Jax’s heart sank as his brother hoarsely choked out: “It’s too late - they already have her!”

Jerry handed Jax the note, which was neatly printed by computer in large, bold letters on plain white paper:

Jax’s hands shook as he read the note. This is exactly what Jerry had feared all along: the Agency had Brenda! Jax blanched as he looked up at Jerry to see his normally unflappable brother also pale and shaken. They stood staring at one another in stunned silence, when suddenly the shrill of a cell phone split the stillness.

“It’s mine,” Jax said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out the phone. “Jax, here,” he answered automatically.

“Jax, it’s me,” John Jacks replied, his voice somber.

“Dad, it’s not a good time,” Jax broke in, not allowing his father to explain the reason for his call.

“Jax, please!” John answered tersely. “This is important!”

Jax sighed. “Sorry, Dad. I know you wouldn’t call if it weren’t important. It’s just that things are a bit tense on this end… It’s Brenda -”

“She’s been kidnapped!” his father interrupted.

“How did you know?” Jax asked incredulously. “We just got the ransom note.”

“A fax just came in on your private line demanding $5 million from you for her safe return,” John answered tensely. Then a thought hit him: How had anyone found Jax in New York to send him a ransom note? “How did they find you? Are you at the Plaza? Is that where they sent the demand? … And who do you mean by ‘we’?”

“I’m at Jerry’s. He’s the one who got the note here, not me. They asked for five million from him also,” Jax answered quietly.

“Why would they ask for money from Jerry for her?” John asked, not understanding any of this.

“Long story, Dad,” Jax interrupted, “but we don’t have time to go into it now. Just trust me that whoever has Brenda knows a lot more about all of us than we knew about one another. Right now we need to come up with $10 million before the midnight deadline.”

“I’ll get on it immediately from this end, son.” He hesitated slightly before he continued: “Do you think it’s this Davis fellow behind all this?”

“No, Dad, it’s not Davis, although it is tied to him somehow.” He glanced at Jerry, who looked away quickly.

“How can you be so sure that Davis isn’t in on this in some way, Jax? If our theory is correct and he is tied into some covert agency, then he could be the one pulling the strings on this,” his father argued.

“No, trust me here again, Dad. ‘Davis’ is as concerned about Brenda’s safe return as you and I are… Dad, I promise that I’ll explain everything after we get Brenda safely back, but at the moment my priority is Brenda’s safety,” Jax replied, his exasperation at the way this day had gone evident in his strained tone.

“Jax, I don’t like the feel of this. You should bring the Bureau in on this.” It was Mike Moriarity, J&J Jacks International’s security chief and ex-FBI. John Jacks evidently had this call on the speakerphone in his office.

“Mike, if that note is anything like the one we received here, it says what will happen if we bring in the police or FBI!” Jax pointed out, wanting his father and Mike to understand the seriousness of the threat against Brenda.

“Jax, you have to understand that the chances are she won’t survive this even if-” Mike started, but Jax cut him off.

“Mike, don’t say it! Don’t even think it! That isn’t an option! We’re getting her back safely!” Jax exploded, but he couldn’t tamp down the growing fear he felt inside that Mike was right: Brenda’s fate was already sealed.

“Jax, please… Mike’s had experience with this sort of thing; you and Jerry haven’t. At least let him offer advice!” John Jacks pleaded.

“He can offer all the advice he wants, but he’s not to do anything that jeopardizes Brenda’s safety - and that includes contacting any of his friends back at the Bureau!” Jax answered curtly. “Now, Dad, how fast can you get the funds arranged?”

“I’ll get right on it. The note says that soon you’ll be told where to wire the funds… Mike wants to run a trace on your fax line and have a tap in place for when this guy contacts you again,” John Jacks added.

“Fine, run all the traces you want and put on all the taps on phones that you want, but don’t do anything else! Please, Dad, trust me on this!” Jax pleaded.

“Let me talk to him,” Jerry said, as he took the phone from Jax. “Dad, this is Jerry,” he began, trying to decide what he could say to his father that would allay his fears about this, yet not arouse his suspicions as to why he and Jax needed to handle this on their own. He wasn’t ready to reveal his other life to his father just yet, and certainly not like this. “Dad, please stay out of this. Jax and I can handle this on our own. All we need is for you to take care of getting Jax’s $5 million ready for transfer to the appropriate account.”

“Jerry, you and Jax can’t handle this on your own! It’s too risky; the stakes are too high! Mike’s had experience in this area. Let him help out on this - contact a couple of friends in the Bureau quietly…” John pleaded, hoping that his elder son would see the wisdom in this where his younger son had not.

“No!!!” Jerry shouted emphatically, surprising both his father and himself. He’d never spoken like that to his father before in his life. Then again, there had never been so much at stake before…

“This isn’t some business deal where we’ll lose a small fortune if it falls apart. This is Brenda’s life you’re playing with!” John Jacks implored, worried now not only for Brenda’s life, but the lives of his sons as well.

“You don’t think we know what’s at stake here, Dad? We do, which is why you need to trust that we can handle this!” Jerry shot back in frustration, as he distractedly ran his free hand through his hair and sighed, realizing that he’d have to at least give his father some inkling about his other life in order to keep both him and Mike from contacting the Bureau behind their backs. “Dad, when this is over I want to sit you and Mum down and we’ll talk about things - about my life and the things that I’ve seen and done over the last several years, but we don’t have time for that now… Whoever has Brenda has a score to settle with me, Dad, which is why I need to be the one to handle this…This is my fight,” he explained, but when he looked up to see Jax’s distraught face he amended: “- and Jax’s.”

“But why would they take Brenda if they’re trying to hurt you, Jerry?” his father pressed, still not understanding any of this. “How is Brenda tied to you?”

She’s the woman I love; she was the mother of my child and your grandchild, Jerry wanted to say, but he didn’t. “She’s the woman my brother loves, and they know I’ll do anything for Jax…” Jerry said softly, his voice cracking as he fought to hold his tumbling emotions in check. He had told his father all that he needed to know for now. And it wasn’t a lie; it just wasn’t the whole truth…

There was a momentary silence between father and son, then John Jacks answered, “I promise that Mike and I will do only as much as you and Jax ask. We won’t be calling in the Bureau, unless you specifically request it.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Jerry answered, relieved that his father was convinced to stay out of this and would keep Mike out of it as well. “I need to be going now, Dad. Time is at a premium for all of us.”

“I understand,” his father replied, pausing slightly and then adding: “I only met Brenda this morning, but I felt an immediate connection to her, Jerry. And she loves Jax very much - I could see that in her eyes. And your brother loves her so much… She’s a spitfire, born to be a member of this family, if you ask me. And when you meet her, you’ll see that for yourself… Please be careful and bring her back to Jax - to all of us. If anything happened to her, I’m not sure Jax would ever be the same…”

(“… She loves Jax very much - I could see that in her eyes….”) His father’s words echoed in his head and cut through him like a knife. He wanted to scream that she loved him, too; he’d seen that in her eyes and she’d told him that as well, but instead he swallowed the pain and answered softly: “None of us would be the same,” as he handed the phone back to Jax.

Jax took the phone from Jerry and saw the pain in Jerry’s eyes and realized that his father had no doubt said something about Brenda. He wondered what it was, but he supposed that if Jerry wanted him to know, he’d tell him. “Dad, it’s Jax…You’ll get the money arranged immediately?” Jax asked again, despite the fact that he knew that his father would. “And you’ll call as soon as that next fax comes in from him?”

“You know I will, son,” his father assured him. “Jax, you and Jerry be careful out there. Don’t do anything reckless, and if you feel you’re in over your heads, call and Mike will have all the help you need… I told Jerry how important Brenda is to you… to all of us… You keep reminding him of that.”

Jax paused slightly, realizing that was what his father had said to put the pain in Jerry’s eyes. “He knows, Dad… Trust me, he knows…” Jax said quietly, as he closed the phone, ending their conversation.

He turned to see Jerry standing at the clear glass doors that led to the balcony, staring out across the twilight that was just settling over the city. As he watched him, Jax realized that he’d never seen his always-in-control brother look so vulnerable before. Even when they were both living at home, Jerry had always been self-assured to the point of arrogance. But now he almost appeared lost, unsure which way to turn. Jax understood Jerry’s pain and his fears - in fact, he shared them - but if ever there was a time for Jerry to take charge and leap into action, this was it! This was no time to wallow in self-recriminations or self-doubt. “Jerry, you need to call your banker now to get your half of the funds arranged,” Jax said, hoping that his voice would prod Jerry out of whatever deep hole he had plunged himself.

“That’s not necessary. My accounts are already set up so that I have ready access to any amount I need whenever I need it,” he answered, turning to see the look of surprise on Jax’s face. “You forget that I was prepared to run with Brenda today… I liquidated a lot of funds and set up several, easily accessible, untraceable accounts around the world,” he explained, still appearing distracted.

“Yeah, well, that came in handy then, didn’t it?” Jax answered sarcastically, then immediately regretted his comment. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he apologized.

“Yes, you did,” Jerry replied evenly. “And I deserved it… It’s my fault this happened. If I had stayed out of Brenda’s life, as I’d been warned, none of this would have happened. But I couldn’t stay away, and now I might as well have signed her death warrant myself…”

“I haven’t given up! I’d never do that! I love her, too, you know!” Jerry snapped back.

“Well, let’s get going then, Jer! You said that she’d go to this Andrew Buxton - that he’d have her. If that’s the case, we can find her before it’s too late!” Jax responded angrily, as he headed for the front door of the penthouse.

“Andrew doesn’t have her,” Jerry said quietly, his words stopping Jax dead in his tracks.

“What do you mean, Andrew doesn’t have her?” Jax asked sharply, whirling around to face Jerry, who had moved away from the balcony doors and back into the center of the living room. “Just a few minutes ago I had to hold you back from going after Buxton because you were sure that he was dangerous and that he’d have her! Now that we know that Brenda’s been taken, you’re suddenly just as sure that he doesn’t have her. What’s going on here, Jer?”

“I know Andrew. This isn’t his style,” Jerry answered matter-of-factly.

“Well, pardon me if I don’t have a lot of faith in your insight into that man at the moment!” Jax sneered. “After all, he was the one you entrusted to look after Brenda all these years, and he’s been the real danger all along!” Jax regretted his hurtful words as soon as they’d left his lips. “I’m sorry… I… That was a low blow, and you didn’t deserve it,” he apologized quietly.

“Yeah, I did!” Jerry answered, his voice even and controlled, despite the emotional turmoil he felt inside. “I was blind to Andrew about a lot of things, but not about this... Granted, knowing what I now know about Andrew and his true loyalties, I think he’s perfectly capable of kidnapping Brenda, but I don’t think he’d ask for a ransom. Andrew’s not a greedy man. He’s always lived simply, almost like a monk…”

“People can change, Jer,” Jax shot back. “And you, more than anyone, know how people can hide their true selves, even from the ones they know and love.”

“True,” Jerry agreed, knowing immediately that Jax was referring to him and his double life. “But Andrew Buxton hasn’t changed since the day that I met him, ten years ago… I was in his apartment yesterday, and it can best be described as spartan. It looks like the only luxuries he’s afforded himself over the past two decades are books, and even then, there didn’t appear to be too many first editions among his massive collection. He doesn’t own a TV, and the stereo that he has sports a turn-style and an 8-track, so you tell me how old that is!

“His taste in clothes is simple, bordering on boring. He dresses like an eccentric college professor, and I doubt that he’s updated his wardrobe in years. He drives a Mercedes, but it’s at least twelve years old and he bought it used, years ago. He rarely takes a day off, and when he is forced to take vacation, he rarely travels anymore, preferring instead to stay holed up in his apartment, reading.

“He has no family and he has no love life, so he’s not supporting a wife or a mistress on the side. He lives and breathes the Agency, and the Agency pays him handsomely for that, especially since he was promoted to assistant bureau chief a few years ago. He moved into that building on the Lower East Side nearly three decades ago, and it’s rent-controlled, so that doesn’t take a huge chunk of his paycheck. He doesn’t drink and he rarely smokes, and his one vice is his tea obsession, which he drinks constantly. And even if he’s personally importing only the finest blends, that certainly wouldn’t cost more than a couple hundred a year. It’s doubtful that he needs more than a tenth of what he earns in order to live as he lives.

