Then she’d hugged Brian and said, “I know your favorite carol.”

“Silent Night.” He’d sung it all by himself in the first-grade Christmas pageant at school last year.

Brian tried to sing it to himself now, in his mind .. . but he couldn’t get past “Silent night.” He knew if he kept thinking about it, he wouldn’t be able to keep Jimmy from knowing that he was crying.

Then he almost jumped. Someone on the radio was talking about Jimmy and him again. The man was saying that a state trooper in Vermont was sure he had seen Jimmy Siddons and a young boy in an old Dodge or Chevrolet at a rest stop on Route 91 in Vermont, and the search was being concentrated there.

Jimmy’s grim smile vanished as quickly as it had come. The first surge of relief at hearing the news bulletin was followed by instant caution. Had some fool claimed he’d spotted them in Vermont? he wondered. It was possible, he decided. When he had been hiding out in Michigan, some two-bit drifter swore he’d seen Jimmy in Delaware. After he got caught at the gas-station job and was taken back to New York, he had found out that the marshals had kept the heat on in Delaware for months.

Even so, being on the Thruway was really beginning to spook him. The road was good and he could make time, but the nearer you got to the border, the more troopers there might be on the road. He decided that when he got off at the next exit, and got rid of the kid, he’d swing over to Route 20. Now that it wasn’t snowing, he should be able to make okay time there.

Follow your hunch, Jimmy reminded himself. The only time he hadn’t was when he had tried to hold up that gas station. He still remembered that at the time something had warned him there was a problem.

Well, after this, there’ll be no more problems, he thought, looking down at Brian. Then when he looked up, he grinned. The sign looming before him read EXIT 42, GENEVA, ONE MILE AHEAD.

Chris McNally had passed the fender-bender on the exit 41 ramp. Two police cars were on the scene already, so he decided there was no need for him to stop. He had traveled fast, and he hoped that by now he had caught up to any cars that had been ahead of him on line at McDonald’s.

Provided, of course, they hadn’t taken one of the earlier exits.

A brown Toyota. That’s what he kept looking for. Finding it was the one chance. He knew it. What was it about the license plate? He clenched his teeth, again trying hard to remember. There had been something about it… Think, damn it, he told himself, think.

He didn’t for one minute believe the report that Siddons and the kid had been spotted in Vermont. Every gut instinct kept telling Chris that they were nearby.

Exit 42 to Geneva was coming up. That meant the border was only another hundred miles or so away. Most of the cars were doing fifty to sixty miles an hour now. If Jimmy Siddons was in this vicinity, he could look forward to being out of the country in less than two hours.

What was there about the license plate of the Toyota? he asked himself once more.

Chris’s eyes narrowed. He could see a dark Toyota in the passing lane that was moving fast. He switched lanes and drove up beside it, then glanced in. He prayed that it held a single man or a man with a young boy. Just a chance to find that child. Give me a chance, he prayed.

Without turning on his siren or dome light, Chris continued past the Toyota. He had been able to see a young couple inside. The guy was driving with his arm around the girl, not a good idea on an icy road. Another time he’d have pulled him over.

Chris stepped on the gas. The road was clearer, the traffic was better spaced. But everything was moving faster and faster, and closer and closer to Canada.

His radio was on low when a call came in for him. “Officer McNally?”

“Yes.”

“New York City Chief of Detectives Bud Folney calling you from One Police Plaza. I just spoke to your supervisor again. The Vermont sighting is a washout. The Lenihan woman can’t be found. Tell me what you reported earlier about a brown Toyota.”

Knowing his boss had dismissed that, Chris realized that this Folney must be really pressing him.

He explained that if Deidre had been talking about the car directly ahead of him in the McDonald’s line, she was talking about a brown Toyota with New York plates.

“And you can’t remember the license.”

“No, sir.” Chris wanted to strangle the words in his throat. “But there was something unusual about it.”

He was almost at exit 42. As he watched, a vehicle two cars ahead switched into the exit lane. His casual glance became a stare. “My God,” he said.

“Officer? What is it?” In New York, Bud Folney instinctively knew that something was happening.

“That’s it.” Chris said. “It wasn’t the license plate I noticed. It was the bumper sticker. There’s just a piece of it left and it says inheritance. Sir, I’m following that Toyota down the exit ramp right now. Can you check out the license?”

“Don’t lose that car,” Bud snapped. “And hang on.”

Three minutes later the phone rang in apartment 8C, in 10 Stuyvesant Oval, in lower Manhattan. A sleepy and anxious Edward Hillson picked it up. “Hello,” he said. He felt his wife’s nervous grasp on his arm.

“What? My car? I parked it around the corner at five or so. No, I didn’t lend it to anyone. Yes. It’s a brown Toyota. What are you telling me?”

Bud Folney got back to Chris. “I think you have him, but for God’s sake remember, he’s threatened to kill the child before he lets himself get captured. So be careful.”

22

Michael was so sleepy. All he wanted to do was lean against Gran and close his eyes. But he couldn’t do that yet, not until he was sure that Brian was okay. Michael struggled to suppress his growing fear. Why didn’t he grab me if he saw that lady pick up Mom’s wallet? I could have run after her and helped him when he got caught by that guy.

The cardinal was at the altar now. But when the music stopped, instead of starting to offer Mass, he began to speak. “On this night of joy and hope…”

Off to the right, Michael could see the television cameras. He had always thought it would be cool to be on television, but whenever he had thought about it, the circumstances he envisioned had to do with winning something or with witnessing some great event. That would be fun. Tonight, when he and Mom were on together, it wasn’t fun.

It was awful to hear Mom begging people to help them find Brian.

“… in a year that has brought so much violence to the innocent…”

Michael straightened up. The cardinal was talking about them, about Dad being sick and Brian being missing and believed to be with that escaped killer. He was saying, “Brian Dornan’s mother, grandmother, and ten-year-old brother are with us at this Mass. Let our special prayer be that Dr. Thomas Dornan will recover fully and that Brian will be found unharmed.”

Michael could see that Mom and Gran were both crying. Their lips were moving, and he knew they were praying. His prayer was the advice he would have given Brian if he could hear him: Run, Brian, run.

Now that he was off the Thruway, Jimmy felt somewhat relieved, despite a gnawing sense that things were closing in on him.

He was running low on gas but was afraid to risk stopping at a station with the kid in the car. He was on Route 14 south. That connected with Route 20 in about six miles. Route 20 led to the border.

There was a lot less traffic here than on the Thruway. Most people were home by now anyway, asleep or getting ready for Christmas morning. It was unlikely that anyone would be looking for him here. Still, he reasoned, the best thing to do was to get on some of the local streets in Geneva, find someplace like a school where there’d be a parking lot, or find a wooded area, somewhere he could stop without being noticed and do what he had to do.