El Nariz looked at the Texas lawman warily. He shook his hand and said, “Mucho gusto” without much gusto at all.

But there seemed to be some relief in his eyes at the mention of El Gato. It told him that maybe this authority wasn’t after anyone in his home.

Payne introduced Harris and himself.

“Come in,” Esteban said.

Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV felt the bile rise in his throat one more time. He was on his knees, his expensively tailored slacks now soiled by the dirty floor of the bathroom in Paco Esteban’s basement. His fine silk necktie was loosened and the collar of his custom-made French-cuff dress shirt unbuttoned. There were wet spots of vomitus on both garments.

Just outside the door, on the closed white door of the horizontal Deepfreeze, Paco Esteban had opened the black plastic bags containing the severed head of Ana Maria Del Carmen Lopez.

He had peeled back the bloody white towel with which he’d wrapped her head.

And there Harris, Byrth, Nesbitt, and Payne had had their first look at the face of what once had been a pretty seventeen-year-old Honduran.

Now, however, her light-brown skin was blotched and bruised, her long straight black hair matted, her dark eyes glassy.

Nesbitt had lost it when he noticed her soft facial features had what had been cute little freckles across her upper cheeks and pixie nose.

“What’s that?” Payne said, pointing toward her left ear.

Esteban turned the head slightly.

They saw there on the neck, at the hairline, a small black tattoo. It was a gothic block letter D with three short lines.

“El Gato and his whiskers,” Byrth said.

Payne shook his head in shock. “What’s the D about?”

Byrth shrugged. “Maybe, probably Dallas.”

Then Nesbitt shared the information about El Gato’s girls and the house on Hancock.

What a helluva break! Payne thought.

And then he thought, Amanda and lunch!

He began thumbing: how?s your day going? just had an interesting development in the case…

He pushed SEND, but then his screen flashed with ERROR-NO SERVICE.

Dammit!

Must be because we’re in the basement.

He looked at the signal strength. None of the five bars were present. He also noticed that the battery was almost drained.

That’s not good.

Worse, I’m not sure I have a charger in the rental car.

Payne walked across the room. The smallest of the five bars flickered on, indicating the weakest of signals.

He hit SEND again. And a second later the screen flashed MESSAGE SENT.

Then his phone chirped twice. And its screen went black.

Fuck!

What if Amanda tries to reach me?

[THREE] 3519-A North Broad Street, Philadelphia Thursday, September 10, 9:56 A.M.

Dr. Amanda Law had just paid for her usual morning double cappuccino with nonfat milk at the Cup O’Joe’s Internet Caf? location across Broad Street from the Shriners Hospital for Children.

She stepped outside and looked up at the morning sun and smiled. Her cellular telephone chimed once. She looked at the screen and her smile became larger.

The box showed the first two lines of the message. It read: matt how?s your day going?

And she thought, I haven’t felt this good in a long time.

I’d forgotten what it was like to have someone thinking about me.

And being genuinely affectionate.

Amanda slid her left thumb across the bottom edge of the big glass of the computer-phone and the touch screen lit brightly. Now she could clearly read the box that had popped up in the middle: matt how?s your day going? just had an interesting development in the case… need to postpone lunch (frown) sorry… i?ll make it up to you… promise!

She thought somewhat sadly:

And so that begins, or continues…

But I can deal with it.

She tapped out:

I?m still fine.

Same as the last time you asked-what?-a half hour ago? (wink) And that?s fine about lunch. I have a busy day, too.

Besides, I told you I know how your days can go.

So, be safe! -A Then she hit SEND. She had no way of knowing that it would be some time until it would be received and read.

Dr. Amanda Law took a sip of her coffee and prepared to cross the street and enter Temple University Hospital.

She looked left, checking for southbound traffic. There was a package delivery truck, a big boxy brown one, accelerating down Broad. She glanced right, trying to judge the northbound traffic, wondering if she could go after the delivery truck flew past her at the hammers of hell.

A block south, the traffic light had all the vehicles on Broad stopped in both directions. A taxicab was parked in front of the hospital, and behind that a beat-up old black minivan was rolling to a stop. She saw a skinny dark-skinned man in baggy jeans, a zipper hoodie sweatshirt, and a wife-beater T-shirt get out of the sliding door on the far side, walk to near the front door of the hospital, and stop to look back at the minivan.

Suddenly, there was the enormous sound and wind of the delivery van blowing past. It went so fast it left a huge wake. Amanda caught herself clutching at her phone and coffee, afraid she’d drop one or the other, or both.

Then all was calm again. She glanced left and saw that no other vehicle was coming, and stepped off the curb. Just shy of halfway across, she glanced to the right. The taxicab was now rolling forward. It made the right turn onto Tioga just as Amanda stepped around its rear bumper.

As she stepped up on the sidewalk, she noticed movement to her right.

The black minivan, too, was rolling.

And the man in the T-shirt was moving away from the front door of the hospital.

Then all of a sudden the minivan accelerated and was right behind her.

And the man in the T-shirt was running right at her. He charged into her, his right shoulder hitting her just above the stomach, at the same time wrapping his arms around her, like a football tackle. It knocked the wind out of her.

The impact also caused her to squeeze and crumple her cup, the hot coffee spilling on her and her attacker, and she dropped her phone on the sidewalk.

As she slowly went backward, Amanda Law began anticipating hitting the hard concrete sidewalk.

But the next thing she knew, she was down, and it hadn’t been hard concrete. It had been a softer landing. Then she realized that she was now on a blanket inside the black minivan, its sliding side door still locked in the open position.

There was no middle or backseat in the van, only open carpeted floor.

She tried to scream or yell, but the wind knocked out of her left her gasping for air.

She heard the driver, a male, yelling: “Phone! Get the fucking phone!”

The driver had been yelling at the man who’d tackled her, because with a grunt he pushed off her. He ran back to the sidewalk and retrieved the phone.

She tried to sit up and make a try for the open door. But then she painfully felt a hand grab her hair at the back of her head. It pulled her back down.

She heard some woman’s voice on the sidewalk yell, “Stop them! Someone call the police! Stop!”

Then the man who’d tackled her jumped back into the minivan and onto her. The hand let go of her hair. And the minivan roared away from the hospital, wind rushing in through the open sliding door.

Some three or four blocks later, the minivan stopped. The man in back slammed shut the sliding door. There was the sound of tape being ripped from a roll. Despite her desperate attempts, Amanda Law very shortly found her wrists bound with duct tape, then her ankles. Then a strip of the tape was placed over her mouth, and finally a pillowcase pulled over her head and held there with a wrap of tape around her neck.

Amanda Law, her head still covered by the pillowcase, knew that she was in some sort of house not too far from the hospital. She had tried to track the direction and distance the van had driven her since she’d been abducted, but had become pretty disoriented after the first four or five turns. On two of the turns, the driver had taken them so fast that she’d rolled around on the open back floor, and that had really thrown off her sense of direction.