Where the h.e.l.l was she? She should have been back long before him.

But her apartment was still locked up tight. Frisco had gone out to check at least five times since he'd arrived. He'd even left a message on her answering machine, thinking she might phone in. He hadn't apologized--he'd need to do that in person. He'd simply told her that he was looking for her. Please call him.

"Okay," Harvard said, finishing hooking the computers and other equipment to Frisco's phone line. "We're all set. When this Dwayne calls, you keep him talking and we'll pinpoint his location in about forty seconds."

"When Dwayne calls. If Dwayne calls." Frisco couldn't keep his frustration from buzzing in his voice. "Dammit, I hate waiting."

"Gee, I forgot how much fun it was to work with the King of Impatience," Lucky said, coming in the door. Another man followed him. It was Ensign Harlan Jones, a.k.a. Cowboy--the hotheaded young SEAL who'd replaced Frisco in the Alpha Squad. He nodded a silent greeting to Frisco, no doubt subdued both by the seriousness of a kidnapped child and the strangeness of being in the home of the man whose place he'd taken for his own.

"Thanks for coming," Frisco said to him.

"Glad to be able to help," Cowboy replied.

Frisco's condo had never seemed so small. With eight large men and Thomas there, there was barely room to move. But it was good. It was like old times. Frisco had missed these guys, he realized. He just wished Natasha hadn't had to be kidnapped to bring them all together again.

And that had entirely been up to him. He'd been the one keeping his distance, pushing the squad away. Yeah, the fact that he wasn't one of them anymore stuck in his throat. Yeah, it made him jealous as h.e.l.l. But this was better than nothing. It was better than quitting "You got anything to eat?" Wes asked, heading for the kitchen.

"Hey, Frisco, mind if I crash on your bed?" Bobby asked, also not waiting for an answer before he headed down the hall.

"Who hit you in the face with a baseball bat?" Lucky asked Thomas, who'd remained silent and off to one side until now.

The kid was leaning back against the wall and he looked as if he should be sitting if not lying down. "Dwayne," he answered. "And it was the barrel of his gun, not a baseball bat."

"Maybe you should go home," Lucky suggested. "Take care of that--"

Thomas turned to give the other man a cool, appraising look. "Nope. I'm here until we get the little girl back."

"I think Alpha Squad..."

"I'm not leaving."

"... can probably handle--"

Frisco cut in. "The kid stays," he said quietly.

Blue stepped forward. "Your name's Thomas, right?" he said to the boy.

"Thomas King."

Blue held out his hand. "Pleased to meet you," he drawled. The two shook. "If you're going to be helping us, why don't I show you how some of this equipment works?"

Frisco sat down on the pink sofa next to Joe Cat as Blue and Harvard began giving Thomas a crash course in tracing phone calls. "I can't just sit here waiting," he said. "I've got to do something."

Wes came back out of the kitchen, having overheard Frisco's remark. "Why don't you make yourself a nice cup of hot tea," he teased in a lispingly sweet voice, "and curl up on your nice pink couch with your favourite copy of Sense and Sensibility to distract you?"

"Hey," Harvard boomed in his deep, subba.s.s voice. "I heard that. I like Jane Austen."

"I do, too," Cowboy interjected.

"Whoa," Lucky said. "Who taught you to read?"

The room erupted in laughter, and Frisco restlessly stood up, pushing his way out the door and onto the landing. He knew that humour was the way the men of Alpha Squad dealt with stress and a tense situation, but he didn't feel much like laughing.

He just wanted Natasha back.

Where was she right now? Was she scared? Had Dwayne hit her again? Dammit, if that b.a.s.t.a.r.d as much as touched that little girl...

Frisco heard the screen door open behind him and turned to see that Joe Cat had followed him.

"I want to go talk to my sister again," Frisco told the CO. "I think there's more to this than she's told me."

Cat didn't hesitate. "I'll drive you over. Just let me tell the guys where we're going."

