“It was filed by BioGen Research Incorporated of Westview Village. I can’t read the complaint online. But you’re showing up as a failure to appear.”

“Appear when?”

“Yesterday.”

“Was I served?”

“Indicates you were.”

“I wasn’t,” Alex said.

“Shows you were.”

“So, is there a contempt citation? A warrant for my arrest?”

“Nothing’s showing. But the online lags up to a day, so there might be.”

Alex flipped the phone shut.

Jamie said, “Are you going to be arrested?”

“No, honey. I’m not.”

“Then can I go back to school after lunch?”

“We’ll see.”

Her apartment building,on the north side of Roxbury Park, looked quiet in the midday sun. Alex stood on the other side of the park and watched for a while.

“Why are we waiting?” Jamie said.

“Just for a minute.”

“It’s been a minute already.”

“No, it hasn’t.”

She was watching the man in coveralls, going around the side of the house. He looked like the meter reader for the utility company. Except that he was big, with a bad wig and a trimmed black goatee that she had seen somewhere before. And the meter readers never came to the front. They always entered from the back alley.

She was thinking that if this guy was a bounty hunter, he had the right to enter her property without warning and without a warrant. He could break down the door, if he wanted to. He had the right to search her apartment, to go through her things, to take her computer and inspect the hard drive. He could do whatever he wanted to do to apprehend a fugitive. But she wasn’t a-

“Can we go in, Mom?” Jamie whined. “Please?”

Her son was right about one thing. They couldn’t just stand there. There was a sandbox in the middle of the park, several kids, maids, and mothers sitting around.

“Let’s go play in the sandbox.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Yes.”

“It’s for babies.”

“Just for a while, James.”

He stamped his foot, and sat down on the edge of the sandbox. He kicked sand irritably while Alex dialed her assistant.

“Amy, I am wondering about BioGen, the company that bought my father’s cell line. We don’t have any motions pending, do we?”

“No. California Supreme Court is a year from now.”

So what’s going on?she wondered. What kind of suit was BioGen bringing now? “Call the judge’s clerk up in Ventura. Find out what this is about.”

“Okay.”

“Have we heard from my father?”

“Not for a while.”

“Okay.” It actually wasn’t okay, because she was now having the strong feeling that all this had to do with her father. Or at least with her father’s cells. The bounty hunters had brought an ambulance-with a doctor in the back-because they were going to take a sample, or do some surgical procedure. Long needles. She’d seen sunlight glint on long needles wrapped in plastic, as the doctor at the back of the ambulance shuffled things about.

Then it hit her:They wanted to take their cells.

They wanted cells from her, or from her son. She couldn’t imagine why. But they clearly felt entitled to take them. Should she call the police? Not yet, she decided. If there were a warrant for her failure to appear, they’d simply take her into custody. And then what would she do about Jamie? She shook her head.

Right now, she needed time to figure out what was going on. Time to get everything straightened out. What was she supposed to do? She wanted to call her father, but he hadn’t been answering for days. If these guys knew where she lived, they would know what kind of car she had, and-

“Amy,” she said, “how’d you like to drive my car for a couple of days?”

“The BMW? Sure. But-”

“And I’ll drive yours,” Alex said. “But you need to bring it over to me. Stop that, Jamie. Stop kicking sand.”

“Are you sure? It’s a Toyota with a bunch of dents.”

“Actually, that sounds perfect. Come to the southwest side of Roxbury Park, and pull over in front of a white Spanish apartment building with wrought-iron gates in front.”

Alex was unpreparedby temperament and training for the situation in which she now found herself. All her life had been spent in the sunlight. She obeyed the rules. She was an officer of the court. She played the game. She didn’t run yellow lights; she didn’t park in the red; she didn’t cheat on her taxes. At the firm, she was regarded as by-the-book, stodgy. She told clients, “Rules are made to be followed, not twisted.” And she meant it.

