The house was a modest, dirty-white ranch with a detached garage; the garage door was open. It was more like five blocks from Cherries, than three, but also made sense for a runner, Lucas thought. Joe Mack had threaded around houses to stay out of sight as long as possible, then made a long hard zig downhill to his left. THE TEACHER'S name was Marti Stasic. MacBride's daughter, four-year-old Stacy, a tiny black-haired girl with a smudge of tears under her eyes, held on to one of Stasic's index fingers.

Stasic said, "She was never late. Never. We had Brenda for two years, and now Stacy for almost two, and in all that time… never."

She said that she'd personally driven Stacy back home because she was afraid that "something had happened" to Jill MacBride. "I was almost afraid to come in the house."

Marcy asked, "Was the garage door open when you got here?"

"Yes, it was. That's… well, it looked to me like she left in a hurry, like she was running late to the school. So I called there before I called you, but she still hadn't shown up." She glanced down at Stacy: "I just hope… you know."

The other daughter was still in school, first grade. Grace said, "We'll get somebody over there when school gets out, if we haven't found her."

Stacy asked Lucas, "Where's my mom?"

"We're looking for her, honey," Lucas said, and he touched the top of her head with his fingertips, and felt the anger starting to build. To Stasic: "What about Mr. MacBride?"

"Jill and Frank are divorced. He has an apartment over in Minneapolis, I guess. I know he comes to see the kids pretty often," Stasic said.

Stacy said, "Where's Mom?" and she started to cry again.

Lucas said to Marcy, "Can you…"

Marcy nodded: "Right now," and she stepped away with her phone. To Stasic: "Frank MacBride? Do you know where he works?"

"He works for the federal government, but I don't know what he does. I really don't know him very well," Stasic said.

Marcy talked to somebody in Minneapolis, and finished by saying, "I want to hear back inside of ten minutes. I mean, like now."

Grace asked, "You need to check anything here? Inside?"

Lucas shook his head: "No-you guys have been through the house, right?"

"Top to bottom." He tipped his head and said, "C'mere."

Lucas followed Grace out the door and around the house. The snow was thin and hard, crunchy, with strips of frozen grass showing through. "Look." Grace pointed at a single line of footprints in the crusty snow, coming across the backyard from the house behind it.

"Okay," Lucas said. "Don't let anybody get near them: we'll want some photos, and some crime-scene guys. I'll make the call."

"Getting nasty," Grace said. LUCAS AND MARCY left, and as they were going, they both turned back to look at the kid, and then walked away. "If Joe Mack did anything to that little girl's mom, I'll kill him," Lucas said. He was not joking. He said, "Keep that under your hat."

Marcy said, "Listen, it wasn't us. We were talking to him, had him right there, and he runs. That's crazy. He just outran us. It happens. It's like… I don't know what it's like."

"Ah, man," Lucas said. "I was just thinking that. How many people you got? How many can we put on it?"

They ran through the resources, and Marcy asked, "What about Lyle Mack? No way his brother was in this deep and Lyle didn't know about it. I got the feeling he's the brains behind the operation, whatever brains there are."

"I don't want to mess with Lyle at this point," Lucas said. "I want him sneaking around. Why don't we get your guy, and Martin, and put them on Lyle? See where he goes and who he talks to. At least for the rest of the day."

She nodded: "Let's do that. What else?"

"Well, I'm gonna stop downtown at Macy's and see if anybody who looks like Joe Mack bought a coat. Get a guy calling around to the cab companies to see if anybody picked him up. Get the highway patrol and all the local agencies looking for MacBride's van. There's a chance we'll need some DNA, so we get a warrant for Joe Mack's apartment, or wherever, and get what we can, and start processing it. See if we can find anything from the hospital robbery."

"That works," she said.

They rode along in silence for a while, and then Lucas said, "The longer we go without hearing from MacBride, the more likely it is that he killed her. Goddamnit. Goddamnit." BARAKAT KNEW he had to stay down, at least for a while. He'd nearly killed himself the night before with the orgy of cocaine, to say nothing of the McDonald's meal afterward. One of the other docs asked him if he was ill, when he came in, and he mentioned the burgers. "All I wanted was a falafel," he said, with a sickly grin.

His body felt as though somebody had beaten him with a broomstick. He felt old, creaky in the joints, and like there might be something wrong with his heart rhythm. When he got up in the morning, he'd taken a couple of quick snorts, and then resolutely put the rest of the coke back in the shoe.

He got to the hospital an hour before his shift began, went to the reference library, got an open computer, went to the Internet and began searching for Weather Karkinnen's home address.

He got a hundred and twelve hits on Google, and all but a handful of them referred to Weather; Karkinnen was not a common name. He crunched through the listings: papers, reports, civic honors. And way, deep down, from years back, a report of a shoot-out at Hennepin General Hospital, Karkinnen taken hostage by members of the Seed, freed with a single shot by a sniper.

Barakat recoiled. How could that be? The Seed? The same gang? He looked for other stories about the shoot-out. Never found an address, but found a reference to her husband, who'd set himself up as bait for the sniper in the hospital. A police officer?

He switched his search to "Lucas Davenport" and got more than four thousand hits. He read through the length of Davenport's career: the man was a killer, and controversial, but somehow had climbed into an influential post with the state police.

They were hunting the wife of a state police investigator… and a killer.

He was still working through the files when Lyle Mack called. He answered on the way to the library door, and in the hallway, hissed, "Are you insane? You can't call me-"

"I'm on a safe phone, I'm in my garage. We've got big problems. The cops are all over us, and that dumb shit brother of mine ran. They don't know anything, I don't think, but he kidnapped a woman when he was on the run."

"Kidnapped… Kidnapped?"

"He was scared and he was running, and the cops don't know he took her. At least, they can't prove it."

"What do you mean, can't prove it? She'll tell them." Silence from Lyle Mack, and Barakat caught on: "Oh, no, no. Oh…"

"Listen. We got one chance," Lyle Mack said. "We've got to nail down that woman doctor. We're looking for information…"

"I'll give you some information," Barakat said. "She's the wife of a state police officer. If we touch her, they'll never give up. Never give up."

There was another long moment of silence, and then Lyle Mack said, "We don't have any choice at this point. Do you have her address?"

"No, but I didn't look for Davenport-that might be her married name," Barakat said.

More silence, then, "You're not joking with me."

Barakat: "Of course I'm not joking, you idiot. Why would I joke? This whole insane program-"

"Davenport is one of the investigators on the case," Lyle Mack said. "He was here. I just talked to him."

Barakat's jaw flapped, but no sound came out, until he managed, "Did you know? The Seed and Davenport?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The Seed took Weather Karkinnen hostage, trying to assassinate Davenport. He had your man shot by a sniper. They killed… the police killed… five or six Seed members."