“Andrew Buxton is a man of simple tastes and simple needs, and money - especially not the amount demanded in those notes - is not important to him… Knowing what I now know about the man, I could see him ordering Brenda’s kidnapping, but for the Agency’s sake - not for financial gain.”

Then something else occurred to Jerry, as he picked up the ransom note and looked at it again. “Besides, if Andrew or the Agency had her, their surveillance would be better than this. They’d know that you were here in New York, not in LA, so they wouldn’t have sent that fax to your office in LA…” he said, letting his words trail off as he continued to think out loud. “And the Agency wouldn’t try to extort money from us for her safe return; they’d merely kill her. I was warned once by them four years ago. Once is all they allow; they never issue a second warning.”

“Then who’s behind this?” Jax asked, suddenly more frightened for Brenda’s safety than he was before. It was always better to deal with the devil you know… “If Andrew Buxton or the Agency doesn’t have her, then who does?” he asked, his voice thick with fear.

“That, Jax, is the $10 million question…” Jerry answered, his own voice quivering slightly, as he walked past Jax and toward the front door. “And one you and I are going to need to work together to answer - and we’re going to need to do it fast!”

Jax was beside him before Jerry even had the door open. “But where do we start?” Jax asked, wondering where, in a city of over 7 million, that one even began such a daunting search?

“We start with Andrew Buxton,” Jerry answered, as they raced down the hall toward the service elevator that led directly to a nearby private parking garage and Jerry’s car.

“But you just said that you didn’t think Andrew had her,” Jax said, puzzled at Jerry’s sudden change of mind.

“True, I don’t think that he personally has her, but that doesn’t mean that Andrew doesn’t know something about all of this,” Jerry answered matter-of-factly. “And if he knows anything, we’re going to find out what it is.” Then, pulling his 9 mm from the inside pocket of his jacket and checking the clip, he arched his brow and added ominously: “- one way or another!”

Dee Hotchkiss was frustrated. It had taken her nearly ten minutes to get off the plane and then another forty-five minutes to fight her way through the crush of the crowd in the unfamiliar airport to baggage claim and the area where the cabs and limos were waiting to pick up passengers. Brenda had told her that a friend was sending a limo for her, and Dee had hoped that the limo had been late or they were otherwise delayed. But as Dee had scanned the area, she’d quickly realized that she was out of luck.

There had been limos everywhere. And in searching for Brenda among those limos, Dee had seen all manner of celebrity, including: a very drunken rock star; a fading movie action hero; and a prominent senator, whose entourage included an aide, whom Dee had sensed, juggled far more than just appointments for the good senator. But there had been no sign of Brenda anywhere.

Now it was nearly an hour later, and she hadn’t been able to find anyone or anything, and that included the car and driver that Peachtree Publishing was supposed to send to pick her up, or her luggage, which somehow had mysteriously disappeared somewhere between check-in at LAX and here. Thank goodness she had her carryon, so at least she had a pair of clean underwear, a change of clothes, her walking shoes, her toiletries, and her trusty laptop! She sighed as she finally dropped into a nearby chair to try to gather her wits about her. She hated New York even on a good day, and this certainly had not been a good day by any stretch of the imagination!

Her futile search for Brenda had begun with a page Dee had issued for her to meet her near the limos. She’d done that from a courtesy phone near the gate where she’d deplaned, and Dee should have known that she wouldn’t find Brenda still here at the airport when she hadn’t shown up or responded in any way to the page. But, undeterred, Dee had pushed on by questioning people in the area who might have seen Brenda before she disappeared. She had tried to describe Brenda to a couple of porters that were working the limo and cab area, but the ones she had managed to talk with hadn’t seen anyone matching Brenda’s description, and the others had all been too busy to even take the time to talk with her.

But she wasn’t about to give up. Dee Hotchkiss had been called a lot of things by a lot of people (and most of them critics), but she had never been called a quitter. In fact, she didn’t know the meaning of the word (nor many others, also according to those same critics), especially when it came to those things about which she had her “feelings.” And the feeling she had about Brenda was as strong as any she had ever felt in her life, so she wasn’t about to give up the search for her, even if that meant that she had to tear the whole damn city apart! But where to start? She supposed Brenda’s apartment was as good a place as any…

She pulled Brenda’s business card from her jacket pocket and read the address and the phone number listed there. The address meant nothing to her, since she was unfamiliar with New York, but she remembered Brenda saying something about it being in the “Village”, which she assumed her driver would know how to find - if he ever got there, that was.

She decided she could call Brenda’s number, despite the fact that she doubted that Brenda had made it there yet, if indeed that was her destination when she left the airport. She pulled out her cell phone and turned it on, then quickly punched in Brenda’s number. She had a strong feeling that Brenda wasn’t there, but she needed to give it a shot anyway. Besides, something was telling Dee that she needed to go to Brenda’s whether she was there or not.

The phone rang several times and then the answering machine picked up. She listened as Brenda’s voice instructed her to leave a message at the beep, which she did. “Brenda, this is Dee Hotchkiss. We met on the plane, remember?” Dee explained, although she knew that Brenda needed no reminding of who she was. She had the feeling that their meeting was as distinctive and unforgettable for Brenda as it had been for her. She and Brenda were somehow cosmically connected. She’d known that from the first moment she’d seen Brenda at the gate at LAX, before they’d even spoken a word to one another, and she felt that Brenda was beginning to realize that as well by the time they’d landed here in New York.

“I’m callin’ because you left somethin’ on the plane, and I thought you’d want it back as soon as possible,” she gave as her excuse for both the call and her impending visit. “I’m on my way to the Park Savoy - if I can find my luggage and a way out of this airport, that is! But I thought I’d stop by your place on the way.” She laughed slightly as she added: “I have no idea if your place is on the way to the hotel or not, but I’m comin’ by there first anyway! At any rate, I’ll be by there sometime tonight…” she said as closed her phone, and stood to go outside to hail a cab.

“I hope you’re there,” she added softly to herself, almost as a prayer, even though she had the sinking feeling in her heart that Brenda wasn’t there now, nor would she be there anytime soon - if ever again…

“Explain to me again why you think that Buxton knows anything about Brenda’s kidnapping if you’re equally certain that he doesn’t have her,” Jax queried, as he and Jerry tore through the streets of Manhattan in Jerry’s car. Jax was sweating bullets, but it wasn’t from the heat of the sultry evening outside the cool of the air-conditioned car; it was from his brother’s harrowing driving. They were currently headed toward Andrew Buxton’s brownstone at speeds well beyond what the law allowed, and Jax gripped the dash in front of him and prayed that one of New York’s finest wasn’t sitting anywhere along their route or that someone wouldn’t unexpectedly pull out in front of them.

“There’s not much that goes on in Brenda’s life that Andrew doesn’t know about,” Jerry explained, never taking his eyes from the road. “I’ve been thinking about all of this - especially about those pictures I got today of you and Brenda…” he began, casting Jax a furtive glance, then immediately turning his attention back to the street. “I asked for loose surveillance on Brenda for the past four years, and those were the kind of pictures and reports I got on her - until today. At first I wondered who else, besides whoever Andrew hired, might be watching Brenda and why? But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense that the innocuous pictures that I’ve gotten all along of her and those more invasive shots of the two of you were all taken by the same person, and that would be whoever Andrew hired to watch her. I think that those pictures and her kidnapping are all tied together in some way.”

“What makes you think he only had one person watching her?” Jax asked, no longer gripping the dash, his hands now tightly holding the edges of his bucket seat. “He could have an entire army following her, and any one of them could have been in on this.”

“No,” Jerry replied, shaking his head resolutely. “Giving this assignment to just one man fits in with Andrew’s idiosyncrasies. He likes to deal with as few people as possible, and it would be easier for him to control just one person, instead of several - and Andrew is a man who always likes to be in control… And this isn’t the kind of work he’d assign an agent, so he’d hire someone outside to do it.”

“You mean like a PI?” Jax asked, thinking about Tom Peterman’s agency that he had used to get information on Brenda.

“Not necessarily someone that reputable, I’m afraid,” Jerry sighed, thinking about some of the lowlifes that he’d seen handle various “contract” work for the Agency, and few of them had licensed credentials behind them, as was required of private investigators.

“What do you mean: nothing that reputable? What kind of people does this agency of yours hire for this kind of work?” Jax asked, unsure if he really wanted to hear his brother’s answer.

“Sometimes they mine the pool of wannabes -” Jerry began.

“What do you mean ‘wannabes’?” Jax interrupted.

“Men and women who applied to work at the Agency, but didn’t quite make the grade for some reason. Possibly they didn’t pass the rigorous tests or their physical or emotional fitness was questionable,” Jerry explained matter-of-factly. “Despite the fact that not every agent is a field agent like me, there are still standards to be met for every specialty area within the Agency, and if a person doesn’t meet those stringent standards, then they don’t qualify as any kind of ‘official’ employee. But they can be considered for work the Agency calls outside work: work that isn’t highly classified and is often repetitive or time-consuming, like routine surveillance or background checks on ancillary targets… Or dirty work,” he added quietly and almost imperceptibly, thinking about the assault on Brenda and their baby.

“And who else do they hire?” Jax asked, thinking that the people Jerry had just described didn’t sound disreputable. He’d completely missed Jerry’s little addendum.

Jerry hesitated, inhaling deeply as what he was about to tell Jax sickened him as much as he knew it would his brother: “Street thugs…sometimes gang members…”

“What?!” Jax exploded, wondering what kind of a sick organization this was? “They actually hire criminals to carry out jobs?” Jax’s mind was no longer on his brother’s erratic driving; instead, it was focused squarely on his brother and the erratic organization to which his brother had pledged his life and loyalty.

“Sometimes, when it’s the most efficient way to handle a problem,” Jerry admitted quietly, wondering if that is how Andrew had seen Brenda all along?

Jax was having similar thoughts. “And is that what Brenda was - a problem that needed efficiently handled?” he asked angrily.

“Evidently Andrew saw her as that,” Jerry answered tersely, as he thought about the ball he’d set in motion four years ago and the havoc he’d managed to wreak on Brenda’s life since then. “But tonight I plan to show Andrew the error in his thinking…” Especially if he’s allowed some street thug access to Brenda on any level, let alone on such an intimate level as sustained surveillance!

“What if Andrew has no idea where Brenda is or who took her - or even that she’s been kidnapped in the first place?” Jax asked, wondering what they’d do then? “This could all be a monumental waste of time, and while we’re playing twenty questions with Buxton, the real kidnapper could have Brenda halfway to Timbuktu!”

“No, Jax, I don’t think so. I’d bet everything I have that Andrew at least has an idea of what’s happened to Brenda and can give us the information we need - if properly motivated,” Jerry answered coldly, certain that his good “friend” somehow had his finger in this particular pie, even if he wasn’t the one actually holding her and demanding a ransom for her safe return.

“Does that include Brenda?” Jax demanded, causing Jerry to look sharply at him. “Because we’re both betting her life here, aren’t we?” he asked, remembering Mike Moriarity’s admonition to him that it was doubtful that Brenda would come out of this alive.

Jerry mulled over Jax’s words carefully, knowing that Jax also sensed that the odds of getting Brenda back alive were slim, even if they followed the kidnapper’s demands to the letter. Jerry knew that going after Andrew was risky, but at this point he couldn’t see any other course of action, and he knew that he and Jax couldn’t just sit idly by and wait while the minutes ticked away on the rest of Brenda’s life. They hadn’t been raised to sit on the sidelines, waiting for opportunities to come to them. They’d been raised to seize the moment and squeeze the opportunities from it, and that’s what they were doing here.

“At this point, I think it’s the best bet we’ve got,” Jerry finally answered. He truly believed that Andrew could shed some light on this entire situation - He just prayed that it wouldn’t be too little, too late.