Joe Catalanotto stepped back into Frisco's condo, then came back out, nodding to Frisco. "Let's go."

As they headed down to the parking lot, Frisco glanced back one last time at Mia's lifeless condo. Where was she?

Mia carried Tasha across the well-manicured lawn to the front door of the big Spanish-style house.

This was ludicrous. It was broad daylight, they were in the middle of a seemingly affluent, upper-middle-cla.s.s suburb. Down the street, several landscapers cleaned up a neighbour's yard. Should she scream for help, or try to run?

She did neither, well aware of that very large gun Dwayne Bell carried concealed in his pocket. If she had been alone, she might have risked it. But not with Natasha in her arms. Still, it gave her a chill to know that she could clearly identify the address where they'd been brought, and the man who'd brought them here.

"Shouldn't you have blindfolded us?" she asked as Dwayne opened the door.

"Can't drive if you're blindfolded. Besides, you're here as my guests. There's no need to make this more unpleasant than it has to be."

"You have a curious definition of the word guest, Mr. Bell," Mia said as Dwayne shut the door behind her. The inside of the house was dark with all the shades pulled down, and cool from an air conditioner set well below seventy degrees. She could hear canned laughter from a television somewhere in the big house. Tasha's arms tightened around her neck. "I've never held someone at gunpoint simply to invite them into my home. I think hostage is a more appropriate term."

"Actually, I prefer the word collateral," the overweight man told her.

A man appeared, walking toward them down the hall from a room that might've been a kitchen. His jacket was off and he wore a gun in a shoulder holster very similar to Frisco's. He spoke to Dwayne in a low voice, glancing curiously at Mia and Natasha.

"Have Ramon take care of it," Dwayne said, loudly enough for Mia to overhear. "And then I want to talk to you both."

There were at least two other men in the house-at least two of them carrying weapons. Mia looked around as Dwayne led them up the thickly carpeted stairs, trying to memorize the layout of the house, determined to gather any information that would be valuable for Frisco when he came.

Frisco would find them. Mia knew that as surely as she knew that the late-afternoon sun would soon slip beneath the horizon.

And then he would come.

"The stakes are higher than I thought," Frisco said tightly, coming out into the drug-and-alcohol rehab centre's waiting room. Joe Catalanotto rose to his feet. "Sharon didn't steal five thousand from Bell--she stole fifty thousand. She fudged his bookkeeping--didn't think he'd notice."

He headed for the door, toward the parking lot and Joe Cat's jeep.

"Can she pay it back?" Cat asked.

Frisco snorted. "Are you kidding? It's long gone. She used most of it to pay off some gambling debts and blew the rest on drugs and booze." He stopped, turning to Cat. "Let me borrow your phone. Sharon gave me the address where she used to live with Bell," he told Cat as he dialled the number of the cellular phone link they'd set up back at his apartment.

The line was picked up on the first ring.

"Becker here." It was Harvard.

"It's just me, Chief," Frisco said. "Any calls?"

"Nothing yet. You know we would have relayed it directly to you if there were."

"I've got an address I want to check out. It's just outside of San Felipe, in Harper, the next town over to the east. Have Lucky and Blue meet me and Cat over there, all right?" He gave Harvard the street address.

"I've got that location on my computer," Harvard told him. "They're on their way, soon as I print than out a map. You need directions?"

Cat was listening in. "Tell H. to send a copy of that map to the fax in my jeep."

Frisco stared at Joe Cat. "You have a fax machine in your jeep?"

Cat smiled. "CO privileges."

Frisco ended the call and handed the phone back to Cat. But Cat shook his head. "You better hold on to it. If that ransom call comes in..."

Frisco met his friend's eyes. "If that ransom call comes in, we better be able to trace it," he said grimly.

"And pray that we're not already too late. Sharon told me Dwayne Bell has killed in revenge for far less than fifty thousand dollars."

