“I’m going to shoot you in the knee if you don’t tell me,” I said.

“Listen, if I tell you they’ll-”

I held the gun over his knee and pulled the trigger. The resulting scream momentarily drowned out the various alarms.

“The next one goes in your other knee,” I said. “Where is she?”

“Oh God!” he screamed, writhing on the ground.

“Where is my daughter?” I asked.

“Vermont!” he wept.

“Where in Vermont?”

“Stowe!” he said. “Somewhere in Stowe!”

“Where in Stowe?”

“They don’t know! Just somewhere!”

“Who’s going for her?”

Before he could answer, he passed out. Or died.

I walked over and picked Gary’s gun up off the ground. I might need two. As I was heading back to the Beetle, the entire showroom erupted into flames behind me. A car’s gas tank exploded. A fireball blew out one of the other plate-glass windows.

I got into the car and took out my cell, punched in a familiar number. In the distance, I could hear sirens.

Susanne answered. “Hello?”

“Hi, Susanne,” I said. “Could you put Bob on?”

“Oh my God, Tim, the police have been here and-”

“Just put Bob on for a second.”

Ten seconds later, Bob, sounding annoyed, said, “Jesus, Tim, you’ve got the entire police force looking for you. What the hell have you-”

“What are you doing right now?” I asked. “I need a different car. One I can count on, and it needs to be fast.”

FORTY-ONE

I WAS DRIVING THE BEETLE ALONG ROUTE 1 when I noticed, in my rearview mirror, a patrol car that had been heading in the other direction put its brake lights on. I kept glancing at the mirror.

“Don’t turn around, don’t turn around,” I said under my breath.

The cop car turned around.

It was still quite a ways back, so I eased down on the accelerator, trying to increase the distance between us without appearing to take off at high speed. Not that the Beetle was exactly up to that.

The cop car straightened out, and the flashing lights went on.

I hung a hard right down a residential street, then killed my lights so there weren’t two bright red orbs glowing from the back of the car. The streetlights were bright enough that I could see where I was going. I looked in the mirror, saw the police car take the right as well.

I took a random route. A right, another right, a left. I kept looking up at the mirror, looking not just for the car but for the pulsing glow of its rooftop lights.

The driver was probably on the radio now, asking for backup units to close in on the area.

I wasn’t safe in this car. The odds were I wouldn’t make it to Bob’s house without getting spotted.

I made another left, another right, and found myself down near the harbor, not far from Carol Swain’s house. I couldn’t go back there.

I was coming up on a cross street, and a police car zoomed past, siren off but lights flashing. If I’d had my headlights on, I’d have had a perfect look at the driver’s profile.

I wasn’t even going to get out of this neighborhood, let alone to Bob’s house. I wheeled the Beetle into a stranger’s driveway, pulling it up as far as it would go next to the house, killed the engine, grabbed the two guns I’d acquired, plus Milt from the back seat, and got out of the car.

Would it be safe to call Bob and ask him to come pick me up here? And would he even do it? The police-maybe Jennings herself-had been to see them. Even if Susanne and Bob didn’t know why, exactly, the police were hunting for me, they had to know it was serious.

I started running in the direction of the harbor. Bob’s house wasn’t far from the Sound. Maybe I could steal a small boat, head up to the Stratford shore near where Bob lived, beach the boat, then hoof it the rest of the way to his place. Then, with any luck, I could talk him into giving me another car so I could start driving up to Stowe.

I got to the harbor. It was a warm evening, and many people were sitting on their boats, having a drink, chatting with friends, their voices coming through the night like soft background noise. Stealing a boat might not be all that simple.

I was skulking around a parking lot that edged up to some tree cover. I was tiptoeing across gravel to the most remote end of the lot, wondering if there was any chance someone might have left their keys in a car-did anyone do that anymore?-when something about a van I was walking past caught my eye.

Stenciled on the rear windows were the words Shaw Flowers.

As I came up around the driver’s side, I could see what appeared to be two people up front, leaning into each other over the console.

I tapped the driver’s window with the barrel of one of my acquired weapons. He jumped, and as he turned to see who it was, his blonde-haired companion slumped forward lifelessly onto the dashboard.

“Hey, Ian,” I said through the glass.

He powered the window down. “Oh my God, it’s you,” he said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I can see that’s not my daughter with you.”

“My aunt made me tell,” he said quickly, defensively. “She made me tell who hit me. But I told the police it was all a mix-up.”

“I know,” I said. “I appreciate that. And I never told anyone about your friend.”

“Thanks,” he said quietly. “What do you want? What are you doing here?”

“Unlock the back door,” I said. “I need you and Mildred there to make a delivery.”

I got into the back. I set the guns on the floor and put Milt on the seat. Surprisingly, it was the stuffed moose that caught Ian’s attention.

“And you think I’m strange,” he said.

WE SPOTTED THREE CRUISERS wandering the neighborhood before we got back up to Route 1.

“They all looking for you?” Ian asked while I looked around in the back of the van, trying to stay below the window line.

“The less you know, the better,” I said. “You’ve got a wrapped-up bouquet sitting back here.”

“Yeah,” Ian said. “Been trying two days to deliver it. The people are away.”

I gave him directions to Bob’s house. “Drive down the street once, see if the place is being watched. Cop cars, or what look like unmarked cop cars. We do that a couple of times, and if it looks clear, pull into the driveway.”

“Okay.” He paused. “You know, I don’t normally deliver flowers this late. Won’t that look weird?”

“Let’s hope not,” I said.

It didn’t take long to get to Bob’s neighborhood. “Houses are really nice around here,” Ian said. “I’ve delivered up around here before.” He paused. “I don’t see anything that looks funny.”

“Let’s do it,” I said. “I want you and Mildred to hang in for a minute.”

“Her name’s Juanita,” Ian said.

He pulled into Bob’s very wide driveway, right next to the Hummer. I grabbed the wrapped bouquet, slipped out the side of the van, walked up to the front door.

Susanne looked shocked when she opened it. At first I thought she was reacting to the late-night floral delivery, then realized she was looking right at me.

“My God, what happened to you?” she asked, Bob standing in the hall a few feet behind her. She took the flowers from me and set them on a nearby table.

At first I was thinking she’d already seen my nose. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d sustained more injuries. I glanced in the front hall mirror. My cheeks had several small cuts in them. My forehead was bruised. Shards of broken window glass and hitting your head on the steering wheel will do that to you.

And there was still duct tape hanging off one of my wrists.

“I don’t have time to explain,” I said. To Bob I said, “What have you got for me?”

“Where’s the Beetle?” he asked, peering out into the drive and seeing only the van.

To Susanne I said, in a rapid-fire delivery, “I know where Syd is. She’s in Vermont. In Stowe. There are people already on their way to get her. They might already be there. I need to get there fast.”