Despite the oppressive heat, Andrew Buxton whistled happily, absently leafing through his sheaf of mail as he strode down the hallway that led to his apartment. Other than the occasional annoying chest pain that had plagued him all afternoon, things were going swimmingly. Brenda’s plane had arrived on time and Jackson had been there to pick her up. He glanced at his watch: 8:15 p.m. Even taking into account traffic at this time of the evening, he was fairly certain that Jackson had arrived at the apartment by now and was happily ensconced in what Andrew was sure Jackson would view as his “love nest,” despite how dingy the place was. The stage had been painstakingly set for the final act of this perpetual play that had dominated Andrew’s life for the past several years, and the curtain was mercifully coming down very soon, with no possibilities of any curtain calls to follow.

It had been a long four years that had led to this point, but in the next several hours it would all finally be over. Brenda Barrett would be dead; Rick Jackson would be a mere unpleasant memory as well; JD would realize that his full loyalty had to remain with the Agency and the Agency alone; and balance would once again be restored to Andrew’s little universe. Everything would soon be right with the world again, and Andrew was in the mood to celebrate, despite his occasional chest pain.

Ignoring yet another slight twinge in his chest, he continued to whistle as he slipped his key into the deadbolt lock that secured the door to his apartment, smiling as he heard the faint click of the tumbler as it unlocked. He opened the door easily, welcoming the cool blast of air that immediately greeted him, and then reached for the light switch on the wall just inside the door, illuminating the foyer and a small area just beyond. He closed the door behind him, automatically securing the deadbolt again, as he carelessly tossed his mail onto the little table by the door, not noticing as most of it missed its mark and scattered haphazardly across the slick surface of his otherwise spotless, dark walnut floor.

Without glancing up, he headed for his small kitchen, flipping on the overhead light and grabbing the teakettle from the counter. He filled it with tap water, before setting it on the small burner of the stove to heat for his celebratory pot of tea. Most Americans would shun hot tea on a night like this, opting instead to pour the tea over a glass of cubed ice, but to a Brit like Andrew iced tea was an absolutely barbaric way to drink tea and a subversion of the elegant beverage itself.

He opened a nearby cupboard door and surveyed his stock of teas that dominated the small pantry cupboard. Despite the dearth of actual edibles in the cupboard, there was a staggering array of nearly every tea imaginable, from the simple Earl Grey to the dark Indian Darjeeling, to green teas from China and exotic blends from Ceylon and Sri Lanka. It was quite an impressive collection, and he owed it all to JD, who had dutifully gotten him a different tea in every tea-producing country he’d visited over the past four years. It was JD’s way of thanking him for watching over Brenda for him.

He grabbed a tin of Darjeeling and smiled at the irony that he would be toasting Brenda’s upcoming demise with a gift from the very man who had fought so hard to prevent that demise. He closed the pantry cupboard and opened another cupboard, reaching in and carefully picking up a bone China teacup and matching saucer, handling it reverently and with the utmost of care. The delicate white pair, with its tiny rose pattern of the palest blue adorning its face, was a part of a complete set that had belonged to his mother, and the fragility of the pieces, with their beautiful translucence and hint of elegance, reminded him very much of his mother.

His mother, Gwyneth Herrington Buxton, had been considered one of the most beautiful women in Great Britain in her time, with her fair skin, her pale blonde hair, and her high cheekbones and long, slender, aristocratic nose. She had indeed been to the manner born, and she had been as beautiful inside as out, always carrying herself with quiet grace and dignity, never raising either her voice or a hand to another. Growing up, people had always commented that Andrew favored her physically, having the same pale skin and hair coloring and inheriting her patrician features. But despite their physical similarities, he seemed to have inherited little of her innate gentleness, instead using his apparent gentility merely as a cover for the ruthlessness that he now wielded like a sword.

As he stood there, holding the fragile dishware delicately in his hands, he was glad that his mother had never lived long enough to see his heartless side, dying decades ago with the image of him as the proper English gentleman still firmly in her heart. She would have been both horrified and devastated by the man he was today. He had done things in the past several years that would turn the stomach of most decent men - but then again, he was no longer what his mother would consider a decent man. And he knew exactly when his descent from gentility into cruelty had begun: soon after his fateful encounter as a young man with Greta Buehler.

He felt yet another pain shoot through his chest, this one more acute than his previous ones - perhaps as a not-so-gentle reminder of Greta’s treachery and the destructive legacy she’d left behind. Shakily, he set the cup and saucer down, knocking the cup askew on the saucer and nearly sending both cup and saucer crashing to the linoleum. He steadied himself against the countertop, trying to breathe evenly in the hope that if he relaxed then the discomfort would let up, but the pain refused to subside. He’d need his nitroglycerin to handle things now.

He reached into the right patch pocket of his jacket, where he usually carried his pills when he left his office, but the bottle wasn’t there. He searched the left pocket, also with no success. The pain was getting sharper with each passing second, and he knew that if he didn’t move to counteract it soon, he’d pass out due to lack of oxygen getting through the constricted blood vessels of his heart.

Leaning lightly against the walls for support, he moved cautiously into the hall and toward the living room, where he kept another bottle of pills on his desk. Now, as suddenly as the pain had begun, it disappeared, and Andrew straightened and took a deep breath, grateful that this episode was evidently nothing more than his usual angina after all. For a moment there he had begun to worry that he might be having a full-blown heart attack, especially since he’d been having more and more frequent angina attacks over the past several days. Of course, he’d been under undue stress as of late, with the whole Brenda Barrett situation coming to a head now, so it was understandable that he’d be experiencing more anxiety-induced pain. And until he knew for sure that his plan to eliminate both Brenda and Jackson and forever tie JD to the Agency had indeed been a success, then he imagined that he’d continue to experience this stress angina.

Despite the fact that he was momentarily pain-free, he decided that it would probably be wise to slip a pill under his tongue even now, just in case. Preoccupied with both his current physical state and the state of his deadly plan, he absently continued on, turning the corner that led to his living room, where his desk sat squarely in front of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that lined the interior walls of the room, never noticing that he was not alone in his own home…

Rick Jackson pulled the Yankees cap further down on his head, then carefully checked all around to make sure that there was no one else nearby to see him before he stepped outside and closed the door, locking it securely behind him. He hated to leave her alone and unguarded like this, but it was unavoidable. He had important errands to run that couldn’t wait. He’d only be gone an hour at the most, and besides, she wasn’t in any shape to try to escape or even make noise, for that matter.

As he headed toward his vehicle, he thought back to the airport and how easy the actual abduction had been. When he’d first approached her to tell her that he was the driver that “Avery Buehler” had sent to pick her up, she’d declined, saying that she’d changed her mind about staying with Mr. Buehler. She asked that he thank Mr. Buehler for his thoughtfulness in sending the car for her, but since she would no longer need Buehler’s hospitality, she no longer needed the car. He’d been momentarily thrown by her unexpected refusal of the limo ride, but he’d quickly recovered, telling her that Mr. Buehler had paid for the use of both the car and his services to pick her up at the airport and deliver her to her destination and if she chose to change her destination, then that was fine with him. She had studied both him and his suggestion momentarily, then had smiled that bewitching smile of hers and relented.

But then as they had neared the car, she suddenly said that she’d changed her mind and she’d prefer to take a cab instead. She had been looking at him strangely as they’d walked the distance from the concourse to just outside the baggage claim area, where the limo was waiting. Suddenly she’d acted like she’d just been struck by lightening, and she immediately tried to get away from him.

For a moment he’d wondered if she’d recognized him. Of course, he knew that was impossible. She’d barely gotten a good glimpse of him in the heat of battle nearly four years before, and at this moment he looked nothing like the man he was back then. In fact, his own cousin Vinnie had failed to recognize him since he’d cropped his hair and bleached it blonde and donned the blue contacts. He doubted very much that Brenda Barrett would recognize him as the one who had attacked her all those years ago. In fact, as he glimpsed his own reflection now in the dark tint of his vehicle’s windows, he barely recognized himself!

He climbed into the driver’s side of his vehicle and started it up, his mind once again returning to the scene at the airport where Ms. Barrett had almost slipped away. As they were just approaching the limo, she’d suddenly balked, but luckily he’d prepared himself for that possibility. He’d grabbed her firmly but inconspicuously by the arm and had simultaneously injected her with a fast-acting knockout drug that he’d delivered on a very tiny needle attached to the underside of a ring. The needle merely pricked the skin, but the potency of even that minute amount of the drug had been enough to bring immediate results, making her appear drunk, which is what the porter, who’d assisted him in opening the limo door and getting her inside, had naturally assumed. She had passed out a few minutes later as the drug got fully into her system, and that was how she remained even now.

He’d just checked her a few minutes ago and she was still out like a light. She hadn’t moved as much as a muscle on her own since he’d first drugged her, over two hours ago at the airport. He hoped that he hadn’t overdosed her. She was pretty small, and it wasn’t like that stuff had come with written instructions as to dosage; it was from some plant in the rain forest of Central America, and it had been specially prepared for this particular job. When he’d been sent the drug he’d been told simply that it was very powerful and to use it carefully, since it would knockout anyone quickly - and that included himself if he wasn’t cautious with it. He’d taken the warning seriously, wearing latex gloves when he’d prepared the needle and then leather driving gloves when administering it. He’d seen how quickly and effectively that it had worked on Ms. Barrett. Now he just hoped that she recovered completely from the drug. It was important that she be healthy and awake for the rest of his plan.

He’d worry about her health later, he decided, as he pulled out of the side street where he’d been parked and onto the main thoroughfare that led to his current destination. Right now he had more pressing concerns. He was on his way to a little out-of-the-way store in another neighborhood where he could safely send another fax and the package without fear of having them traced back to the fax he had at the apartment. His own fax was safe for his other communications, but not this one. He couldn’t take the chance that anyone found where they were hiding - at least not until after he got his money.

He grinned as he looked down on the passenger seat beside him at the negotiating tool that he knew would cinch his pending multi-million dollar deal. It was a photo of Brenda Barrett, a copy of today’s Times in front of her luscious body, lying in the back seat of the limo that “Andrew Buxton” had secured for him to fetch the lovely Ms. Barrett from Kennedy and squire her to the questionable accommodations Buxton had also rented for her short stay. The photo was insurance of a sort. He was certain that no one would balk at paying for Ms. Barrett’s safety, but he just wanted to let everyone know that he was bargaining in good faith and that she was safe and untouched - well, at least for now. He couldn’t, however, make any promises for later, especially if everything went according to plan…

By the time he made it to his living room, the pain in Andrew’s chest had once again returned. He switched on his reading lamp to illuminate the desktop, and in his haste to find the sought-after pills, he failed to notice the outline of a figure just beyond the desk, in the shadows of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that dominated the room. He finally found the nitroglycerin tablets and quickly slid one under his tongue, then, lowering himself into his desk chair, he tried his best to relax while he waited for the pill to do its job. He leaned back, his eyes closed, relishing the little white pill’s bitterness as it slowly began to dissolve; praying that it would be enough to give him the blessed relief he sought. He’d looked forward to this day and worked hard for it, and sweet victory was almost within his grasp. He wanted to be alive now to savor it.

“Having trouble?” a voice that Andrew knew all too well asked from somewhere in the darkened room. “I hope it’s nothing serious,” Jerry commented dryly, as he emerged from the shadows to show himself to Andrew. He was well aware of Andrew’s deteriorating heart problem, and he knew that Andrew’s angina must be in full swing now to send him groping so desperately for his pills. “I’d hate for anything to happen to my good friend…” Jerry added sarcastically, as he leaned down into the light so that Andrew could clearly see his face.

“JD… What…? How did you get in here?” Andrew stuttered breathily, startled to find JD here in his apartment. The nitroglycerin had yet to fully dissolve and the tightening in his chest seemed to be increasing with this new shock.

“How did I get in here?” Jerry mockingly echoed Andrew’s question. “Why, you know the answer to that, dear friend, don’t you? After all, you taught me all that I know about breaking and entering... I’m really quite proficient at it now - able to override the most sophisticated security systems - so a simple deadbolt, such as yours, was mere child’s play.” He moved his well-tanned face closer to Andrew’s increasingly pale face, as he continued: “And we both know that you know the answer to what I’m doing here…” He let his words trail off as he leaned in closer still to Andrew.

