Eric Lustbader - First Daughter

"Good," Carson said. "One more thing. I must insist on a Secret Service detail."

"I understand how you feel, sir," Jack said, thinking their presence might not be a big problem, but it would have to be dealt with. "Just so you know, right now seeing a detail isn't going to be good for Alli. I need her to open up about what happened while she was in captivity. Feeling hemmed in is going to make that job more difficult than it already is."

There was silence on the other end of the line while Carson mulled this over. "All right, a compromise, then. I want them on the roads with you. They'll exit their vehicle only in case of an emergency."

"And then, sir, I'd like to pick her permanent detail. I've a couple of people in mind. I don't want a repeat of what happened at Langley Fields."

"You've got it, Jack, we're on the same page there," Carson said. "Now let me settle matters with Dr. Saunderson."

ALLI TURNED when Jack emerged from Emily House. She'd been standing on the veranda, watching the guards crisscross the lawns at random intervals. He saw the anticipation in her face, but also the fear.

"Well?"

Jack nodded, and immediately relief flooded her face.

On the way to his car, she said, "I want to sit in the backseat."

Jack understood immediately. On the way back to Washington, he kept one eye on the road, one on the rearview mirror, checking on the vehicle carrying the two-man Secret Service detail, and on Alli.

"Tell me where she was sitting," Alli said.

He knew she meant Emma. "To your right, just a little more. Okay, right there."

Alli spent the rest of the drive in that position, her eyes closed. A certain peacefulness settled over her, as if she had been transported out of time and place. Then, with a jolt, he realized that her near trance-like state reminded him of what had stolen over him after he'd killed Andre in the library. And he wondered whether he and Alli were two tigers, whether it was now his turn to lead her into the forest.

THE OLD wood-frame house stood as it always had at the end of Westmoreland Avenue, just over the border in Maryland. The house and its attendant property had resisted the advances of time and civilization. The huge oak tree still rose to a height above the roof; there was still a bird's nest in its branches outside Jack's bedroom. The forested area was, if anything, thicker, more tangled.

It was to Gus's house he took Alli. His home, the place Sharon had refused to move into, rejecting his past. In fact, she couldn't understand why he didn't sell it, use the proceeds to pay for Emma's tuition at Langley Fields rather than taking out a second mortgage on their house. "You own that horrid old thing free and clear," she'd said. "Why not just get rid of it and be done with it?" She hadn't understood that he didn't want to be done with it. Just as she hadn't understood that the house and property had been a place he'd taken Emma and, quite often, Molly Schiltz, when the girls were younger. They adored climbing the oak tree, where they lolled in the crotches of its huge trunk; they loved playing hide-and-seek in the wild, tangled woodland behind the house. They'd spread out like sea stars on the huge living room sofas, listen to Gus's old LPs-Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, James Brown, whose over-the-top stage antics they imitated so well after Jack showed them the electrifying concert video of him performing at the Apollo in Harlem.

On his way up the front steps, Jack noticed the Secret Service vehicle parked down the block, in front of the neighboring house. From that vantage point, the detail had an ideal view of the front and side of the house.

Jack padded into the kitchen, put the Chinese takeout on the counter. When he returned to the living room, he went over to the old stereo, selected a vinyl disc, put it on the turntable. A moment later, Muddy Waters began to sing "Long Distance Call."

Alli began a slow circuit, stopping here and there to peer at a photo, a book, a row of album covers. She ran her fingertips over an old guitar of Gus's, a stack of Jack's individually cased Silver Age comics of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and Dr. Strange. His stacks of videocassettes of old TV shows.

"Wow! This place is exactly the way Emma described it."

"She seemed to like it here."

"Oh, she did." Alli looked through the cassettes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Sea Hunt, Have Gun - Will Travel, The Bob Newhart Show . "She liked to come here when you weren't here. To be alone."

"What did she do here?"

Alli shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe she listened to music; she was nuts about the iPod you gave her. She took it with her everywhere. She made playlists and listened to them all the time." She put the cassettes aside. "She never told me what she did here. See, she had secrets from everyone, even me."

Jack, watching her, experienced a piercingly bittersweet moment, because as happy as he was to have her here, her presence-in a way that was most immediate, most painful-served to remind him of what he could have had with Emma. At the same time, he was overcome with a feeling of protectiveness toward her.

It had taken him some time after Emma's death to realize that the world had changed: it would never again feel safe, never have the comfort it had held when Emma was alive. Its color had changed, as if cloaked in mourning.

And there was something else. Through Alli, he was coming closer to Emma, he was beginning to understand that he and his daughter were not so very different. It seemed that Emma knew how similar they were, but Emma being Emma, she needed to go her own way, just as he had when he was her age. All at once, he experienced a jolt of pure joy. It seemed to him that he and Emma would have come together again, that they would have reunited, perhaps as soon as the day she had called him. She was coming to see him, after all. What had she wanted to tell him?

"Abbott and Costello." Alli was holding a cassette aloft. "Can we watch this? Emma talked about them, but I've never seen them."

Shaking himself out of his reverie, Jack turned on the TV, slid the cassette in the slot. They watched "The Susquehanna Hat Company" bit until Alli laughed so hard, she was crying. But then she didn't stop crying, not when the bit was over or when Jack popped out the tape. She just cried and cried, but when Jack tried to hold her, she shied away. He left her alone for a bit, going upstairs, sitting in Gus's old room, which, now that the bed was gone, he could bear to be in. He spent time thinking of Ronnie Kray, trying to imagine him, trying to imagine what a serial killer could want with Alli. Had he meant to kill her? If so, he'd had plenty of time to slip his filed-down paletta into her back. Had he meant to torture her before he killed her? If so, there was no sign that he'd begun. Besides, torture wasn't part of Kray's MO. And if there was one thing Jack had learned in dealing with criminals-even the cleverest ones-it was that once established, an MO never changed. The same aberrant impulse that drove a person to kill another human being also ensured it be done the same way every time, as if it were a kind of ritual of expiation.

So, to sum up, at great jeopardy to himself, Kray had abducted Alli Carson from the grounds of Langley Fields. If it wasn't to kill her or to torture her, then what was his motive? And why had he abandoned her? Had they been lucky, had he simply been shopping for supplies when he and Nina raided the house? Could he have been tipped off? But how, and by whom? The more Jack worked the puzzle over, the more convinced he was that Alli was the key. He had to get her to talk.

When he came downstairs, she was sitting on the sofa.

"Sorry I freaked out," she said.

"Forget it," Jack said. "You hungry?"

"Not really."

"Let's have something anyway." Jack padded into the kitchen. Alli was right behind him. She helped him open the cartons, spoon out the food onto plates. Jack showed her where the silverware was, and she laid out neat place settings.