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She walked into the parlor. Look at the great lengths he had gone to.

The food, the clothes, the bathroom, exercise equipment, books, videos and cassettes. The radio did not work; the TV did not work; there were no magazines or newspapers. So the point was clear, she was to amuse herself without knowing what was going on in the outside world.

But why? What harm could it do?

"Okay, what do we have?" Will said.

"A list of Jessica's old boyfriends," Detective Richard

O'Neal of the NYPD offered.

"Table it," Will said.

"This guy's someone from the outside. We've got our working profile--it's someone trained in electricity, someone who is or has worked for Con Edison and has access to the layouts of Manhattan buildings. None of Jessica's exes would know anything about that."

"Craig thinks it's someone Jessica knows," Alexandra said, referring to Craig Scholer, the crime-beat reporter who had come up from his paper in Washington, D. C. "He's tracking that same list. Detective O'Neal, as we speak."

"Rich," said the NYPD detective.

"Call me Rich."

"Craig's wrong," Will insisted.

"Leopold's someone from the outside.

Obsessed with Jessica, yes, but he's not someone at DBS. It's not someone she knows. "

"How can you be so sure?" Agent Debbie Cole asked.

"Someone she knows may well have hired that stranger to do the actual kidnapping."

Alexandra looked to Wendy, who was sitting quietly in the corner.

"I

think the possibility that someone involved with the kidnapping knows Jessica is quite high," the private detective said.

Silence.

Will sighed, running his hand through his hair.

"Okay, back to the stalker, then, Leopold. Do you agree that he's kidnapped her?"

"Who can say for sure?" Wendy asked, shrugging.

"Anybody could have left that note for Cassy."

"Hang on, hang on," Detective O'Neal said.

"Let's focus on Leopold for the moment, all right? We've got to start somewhere."

"} think we need to work on the premise that Leopold has kidnapped her," Agent Cole said.

"And I think Leopold is a complete stranger to Jessica," Will said.

"Well, whatever," the detective said, leaning forward over the conference-room table to slide some papers over to Will.

"Here's the Con Edison employee lists for the last ten years."

"Good."

"And I've got the list of every outside technical worker who has ever worked at West End," Alexandra said, heaving another pile of paper onto the table

"Great," Will said.

"Dr. Kessler can start crosschecking the lists."

Dr. Irwin Kessler, age seventy-four, was the scientific genius behind the Darenbrook Communications expansion into computer and satellite technology in the early 1980s. He was responsible for the two floors beneath the ground of the West End complex that represented the single largest electronic-information depository in the Northeast. From his organization, the conglomerate orchestrated the printing and distribution of one hundred seventy-six newspapers, twelve magazines, seventeen on-line research companies and united two hundred seven affiliate newsrooms across the U. S. and forty- three in foreign countries to form the DBS News and Information Service.

A refugee from Germany when Hitler took power, Dr. Kessler's most triumphant moment had been returning to East Berlin to cut the ribbon on the DBS News affiliate there after the Wall fell. He was a great man; his health, unfortunately, was not so great. Too much Rhine wine and Wiener schnitzel, Jessica always scolded the roly-poly little man.

"Dr. Kessler's taking a nap," Detective O'Neal said.

"Cassy said he's got a heart condition and we're not supposed to wake him up."

"Alexandra?" Will said.

Alexandra, looking at the Con Edison lists, glanced up.

"I'll start scanning them in a minute."

"I thought no one else was allowed" -Detective O'Neal began.

"What Cassy doesn't know won't hurt her," Alexandra said, looking up.

"You know how to run that star-wars rig?" Agent Cole said, amazed. The agent had toured West End, including the floors of technical equipment.

"Uh-huh," Alexandra said matter-of-factly, standing up.

"Sometimes we need to--well, expedite things." She turned.

"By the way. Rich, what was with our mailroom clerk? Cassy said you arrested him, but not for anything connected with this."

"We busted him for dealing dope."

"The guy with the one arm? Stevie?" Will frowned.

"He's been here from the beginning."

