A boy's gotta have his fun, right?

He found the ice pick and held it up where she could see it.

"But first, a little truth serum."

8

Jack wasn't sure how to play this.

Here he was, following the Blagden truck down this bumpy country road in the dark. The very dark. The moon hadn't risen, not a street lamp in sight, and he and the truck were the only vehicles on the road.

They'd turned off the Turnpike miles ago, then wound into these low hills. No way they couldn't know someone was coasting along behind them. But did they care?

That was the question. If they knew they'd been hauling a murdered woman's body across state lines, they'd be more than a little paranoid and watching their rearview mirrors. They might even pull over to let a following car pass.

But if they believed they were hauling a weird chunk of concrete and nothing more, they wouldn't care who was behind them.

Although the truck had made no evasive maneuvers, Jack decided to play it safe and proceed on the assumption that the drivers knew the score.

So when he saw the truck slow and make a cautious turn onto an even narrower road, Jack drove on by. He spotted two sets of headlights sitting atop a rise. Through his rearview he watched the truck climb to the top of the rise and stop by the headlights.

Jack killed his own lights and pulled over. He stepped out of the car and found himself facing what looked like an open field, overgrown and bordered by a rickety wire fence. He checked the sky. Broken cloud cover blocked most of the starshine. He looked around for signs that the moon might be rising but found no telltale glow. Good. The less light the better.

He hopped over the wire and made his way in a crouch through the tall grass toward the lights.

He dropped lower as he neared the top of the rise, then stopped and squatted just out of reach of the headlights.

The flatbed and two pickups sat angled around a pit that looked maybe seven or eight feet wide. From the size of the mound of excavated dirt piled to the side, Jack guessed it was a pretty deep hole.

Deep enough to swallow Jamie's concrete sarcophagus.

Four men with shovels, plus one of the drivers, stood around the rim showing not a hint of furtiveness. That persuaded Jack that they probably wouldn't be able to add anything to what he already knew. He'd made the trip for nothing.

No… not for nothing. He'd learned where they were burying Jamie Grant.

The driver on the ground made a signal to his partner in the flatbed's cab. As Jack watched, the truck's winch began to raise the forward end of the pillar, tilting the butt over the black maw of the hole.

Jack's instincts spurred him to put a stop to this now. Jamie deserved better. But he'd be taking on six men; some of them could be armed. Better to let them complete their work. This way at least he'd know where to find Jamie when the time came to arrange for a proper burial.

And another reason for holding back: As long as he knew where to find the pillar—literally where the body was buried—it remained a potential weapon against Brady and Jensen. What he had to do now was figure out how to use it to inflict maximum damage.

So he held his place and his breath and watched the pillar angle up, up, up, then slip off the truck bed and into the hole.

9

In Midtown Manhattan an old woman cries out and clutches her back as pain lances through her. Her dog, a Rottweiler, stands beside her, legs stiff, body tense, barking in sympathy.

She knows the cause of her suffering.

Another one… they've buried another one. They must be stopped before it's too late.

But she can't do it. Someone else must act on her behalf.

10

Jack's thoughts raced ahead of his car as he cranked eastward on the Penn Turnpike. How to get the most out of that pillar…

Nothing was coming. He was dry… dry as the earth they'd backfilled into Jamie's grave.

East of Harrisburg he gave up and switched on the radio. Maybe he could zone out on music for a while, then tackle the problem with a fresh head. But he couldn't find anything he felt like listening to. He wished he'd brought along some of his CDs, but realized he probably wouldn't want to listen to them either.

The problem wasn't with the music, but with him. He wouldn't feel right, wouldn't be himself until he'd fixed this.

He switched to AM and picked up a strong, clear signal from WABC in New York. He hung on through a commercial to see which one of their stable of talk show geeks had the mike tonight, but instead wound up in the middle of the top-of-the-hour news update. He was reaching for the SEEK button when he heard…

'Wo word yet on the missing nun. Sister Margaret Mary O'Hara was last seen being pulled into a car from a Lower East Side sidewalk earlier this evening. The witness did not know the make or color of the car, and couldn't read the license plate. If you have any information on this incident—any information at all—please call …"

Feeling as if his bones were dissolving, Jack veered through the right lane and onto the shoulder where he stopped and set the shift into park.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, his hands squeezing the steering wheel as if trying to strangle it.

He's got her… the son of a bitch has got her.

But how could he have known it was Maggie?

An instant of self-doubt pierced him, but then faded as he reviewed all the moves he'd made in the Cordova fix. He was certain—knew—that he hadn't left the faintest link to Maggie.

She must have made a slip talking to him.

Jack pounded the steering wheel. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

All that effort to make the fix look like an accident—for nothing. Cordova knew, and he had her. God knew what he was going to do with her. Or was doing to her. Or had already done to her.

A slimeball like Cordova… didn't deserve to live… shouldn't have bothered finessing the fix. Oxygen waster like him… best thing to do—for his victims and for the human gene pool—was to walk up to him and deliver a hollowpoint between the eyes.

But Jack hadn't wanted to set himself on that road. Feared once he started traveling it he might not be able to step off. He'd approached Cordova as a guy who wasn't doing anyone physical harm—his bloodletting was emotional and financial—so Jack had taken a parallel approach. Cordova was hands off, so Jack had gone the hands-off route.

He realized now that was a mistake. A bullet to the brain would have solved the Cordova problem. Quick, clean, easy. No more blackmail, and sure as hell no worry about a good-hearted nun being abducted.

A mood cold and black settled on Jack as he threw the Buick back into drive and merged with the eastbound traffic.

He knew where Cordova lived, where he worked. He'd find him. And if that fat slug had done anything to Sister Maggie, if he'd harmed her in any way…