“JD…” Andrew began plaintively. The pill had completely dissolved now, but the effects had yet to take effect, and the pain in his chest seemed to be increasing. It’s the surprise of seeing JD here, he told himself; breathe deeply and relax; you can handle both the pain and JD if you just relax… “I have no… idea what… you’re… talking about…” he lied, but the increasing pain caused him to catch his breath several times and his words came out haltingly, seeming to magnify the emptiness they held.

“Cut the crap, Andrew!” Jerry yelled, his patience having left him the minute he’d heard Andrew enter the apartment, whistling happily. He knew that Andrew knew something about Brenda’s disappearance, and he resented playing games while the remaining hours of her life quickly ticked away. “Tell me where she is!” he bellowed, grabbing Andrew by the lapels of his jacket and pulling him roughly out of the chair.

“JD, please,” Andrew whimpered; his face was growing more pallid and his forehead was now dotted with cold sweat, but despite his deteriorating physical state he continued to feign innocence. “Are you talking about Brenda?”

“You know damn well I am!” Jerry screamed, shaking Andrew like a rag doll. “You pretended to be my friend - Brenda’s friend - but you’ve done everything in your power to hurt the both of us since the first day I asked you for help! You son-of-a-bitch! You ordered that attack on Brenda four years ago! You killed our baby and nearly killed her, too! Now she’s missing and you know who has her, so tell me, old man!”

“JD… I - I don’t know… what… what you’re talking about…” Andrew choked out, still trying to maintain his pretense of innocence. How had JD found out about all of this? It was impossible that he knew about the pregnancy or Andrew’s role in ending it. He had worked too hard to cover his tracks for JD to have found out! And how did he know Brenda was missing already? Had that jackass Jackson doublecrossed him by going straight to JD and demanding money for Brenda’s return? Had he underestimated Jackson in this? This was not how this scenario was to play out, he thought, as he tried desperately to think of a way out of this.

“I… I saved Brenda… she would have died…if it weren’t for me!” Andrew stammered between gasps for air. The pain in his chest was getting worse instead of lessening, and it was harder and harder for him to breathe now, let alone talk. He knew that this was more than mere angina; it was a full-blown heart attack, and he needed to get to a hospital immediately! “Please…” he wheezed, his face contorted with pain. “… My heart… call 9-1-1!” He tried to reach behind him for the phone, but Jerry slammed him back into the chair before he reached his goal.

Jerry could see the truth in Andrew’s eyes, and the fact that he continued to lie to him infuriated him even more. “Do you really think you deserve to live?!” Jerry spat out, as he shoved the desk chair holding Andrew back against the wall of bookcases, scattering books here and there. “Now, tell me who has her and where she is, or I swear I’ll kill you myself!”

“Jerry!” Jax yelled, grabbing his brother just as Jerry was about to slam his fist into Andrew’s face. He’d been waiting in the shadows, as Jerry had suggested, but watching the drama unfolding between Jerry and Andrew had quickly pulled him from the sidelines. He’d seen his brother angry before, but he had never seen the murderous glint that was in his eyes now, and it scared him. “Jerry, think about what you’re doing - If he dies, then there’s a good chance Brenda dies, too! We need him to tell us whatever he knows about her disappearance!” Jax reasoned, searching Jerry’s face for any sign that he was listening to reason here.

Despite the intense pain and his waning grasp on consciousness, Andrew immediately recognized Jax as he emerged into the light. He was surprised to see him here with JD. He assumed that Jax would still be in LA, unsnarling the mess that Andrew had unleashed on his family’s firm. Evidently Andrew had underestimated the hold that Brenda had over both brothers and also the brothers’ loyalty to one another even after they’d discovered the other’s role in her life. Andrew knew that his plan was rapidly falling apart, but at this point he was just grateful for Jax’s presence here. Jax might be the only one who could talk some sense into JD now, so he was Andrew’s only hope to stay alive.

Jerry immediately realized that Jax was right. If he killed Andrew or even just left him here to die, then they might not find Brenda before it was too late. He took a deep breath and pulled himself away from Andrew, watching as the man that he had once revered and had once called friend fell forward, gasping for air, looking like nothing more than the pathetic, sorry excuse for a man that he was. “You’re right, little brother,” Jerry answered, straightening himself up and grabbing the phone that Andrew had been so desperately trying to reach just seconds ago. “Andrew, I’ll get help for you, but only after you give me what I want. Tell me what you know,” he demanded, holding the receiver in front of Andrew’s ashen face, taunting him.

Andrew knew that cooperation was his only choice, but he was barely able to think beyond the excruciating pain in his chest, let alone talk. He nodded his head almost imperceptibly, as he lay facedown across his desk. He knew he should tell JD everything - that Rick Jackson had her and that he’d taken her to a seedy apartment in Harlem and that Jackson had designs of his own on Brenda. But all he could choke out was the strangled name of Rick Jackson, and then he was gone…

His errand had taken less time than he’d anticipated, even with the backtracking that he’d done to throw off any possible tails, and Rick Jackson was back in the apartment in forty-five minutes flat. He immediately checked on Brenda, but found her still unconscious.

It had been nearly three hours since he’d drugged her, and she still hadn’t roused at all. He’d checked her pulse and respirations, and her breathing was shallow and her pulse extremely slow, and that concerned him. Had he inadvertently given her too much of the drug, he wondered? He hoped not! It was imperative that she survive this because a lucrative side deal that he’d worked out depended on her being very much alive for now.

Over the past several years, he’d come to see Brenda Barrett as his meal ticket, but up until recently he hadn’t realized just how lucrative knowing her could be. His fantasy life has certainly burgeoned since he took his first picture of her years before, but now both his bank account and future career prospects were thriving as well, and all thanks to her.

Of course, he also knew how tenuous all of this was at this point, as all prospects now hinged on her waking up very soon. He wondered now if he’d allowed his greed in all of this to overtake his good sense? He should have just been satisfied with the original plan, instead of trying to add to the pot, as he had, by making his latest deal concerning Ms. Barrett. He had promised that she would be alive and in good health upon delivery, and he began to panic as he realized what would happen if she didn’t wake up soon - or worse still, if she never woke up at all… He would lose everything - and that included his life.

Jerry and Jax watched as Andrew gasped and then went limp, the life draining out of his face. Jerry threw off his jacket and grabbed the man’s lifeless body from off the desk and laid him on his back on the floor, checking for a pulse, but knowing full well that there would be none. “Call 9-1-1!” he barked at Jax, but Jax was already a step ahead, having grabbed the phone as soon as Jerry had dropped it and dialed for help the minute Andrew had collapsed after giving them a name.

Jerry began CPR, feverishly working to bring the man back. A part of him wanted to let the miserable wretch stay dead, but another part wanted him very much alive - both to provide more answers to Brenda’s whereabouts and to give Jerry the privilege of choking the life out of him himself after Brenda was safely back with him.

“The squad will be here in just a few minutes,” Jax said, hanging up the phone and kneeling at Andrew’s head to take over for his brother at respirations. “Lucky for Buxton that there’s a station just a couple of blocks from here,” he added, as he bent to start giving Buxton mouth-to-mouth.

Jerry shook his head, motioning Jax away from helping, and then quickly gave Andrew another breath himself. “I can handle this, Jax. Call Dad and Mike and tell them to get right on finding whatever they can about this Rick Jackson. My guess is that he’s local and he’s been working with Andrew for the past four years on Brenda’s surveillance. Jackson’s a pretty common name, so tell Mike to use those friends of his at the Bureau and cross check arrest records as well, especially muggings and those kind of assaults. I’m betting that Andrew mined the lowest of the low for this, and it’s come back to bite all of us on the ass!”

“What do you mean?” Jax asked, as he opened his cell phone and punched in the private number that connected him directly to his office, where his father and Mike had planned to stay until this was over. Just then the teakettle let out a shrill scream. “I’ll get that!” Jax said, running to the kitchen and turning off the burner, then returning to hear Jerry’s explanation.

“What I mean is that Andrew knew that Brenda was missing - I could see it in his eyes…” Jerry began, once Jax had returned. “But he was surprised that I knew about it and that I knew about his role in Brenda’s assault as well. I think that Andrew just now realized that this Jackson - who’s probably been his trusted lackey for the past four years - has decided to stretch his wings and branch out on his own,” Jerry continued between compressions and breaths. “I think that Andrew’s plans for Brenda were completely different from what is actually happening… Andrew may very well have ordered the actual kidnapping, but I think he ordered Jackson to kill Brenda, which is what he said that the Agency had threatened all along. But I think Jackson saw an opportunity to make a lot of money from the both of us on this by kidnapping and holding her instead. I think Jackson’s also the one who’s behind the pictures and the disk. I think that he knew what my reaction would be once I saw what was on that disk. He led me directly to Andrew with that disk. He probably counted on me killing Andrew without hesitation. But what he hadn’t counted on was you being there to stop me.”

“Jer, hold on a minute. Dad’s on the line,” Jax said, holding up his hand for Jerry to stop talking. “Dad? Jax, here! We have a name for Mike to check out through his connections with the Bureau. It’s Rick Jackson. Jer says that he’s most likely local here in New York and probably has some sort of a criminal record as well.”

“We’ll get right on that, Jax,” his father answered. “I was just about to call you… You’ve had another fax…”

“From the kidnapper?” Jax asked loudly, his heart skipping a beat. Jerry’s head snapped up at Jax’s words, his heart also flipping in his chest. “What did it say?” Jax asked anxiously.

“It was a picture, showing Brenda unconscious in the backseat of a car, the front page of today’s New York Times in front of her,” John Jacks answered gravely.

Jax repeated to Jerry what his father had just said. Jerry nodded soberly and swallowed hard, returning to the task at hand: trying to save the life of the miserable wretch who had put Brenda into this situation in the first place.

“How did she look?” Jax asked, his tone as apprehensive as both he and Jerry felt.

The blare of a siren swelled in the background, as the ambulance rounded the corner and came to a stop in front of the building. Phone still to his ear, Jax grabbed Jerry’s jacket off the floor and ran to the door in anticipation of the squad’s arrival upstairs at the apartment. After he opened the door, he stooped to gather up Buxton’s mail from where it lay scattered across the path leading from the front door to the living room.

“It’s hard to tell really - it’s grainy and dark,” his father answered truthfully. “But it doesn’t appear that she was bruised or anything… I’ll fax it to Jerry’s for you to see…” Then, hearing the siren, he quickly asked, “Is that a siren? Has something happened to one of you?”

“Yeah, that’s a siren, but it’s nothing to worry about,” Jax reassured him, dropping the retrieved mail on the table, then picking up an envelope off the top of the stack, the flashy logo of the return address catching his immediate attention: Luxury Limousines. Why would a man who had such simple needs - as Jerry insisted that Buxton was - be getting mail from a limo service, he wondered, as he directed the paramedics to the living room? That was something he planned to ask Jerry as soon as possible, he decided, sliding the letter into an inside pocket of his suit coat as he followed the paramedics into the living room.

His attention returned to the phone call with his father. “Jerry and I are fine, but the same can’t be said for our informant. His heart stopped; Jerry got him back though,” Jax continued, as he watched one of the paramedics check Andrew’s pulse and give Jerry a thumbs up, indicating that he’d been successful.

Jerry and the paramedics exchanged a few words, as one of the men put an oxygen mask on Andrew then started an IV, while the other hooked up a cardiac monitor to the man’s chest and fed the findings to a nearby hospital. Then Jerry ran to Jax’s side and held out his hand for the phone. “Let me talk to them,” he said, as Jax nodded and handed him the cell phone. “Dad, put this on the speaker again. I want to talk to both you and Mike,” he instructed, pausing a second while his father did as he’d asked.

“Okay, son, go ahead. We’re both listening,” his father informed him.

