"And that's basically it, Jack. The arrows will lead you to the return that services Haffner's office. If you need any help, you've got the cell phone. The thing is to move slowly and carefully, easing yourself along. Sudden moves that bang against the sides will send the noise far and wide. Most people ignore an occasional rattle or such from a register. But give them a series of noises moving along above their hung ceilings and they start making calls, asking what's going on. So take it easy, Jack. We've given you plenty of time. Good hacking, man. This is Milkdud, signing off."

Must think he's Walter Cronkite or something, Jack thought as he turned off the Walkman and continued his crawl.

As he slid through the dark ducts, following the wavering beam of light stretching before him, he came to appreciate the coveralls. Its button-free front surface allowed him to glide along smoothly and silently.

The ducts, as Dud had warned, did indeed get smaller. But Jack kept following the arrows. He was, he freely admitted, utterly lost. He knew he was on the twenty-first floor of the Hand Building, and that his body was horizontal, but any orientation beyond that was a guess. Was he facing east or west, uptown or downtown? He had no idea.

That Dud had managed to hack this place—doing the elevator thing, and finding his way through this labyrinth of ductwork—on his own was astonishing.

That anyone could call it fun was simply beyond Jack.

And then Jack came to a left-pointing arrow and saw—literally—a light at the end of the tunnel.

Slim bands of fluorescent glow angled up through the louvers of a register at the end of a small duct. Jack heard voices filtering through from the room beyond, but couldn't catch the words. And even if he could, hearing was not enough. He wanted to see who was in that room, wanted to know who was saying what.

And he couldn't do that from here.

He had to get closer, and that meant moving into this last duct. This small last duct.

Jack stared into the narrow confines of the six-foot length of steel… just the length of a coffin. But coffins probably were a lot roomier. What if he got stuck in there?

Milkdud had given him a few hints on how to maneuver in a tight spot. This might be the time to try them out.

Jack turned off the headlamp. Then, with his right arm extended ahead and his left arm close against his side, he squeezed himself diagonally into the duct.

Tight. Very tight.

Now he truly appreciated what Dud had meant about claustrophobia being a deterrent to hacking.

Slowly, silently, he inched forward until he had about eighty percent of the office in view.

A plump, red-haired man in a white shirt—Gordon Haffner, Jack hoped—sat behind the desk, talking on the phone. Jack could hear him perfectly. As he watched, two other men entered. Jack recognized one from the van on Thursday night: Thomas Clayton. The other was new—dark-skinned, dark-haired, bearded, very intense-looking, with an accent from somewhere in the Middle East.

Jack smiled. He figured he was looking at Thomas Clayton's backer—the guy who was killing anyone who stood between him and the Clayton House. Excellent. Now, if they'd all just be so good as to discuss exactly why they wanted the house so badly, Jack could get the hell out of here.

But they didn't. They talked about Alicia and how they hoped she'd come up with a sale price this morning so they could settle the matter of ownership, but the reason was never mentioned.

And what was Thomas doing here? Sean had told Haffner that Alicia didn't want her brother present at the meeting. But here he was, and the clock was ticking, getting close to nine-thirty. He was sure Alicia would pop her cork if she saw him here. This was no way to get her to cooperate. What were they thinking?

And then Haffner's intercom buzzed, announcing "Mr. O'Neill and Ms. Clayton." Haffner got up, slipped on his suit jacket, and said he'd be back as soon as he finished speaking to her.

Jack's head jerked up and almost struck the ceiling of the duct.

What?

The meeting was supposed to be in Haffner's office, just the other side of the register. Where the hell was he going?

Not that the meeting itself mattered. Alicia could fill him in later on anything important. Jack had crawled through these ducts to hear the postmortem. If he had any chance of picking up some choice tidbits of unguarded conversation about the Clayton house, that would be the time.

But if the meeting was being held somewhere else, so might the postmortem.

He listened awhile to hear if Thomas and his Middle Eastern wallet man would drop anything worthwhile, but they didn't seem to be buddies: Thomas read the paper while the stranger stood at the window and stared at the street below.

Jack eased back into the larger duct and checked out his options.

2.

"What are we doing here?" Alicia said as Gordon Haffner ushered them into a mahogany-paneled conference room.

"Having a meeting," Haffner said. He looked confused as he laid a file folder on the gleaming surface of the oval mahogany table. "Isn't that why you called? To have a meeting?"

"We met in your office last time, so I thought—"

"This is much roomier."

Alicia glanced at Sean O'Neill, who replied with a barely perceptible shrug.

"Is something wrong?" Haffner said.

Yes, but Alicia couldn't tell him what. They'd set up this meeting to allow Jack to identify Thomas's backers. But what if the backers met in here instead of Haffner's office after the meeting? Jack would be eavesdropping on an empty room.

If she demanded to meet in Haffner's office, would that make him suspicious? And what would that accomplish if the backers were set to meet here afterward?

Jack needed to know about this conference room. And she could think of only one way to do that.

"Wrong?" Alicia said, letting her voice rise. "You want to know if something's wrong! Let me tell you what's wrong!" She raised the volume, pushing it to a shout. "Your client, my half brother Thomas Clayton, is what's wrong! Do you have any idea what kind of a slug you're representing? Do you know what he did to me Thursday night?"

She saw O'Neill turn her way and give her a quick smile and a wink.

But as she started in on the details of her abduction, she found she no longer needed to force the volume, or act angry. Suddenly the rage was real and her pitch rose.

Gordon Haffner's face went a little pale, and Sean O'Neill's smile faded.

Alicia heard her own voice… screaming…

3.

You're beautiful, Alicia.

Jack smiled as he watched her wind down from her tirade. He'd been crouched outside the return from Haffner's office, pondering his next move, when he'd heard a woman screaming. He hadn't recognized the voice—a scream was a scream—but he'd followed the sound. After all, no one should be screaming in an attorney's office, unless maybe it was a client who'd just got a bill.

A few turns this way and that, and here she was, sliced by the louvers of a register high in the wall of some sort of conference room, doing a very convincing Screaming Mimi.

Finally, she began losing steam. As she wound down, Jack eased back into the larger duct and positioned himself facing the way he'd come. He turned on his headlamp and narrowed the beam to check his watch. Barely past nine-thirty. He'd be back on the street before eleven—hopefully with the answers to some of his questions.

All he had to do was wait until the meeting was over, then see where the other side chose to hash over Alicia's proposal.