"Yeah, well, he's made a very nice living on the side here, too," Detective O'Neal said.

"So that's what Jessica meant," Alexandra said to herself.

"Listen," Agent Cole said, "I had another thought about those suspect lists. Someone around here mentioned that Jessica had her apartment renovated not long ago."

"I did," Alexandra said.

"It was about a year ago." , "I think we need to check that out," Agent Cole said.

"That's something we can get our guys on," Detective O'Neal offered.

"Alexandra," Will said, looking at his watch, "you j better get started on the computers. I'll get started with I Detective O'Neal" "Rich." ;

"With Rich on the renovation angle. Wendy, can you help?" I "Sure."

"Okay," Alexandra said, moving to the door.

"Let's see, I've got the Con Edison list, the contract workers 5 list"

-- :

"And now you've got the visitors log, too," Agent Cole announced, hefting an enormous stack of computer records and thumping it down on the table

Jessica set up the old wooden card table she had found in the parlor and opened one of the jigsaw puzzles. She popped in a videocassette--Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in Top Hat--and sat down at the card table facing the door. About halfway through the movie, she turned it off, went over to the cabinets to get some paper and pen, and sat down on the couch. Using the top of the puzzle as a lap board, she wrote:

Dear Leopold, I have a few questions-1) Could you tell me which twelve hours are day, and which are night so I can get on some kind of schedule in here?

2) Are you going to explain why I'm here?

3) Can you give me some kind of time line for how long I'll be here so I can plan my regimen?

4) Is there anything I can do to hasten my return home?

Yours, Jessica

She slipped the note under the locked door of the parlor, hoping it would go out to somewhere her captor would find it. Then she went back to her movie and her puzzle, feeling a little bit better.

There would be a regimen in this place, all right. She would eat, sleep, exercise, meditate and pray. And most of all, she'd get ready to do whatever it was going to take to get out of here.

ner eyes opened.

Jessica heard something and it was no scratching rat.

It was human. And it was the sound of a human being in terrible pain.

She sat up in bed, pushing the bedclothes to her waist. And listened.

Nothing.

She fumbled to find and turn on the bedside lamp. God. The red velvet and pink canopy and this whole place was like living in a nightmare.

And then that sound. A moan, definitely human, definitely awful. She jumped out of bed and walked over toward the fireplace. It was louder here. She stooped down to move the books and pushed the swivel ash grate.

This time she heard the moan clearly. It was coming through the ash grate. That meant someone was either down in the cellar or in another room that had a fire place on this same chimney. And that someone sounded like misery itself.

It sounded like a man. It couldn't be Leopold, could it? Sick or hurt?

Now there was a cry and it wrenched at her. Who ever this was, she would have to try to help. Or get

Leopold to help. She wished she knew the layout of this house.

Fear started to gnaw at her.

And then there was a strangled cry.

"Pssst, hey!" she whispered loudly into the ash chute.

"Hello!"

Silence.

"Are you all right?"

There was a whimper and it made Jessica's flesh crawl. Whoever this was, he was in very bad shape. And then there was a voice, very faint, male.

"Help me."

"It's okay, I'm here. I'll find you. I'll help you."

More whimpering.

Could it be a child?

No, it was a man. And he was delirious, and now he was making all kinds of horrible sounds. Jessica stood up and put her ear to the wall. Nothing. She opened the closet, pushed aside the clothes and pressed her ear up against the back wall. She could hear him. She stepped back, trying to look over the wall. She went back out and tried to move the bedside lamp closer so she could see.

The closet wall wasn't plaster like the other walls in the apartment;

it was plasterboard. The closet wasn't old, in fact; it had evidently been thrown up in some sort of reorganization of space. Judging by the width of the closet and the plaster molding along the top of the side walls, it appeared as though the closet might have been part of a hallway leading to another room, perhaps a sitting room. And maybe, she figured, whatever room that was had a fireplace backing up to this one.

He cried out.

Oh, this was awful.

Well, she couldn't let the guy die without trying to help.

