He closed his eyes and leaned back, thinking, All right now. All right. I’m ready. Let them come.

“We have a situation.”

It was just past ten P.M. Sykes had appeared at the door of Richards’s office.

“I know,” Richards said. “I’m on it.”

The situation was the girl, the Jane Doe. She wasn’t a Jane Doe anymore. Richards had gotten the news off the law enforcement general feed a little after nine. The girl’s mother was a suspect in a shooting, something at a fraternity house; the boy she’d shot was the son of a federal circuit judge. The gun, which she’d left at the scene, had led local police to a motel near Graceland, where the manager-a list of priors that filled two pages-had ID’d the girl from the photograph the cops had taken of her on Friday, at the convent where the mother had dumped her. The nuns had spilled their story, and something else that Richards didn’t know what to make of-some kind of disturbance at the Memphis Zoo-before one of them had picked out Doyle and Wolgast from a surveillance video taken the night before at the I-55 checkpoint north of Baton Rouge. Local TV had gotten the story in time for the evening news, when the Amber Alert had gone out.

Just like that, the whole world was looking for two federal agents and a little girl named Amy Bellafonte.

“Where are they now?” Sykes asked.

On his terminal, Richards called up the satellite feed and pointed his viewer at the states between Tennessee and Colorado. The transmitter was in Wolgast’s handheld. Richards counted eighteen hot points in the region, then found the one that matched the number of Wolgast’s tracking tag.

“Western Oklahoma.”

Sykes was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder. “Do you think he knows yet?”

Richards recalibrated the viewer, zooming in.

“I’d say so,” he said, and showed Sykes the data stream.

Target velocity, 120 kph.

Then, a moment later:

Target velocity, 133 kph.

They were on the run now. Richards would have to go get them. Locals were involved, maybe state cops. It was going to be ugly, assuming he could even reach them in time. The chopper was already inbound from Fort Carson; Sykes had made the call.

They took the rear stairs to L1 and stepped outside to wait. The temperature had risen since sunset. A thick fog was ascending in loose coils under the lights of the parking circle, like dry ice at a rock concert. They stood together without talking; there was nothing to say. The situation was more or less a complete and total screwup. Richards thought of the photograph, the one that was all over the wires. Amy Bellafonte: beautiful fountain. Black hair falling straight to her shoulders-it looked damp, like she’d been walking in the rain-and a smooth, young face, still with some baby fat fluffing her cheeks; but beneath her brow, dark eyes with a knowing depth. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt zipped to her throat. In one hand she was clutching some kind of toy, a stuffed animal. It might have been a dog. But the eyes: the eyes were what Richards kept coming back to. She was looking straight at the camera as if to say, See? What did you think I was, Richards? You think nobody in the world loves me?

For a second, just one, he thought it. It brushed him like a wing: the wish that he were a different kind of person, that the look in a child’s eyes meant something to him.

Five minutes later they heard the chopper, a pulsing presence coasting in low over the wall of trees to the southeast. It made a single, searching turn, dragging a cone of light, then dropped toward the parking lot with balletic precision, shoving a wave of shuddering air under its blades. A UH-60 Blackhawk with a full armament rack, rigged for night reconnaissance. It seemed like a lot, for one little girl. But that was the situation in which they now found themselves. They held their hands over their brows against the wind and noise and swirling snow.

As the chopper touched down, Sykes seized Richards’s elbow.

“She’s a kid!” he said over the din. “Do this right!”

Whatever that meant, Richards thought, and stepped briskly away, toward the opening door.

TEN

They were moving quickly now, Wolgast at the wheel, Doyle beside him, thumbing away furiously on his handheld. Calling in to let Sykes know who was in charge.

“No goddamn signal.” Doyle tossed his handheld onto the dash. They were fifteen miles outside of Homer, headed due west; the open fields slid endlessly away under a sky thick with stars.

“I could have told you that,” Wolgast said. “It’s the back side of the moon out here. And why don’t you watch your language?”

Doyle ignored him. Wolgast lifted his eyes quickly to the rearview to find Amy looking back at him. He knew she felt it too: they were joined together now. From the moment they’d stepped off the carousel, he’d cast his lot with her.

“How much do you know?” Wolgast asked. “I don’t suppose it matters now if you tell me.”

“As much as you do.” Doyle shrugged. “Maybe more. Richards thought you might have problems with this.”

When had they spoken? Wolgast wondered. While he and Amy were on the rides? That night in Huntsville, when Wolgast had gone back to the motel to call Lila? Or was it before?

“You should be careful. I mean it, Phil. A guy like that. Private security contractor. He’s little more than a mercenary.”

Doyle sighed irritably. “You know what your problem is, Brad? You don’t know who’s on your side here. I gave you the benefit of the doubt back there. All you had to do was bring her back to the car when you said you would. You’re not seeing the whole picture.”

“I’ve seen enough.”

A filling station appeared ahead of them, a glowing oasis in the gloom. As they approached, Wolgast eased off the gas.

“Christ. Don’t stop,” Doyle said. “Just drive.”

“We’re not going to get very far without gas. We’re down to a quarter tank. This could be the last station for a while.”

If Doyle wanted to be in charge, Wolgast thought, at least he would have to act like it.

“Fine. But just the gas. And both of you stay in the car.”

They pulled up to the pump. After Wolgast shut off the engine, Doyle reached across and withdrew the keys from the ignition. Then he opened the glove box and removed Wolgast’s weapon. He released the clip, buried it in the pocket of his jacket, and returned the empty gun to the glove box.

“Stay put.”

“You might want to check the oil too.”

Doyle exhaled sharply. “Jesus, anything else, Brad?”

“I’m just saying. We don’t want to break down.”

“Fine. I’ll check it. Just stay in the car.”

Doyle stepped around the back of the Tahoe and began to fill the tank. With Doyle out of the car, Wolgast had a moment to think, but unarmed and without the keys, there wasn’t much he could do. Part of him had decided not to take Doyle completely seriously, but for the moment, the situation was what it was. He pulled the lever under the dash; Doyle moved to the front of the Tahoe and lifted the hood, momentarily shielding the cabin from view.

Wolgast twisted around to face Amy.

“Are you okay?”

The girl nodded. She was holding her knapsack in her lap; the well-stroked ear of her stuffed rabbit was peeking through the opening. In the light of the filling area, Wolgast could see a bit of powdered sugar still on her cheeks, like flecks of snow.

“Are we still going to the doctor?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

“He has a gun.”

“I know, honey. It’s all right.”

“My mother had a gun.”

Before Wolgast could assemble a response, the hood of the Tahoe slammed closed. Startled, he turned sharply in time to see three state police cruisers, lights on, tearing past the filling station in the opposite direction.