“Thanks, Dad,” Jerry answered, then he headed into Andrew’s kitchen for some privacy while they talked, motioning for Jax to follow. “I had another thought as to where Mike might look for this Rick Jackson… This guy’s evidently heavy into hacking because he found information that I know was deeply buried. See if there is a Rick Jackson who might have used a credit card on high tech websites or stores for the latest in computer hardware, software, attachments, whatever… Also check out credit card use by any Rick Jackson at those online and offline places that sell pseudo-spy toys, like voice modulators. If this Jackson is who I think he is, he’s also into photography, so keep that in mind while doing these checks, too… And he’s got brains as well as balls, so I’ve got a hunch he may have tried at some point to join the Bureau or the Secret Service but was rejected for one reason or another… See if there is a Rick Jackson on any of those lists, too, Mike. I’d say that the criminal acts started after the rejections. My guess is that he feels angry and frustrated that he couldn’t make the grade there and is taking his anger out in a lot of different ways. Check for any arrest records in the last ten years…”

“Interesting…” Mike Moriarity murmured. He’d been making notes as Jerry spoke, and he wondered how Jerry Jacks could put together a possible criminal profile so quickly and easily? But that was a question to ponder for another time; he had more pressing matters to attend to now. “I’m on this now,” he said. “I’ll start with a check of the tri-state area’s DMV’s. If this guy’s been used in the past to follow Ms. Wilding, I doubt he’s been doing all of his work on foot, or using buses or cabs to get around. I’ll call the minute we make a probable match,” he added, then pulled out his cell phone to begin his chain of calls.

“What does all of this have to do with Brenda or Jax or you, Jerry?” his father asked, still not seeing any connections here.

“Just trust that there is a connection, Dad, and leave it at that,” Jerry answered, frustrated that he couldn’t share more with his father. He glanced up to see the paramedics wheel Andrew’s gurney past the kitchen doorway toward the front door. “Dad, Jax and I have some leads of our own to chase down, and we need to get right on them. There’s just over three hours until the midnight deadline, and we all have a lot of ground to cover before then. We’ve wasted enough time here as it is.”

“I understand, son,” John Jacks answered. “We’ll be in touch.”

With that the connection went dead, and Jerry closed the phone, handing it back to Jax.

“Where to now?” Jax asked, wondering what exactly these leads were that Jerry had told their father they planned to pursue? He felt frustrated and worried. Brenda’s life was literally in the balance here, and Jax felt as if they were all merely twisting in the wind, grabbing frantically for possible leads that were tenuous at best. As far as he could tell, their best lead to where they could find Brenda was currently on life support and being raced to the nearest hospital after giving them very little in the way of substantial help.

“Back to my place for my laptop. I have access to some areas within the Agency’s files that could help us find this Jackson and get a profile of him,” Jerry replied. He could see the look of doubt on Jax’s face now, and he understood Jax’s frustration, but they both needed to stay optimistic and focused now if they hoped to find Brenda before it was too late. “We’ll find her, Jax… She’ll be back with us soon, I promise,” he said, patting his brother on the shoulder, but he didn’t feel as optimistic as he sounded. Even with a name now of the possible kidnapper, they were still looking for a needle in a haystack. But neither of them could afford to feel overwhelmed by the odds that seemed to be stacked against them. If they did, then Brenda truly was lost. “Let’s go,” Jerry added tersely, as he headed toward the front door.

Jax nodded, following silently on his brother’s heels. As they left the apartment building and headed toward Jerry’s car, Jax slid the cell phone back into its berth inside his jacket, hitting the letter he’d picked up moments ago from Buxton’s stack of mail as he did so. His face brightened as he pulled it out and looked at it. “You said that Buxton was a simple man, right?” he asked Jerry, as they both got into the car and Jerry buckled his seatbelt and started the engine.

“Yeah, what about it?” Jerry asked, as he surveyed the street traffic, absently wondering where Jax was going with this.

“Then why would a simple man have correspondence from a place called Luxury Limousines?” Jax queried, a slight smile touching his lips as he handed Jerry the letter in question.

Jerry’s eyes quickly scanned the outside of the envelope, across the Luxury Limousine logo to the fact that there was no postmark on the envelope. “This isn’t postmarked. It was hand delivered to him today,” he said excitedly, as he tore open the envelope and pulled out its contents, reading the cover letter aloud: “Thank you for your business. A copy of your contract for the limousine you requested for the next 48 hours is included here. The car is available for pickup at 3:00 p.m. today. Since you requested only a car and planned to provide your own driver, we checked your driver’s references and driving history and found them to be most satisfactory. Please be advised, however, that you are liable for any damage to the vehicle while your driver is operating the vehicle and while the vehicle is in your possession and any such damage will be charged to your account immediately… Thank you for choosing Luxury Limousines, where luxury isn’t merely our logo, it’s our promise.”

“This is it, Jax!” Jerry smiled as he handed the letter back to Jax. “We have a solid lead now for finding Brenda and this Rick Jackson. And if the limo company has info on him, then so do we now! We’ve still got a lot of work to do in a short period of time, but with a little luck, we’re going to find where he’s got Brenda hidden before Jackson can even have a whiff of that $10 million!”

He glanced down to see that Jax had yet to fasten his seatbelt. “Buckle up, little brother! You thought you were on a thrill ride coming here, but I’m telling you that you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” he grinned, as Jax quickly complied just as Jerry pulled out into traffic and sped off at breakneck speed.

This time, however, Jax seemed unfazed by the speed at which Jerry was driving, and he looked over at Jerry, hope once again infusing both his heart and his face. “There’s real hope now, isn’t there, Jer?”

Jerry nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, Jax, there is. I have a good feeling about this information. I think it’s going to point us in the right direction. This, combined with whatever Dad and Mike are able to dig up, could be just the break we need. Up until now, Jackson’s been the one holding all the cards. But not anymore… We’re going to find them!”

“And Jackson’s not going to know what hit him!” Jax grinned, buoyed by Jerry’s exuberance at this new information.

Jerry glanced over at Jax and thought back over the events of the past couple of hours and all that had happened in that time to test the two of them. In that time Jax had discovered the truth about Jerry’s other life, and they both had found out that they each loved and wanted the same woman. They’d also made the terrible discovery that that same woman was now missing. And in that same time frame, they each instinctively had known that united, they could stand against all odds in getting her back; but divided, Brenda would surely die. They were both still romantic rivals for Brenda’s heart, but they were also still brothers, who loved and supported one another, no matter what - which is exactly what they were doing now.

“No, he won’t!” Jerry finally answered, returning Jax’s broad grin with one of his own as he continued, “But we’re going to wipe the floor with him and then tattoo our names across his sorry ass, so he’ll never forget the name of the freight train that hit him! This guy is about to find out that the Jacks brothers working together are one unbeatable team!”

It had taken Jax and Jerry less than twenty minutes to travel the distance from Andrew’s brownstone to Jerry’s penthouse, but their stay at Jerry’s apartment was even briefer than that. Upon their arrival, Matthew, the night doorman at Jerry’s building, had immediately handed Jerry another envelope, this one containing the same picture that had been faxed to Jax in LA. But on the bottom of Jerry’s picture were instructions for him to go to Brenda’s apartment, where he could expect to receive a package before the midnight deadline. It warned that if he wasn’t there to accept delivery, then all bets were off as far as getting Brenda safely back.

Jerry was certain the guy was trying to keep him contained so that he wouldn’t be out searching for leads on Brenda’s whereabouts, and that angered him, but he complied because he was just as certain that the guy would kill her without hesitation if even mildly provoked. He had tried to quickly search the Agency’s files for a bio and picture of Rick Jackson, but there was absolutely nothing there on the man. His hope now of finding out more about Jackson lay with his father and Mike Moriarity in LA, and in whatever they could glean from the people at Luxury Limousines. Despite the fact that he had planned to make a trip to Luxury Limousines for that information to get whatever info they had on Rick Jackson - if indeed what they had was legitimate - he opted to get it by phone and computer instead now. So Jerry quickly packed up his laptop and he and Jax headed to Brenda’s to await the next contact from the kidnapper.

Rick Jackson closed the door quietly behind him, then grabbed another beer from the refrigerator before returning to his chair in front of the open window to continue his vigil. He took a long swallow of the cold brew and then held the icy can against his forehead, as he leaned his head slightly out the open window, hoping for a stray breeze to find its way into the stifling room.

God, it was hot! Even for a midsummer’s night in the asphalt jungle it was unusually hot, and this place had no air conditioning, so the sweat was running off him in rivers. He’d peeled off his shirt long ago and the two six-packs of beer that he’d bought at that grocery earlier was dwindling fast; this was his third in less than an hour. He knew he should probably switch to water to quench his thirst, otherwise he’d be sloshed by the time the witching hour hit and too drunk to celebrate the fact that he was a very rich man.

He grabbed the T-shirt he’d tossed off earlier and used it to wipe the sweat from his face. He’d give a million bucks right now for an electric fan. Of course, he doubted that he would use a fan even if he had one; the noise it would make might prevent him from hearing any sounds coming either from the bedroom or from outside the apartment. Not that he was expecting to hear much from either quarter tonight.

He’d just come from checking on his guest, and she was still out but at least she had moved and her breathing was more normal than before. He breathed a sigh of relief at that, not wanting to think about what would happen to him if she died before he was able to conclude the final part of this complicated transaction. Her health and welfare after she left his hands were not his concerns, but until that moment he had to make sure that she stayed very much alive.

He wasn’t really all that worried about anyone snooping around the apartment either, especially not Mr. Secret Agent Man, JD Jacks. He’d purposely left a trail of conflicting clues for the man to follow, and he doubted that even Superman would be able to find his way through this particular maze. Rick grinned at that. It felt so good that he, a lowly grunt not deemed worthy enough to become a full-fledged employee of the Agency, could so easily outsmart a man considered one of the Agency’s finest. At least that’s how Andrew Buxton had always viewed the two of them: JD, the best of the best; and Jackson, the lowest of the low.

His eyes gleamed maliciously as his thoughts turned to Andrew Buxton… He wondered if he was on that cold slab in the morgue yet or if he was just lying dead on the ground somewhere? Had he succumbed to the poisoning by now or had JD Jacks simply torn him limb from limb after seeing that disk and realizing Andrew’s deception? Either way was fine with Rick, just as long as the old man was dead and gone in the end.

He took another long swallow of the beer, glancing around the room in the sparse light from the streetlights below and taking a quick inventory of the room. He’d packed most everything he’d had remaining here into the vehicle on his earlier trip outside. He’d worried then that his activities would arouse suspicion, but he’d managed to accomplish everything without raising so much as an eyebrow of interest toward him - or running into any other tenants, which is what had worried him most. Now the only things that still needed to be loaded were Ms. Barrett herself, his fax, and his trusty camera and tripod, but he needed those to document things now and later, as a record of the events that were taking place. That had been a part of this plan from the beginning: a record of the events of the night as proof of the pain and suffering of Agent Jacks through all of this.

He took one final swallow, finishing off the can, and then tossed it onto the growing pile on the chair in the corner. He settled behind the camera tripod and leaned forward, focusing the night vision lens as he angled the camera to view the area - the cars speeding by on the street, the occasional person sauntering past on the sidewalk, the unwitting occupants of the buildings around him - all completely unaware that they were being watched or of what was about to happen in their midst. This was his night and he planned to record every aspect of this night to savor for later. He wanted to be able to remember every detail of tonight.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he noticed the lights go on in the apartment on the top floor of the building across the way, and his attentions, as well as his camera, were immediately drawn there. “Oh, it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…” he sang softly, laughing as he focused his camera and clicked away.

Jax was hot and tired. Outside the night air was sweltering, and inside it seemed only marginally better, as the air conditioning was apparently barely on in the hallways. He could feel the sweat trickling down his back, as he stood in the fourth floor hallway of Brenda’s building, holding his and Jerry’s jackets, while Jerry deftly picked the locks that secured the main door to Brenda’s apartment. Jerry appeared unfazed by the heat, never even breaking a sweat. Before today Jax could never have imagined his brother coolly breaking and entering someone else’s residence, but he had watched him do it twice now in less than ninety minutes, and he’d done it as easily as most people use keys to open their doors. Of course, before today he could never have imagined his brother leading a double life or being the other man in Brenda’s life either, but those things were true also.

