19

The night seemed to have grown darker when Heather and Keith emerged from the subway station. A few cabs were cruising on Broadway and a smattering of people dotted the sidewalks, but as they started up the long block toward Jeff's building, the noise of the traffic on Broadway died away, and the street was unusually deserted.

As they came to Jeff's building, Keith turned to face Heather. "This is all nuts, isn't it? I mean, what are we doing, following crazy old women down into the subway?"

Heather looked up at him. Though she hadn't seen a strong resemblance between Jeff and Keith until earlier that night, in the apartment, now, in the glow of the streetlight and the shadows that lay over his features, she clearly recognized the son in the father. Maybe it was something in his voice, or his posture, or even the line of his jaw, but whatever it was, she suddenly felt she was standing with Jeff himself, hearing all the uncertainty in his voice when he'd talked about the future, about the pain he was going to inflict on his father when he finally told Keith that he had no intention of going back to Bridgehampton when he finished school.

That pain, Heather knew, would have been nowhere near as terrible as the pain she could see Keith suffering right now.

"I'd better go home, and you should get some sleep," she said. She started to turn away, but Keith reached out and took her arm.

"Tell me I'm not nuts," he said softly. "Tell me I'm right."

"I don't know if you're right," Heather said. "But I know we heard something. I'm not sure what it was-it doesn't seem possible it could have been Jeff, but-" She gently pulled herself loose from his grip. "If you're crazy, then I guess I am, too." She started quickly back toward Broadway, but then turned to face him again, and this time met his eyes directly. "Tomorrow," she said. "We'll start looking again tomorrow."

"I'll wait for you," he said.

This time Heather didn't look back, but could feel Keith's eyes on her as she hurried down 109th Street toward the lights and noise of Broadway.

"Spare change?"

The phrase was so familiar to Heather that she almost didn't hear it at all, but as she raised her hand to signal to the cab that was still two blocks up Broadway, she heard it again.

"Come on, lady-don'cha even have a quarter?"

Still waving at the cab, Heather glanced at the source of the voice out of the corner of her eye. A boy, maybe ten years old, certainly no older. He was dressed in the typical clothing of the homeless: pants that were little more than rags and a grubby shirt whose tails were hanging out in back. His skin was pale and his unkempt blond hair hung in a tangle over his forehead.

It was his eyes that shocked her. They weren't those of a ten-year-old at all.

They were more like the eyes of an animal.

As he looked up at her, she could see them flicking first in one direction, then another, scanning the street for unseen danger.

She glanced at her watch. It was nearly midnight. What was he doing there? Was he a runaway?

She thought of the old woman she'd seen disappearing into the darkness of the tunnels.

The woman who probably had no more family than this boy.

The woman who had finally grown so fearful she wouldn't even speak to someone like her, preferring to disappear into the darkness and filth that lay beneath the streets.

She reflected that in a few more years, maybe even months, that's what this boy might be like.

As the cab pulled up, Heather burrowed deep into her purse until her fingers closed on a bill. Pulling it out-not even looking at it-she offered it to the boy. As he snatched the bill out of her hand like a squirrel snatching a nut from an old man in Central Park, Heather got in the cab. She pulled the door shut and gave the driver her address.

Why did I do that? she wondered as the cab pulled away. Giving them money only encourages them.

She twisted around to peer out the back window, but the boy was gone.

By the time she got home, she knew exactly why she'd given money to the boy.

He was no longer just another one of the faceless mass of homeless people who lived all around her.

Now he was someone-if she could ever find him again- who might be able to help her.

Help her, and help Keith.

Help them find Jeff.

"Time to go," Creeper said.

Jeff had been dozing fitfully, resting his back against the hard concrete. His stomach, which had been churning violently against the meal Creeper served them, was only now starting to settle down, and what little sleep he'd gotten had done nothing to ease the soreness in his muscles. A small groan escaped his lips as he unfolded his legs, which he had drawn up to his chest in an almost fetal position.