"Is he dead?" the boy asked, stepping out of the shadows. He stood beside her, his hands trembling. The cane slipped out of his grip and dropped to the floor. It made a lonely, hollow sound that Teri didn't think she would ever forget.

"I don't think so," she said. "Are you all right?"

He nodded, shaken. He had stepped out of the shadows, fearlessly, with the courage and strength of a man. But suddenly he was a little boy again, frightened by what he had done, and by the significance of the man lying so motionless at the bottom of the stairs.

Teri picked up the cane, and swept the boy up in her arms. She kissed him on the cheek. "Whoever you are, you did great, honey. I know it was scary, but believe me, you did great. You did everything exactly right."

He stared over her shoulder at the man he had hit and he said nothing, and Teri couldn't afford to stop and discuss it. She had no idea how much time they had bought. Maybe minutes. Maybe only seconds. There was no way to tell how much time would pass before the man would sit up again and clear his head, then start up the stairs. For the moment, though, she suddenly became aware of the dark outline of the other man, the one called Jimmy. He was lying on the floor off to the right, apparently another victim of the boy's cane. She stepped over his outstretched arm.

"You're one brave little kid, you know that?"

A stream of cold air circulated down the hall. It poured in through the sliding glass door downstairs and slipped out through the office window just ahead of them. Teri thought she had probably left the window open the last time she had been up this way. The chill slid across her arms like the cold flesh of a snake and she realized she was trembling.

That's your fear, my dear lady.

I know.

Inside the office, the boy immediately wanted down. She sat him on the corner of the desk, and took an extra second to look him straight in the eye. "You sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine, Mom."

"Don't-"

"I know. I know. Don't call you Mom."

"You got it," she said, giving him an appreciative tap on the leg.

She turned her attention to the phone. It was a combination phone/answering machine, black, touch tone. Almost effortlessly, the receiver fell out of the cradle and into her grasp. It was a good thing, too. She didn't think she would have been able to find it in the darkness if she had let it get away from her. It was difficult enough trying to blindly fumble her way over the keypad. She dialed 911, raised the receiver to her ear, and realized with coldness that there was no dial tone.

The boy tugged on her sleeve.

"Just a minute," Teri said. She tapped the cutoff switch half-a-dozen times, praying that by some fluke of luck it might actually put her through to someone, maybe an operator, maybe the police, anyone. But there were no voices on the other end, and no dial tone, either. The line was dead.

"Listen," the boy said.

"What is it?"

"Listen."

[3].

The sound he had heard was the sound of someone climbing the stairs.

Apparently, Mitch was awake again, though it didn't sound as if he were feeling quite like himself just yet. Teri could hear the squeal of the handrail as he pulled himself up one plodding step at a time, stopping occasionally to catch a breath or to wait to catch his bearings. He sounded harmless from this distance, but she didn't like the idea that he was conscious again. And she didn't like the idea that he still had strength enough to even consider climbing the stairs.

"Mom..." the boy whispered.

"I hear him." It had not slipped by her unnoticed the fact that he had once again referred to her as Mom. But Teri suddenly found herself watching the walls closing in around them as if the house were a living, breathing thing and she let the reference pass unchallenged.

"The window!" the boy whispered.

"Huh?" She stared at him, still caught in her image of the house as their captor, then gradually the thought released her and she remembered a time when Gabe had been eight or nine and she had caught him climbing out this same window. It opened onto a decorative ledge across the front of the garage. Gabe had been playing Frisbee in the front yard and the disk had ended up on the roof, and he had somehow got it into his head that if he could climb out on the ledge, then he might be able to work his way around to the side of the house and up onto the roof. Teri had put a quick stop to that notion. But if they could drop from the ledge to the ground...

"Okay," she whispered.

She took the cane out of the boy's hands and motioned for him to get going before it was too late. Somewhere behind them-near the top landing, she thought-voices had broken out. One clearly belonged to the man who went by the name of Mitch. The other voice-a groggy, unintelligible moan-she assigned to the man named Jimmy, who had apparently fought his way up from unconsciousness and was feeling the full effects of a terrible headache just about now.

"Hurry up!"

The boy slipped through the opening feet first, then reached back to help.

"No, you go on," she said, handing him the cane. She waved at him, backhanded, and watched as he disappeared off into the shadows on the left. For an eleven year old, the jump from the side of the garage into the ivy bed at the north corner would be a piece of cake. For someone a little older...

Teri climbed onto the desk, not wanting to think about it. She pushed the window up against its stop, as wide as it would go, wishing she had taken better care of herself the last couple of years. Cool night air blew across her face. She braced her hands against the window frame, the aluminum sash rough and pock-marked, and managed to get her left leg through the opening before someone grabbed her from behind.

"Where do you think you're going, Mrs. Knight?"

Mitch.

"Come on, now." He held her by the ankle, swinging her leg back and forth like an alley cat toying with its prey. "Come back in here and we'll see if we can start all over again, all right?"

"I'm going to fall," she said.

"No you aren't, Mrs. Knight. I've got you."

"Don't let go. Please."

"I won't. Just inch your way back in. You'll be fine."

With surprising effort, she managed to get her leg back inside and her body turned around. She scooted across the desk and hung her legs over the front edge, her heart pounding like an African drum in a Paul Simon song. Mitch leaned in, bracing himself with an arm on either side of her.

"There, that wasn't so bad, now was it?"

"Why don't you just take what you want and leave us alone?"

"We didn't come here to steal from you, Mrs. Knight."

"Then what do you want?"

"Your son."

"You mean the boy?"

"Yeah, the boy."