"No one's home," Lucky reported as he and Blue McCoy silently materialized alongside Cat's jeep, down the street from the house Sharon had lived in with Dwayne Bell.

"I went through a bas.e.m.e.nt window," Blue told Frisco and Joe Cat. "From what I could see from just a quick look around, Dwayne Bell doesn't live there anymore. There were kids' toys all over the place, and there was mail on the kitchen counter addressed to Fred and Charlene Ford. Looks like Bell moved out and these other folks moved in."

Frisco nodded, trying not to clench his teeth. It would've been too easy if Bell had been there. He'd known that coming out here was a long shot to start with.

Cat was looking at him. "What do you want to do?"

Frisco shook his head. Nothing. There was nothing they could do now but wait. "I want the phone to ring."

"He'll call and we will get Natasha back," Lucky said with far more confidence than Frisco felt.

Mia tried the window of the tiny bedroom where she and Tasha were being held. It was sealed shut. They wouldn't get out that way, short of breaking the gla.s.s. And even if they could break it without Dwayne and his goons hearing them, there was a long drop down to the ground.

Tasha sat on the bed, knees hugged tightly to her chest, her blue eyes wide as Mia made her way around the room.

The closet was minuscule--there was no way out there.

There were no secret doors, no hidden pa.s.sages, no air ducts in the walls or crawl s.p.a.ces underneath the throw rug. There was no hidden telephone with which she could make a furtive call for help, no gun in the dresser drawer that she could use to defend them.

The door was locked with a bolt on the outside.

They weren't going anywhere until Dwayne or his goons unlocked it.

There was nothing to do now but wait.

The phone rang.

They were halfway back to the condo, whan the cell phone in Frisco's pocket chirped and vibrated against his leg. Joe Cat quickly pulled the jeep over to the side of the road as Frisco flipped the phone open.

"Frisco."

It was Harvard. "Call's coming in," he reported tersely. "I'm linking it directly to you. Remember, if it's Bell, keep him talking."

"I remember."

There were several clicks, and then the soft hiss of an open line.

"Yeah," Frisco said.

"Mr. Francisco." It was Dwayne Bell's lugubrious voice. "You know who I am and why I'm calling, I a.s.sume."

"Let me talk to Tasha."

"Business before pleasure, sir," Bell said. "You have twenty-four hours to return to me the money that your charming sister stole. Fifty thousand, plus another ten in interest."

"It's going to take me longer than twenty-four hours to get together that kind of--"

"I'm already being very generous out of sentimentality for what Sharon and I once shared. It's nearly 6:00. If I don't have cash in hand by 6:00 p.m. tomorrow, I'll kill the girl. And if I don't have it by midnight, then I'll kill the child. And if you go to the police, I'll kill them both, and take your sister to prison with me."

"Whoa," Frisco said. "Wait a minute. What did you say? Both? The girl, then the child...?"

Bell laughed. "Oh, you don't know? Your girlfriend is a guest in my house as well as the brat."

Mia. h.e.l.l, Bell had Mia, too.

"Let me talk to her," Frisco rasped. "I want proof they're both still all right."

"I antic.i.p.ated that." He must have turned away from the phone because his voice was suddenly distant. "Bring them in."

There was a pause and a click, and then Mia's voice came on the line. "Alan?"

The sound was boomy and Frisco knew Bell had switched to a speaker phone. "I'm here," he said. "Are you all right? Is Tash with you?"

Lucky appeared silently outside Joe Cat's car window. As Frisco glanced at him, he pointed to his own cellular phone and signaled a thumbs-up.

Harvard had gotten the trace. They had a location.

"Yes," Mia was saying. "Listen, Alan. My parents have money. Go to them. Remember I told you they live near the country club in Harper?"

No, she'd told him her parents lived in Malibu.

"Just be careful of my dad--he's a little nuts, with all those guns he has in his collection, and his two bodyguards."

Harper. Guns. Two bodyguards. d.a.m.n, she had the presence of mind to tell him where they were and how many men there were guarding them.