Everything seems so surreal now, Jax thought, as Jerry slid open the heavy apartment door and flipped on the lights, then led the way inside. Just moments before he’d watched Jerry effortlessly pick the locks on Brenda’s door, he’d watched as his brother had skillfully disconnected the wiring in the electrical panel of the service elevator, effectively putting it out of commission for the duration. Jerry said he’d done it to eliminate one method of access to the floor, leaving the stairs as the only other way to get to the loft. Jax didn’t bother to ask why that was necessary; he’d learned to trust his brother’s instincts here. After all, this cloak-and-dagger stuff was Jerry’s venue, and he’d gladly leave it to him. He’d quickly learned that it was a lot less glamorous than the James Bond films led one to believe.

As Jerry made a quick check around the apartment, Jax tossed the jackets onto a nearby chair. Enjoying the relative cool of the air-conditioned loft, he stood and stared around the main room, remembering the first time he’d set foot here and the cool reception that had greeted him that time, too. But that coolness hadn’t come from an air conditioning unit set on high; it had come from Brenda herself…

It had been exactly a week ago today that he’d barged into her apartment to a less than cordial initial reception. He’d shown up unexpectedly with deli sandwiches and the hope of discovering more about the beautiful and mysterious woman who had propositioned him hours before in the park. And he had definitely discovered more about her; he’d discovered that she was enchanting and exciting and that she was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Unfortunately, in the past few hours he’d also discovered that his brother wanted the very same thing.

He was drawn out of his thoughts by the sound of Brenda’s voice coming from behind him, and his heart caught in his throat, as for a split second he thought that she was actually here and that the last few hours had been nothing more than a bad dream. But as he turned, he realized that Jerry was checking Brenda’s messages and her voice had come from her answering machine.

“Hi, this is Brenda. I’m not here right now, but if you’ll leave your name, number, and a brief message, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can! Thanks!” The message repeated again and again, and Jax realized that Jerry was purposely rewinding it over and over just to hear her voice.

Jerry looked up to see Jax staring at him, and he immediately let the machine continue on to retrieve the messages that had been left for Brenda over the past day. There were a total of six messages on the machine: one from Lois Ashton, informing Brenda that she was returning early to surprise her husband, Ned, and asking if Brenda would be free for lunch the following day; another from Ned Ashton, telling Brenda that he’d just received her note about the unexpected job out of town and that she had better call the minute she returned; three from Jax, all telling her that she couldn’t just run from him like that and that he was on his way to see her; and the most recent from a Dee Hotchkiss, informing Brenda that she was stopping by that evening with something that Brenda had left on the plane.

Jerry checked the caller ID for times and numbers and compared them to the messages on the machine. “She has six messages here,” he explained, as he continued to sort through the numbers that flashed on the caller ID, “but the caller ID indicates that she’s had over a dozen calls since I left her around 1:00 this morning. All of the hang-ups come up as anonymous, as does the call I made to her at 6:08 a.m. and the three you made to her… Did you call her any other times and not leave a message?” he asked, looking at Jax, who was now standing beside him.

“No, only the three times… Why? Do you think those other times could have been related to her kidnapping?” Jax asked, afraid to let himself hope that it would be that easy to track this guy down.

“Possibly, though I doubt it…I think this guy’s too smart to slip up on something as easily traceable as a phone call,” Jerry replied. “I’m going to run them all down anyway,” he added, putting his laptop down on the coffee table and plugging his computer into the phone line, then turning it on and booting it up.

“But if they’re anonymous, how can you trace them?” Jax asked wearily, settling into one of the large chairs of the living room area of the loft. He was so tired that his brain seemed to have stopped functioning. He wondered how his brother seemed to be still going strong? His stomach grumbled loudly, reminding him that he hadn’t had anything to eat since the plane, and then he’d only grabbed a quick bite.

“There are ways to trace most anything, little brother, if you just know where to look and how to get there,” Jerry answered as he settled onto the couch to work. Then, hearing the rumble of Jax’s stomach, he added: “Why don’t you see if there’s anything to eat in the refrigerator? I’m starting to feel pretty empty myself.” He paused slightly, then turned to look back at the big table in the kitchen/dining room area and smiled as he nodded his head toward the table: “If nothing else, there are some cookies over there that the neighbor dropped off last night.”

Jax walked to the table, where the Saran-wrapped plate of cookies sat at the far edge, and grabbed one, taking a bite and then hurriedly stuffing the rest in his mouth. “Want one?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder at his brother. “They’re really good.”

Jerry looked up to see Jax, his mouth full of one cookie as he prepared to pop yet another into his mouth, and he suddenly had a flashback of a similar scene when Jax was only four and he was barely ten. They had stumbled upon their mother’s hidden stash of Christmas cookies that she’d made ahead for the holidays, and they’d helped themselves. They’d ended up eating themselves sick that day and neither was allowed another Christmas cookie or candy that entire holiday season, which was just as well since neither of them could bear to even look at sweets for months after that! He smiled at the memory, then nodded at Jax. “Sure, but only one. I’d hate not to be able to face another cookie for the rest of my life!”

Jax grinned, immediately knowing what his brother meant by that remark. He tossed Jerry one of the sweet/tart treats, which Jerry easily caught and popped into his mouth, and then he folded the clear plastic wrap back over the plate of temptation. “Good point!” he laughed, spewing cookie crumbs in his wake, as he headed to the refrigerator to look for some real food for the both of them. “Have you found anything yet?” he asked, as he scouted the inside of Brenda’s less than overflowing refrigerator.

“Not yet. It’s still searching,” Jerry answered, his eyes flickering as names and numbers scampered briskly across the LCD screen in front of him. “What about you?” he asked, glancing back over his shoulder, as Jax stood hunched in front of the open door of the huge side-by-side refrigerator. “Found anything actually edible in there?” He remembered that Brenda usually kept her film in the tiny refrigerator they had in their flat in Monte Carlo, saying that it kept it fresher longer - and little more. He wondered if she still did that today?

“Actually, it’s got more in it than the first time I was here. But it looks like everything that she does have is the food that I bought for us,” Jax answered, not thinking about what he was saying. “And that’s basically untouched because we were usually too busy to eat -” He caught himself suddenly, realizing what he had just said and how hurtful it must have been for his brother.

He turned around to just in time to see Jerry staring at him, blinking as if he were trying to erase the images that Jax’s words had evoked for him. “Jer, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…” he stuttered apologetically.

“No need to apologize, Jax,” Jerry said, but Jax could tell from his face that the words had hurt Jerry deeply. “It was only natural for you to remember that because what you’re doing now reminded you of a similar situation with Brenda. It’s no different than me seeing you stuffing your face with those cookies and flashing back to when we were kids and doing the same thing.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t mean to rub it in that Brenda and I were… we were…” Jax’s voice trailed off, realizing that he was most likely making the situation more uncomfortable, instead of less.

“‘Intimate,’” Jerry finished for him; standing and turning to fully face Jax. “I think that was the word you were fumbling for… Listen, it’s no secret that you and Brenda were intimate… Hell, there’ve been enough pictures recently of the two of you being intimate to make that impossible for anyone to deny!” He laughed at that, but Jax could hear the hollowness in it. “And you’re just as aware of my past with Brenda - We even conceived a baby together… There’s no denying that both of us have shared her bed as well as her heart…”

He shifted slightly where he stood as he continued, “The point that I’m trying to make here, Jax, is that we have enough stresses facing us now without having to censor our thoughts and memories of Brenda as well. I don’t want to have to watch what I say around you, and I don’t think you want to have to be guarded around me either… You might be the other man that Brenda loves, but you’re also my brother, and right now that trumps everything else. I need you to be my brother first and foremost now. I need to think and talk about her in order to stay connected and sane right now, and I think that you probably need to do the same. And if that means that occasionally one or the other of us slips and reveals an intimate detail, then we’ll deal…” He waited as Jax absorbed what he’d just said.

“How’d you ever get to be so wise?” Jax asked, smiling broadly as he looked at his brother with newfound respect.

Jerry flashed an equally broad smile as he tried to modestly deflect his brother’s unabashed admiration. “Comes standard in the ‘big brother package’ job description,” he tossed off.

“Yeah, but it’s times like this that make me realize that I got the deluxe model,” Jax answered, and both he and Jerry knew he was sincere in his praise and they left it at that.

“Well, I found that three of those hang-ups came from a cell phone registered to a Dee Hotchkiss, currently a resident of Santa Monica, formerly of West Monroe, Louisiana. She’s the same woman who called Brenda from the airport… I couldn’t find names or numbers to go with the other three hang-ups,” Jerry announced, as he looked back at the screen to see that the program had finished running. “I figured as much though… If those calls were this guy checking here, then he probably used a series of computers to route his calls all over the globe, which is why I came up empty. If I had several hours and the Agency’s system, I could pinpoint the original number, but with just this and our time constraints...”

“Well, you said it was a long shot anyway,” Jax pointed out. “But we do have that description from the owner of that Harlem grocery store where Mike traced that last fax to…”

“Which was vague, at best,” Jerry interrupted. “He said that he thought that the man who sent that fax was white - although possibly Hispanic; average height and build - possibly bigger; and wore dark glasses and a Yankees cap - that could describe over half of the men in over half of the boroughs of New York. He couldn’t even tell the guy’s age or hair color or even if he had an accent or not…”

“You don’t think we should at least look around that area, possibly for the limo?” Jax asked, playing devil’s advocate. It had crossed his mind that this guy - if he was the same guy who had assaulted Brenda in Harlem four years ago - might be just sick enough to hold her in that area now, but he kept his theories to himself. After all, Jerry was the expert on these things.

“If this guy’s as smart as he seems, I don’t think he’d use a public fax in the same area where he’s holding her. It would be too easy for us to follow up on that,” Jerry answered, as he continued to work at his computer. “Besides, I can’t imagine this guy keeping the limo any longer than he had to. Those things aren’t exactly easy to hide. But I’m still planning to follow up on that limo lead. I’m running a check now on the owners of Luxury Limousines. The business is closed for the day, but I should be able to find some home numbers soon enough, and then we’ll go from there.”

Jax nodded, and turned his attention back to the refrigerator and scavenging for food. If Jerry did turn up something, then they’d need all their energy to follow up on it and that meant they needed to eat now. “I can make some ham-and-cheese sandwiches,” Jax announced, pulling the sandwich fixings out of the refrigerator.

“Sounds good,” Jerry answered absently, as he intently watched his screen, waiting for the data on Luxury Limousines. Within seconds the information he had sought was there. “I found it!” he said triumphantly. “Luxury Limousines of Brooklyn is owned by husband and wife, Anthony and Linda Fiorrella, of Montclair, New Jersey.” He pulled out his cell phone and eagerly punched in the numbers of the Fiorrellas’ home phone, but even after ten rings there was no answer. “Dammit! No answer!” he swore, slamming his phone shut. “You’d think that someone that owns a citywide limo service, that boasts two dozen limousines and caters to celebrities, could afford to have at least one answering machine at their home!”

“Wait awhile and then try it again. But for now, just sit down and eat. We’re both dead on our feet, and we won’t be any good to Brenda if either of us passes out from hunger or exhaustion,” Jax offered, as he handed Jerry a plate with his sandwich and a glass of iced tea. “We need to be ready when we hear from this guy.”

Jerry’s face softened as took the proffered food and drink from his brother. “Now who’s the wise one?” he grinned, as he settled onto the center of the couch, propping his feet up on the coffee table in front of him.

Jax just smiled as he sat down to eat in a chair across from the couch, also propping his feet on the coffee table.

They ate in relative silence after that exchange, both feeling Brenda’s overwhelming presence as they sat among her things, waiting to hear again from her kidnapper and praying that this nightmare would be over soon and that Brenda wouldn’t be lost to them forever. But as they sat there, the steady tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the far corner of the massive wall of bookcases that divided the loft the only sound punctuating their thoughts, they both knew that even with Brenda’s safe return one of them would lose her in the end.

And that thought saddened each of them. For as much as each loved and wanted her for himself, a part of each of them ached for the other who would be denied the love he was fighting so hard to save. They were brothers, after all, and as such they would always rejoice in one another’s good fortune and cry at one another’s pain. They knew that in that respect that getting Brenda back - a feat they both fervently prayed they could accomplish - would be a bittersweet victory in the end.