"Well, he's not my-" She had never intended to finish the sentence. Her fingers clamped around the edge of the desk for balance and in that moment, before the last word had come up from the back of her throat, she fired off a knee that sank deep into the man's crotch.

He stumbled back, bent over, teetering on the edge of an invisible line. Her shoe, which he had been holding in his right hand, slipped out of his grasp and fell to the floor, almost unnoticed. Mitch grabbed himself with both hands, his eyes squinting, his lungs struggling to draw the next breath.

Later, everything after that would become a blur of time. Teri found herself outside, standing at the edge of the garage, looking down on the patch of ivy they had planted the first spring after moving into the neighborhood. She had never been fond of heights, but she had never been terrified of them, either. She crouched on the narrow ledge until she was able to get both legs dangling over the edge. It was mostly a matter of trust after that. She closed her eyes, said a little prayer, and pushed off.

By the time she made it to the car, the boy was already there, waiting.

[4].

This was the call generated from a phone inside the house shortly after Teri Knight and her son had escaped: "We've got a spill."

"How bad?"

"Looks like a Code Red."

"Christ. What's the damage?"

"Both drums were identified and temporarily contained. We were unable to maintain possession, however. Current location and status are unknown."

"Any contamination?"

"Jeffcoat sustained trauma to the head. Kellerman mangled his hand."

"You need a cleanup?"

"Yes. Immediate."

"Degree of hazard?"

"Some breakage, mostly glass."

"Are you mobile?"

"Yes."

"Get out of there."

"We're on our way."

[5].

It was after midnight.

Teri fumbled a dime into the coin slot and followed it with two nickels. The number she wanted to call was circled in red ink on a page torn out of the local phone book. It belonged to Walter L. Travis, a man she hadn't seen in nearly four years.

She finished dialing as two young men walked past the phone booth and filed through the front door of the 7-Eleven. The boy, whom she was almost beginning to think of as her son now, waved at her from behind the foggy windshield of the car. Teri forced a smile and waved back.

They had been lucky to escape at all, and even luckier to have escaped with the car. If she hadn't been bothered by the headache when she had arrived home, she would have taken the time to park inside the garage. That would have put the car out of reach. And if Michael, her ex, hadn't always insisted on keeping a spare set of keys in a magnetic box in the wheel well, it wouldn't have mattered where she had parked.

The boy had been the one who had found the spare keys, and that had been the moment when she had begun to look at him a little differently. It didn't make any sense, of course, because Gabe had disappeared nearly ten years ago and he would be almost twenty-one now. But what about the man back at the house Mitch? He had said that he only wanted her son. And then there were the keys. How had the boy known about the keys?

It had all been an adventure for him once they had made it to the car and they were safely out of the neighborhood. He had turned to her, his face bright, his smile alive and asked almost enthusiastically, "What now?"

"I don't know," Teri had said, still shaking.

"Did you see that guy when he caught his fingers in the back door? I thought his eyes were gonna pop. Jeeze, that must have hurt." The boy climbed up on his knees and stared out the back window as if they had just finished a roller coaster ride and he wished he could go back and do it all over again. "Who do you think those guys were, anyway?"

"I don't know that, either."

"What do you think they wanted?"

You, Teri had thought at that moment. They wanted you.

She dropped her smile now and listened as the phone on the other end rang a fourth time. The ring was followed by a click and then the message: Hi, this is Walt. Sometimes I'm here, sometimes I'm not. Looks like this time you're outta luck. Leave a message at the beep.

The tape rolled another second or two, and beeped.

"Walt, it's Teri Knight. I need to talk to you. It's important. Unbelievably important. Um... it's a little after midnight now, if you happen to come in before-"

"Teri, good to hear from you."

"You're there."

"Yeah. Bad habit, hiding behind the machine. Sorry."

"No, that's okay. I'm just grateful you're there. I've been driving around in circles, trying to figure out what I should do next, who I might be able to call. I'm scared, Walt. I've never been so scared in my life." She gulped down the last word, her mouth dry, her throat raspy. "I need to see you."

"Name your time."

"Tonight."

"How about Denny's in forty-five minutes?"

"That would be wonderful," she said, taking in a deep breath. She stole a quick glance at the car, where the boy was hunched over the dashboard, a Big Gulp in one hand, the other hand apparently flipping through the stations on the radio. "There's something I should prepare you for, though. I've got someone with me who claims to be Gabe."

"Jesus, Teri, you found him?"

"I don't know. It's more like he found me."

There was a short pause on the other end, and she did her best not to analyze it. If she thought about it at all, she'd probably conclude that Walt was trying to decide if he wanted to believe her or not. A mother's sorrow was like a dream. It could take you places that never really existed. Teri had been trapped in her own sorrow for a long, long time now.

"Gabe's really back?" he finally said.

"Yeah, well, wait 'till you see him."

[6].

Walt hung up the phone, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. In front of him, on the kitchen counter, the Chicago Tribune was open to the Tempo section. It was the top newspaper on a stack of papers from across the country: the San Francisco Chronicle, the L.A. Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the San Jose Mercury News. Walt folded the Tribune into fourths and tossed it aside.

Gabriel Knight had come home.

Walt had been a lieutenant in the Juvenile Investigations Bureau when he had first been drawn into the Knight case. It had been his first day back after the death of his son, Brandon, who had battled leukemia for nearly eighteen months before finally succumbing. Walt had watched his son waste away to almost nothing in the end and then he had been handed the Knight case. Gabriel, it seemed, had done a disappearing act of his own. Maybe not as graphic, but certainly just as devastating for his parents as Brandon's death had been for Walt.