Jack says, “So what exactly did Shane say?”

“According to Dane, he said, ‘Kendall Square. Behind Dumpster. My laptop. Jack will know.’”

“He said I’d know, huh?”

“Does it ring a bell?”

“I recall the Dumpster. It was in the vicinity when I picked him up in Kendall Square. But if he left his laptop behind the Dumpster, somebody will have found it by now. Has to be hidden somehow.”

I can’t help saying, “Well, duh.”

“I’m thinking out loud, Alice,” he snaps. “Give me a break.”

“Sorry. Can I sit up now?”

“Yeah. And fasten your seat belt, please.”

We’ve made it to Storrow Drive. Jack Delancey has the skills of a NASCAR driver, and is putting them to good use on the curving, lane-switching highway that hugs the Charles River. If there’s anybody attempting to follow us, they have my sympathy. Vroom, vroom, then we’re somehow off Storrow and crossing the river into Cambridge before my brain can quite catch up with Jack’s expert maneuvering.

“Whoa doggies,” I say, sighing with relief as we finally begin to reenter earth orbit.

“Whoa doggies? Who are you, Annie Oakley?”

“Maybe. Is she a babe?”

“Sort of. Annie Oakley was a famous sharpshooter in a Wild West show. Shot a cigarette out of her husband’s mouth.”

“Great idea,” I say. “Wish I’d thought of it.”

“Yeah, well,” says Jack, who’s been hitched and unhitched so many times that he knows his way to the barn, so to speak.

He swings onto Cardinal Medeiros Avenue, keeping slightly below the limit, and slows further as we enter Kendall Square. Not a lot going on here. Harvard Square, Central Square, those are the action areas in the People’s Republic of Cambridge. Kendall is a sleepy backwater, quiet and somehow dignified, despite being only a few blocks from the MIT campus. Jack pulls around, just off the square, and parks a few yards from where the train tracks cross Binney Street.

“There,” he says, indicating a battered green Dumpster behind a plumbing supply warehouse. “Are you clear?”

I’m scanning the area. We seem to be the only living beings on this particular block. “Looks clear, but I don’t have your eyes.”

“Give yourself credit, kid. You spotted the first tail.”

“Lucky.”

He shakes his handsome head. “Luck wasn’t involved. Your gut told you to look for them. What’s your gut say now?”

“Time to make the donuts,” I say, opening the door.

Jack looks over the top of the rental at me. “I heard about that. Save one for me.”

We cross the deserted street to the Dumpster. Have a peek over the rusty edge. Emptied recently.

“Okay, here I am,” Jack says. “Waiting for me.”

He means he’s putting himself in Shane’s place, hiding behind the Dumpster until his good friend Jack Delancey arrives like the cavalry and they proceed with the fun and games of blowing up an innocent vehicle in the vicinity of Shane’s motel room.

He crouches, reaches out and sifts a few bits of gravel, eyes surveying the limited landscape. The Dumpster, a chain-link fence, the tracks, a nearby warehouse. I back away, not wanting to disturb his line of sight. He puts his cheek to the ground, eyeballing the underside of the Dumpster. Dismisses that particular possibility, and stands up, dusting his knees. Question: How can a guy crouch in the gravel and still look so immaculate?

Jack nods to himself and begins to probe along the fence, where pieces of weather-beaten cardboard have escaped from the Dumpster and been blown into the chain links, stirred by the slow passage of trains, or gusts of wind. At a place where the chain has been partially separated from the galvanized fence pole, he slips through to the other side. Walking slowly, looking down, nudging aside thick hunks of rain-soaked cardboard.

A hundred feet or so from the road, in an area alongside the tracks where the tufts of grass are knee-high, he looks back at me and flashes a beautiful white smile that makes him look about twelve years old.

I’m thinking, go, Jack, do it, think like Shane, but he doesn’t need any encouragement from me. He circles around like a dog preparing to lie down. Then he bends gracefully at the waist, hooks his right hand in something and stands up, showing me the find.

A laptop carrier, clotted with tufts of dirt and bits of grass.

If the boy wonder was any more amped his fauxhawk would explode. He’s had quite a day so far, leading tails around the city, and now back home at his bench, doing his thing with the recovered laptop.

“This could be the mother lode,” Teddy says, lifting the lid of Randall Shane’s small 13-inch MacBook Pro. “Let’s see if she boots.”

We’re gathered in the command center—everybody but Dane, still holding vigil at the hospital—more or less standing over Teddy’s narrow shoulders, watching with keen anticipation as he presses the power button.

There’s a low-key dong and the screen illuminates, soon followed by the gray Apple logo in the center.

“System loading,” Teddy says, hushed.

Twenty-eight seconds later—by his count—he’s trolling for downloaded video files.

“I’ll start with the most recent,” he says, selecting from a pop-up menu. “This was attached to an email that originated from [email protected]. I’m assuming that’s the professor.”

“Bingo,” says Naomi, almost before the video-player image has a chance to form on the screen.

A little boy on Harvard Bridge, looking into the camera with what could be fear or nervous anticipation, hard to say. A little boy, possibly Eurasian, maybe five years old, with a mop of thick dark brown hair in a bowl cut, straight across his forehead. Intelligent, wary eyes glancing upward and to the side. The camera zooms back to reveal a skinny Caucasian woman holding the child’s hand. She has a similar, wary look when her eyes flick nervously at the camera. She says something but we can’t hear it, and then the clip ends abruptly.

Teddy runs it again—the whole clip lasts a mere seven seconds—and I start to take in some of the details. For instance the child and the woman are close to the bridge rail, facing south, with the Cambridge shore behind them.

“Sound?”

“There’s an open audio track,” Teddy says, tapping a finger on the screen, indicating a graphic. “No volume. My guess, this was recorded with a cell phone. I’ll run lip recognition software, see if we can figure out what she’s saying.”

“She’s saying, ‘where do we go?’” I tell him.

Teddy reruns that segment several times, and we study her moving lips.

“Alice is right, it fits,” Naomi says, nodding.

“‘Where do we go?’” Jack says, musing. “Like she has no real idea what’s going on, or what’s supposed to happen next, or why they’re in that particular location.”

“Who’s shooting this, do you think?” Naomi asks.

“Not Shane,” says Jack. “She’s frightened, or at the very least uneasy. So is the boy. Kids don’t respond to Shane with fear. Quite the opposite.”

“The woman isn’t his mother, obviously,” Naomi says. “Is she in league with the kidnapper?”

Jack shrugs. “Run it again, please.”

We see it all again. Close-up on little Joey, then a shaky pullback revealing a slender, nervous-looking woman clinging to the boy’s hand.

“He’s not afraid of her,” Naomi says. “He’s not trying to get away. See how he leans in her direction? She’s his caregiver.”

“Like a nanny?”

Boss lady shrugs. “Like someone who knows how to make a child trust her.”

“This is real,” I say. “She’s worried for the boy’s safety.”

“Maybe.”

“If she’s in league with the kidnappers, why show her face? Why not keep it close on the boy?”

Naomi, looking thoughtful, gives me a nod of approval. “Good point. This was done with a purpose. Teddy? Check Shane’s search history, his email. Who, if anybody, did he search for or contact after downloading this video?”