They both glanced up as the clock struck the hour, signaling that it was 10:00 p.m., with only two hours left before the deadline. Jerry was the first to break the silence. “I’m going to try the Fiorrellas again. Let’s hope someone answers. We’re running out of time here,” he announced, as he grabbed his cell phone from off the coffee table and immediately pressed ‘redial,’ praying that someone at the Fiorrella’s answered the phone this time, but there was still no answer. He threw the phone back down in frustration, and it bounced off the soft cushions of the couch and onto the floor, landing near Jax’s feet.

Jax understood Jerry’s frustration; he shared it. “Better be gentle with that,” Jax said, bending down and picking up Jerry’s phone and setting it onto the coffee table next to the laptop. “I managed to destroy mine when I threw it against the wall in frustration this morning. And the phone system for the entire building was down at the time. Good thing Dad had his cell phone to lend me.”

“The entire phone system was down in the building?” Jerry asked, sitting up straight on the couch. This bit of information had his attention.

Jax nodded. “We - Mike, Dad, and me - had even considered that it was tied to Jarrod Davis’s reappearance in Brenda’s life, especially after she showed up at the office to say goodbye. I finally dragged out of her that JD - you -” Jax continued, nodding toward Jerry, “ - had come back for her. And then we started speculating that Jarrod Davis was somehow tied to our troubles with our phone and computer systems, as well as Addie’s not-so-accidental accident, and they were all done to draw me back to LA and distract me while he scurried her safely away from me.” He paused and looked at his brother steadily as he added: “But, of course, now that I know that you’re Jarrod Davis, that theory is blown out of the water.”

“Not necessarily, little brother,” Jerry replied cryptically. When Jax cast him a puzzled look, Jerry added: “I think that your theory still holds; you just had the wrong man behind it…” He grabbed his laptop’s carrying case and unzipped one of the inside pockets, triumphantly pulling out a zip disk. “It’s my guess that we’ll find out everything we wanted to know about who was behind that little bit of industrial espionage from this,” he said as he slid it into the zip drive and booted it up.

Jax moved to sit on the couch beside Jerry, so that they could both see the monitor. They watched intently as a list of files of Andrew Buxton’s chronological account of his dealings with Brenda, filed by dates, filled the screen.

“This seems to be the most recent entry,” Jerry said as he quickly pulled up an entry dated a few days before.

They both read the screen as the contents of the file appeared:

"Brenda and young Jacks have been inseparable over the past couple of days, and I fear that if I don’t do something soon to end this affair that JD will learn of it and then there will be hell to pay…

“Though not as extensive as they once were, my connections on the West Coast are still considerable. And there are several who owe as much loyalty to me as to the Agency, so I have no fear that they would ever betray me to anyone inside or outside of the Agency. Of all of those choices, I believe M to be the most obvious and appropriate choice for this, as I know that he has controllable sources within the firm itself, who would have easy access to vulnerable areas.”

Jerry looked up at Jax. “Looks like Andrew was the one who threw the monkey wrench into the works at the company, but there’s no mention of any names of those within the company itself that were involved.”

“Gwen Thompson was the one who unleashed the computer virus and also took down the phone system,” Jax supplied, watching as Jerry reacted to the news just as he and their father had. “She pulled Tom Kincaid in security into it, too, and there’s probably more that will be flushed out as we delve deeper into it, but for now, she seems to have been the point man.”

“Gwen Thompson - Addie’s assistant?” Jerry asked, his jaw dropping, realizing the depth of betrayal, both personally and professionally, that was to his family’s firm. Employees there - especially those with close ties to his family or Addie - were considered like family.

“Pretty incredible, huh?” Jax said, leaning forward, his chin on his folded hands. “Of all the people we might have suspected to do something like this, Gwen would have been almost as far down the list as Addie or Dad and myself,” Jax sighed, shaking his head. “I guess everyone has their price.”

“Unfortunately, that’s all too true,” Jerry murmured, then adding quietly: “And in my business we make it our job to know exactly what that price is. That’s how we do what we do - by quickly finding and meeting people’s prices…”

Jax didn’t comment, but when Jer put it like that Jax realized that sometimes what Jerry did wasn’t all that far from what he did as a corporate raider, since he also found and met people’s prices. But at least in his line of work, no one got killed in the end. “Any idea who ‘M’ might be?”

“Could be a current agent or a former agent or simply a contract worker,” Jerry answered. “Or it could be just someone that Andrew knows outside the business… My bet is that it’s a former agent. Current ones rarely have time for this kind of side dabbling, and I doubt that Andrew would risk too many within the Agency finding out about this little side job of his.”

“But I thought Andrew was handling the situation with Brenda at the Agency’s order?” Jax answered. “If that’s the case, why not use current people?”

Jerry shook his head. “No, the more that this all unravels, the more I think the whole elaborate plan was Andrew’s. The Agency would have ordered a clean kill; eliminate the problem quickly. There would have been none of this involving your company or a limo and driver to grab Brenda at the airport… The Agency would have simply arranged another street assault - this time fatal though. In this city it happens regularly enough that it’s almost routine, unfortunately, and a great many of those murders go unsolved, and they could have easily erased the trail of evidence afterwards… I think this entire operation has been Andrew’s all along. It’s just that somewhere along the line he lost control of it to his man, Jackson.”

Jerry suddenly leaned forward as he stared at the computer screen. “What the hell is this?” he swore, pointing to the screen at a particular passage in Andrew’s diary.

“The most recent photos that Hanover has secured recently in his ongoing surveillance of Brenda indicates that she and young Jacks have progressed to a point where I may have no choice but to step in to permanently sever the relationship, as well as permanently dispensing with Brenda. JD’s association is far too important to risk his possible defection to reunite with her over jealousy of his brother’s affair with her.

“One way or another by the end of the week I will have dealt with both Brenda Barrett and Mark Hanover for the last time, and the Agency’s hold on JD’s future will be secured.”

“That bastard!” Jerry muttered through clenched teeth, his face flushed with anger.

“Buxton sees this as a way to keep you tied to them forever. And on top of that, he talks about killing Brenda as casually as if she were a fly!” Jax exclaimed angrily.

But Jerry wasn’t dwelling on Andrew’s intentions about him or Brenda in his diary. He had already figured as much earlier when it had become clear at Andrew’s that he knew what was happening with Brenda. He was focusing on something else entirely: Rick Jackson wasn’t mentioned anywhere in this excerpt. He quickly ran a check on the entire disk, searching for any references whatsoever to Rick Jackson, but the search came up empty. “He lied,” Jerry whispered hoarsely, not really believing what was happening here. “He said Rick Jackson had her, but here he says that he’s used some guy named Mark Hanover all along… He used his last breath to lie to us to insure that we couldn’t find Brenda…” Jerry spat out angrily, shaking his head in disgust and disbelief.

“What?” Jax asked, not sure that he’d heard Jerry correctly.

“I checked, and there is no mention of a Rick Jackson anywhere on this disk… That’s why I couldn’t find him in the Agency’s files - Those files were never purged, like I thought they’d been; there was never a Rick Jackson in them in the first place!” Jerry shouted, slamming his fist down hard on the table, and nearly knocking his laptop over. “That son-of-a-bitch lied to us! We wasted all this time trying to find the wrong guy!”

He jumped up and grabbed his phone. “Dad, it’s Jer. Is Mike around?”

“Jerry, what’s happened?” his father asked, noting the anxiety in his son’s voice.

“We were fed a bad lead, Dad, and we’ve been wasting time tracking down the wrong man!” Jerry answered, running his free hand through his hair in frustration, as he paced the wide expanse between the couch and the bookcases. “I need for Mike to run the same checks on a Mark Hanover as he did on Rick Jackson.”

“Okay, son,” John answered, then added, “We were just about to call you. Mike was able to find a Rick Jackson that fit your profile. Do you want us to disregard that information now, in light of this?”

Jerry gave a heavy sigh as he stopped his pacing and stared out the wall of windows at the activity on the street below. He was so tired. It wasn’t like him to be unable to discern the truth from a lie. Why had he blindly believed what Andrew had said about Jackson? Because dying men don’t lie, his inner voice told him; don’t throw that information away; it might still be important… He hesitated only a second, as he answered his father: “No, go ahead and send it anyway. Brenda has a fax here in her studio, and the number is…” He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to remember the number he’d seen on the fax machine earlier that day when he’d looked through her studio.

“The number is 212-555-3131,” Jax supplied quickly, remembering the number from days before, when he’d had Addie fax him some business papers there during his brief stay with Brenda.

“212-555-3131,” Jerry repeated for their father.

“I’ll send that information on Jackson the minute we’re done here,” his father assured.

“Is Jax’s money ready for transfer?” Jerry asked. On hearing his father’s “Yes,” he continued, “Good, but don’t wire it until you get the okay from me. We’re still hoping to locate Brenda before the deadline - or at least know that this guy’s bargaining in good faith.”

“I understand. We won’t make a move on this end without hearing from you first,” John answered, knowing that Jax wouldn’t let Jerry gamble unnecessarily with Brenda’s very life at stake. He paused and then asked, “How’s your brother holding up?”

What about me? She’s as important to me as she is to him, Jerry wanted to shout at hearing his father’s concerns for Jax. But instead he looked over at Jax, his brother’s eyes bleary from lack of sleep, worry lines creasing his forehead, and answered: “He’s doing as well as can be expected right now, but we’ll all feel better once we get a solid lead and Brenda’s safely back.”

“Take care of him, Jerry,” John said. “He’s strong, but if anything happens to her…”

“I know, Dad,” Jerry replied quietly, as he walked over to the windows and leaned his forehead wearily against a pane of glass, welcoming the feel of its cool surface on his flushed face. He was trying hard not to let his voice betray his fragile emotional state to his father or his face betray the same to his brother. “I’ll take care of him.”

“You’re a good brother and son, Jerry,” his father said softly, and then he hung up.

“Yeah,” was Jerry’s muffled reply, as he closed the phone and continued to lean against the glass, staring at the street below. Finally, having regained his composure, he turned back to Jax. “Thanks for supplying that number. I knew it, but for some reason I couldn’t recall it - that’s not like me…” His voice trailed off, as he sighed and shook his head, suddenly feeling drained.

“I know,” Jax said. He understood his brother’s momentary memory lapse. It was a wonder that either of them could think straight at this point, since neither had eaten much all day and both were in dire need of a couple of hours of rest. But rest at this point was out of the question, especially since they seemed to be back at square one as far as the identity of Brenda’s kidnapper was concerned. And he knew that that was what was really bothering Jerry and confusing things for him.

This new piece of the puzzle seemed to make no sense whatsoever to Jax. Why would a man use his last breath to perpetuate a lie? He hadn’t seen too many men die, but he doubted that they would want to leave this life and face the next with a blatant lie passing their lips. He sensed that in his profession that Jerry had heard the dying words of a lot of men, and he’d gotten the impression that Jerry readily believed Buxton because Buxton believed he was dying. What Buxton said had to have significance - it had to be the truth! And he knew that Jerry felt that way, too.

“I think that you were smart to tell Dad to send that information on Jackson, despite what we just uncovered,” Jax said, standing and moving around to where Jerry stood. “I know that this isn’t my field of expertise and all, but there’s something about all of this that just isn’t adding up for me.”

Jerry smiled at that, though it really didn’t surprise him. Jax had good instincts; this was just another example of that. “Good call, little brother… The more I think about this, the more likely it seems that we’re intentionally being fed red herrings here…” He moved back to the computer and began typing.

“So which do you think are the real clues and which are the fake ones?” Jax asked, watching as Jerry sat back and waited for the site that he’d just accessed to fully download.

“That is what I’m trying to find out now… I just accessed the Agency’s personnel files, searching for information on Mark Hanover,” Jerry explained, as his eyes scanned the information there. “There is something here…” he said as he peered closely at the screen. “It’s not much… He’s done occasional contract work for the Agency for the past five years, and his specialty is surveillance…” Jerry said, but his tone sounded more skeptical than triumphant.

“Well, then he’s our man, right?” Jax asked, but his tone reflected his puzzlement at this new information.

