Franco leaped out of his side of the blue van while Richie and Freddie jumped from the white one. All four men were running up the sidewalk on the park side of Fifth Avenue, with Angelo slightly in the lead. Suddenly, Angelo stopped, as did the others. All saw Adam race out into the street in pursuit of Laurie, at whom he was yelling to stop. They all saw that he was carrying something wrapped in a towel.

Because Laurie was not moving ahead exclusively but rather trying to get cars to stop by slapping their hoods, Adam rapidly closed the narrow gap between them.

Laurie turned to look at him. Although she'd thought upstairs in the HVAC room that he was a stranger, now she thought she recognized him as the bill collector at the OCME. But before she could say anything and before he said anything, he slowly raised the cone-shaped towel he was carrying such that Laurie could see a black cylinder just concealed in its tip.

The sound of the gun was muffled, and Laurie reflexively winced and closed her eyes. Strangely, nothing happened. She reopened her eyes. At her feet lay Adam, still clutching his pistol, which had partially come out from behind its towel. Laurie was shocked into momentary immobility, staring down at her attacker, who was on his stomach, slightly twitching. But Laurie's trance didn't last long. A moment later, she was set on by four men, one of whom was yelling "Police" and showing several motorists who'd finally stopped his police badge. Two other cars had actually pulled to the side of the road, and the drivers were climbing out.

Laurie was relieved as she allowed herself to be rapidly escorted to the park-side sidewalk. It was there that her relief dissolved in a totally new whirl of fear. One of the men was Angelo Facciolo, an old nemesis of hers going back fifteen years. She tried to slow the rapid progress being made as the four men hustled her toward the vans. "Excuse me," she called out, still wanting to believe the men had saved her. "Let's stop! I'm fine."

She was ignored. No one spoke. Suddenly, she tried desperately to break from their collective grasp but to no avail. She found herself being hoisted up into the air with her feet only lightly touching the pavement. It was at that point that Laurie belatedly tried to verbally protest, but even that was of limited value as a hand snaked from behind and was clasped over her mouth.

Reaching the vans, the sliding door of the white one was thrown open, and Laurie was pulled inside as if devoured. She tried to struggle, but the four men crushed her under them, making it hard for her to breathe. She felt her legs being bound with duct tape, then her arms. She still tried to struggle, and she screamed when the hand over her mouth had been removed. But her shouting didn't persist for long, as she was gagged with an oily rag held in by several turns of the duct tape.

23

Jack cringed from a new stab of pain from his freshly traumatized knee, as he'd forgotten where he was while reaching for the glass of water on his bedside table. Although the general, background pain hadn't gone away, the blissful narcotic had changed the pain's character such that Jack could easily ignore it. Jack had an intravenous setup with which he could control how much pain medicine he got. In that way, he was certain to get less, which was his goal. He knew that all the strong pain meds had a price to pay down the road, even if it was something seemingly simple like constipation.

From about noon on, Jack had been multitasking, meaning watching TV and flipping through magazines simultaneously. He'd brought some more serious reading, but he had a sneaking suspicion he might not get around to it until the following day, or the day after that, or maybe never. He liked just relaxing now that the big stress was over. The operation was history, and Dr. Anderson had popped in around eleven and reported that it had gone exceedingly smoothly There was only one problem: Laurie had said she'd be by around noontime, and so far there had been no Laurie and no call.

By one, Jack had called the OCME, as he assumed she'd gotten held up, perhaps by there being so many autopsies such that she had to pitch in. But he learned the day had not been overwhelming. Speaking with Riva, Jack was told Laurie was in her office around seven that morning but that no one had seen her since. Thinking that she might have gone home, Jack had tried her there. When he didn't catch her, he left a message for her to call. With no other ideas of where she might be, Jack could only wait. Now that it was after two, he began to get seriously concerned.

After drinking his water, Jack was about to go back to his magazine and the TV when Lou Soldano walked in. He was doubly solicitous when he saw the contraption Jack's operated leg was Velcroed into. It was constantly flexing and extending the knee, which Lou envisioned as being constantly painful. After assuring the detective that it wasn't bothering him, Jack asked if he'd seen or heard from Laurie.

"That's why I'm here," Lou said in a very serious tone. He pulled over an upholstered chair.

"I think you'd better tell me what's going on."

"There was a very bizarre shooting this morning while you were under the knife," Lou said. "It was right below your window, in fact. The victim was a man we knew little about since he was carrying false identification."

Jack nodded. He had no idea how Laurie possibly could be in any way involved.

"As you know, New Yorkers are rather high on the hard-hearted scale, and when this shooting went down, not too many stopped, although we are hearing from more people as the day progresses. Of those who stopped, we haven't gotten consistent reports. Be that as it may, the individual had been chasing a woman out from behind the hospital."

"So the woman shot this guy?"

"No, not the woman but some passerby who had leaped from a van with three other people. This guy shot the man who was about to shoot the woman, at least according to a couple of witnesses, but to corroborate the story, the shooting victim was carrying a silenced automatic nine-millimeter pistol rolled up in a towel."

"Is the victim dead?"

"No! He's critical but not dead."

"Have you been able to talk to him?"

"Nope. He had to undergo emergency surgery down the street at Beth Israel."

"What about the woman? Have you talked to her?"

"Nope again. The woman was whisked off in a white van by the four men who had, of all things, pretended to be plainclothes police. I'm telling you, this is one weird case."

"So how does this relate to Laurie?" Jack asked, although he was unsure if he wanted to hear.

"The descriptions of the woman, although they're not terribly consistent, could be describing Laurie, with some more so than others."

Jack stared at Lou. His anesthesia-addled mind was struggling to process the information Lou was providing. Jack didn't like what he was hearing but wanted to remain hopeful. "Let me get this straight," he said. "You don't have any specific association of this apparently abducted woman with Laurie?"

Lou nodded. "Nothing specific, just the suggestive descriptions. That and the fact that no one knows where Laurie is at the moment. I mean, no one at the OCME, and certainly not you."

"Good God!" Jack murmured. "And me a total invalid with a totally bum knee."

Lou stood up and replaced the chair. He came back to the bed, where the flexing and extending machine was making a constant, low-pitched grinding noise. He reached out and gave Jack's arm a squeeze. "I just want you to know that I've got a thousand people, including myself, working on this and will be twenty-four-seven. We've been stopping white vans all over the city."