But maybe it was Leopold. Why shouldn't she let him die?

Because no one knows where you are and. you can die in here.

She went back into the bedroom and looked around. Her eyes traveled up to the long velvet drapes over the bricked-in windows. They were hung over a long thin bar of either wrought-iron or black steel (she never knew which was which). She dragged over a chair and climbed up to look. Then she went to the kitchen to get a stainless-steel knife and went on to the parlor for a brass bookend. Back in the bedroom she climbed up on the chair and started working on breaking the seal of who only knew how many coats of black paint on the rod and brackets.

She was sweating profusely now; her neighbor's moans had stopped and she didn't know if that was good or bad.

She finally pried the rod out of the brackets, which then came crashing down on her with the enormous drapes. She sat on the floor and slid the curtains off, coughing at the dust. Then she went to the closet, took a running start and javelined the metal rod into the back of the wall.

It broke through.

On Thursday morning. Studio B--Jessica's studio-was packed with the press.

"It hasn't been this bad since O.J.," an ABC camera operator grumbled as a producer from the E Network stepped on his foot.

The group settled down when Cassy, Langley, Jackson, Agent Kunsa and Detective Hepplewhite came out on the hastily constructed dais. There was a dark blue velvet curtain hanging behind them, and a lectern with the DBS logo on the front. To the side of the dais stood an American flag.

"Good morning, good morning," Cassy said into the mass of microphones on the lectern.

"Thank you for coming."

The group quickly settled down. There were few in this room who did not know Cassy personally from her years in television and they were perhaps a tad more well behaved than they might have been otherwise.

Cassy waited a moment more before speaking. Cleo had done a heroic makeup job to mask the circles under her eyes; Visine had done its best to deal with the red;

nobody could do anything about the slight tremor in her hand.

"We asked you to come today not only to tell you what we know about the abduction of our friend and colleague, Jessica Wright, but to implore your audiences for help."

And then Cassy went into a general recap of what had happened, of Jessica's party, of her being abducted through the maintenance tunnel, the Con Edison truck, and the fact there had been no ransom note as yet. At the conclusion of the press conference, she said each member of the press would receive fact sheets on what they knew thus far.

Then she introduced Detective Hepplewhite, who gave a brief summary of the manpower on the case. He, in turn, introduced Agent Kunsa, who addressed the cameras and implored the kidnapper to let Jessica go before anything happened.

And then Langley stepped up to announce that DBS was offering a five-million-dollar reward for any information that led to the recovery of Jessica Wright, and he gave out an 800number.

Then Cassy stepped forward again and asked for questions. She pointed to an unfamiliar face in the second row.

"Mrs. Cochran," the woman said, "there have been reports that Jessica staged this disappearance in order to publicize her new book. How do you respond to that?"

"I respond," Cassy said without hesitation, "that anyone who would believe that must be a stupid idiot and desperate for ratings. Next question."

There were hearty guffaws among the corps and Cassy pointed to another reporter.

The questions were fairly standard, the who-whatwhenwhyand-where, and Cassy waited for a question that would make a natural lead into the statement Agent Kunsa said she absolutely had to make at this press conference. Finally, such a question came.

A reporter from ABC was standing.

"Cassy, have you heard from the kidnapper at all?"

"No," she said.

"With all the publicity, he--or they-couldn't possibly contact us without running the risk of getting caught."

There, she had issued the dare to the kidnapper that Kunsa said she had to make. Leopold would not be able to resist it; and they desperately needed to make him contact them again. The more contact he made, the more they would know about him, and the greater their chances would be of finding him.

Jessica knew one thing with certainty--whoever had constructed the closets between the rooms, it hadn't been Leopold. Otherwise he would have done some 9

thing to fortify the back wall of the closet. Once she had punched through the wall a couple times, it was fairly easy to chip big hunks out of it. All the contractor had done was put up two two-by-fours, then he'd nailed some drywall up on one side, stuffed some insulation in there, nailed drywall up from the other side and slapped on some doors. Voila, back-to-back closets.