Five years earlier, when she discovered her husband was screwing around on her, she threw him out within an hour of learning the truth. She packed his bag and put it outside the door, and had the locks changed. When he came back from his “fishing trip,” she spoke through the door and told him to get lost. Matt was actually screwing one of her best friends-that was Matt’s way-and she never again spoke to that woman.

Of course, Jamie had to see his father, and she made sure that happened. She delivered her son to Matt at the appointed time, on the dot. Not that he ever returned her son on time. But it was Alex’s view that the world stabilized one person at a time. If she did her part, she felt eventually others might do theirs.

At work she was called idealistic, impractical, unrealistic. She responded that in lawyer-speak,realistic was another word fordishonest. She stuck to her guns.

But it was true that sometimes she felt she limited herself to the kinds of cases that did not challenge her illusions. The head of the firm, Robert A. Koch, had said as much. “You’re like a conscientious objector, Alex. You let other people do the fighting. But sometimes we have to fight. Sometimes, we can’t avoid conflict.”

Koch was an ex-Marine, like her father. Same kind of rough-and-tumble talk. Proud of it. She’d always shrugged it off. Now she wasn’t shrugging anything off. She didn’t know what was going on, but she felt pretty sure she couldn’t just talk her way out of it.

She was also sure nobody was going to stick a needle into her, or her son. To prevent that, she would do whatever had to be done.

Whateverhad to be done.

She replayed in her mind the incident at the school. She hadn’t had a gun. She didn’t own a gun. But she wished she had had one. She thought,If they were trying to do something to my son, could I have killed them?

And she thought,Yes. I could have killed them.

And she knew it was true.

A whiteToyota Highlander with a battered front bumper pulled up. She saw Amy sitting in the car. Alex said, “Jamie? Let’s go.”

“Finally!”

He started toward their apartment, but she steered him in another direction.

“Where’re we going?”

“We’re taking a little trip,” she said.

“Where?” He was suspicious. “I don’t want to take a trip.”

Without hesitation, she said, “I’ll buy you a PSP.” She had steadfastly refused for a year to buy him one of those electronic game things. But now she was just saying whatever came to mind.

“For real? Hey, thanks!” More frowns. “But which games? I want Tony Hawk Three, and I want Shrek-”

“Whatever you want,” she said. “Let’s just get in the car. We’re going to drive Amy back to work.”

“And then? Where are we going then?”

“Legoland,” she said.

The first thing that came into her mind.

Driving backto the office, Amy said, “I brought your father’s package. I thought you might want it.”

“What package?’

“It came to the office last week. You never opened it. You were at trial with the Mick Crowley rape case. You remember, that political reporter who likes little boys.”

It was a small FedEx box. Alex tore it open, dumped the contents on her lap.

A cheap cellular phone, the kind you bought and put a card in.

Two prepaid telephone cards.

A tinfoil-wrapped packet of cash: five thousand in hundred-dollar bills.

And a cryptic note: “In Case of Trouble. Don’t use your credit cards. Turn off your cell phone. Don’t tell anyone where you are going. Borrow somebody’s car. Page me when you are in a motel. Keep Jamie with you.”

Alex sighed. “That son of a bitch.”

“What is it?”

“Sometimes my father annoys me,” she said. Amy didn’t need to hear details. “Listen, today’s Thursday. Why don’t you take a long weekend?”

“That’s what my boyfriend wants to do,” she said. “He wants to go to Pebble Beach and watch the old car parade.”

“That’s a great idea,” Alex said. “Take my car.”

“Really? I don’t know…what if something happened to it? I got in an accident or something.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alex said. “Just take the car.”

Amy frowned. There was a long silence. “Is it safe?”

“Of course it’s safe.”

“I don’t know what you’re involved in,” she said.

“It’s nothing. It’s a mistaken-identity thing. It’ll be worked out by Monday, I promise you. Bring the car back Sunday night, and I’ll see you in the office Monday.”

“For sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Amy said, “Can my boyfriend drive?”

“Absolutely.”