TWENTY

There was a long silence, and then Matt said carefully, "The roads are a mess. Maybe he stopped to pull somebody out of a ditch. He has chains in that Jeep of his, and a winch. That's probably it. I'll send a patrol car out that way."

"He would have called. He would have called one of us."

"Maybe he hasn't had time. Don't make yourself crazy before we know if there's a reason."

Cassie's throat was so dry, she could hardly swallow. "I'm coming to town," she said.

"Cassie, listen to me. I wasn't kidding about the media. There are three news vans parked in front of the station, and the place is crawling with press. You do not want to be here."

"Matt – "

"You stay put. I'll check it out and call you the minute I know something."

"Hurry," she whispered. "Please hurry."

For an endless hour Cassie paced the floor and bit her nails, her imagination going wild. Even though she knew it would be impossible, she tried to reach out to Ben, telling herself it simply wasn't conceivable that something could have happened to him without her knowing about it. She would have felt it, surely.

All she felt was terror, and it was all hers.

When Matt's cruiser pulled up in her driveway, Cassie knew the news would be bad. Numb with dread, she went out onto the porch to meet Matt and Bishop, and their faces told her that her instincts were right.

"He's not dead," she said.

"No, he's not dead. At least – we don't think so." Matt took her arm and led her back into the house, and the physical contact made her acutely aware of his worry.

Cassie sat down on the sofa, staring from one man to the other. "What do you mean, you don't think so?"

Matt sat down beside her. "We found the Jeep but not Ben. It looks like he stopped to clear a fallen tree from the road. Idiot. The Jeep could have made it over easily. He was thinking about whoever came along behind him."

"I don't understand," Cassie said. "If he wasn't with the Jeep, then where is he? What happened?"

From his position on his feet near the fireplace, Bishop said, "There were tire tracks showing another vehicle came up behind his. And that tree didn't come down naturally."

"You mean – some kind of trap?"

Matt nodded. "We think so, Cassie. It looks like someone else stopped, ostensibly to help Ben. Then grabbed him, probably after knocking him out. There's – We found a little blood at the scene." Quickly he went on. "I have some of my people crawling all over the scene, and I sent for the tracking dogs, but I'm not expecting them to pick up much of a trail. Back at the station they're pulling files and cross-checking to see if we can come up with anybody who might have had an especially strong grudge against Ben."

Cassie tried to concentrate. "Who? Who would have done something like this?"

"Like any other prosecutor and former judge, Ben's made his share of enemies, and while any of them might have run him off the road, setting a trap like this is way beyond what I'd expect. This was… I don't know… personal somehow." Matt exchanged a glance with Bishop, then said, "We found something on the front seat of the Jeep."

"What?"

Matt reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a plastic evidence bag. Inside was a single red rose, painstakingly fashioned from tissue paper.

"Oh, my God," Cassie whispered.

The headache had lessened to no more than a dull throb, and the blood had dried on the side of his face, but Ben still felt lousy. Every time he turned his head too fast, dizziness swept over him and nausea churned in his stomach, and shouting a few times in the vain hope somebody other than his captor would hear had earned him nothing except more pain and queasiness. Cold and stiff, he kept flexing his fingers in the hope of warding off total numbness and in the effort to loosen the ropes binding his wrists to the arms of the chair where he sat.

He had studied every inch of the room, and there wasn't much to see. It was mostly barren, the two windows heavily curtained, the ancient carpet on the floor stained and threadbare. One other chair sat by the closed door. There was a fireplace where a low fire burned and took the edge off the chill; the only other light came from an incongruously elegant torchere between the windows.

So all he could say for sure about where he was being held was that there was some electricity, even if it wasn't being wasted on heat. That and his present position told him his captor wasn't much concerned about the well-being of his hostage. The iron chair Ben was tied to was dead center in the room and bolted to the floor, and several attempts had convinced him it would take more than muscle to budge it. He was glad his wrists were tied to each arm of the chair rather than behind his back, but if the position was more comfortable, it didn't provide extra leverage to dislodge the chair.

He thought he had loosened the ropes a bit though. Unless that was only wishful thinking.

The initial shock of finding himself helpless had finally passed, and he was left with anger and bewilderment; fear, he thought, would undoubtedly come later. What occupied his mind in those first long minutes of silence was the question of who hated him enough to do this.

He had a hazy memory of stopping the Jeep to clear away a tree fallen across the road, but nothing beyond that. He could only assume that someone had come up behind him and hit him with something heavy.

But who?

He had put away a few people in his time, but Ben couldn't think of anyone with a resentment powerful enough to arrange his kidnapping. The timing also struck him as extremely odd; with virtually everyone in the county overwhelmingly relieved by the capture of a serial killer, who would be concentrating on old grudges?

He kept working to loosen the ropes, taking advantage of being alone in the room because he had a fair idea that wouldn't last long. And it didn't.

When the man walked into the room a few minutes later, pushing some kind of rolling cart covered with a white cloth, Ben's first realization was that he was a total stranger. He was a medium-sized man on the wiry side, not particularly tall or particularly powerful in appearance, with straight hair-colored hair and the pasty skin of someone who didn't spend much time outdoors. The only unusual physical characteristic Ben noticed was that he had incongruously large hands and feet, both of which lent him a slightly ludicrous air. His features were regular, even pleasant, and he wore a small half-smile.

It was the smile that made Ben suddenly, acutely, aware of the chill in the room.

"Hello, Judge. That's what they call you, isn't it? Judge?" His voice was deep, the tone amiable.

"Some do." All his instincts told Ben to hold on to both his wits and his temper, to keep his body relaxed and his own voice calm. But the hair on the back of his neck was standing straight out.

"Oh, I think most do. And I think you like it." "What do I call you?" Ben asked. The man smiled, revealing even white teeth. "What is that thing you see on T-shirts everywhere these days? Bob's wife, Bob's boss, Bob's brother. Just call me Bob."

"Okay, Bob. Should I know what it is I've done to piss you off?"

"Should – but don't." He got the chair that was by the door and placed it in front of Ben a few feet away, beside the covered cart, and sat down. The picture of relaxed interest, he clasped his big hands together in his lap and continued to smile pleasantly at his captive. "Do we play a guessing game?" "Bob" shook his head. "Oh, I'm quite willing to tell you, Judge. That's the whole point of this, after all. No one should ever die without knowing why." "So tell me."

"The oldest male game in the world, Judge. Rivalry." "I see. So what are we competing for?"