“I’m glad you’re all right,” I tell him.

“We’ll get you an ambulance,” says John, leading the artist back toward the command post. “But we need to know everything you can tell us.”

“That’s Sarah! Oh, my God!”

The sound of screaming college girls is more piercing than a siren. Looking up at the window, I see a petite brunette pressed to the pane, the gun barrel huge beside her head.

“Get those students out of here!” Baxter yells to the SWAT agents.

John sits Wheaton down beneath an oak tree, and an agent wearing rubber gloves begins wiping blood from the artist’s face. Baxter, the SWAT leader, and I cluster around them.

“Did you see any other weapons besides the pistol?” John asks.

Wheaton takes the gauze pad from the agent and wipes the blood from his own lips. “No. But he has a bag with him.”

“A bag.” John looks back at me. “I didn’t see a bag in his cart at the Wal-Mart.”

“Under the magazine, maybe?”

A heavy beating sound ricochets off the face of the art center. The Huey on the quad is climbing into a hover fifty yards from the window behind which Gaines holds his hostage. Instant execution will soon be an option.

John raises his voice above the rotor noise. “Has Gaines said anything to you to indicate he’s guilty of the abductions?”

“No.” Wheaton’s long gray hair flies as he shakes his head.

“Has he mentioned Thalia Laveau?”

“He claims he knows nothing about her. He says you’re framing him. He said, ‘Those assholes need a patsy, and I’m it.’ He wanted cash. He has a painting I gave him as a gift, but he wants to get the most he can for that.”

“Did he know you called the FBI?”

“Probably.” Wheaton’s gloved hands are shaking, but I sense that he’s more frustrated than afraid. “But I had to go back up there. If I tried to get everyone out, he’d have heard me, and he might have panicked and done something crazy. Leon acts like he’s in control, but deep down he’s very unstable. The safest thing was to offer myself as a hostage.”

“That took guts,” John says, but the artist just shakes his head.

“Leon doesn’t want to shoot anybody, Agent Kaiser. He’s scared to death. If you give him a way out of this, he’ll take it.”

John looks skeptical. “Mr. Wheaton, sometime last night or this morning, Leon beat his girlfriend into a coma. Then he gagged her and left her for dead.”

A look of sadness comes over the artist’s face. “Good God. I met that girl.” The sadness is quickly replaced by a look of concern. “That’s still no reason to shoot him. He’s backed into a corner. Offer him a way out, then arrest him later.”

“I don’t know about that,” I say. “But Gaines may be the only person in the world who knows where Thalia Laveau is, or my sister and the rest of them.”

John looks over his shoulder at Lenz, who is angrily punching numbers into the commandeered cell phone. “Any luck?”

“He’s not answering.”

A look of puzzlement crosses John’s face; then he pulls his cell phone from his jacket. He must have felt rather than heard it ringing.

“Hello?” he yells, cupping his free hand around the earpiece. “Thanks. I’ll call you when we know more.”

He puts the phone back in his pocket and turns to Baxter. “Linda Knapp regained consciousness at the hospital. She said she threatened to tell the truth about Gaines’s alibis, and he went crazy. She has no idea where he went on any of the snatch nights.”

“Could someone help me stand up, please?” Wheaton asks. “I may have to be sick.”

Baxter pulls the artist to his feet. True to his word, Wheaton doubles over and vomits on the grass.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“There’s an ambulance on the way,” says Baxter.

“I’m fine,” says Wheaton. “Really. But I don’t think I want to see what’s going to happen next.”

John grimaces and pulls out his cell phone again. “What is it?… What?… Put out a citywide APB. Hell, statewide. And keep me posted.”

“What is it?” asks Baxter.

“Surveillance just lost Frank Smith.”

“What?”

“He went into the antiques show down at the convention center and disappeared.”

“Shit! What’s going on, John?”

“I don’t know. But we better get on top of it fast.” He looks at Wheaton. “We’ll have someone drive you home.”

“I’m just going to walk a bit, clear my head.”

Dr. Lenz appears and taps Baxter’s arm. “Gaines told me that if we don’t land one of our helicopters on the roof of the art center in five minutes, he’ll kill that girl and drop her out the window. He says he’s got another one up there.”

John looks at Wheaton. “You said there were two girls, didn’t you?”

Wheaton nods, then wobbles on his feet.

“I’ve got him,” I tell John. “Please just remember that Gaines may be the only one who knows what we need to know.”

John squeezes my arm, then leans down to me and says: “Stay in plain sight.”

As I lead Wheaton away, John addresses a group of black-clad men who remember their SWAT teammate Wendy Travis much too fondly to be objective in this situation.

“We may be looking at explosive entry,” he says. “I want every one of you to…”

I turn and catch up to Wheaton, who is walking aimlessly along the grass, parallel to the lane that runs in front of the Woldenberg Center.

“Leon really left that girl for dead?” he asks.

“I thought she was dead till I felt her pulse.”

He stops and looks back toward the art studio wing. “They’re not going to listen to us. They’re going to kill him.”

“They’re not as gung ho as you think.”

“Maybe not Kaiser. That’s why I called him. But the rest… I saw it in Vietnam. You put enough guns and soldiers into a situation like this, somebody’s going to fire.”

“I hope not. But we said our piece. Let’s find somewhere for you to sit down.”

The sound of a bullhorn reverberates across the quad, and Dr. Lenz begins addressing Gaines through the window glass.

“I guess he quit answering the phone,” I murmur.

“I don’t want to see this,” Wheaton says. “I’m going to go home.”

“You’re in no shape to drive. I’ll get a cop to drive you.”

“I’m really fine. But my keys are in the gallery with my bag, and I don’t think that cop is going to let me get them.”

He points to the low section of the building, where an FBI agent stands beneath the entrance arch. Wheaton’s keys are far from Leon Gaines. This is the backwater of the hostage scene.

“I’ll talk to him. You stay here.”

“Thank you. They’re on the floor in the center of the room. Right by my bag.”

I trot across the grass and wave to the agent as I come under the arch. “I need to get some keys for one of the hostages. They’re just inside the gallery.”

“Nobody goes in,” he says.

“You’ve got a radio. Call John Kaiser.”

The agent lifts his walkie-talkie and makes the call.

“Where’s Wheaton, Jordan?” asks John from his position forty yards away.

With exaggerated movements, I point out into the quad, where Wheaton has sat down on the grass.

“Go in with her,” John tells the agent. “But don’t let Wheaton go home yet. Bring him back to the command post. I’m sending an agent with him. We don’t know where Frank Smith is, and I don’t want anyone else kidnapped. No more surprises.”

“Copy,” says the agent. His face softens as he opens the door and holds it for me. “I’m Agent Aldridge, by the way.”

I walk into the gallery, my eyes drawn to the Tiffany stained-glass windows I saw the first time we were here.

“Through here,” I tell Aldridge, leading him through the makeshift plywood door that seals the gallery against nosy visitors. The access panel in the canvas circle is still open. I start to go through, but Aldridge pushes ahead of me.