Jerry heaved a heavy sigh. “That’s where the trail seems to be leading, but…” his voice trailed off.

“But what?” Jax asked quickly. His instincts told him that despite the evidence to the contrary Buxton wouldn’t let a lie be his dying words. Jackson, not Hanover, had to be the man they were after. Was that what Jerry thought, too?

“It just doesn’t feel right,” Jerry finished. “It all feels too pat and easy… And I still can’t accept that Andrew would use what he thought was his last breath to lie to us… My blinders are off as far as Andrew being a friend to Brenda and me, but my gut tells me that Andrew wasn’t lying to us there. I think that Rick Jackson is our man and that this disk has been altered to make Hanover look like Andrew’s accomplice, rather than him.”

“I agree, Jer, but how can we be sure which man is the right one?” Jax asked.

“I think we’ll just have to keep looking into both men and hope that the Fiorrellas get in soon, so that they can provide a few answers. And if all else fails, I say we follow our guts and go after Jackson…” Jerry answered. “But for now we have faxes to review and phone calls to make, and we can hope that this guy - Jackson or Hanover - gets that promised delivery here soon. The later it gets, the more worried I get about Brenda’s safety - which actually may be part of his plan.”

“What do you mean?” Jax asked.

“I get the feeling that this guy is on a power trip right now…” Jerry explained. “I still think that this Jackson was the one who sent me the pictures and the disk, which makes me also feel that he deleted his name from Andrew’s files and replaced Hanover’s there instead. I think he counted on me going after Buxton and being angry enough to kill him before he gave up anything, then he’d be free and clear in the end. I may be wrong about all this, but my gut and my experience tell me I’m not.”

“I know that the stakes here are just as high for you as they are for me, so I trust you here, Jerry,” Jax answered. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“Well, you can check to see if that fax on Jackson has come in yet, and I’ll try the Fiorrellas again,” Jerry answered, but before either could make a move, they heard a resounding thump in the hall outside in the direction of the stairs.

Jax gave Jerry a questioning look. “We have company,” Jerry mouthed as he held his hand up, indicating that Jax shouldn’t say anything. Jax merely nodded as Jerry retrieved his gun from where his jacket lay. He motioned for Jax to man the front door and then he headed back to Brenda’s studio and the only other entrance to the loft.

Jax watched as his brother quickly disappeared from view, then he heard a tentative knock at the main door. He waited a few seconds, allowing Jerry time to get into position, then, taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, he walked slowly over to answer the door. The Jacks Brothers team was about to meet their first test…

Dee clutched her chest and leaned against the stairwell wall, panting heavily as she saw the fire door of the fourth floor landing just a few feet in front of her, finally signaling the end of her long, arduous climb. She guessed that Brenda’s apartment was somewhere just beyond that door, and she only hoped that Brenda was indeed there since Dee was in dire need of both a very cold drink for her parched throat and a very hot soak for her tired feet.

She wiped the perspiration from her forehead, thinking that for an air-conditioned building this place didn’t seem very cool. Part of that was probably due to this unplanned hike up four flights of stairs. She wasn’t one who normally took the stairs, preferring instead to use elevators or escalators whenever possible. In fact, Dee was firmly opposed to strenuous activity of any kind - outside the bedroom, that was - and certainly taking the stairs up four flights in heels had not been in her plans for the evening. But for some reason the only other means of access to this floor - the service elevator - was currently out of commission.

She had actually planned to use the other elevator in the building, but she had learned from one of the other tenants - a cute, little, old lady with bright orange hair, whom she’d met as the woman was coming out of that elevator to walk her dog, an ugly, little rat terrier - that that particular elevator didn’t go to the top floor. The service elevator was the only one that went to the fourth floor where Brenda’s apartment was, and it was mysteriously out of order, so it was the stairs or nothing.

Dee supposed that, in retrospect, she should have at least taken off her silk jacket and changed out of her heels and into her walking shoes, which were in her carryon that she had slung over her shoulder. And she probably should have known that this was going to be a bad night when her car had never arrived to pick her up and she was forced to take a cab. And she probably should have just continued on to her hotel rather than detouring here when she had repeatedly called Brenda’s apartment during the hellish hour-long cab ride from the airport and each time had gotten the answering machine. But hindsight was always 20/20, as they say. Besides, she knew in her heart that she could never have rested at her hotel without first coming here to check on Brenda for herself. She knew that she was being drawn here to this place, just as surely as she’d been drawn to Brenda herself in the airport in LA. She only wished that she knew why. She supposed she’d find that out soon enough. And right now she could feel that Brenda was very close, and when her feelings about something were this strong, they were rarely wrong.

She finally caught her breath and trudged the last few feet to push open the stair door that led to the fourth floor hallway. It hit the wall outside with an unceremonious thump before closing behind her, also with a noisy bang. “Well, at least the whole floor knows I’ve arrived!” she chuckled, as she surveyed her surroundings. She found herself at the far end of the fourth floor. To her immediate right and nearly in front of her was a door with a sign that read: “B. WILDING - PHOTOGRAPHER,” which she figured led to Brenda’s studio. As she looked further down the hallway to the right, she could see that there was only one other door, which she assumed must lead to Brenda’s apartment proper.

Brenda had told her that her studio and apartment were together, but she had never mentioned that it took up the entire top floor of her building! Dee was impressed that such a young woman could afford to maintain such a large space. She must be doing very well, she thought, as she walked down the long hallway to the door at the other end of the building, which she soon discovered was directly across from the service elevator. “It figures!” she groaned, looking at the short distance from the service elevator to Brenda’s apartment door.

She raised her hand to knock at the door, hesitating slightly as she thought she heard a noise behind her. She looked back down the hallway, seeing nothing, but her guard remained up, as did the hairs on the back of her neck. Calm down, she admonished herself; you’re just over stimulated from the heat and that hike up here. But she knew it was more than that.

Her nerves had been on edge ever since she’d watched Brenda leave the plane. She’d had an ominous feeling about what had happened to her after that, especially after she’d finally located a porter at the airport who had seen Brenda leave the airport in a limo. Not only had he seen her leave, he’d helped the limo driver get her into the car because she was “as drunk as a skunk,” as the porter had so indelicately phrased it. And that had really set off alarm bells, since she knew for a fact that Brenda had been sober when she’d boarded the flight and had nothing more to drink on the flight than a couple of gingerales. Something drastic had happened to Brenda between the time that she’d stepped off their plane until the time she was lifted into that limo, but what? She just hoped that she would find that answer, as well as Brenda herself, once someone answered the door. But first she had to actually knock…

She sighed, taking a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves and slow her racing heart, which was no longer racing from the heat and physical exertion but rather from anxiety. Once again she raised her hand to knock, glancing back over her shoulder in the direction from which she had just come. Still seeing nothing, she rapped lightly on the door. At first she heard no sounds coming from inside the apartment, but just as she raised her hand to knock again, this time more soundly, she heard heavy footsteps coming toward the door.

“Good, someone’s here!” Dee sighed, letting out the breath that she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding until now. But as the heavy door slid open, it wasn’t Brenda on the other side to greet her. A tall, incredibly handsome, though slightly disheveled, man stood in the doorway looking down at her. His clothes, expensive-looking gray dress pants and white dress shirt with its sleeves rolled up above his elbows, were rumpled, like he’d been wearing them for days. His blonde hair, with its $200 haircut, was mussed as well, and his incredible blue-green eyes were bloodshot and weary, as if he hadn’t seen sleep in a long time.

“Yes?” he asked brusquely, not moving an inch from the middle of the open doorway to allow her entrance into the apartment, nor even acting as if she were welcome there.

Despite the brevity of his words, Dee could hear a slight accent. And as she stood staring up at him, she realized that his face looked familiar. It was then that it hit her: he was one of the men in Brenda’s picture - one of the men Brenda loved! “I’m here for Brenda,” she said, never taking her eyes off the man’s incredible face as she reached into her carryon to pull out the picture that Brenda had left on the plane.

But just as her hands reached inside her open bag, she heard someone from behind her shout: “Hold it right there!” as he simultaneously grabbed her and shoved her hard against the wall.

“Another dose of epi!” Dr. Michael Carpenter ordered, as Susan Samuels, charge ER nurse, handed him the syringe of epinephrine, and Dr. Carpenter deftly inserted the cardiac needle into the patient’s heart, glancing up to see that there was no change on the heart monitor.

“Charge to 300!” he yelled, reaching once again for the cardiac paddles, as Nurse Samuels flipped the switch on the defibrillator and soon the familiar hum of the defibrillator filled the air as it recharged once again.

“Clear!” he barked, for the umpteenth time in the past forty minutes, and for the umpteenth time the ER personnel of St. Vincent’s Hospital stood back as Dr. Carpenter labored to once again restart this man’s failed heart, with no success.

“Mike, he’s gone,” Susan announced wearily. “There’s nothing more we can do. Just call it, and let him go in peace.”

Dr. Carpenter sighed, realizing that Susan was right. Although he hated losing a patient, he knew that this guy was gone and had been since the moment the squad had brought him in. “Okay - time of death: 10:32 p.m.,” he agreed reluctantly, glancing up at the large clock on the wall as he grabbed the man’s chart and signed it. Then he turned and walked away to handle the next trauma, never casting a backward glance as one of the med techs pulled a sheet up over the ashen face of Andrew Buxton’s dead body.

Jax watched in horror as Jerry threw the woman against the wall. “Jerry, what are you doing?!” he yelled, trying to pull his brother off the poor woman, who was stunned speechless by what was happening to her. “For God’s sake, it’s a woman!”

“Back off, Jax!” Jerry warned, holding Dee so that her face was pressed hard against the wall. He had her arms twisted behind her back, gun to her head, as he reached inside her bags to check for a weapon. “In my line of work it’s safer to assume someone is the enemy until proven differently,” he said, as he rummaged through her purse and then her carryon. He found no weapons but pulled out a framed picture of him and Jax, identical to the one that he had in his apartment. He immediately realized that this was the picture that Jax had said that Brenda had with her when she’d left his office in LA. As swiftly as he’d shoved the woman against the wall, he whirled her around to face him. “Where did you get this?” he demanded, holding the picture in front of her face.

Dee’s eyes were wide with fear, as Jerry pushed the picture at her. For the briefest moment she thought her knees would buckle, but instead they seemed to lock in place. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself; her heart was racing as if the devil himself had her in his grasp - and for a brief moment there she’d thought that he had! What had she walked into, she wondered? But as she stared face-to-face with her attacker, she recognized the pain in his eyes, as well as the man himself. She realized that this was the other brother in the picture, and if they were acting like this and wondering why she had the picture, then Brenda must truly be missing. No wonder they looked the way they did - all wild-eyed and frantic.

“My name’s Dee Hotchkiss,” she began, her voice much calmer than she felt. “I sat by Ms. Wildin’ - Brenda - on the plane from LA, and she accidentally left the picture behind when she got off the plane,” she explained, her usually faint Southern accent growing more pronounced with each syllable, an indication that she was growing more anxious by the minute. “I was just returnin’ it to her.”

“The message on the machine,” Jax reminded Jerry, who merely nodded as he continued to stare at Dee suspiciously. When Jax saw that Jerry wasn’t moving away from the woman, he reached out to pull her out of Jerry’s grasp. “Let her go! She’s not in on this!” Jax watched as his brother - who wore the same hard, almost robotic look he’d assumed when he’d attacked Jax in the penthouse - slowly released his grip on the woman’s arm and backed away from her. But Jax could tell from Jerry’s cold glare that he was convinced that this woman was not somehow connected with Brenda’s disappearance.

Jax knew that Jerry had said that the Agency had all kinds of ordinary people working for them and one could never tell by just looking at them whether they could or couldn’t be trusted. But somehow Jax knew that this woman was exactly who she claimed to be. He had a good feeling about her. He couldn’t explain it; he just felt it.

“I’m sorry for this, Ms. Hotchkiss. It’s just that we thought that you were someone else…” Jax tried to explain, as he lifted her chin to look at the side of her face that Jerry had shoved against the wall. Her cheek was red, but he doubted she would have much more than a small bruise and a good-sized headache to show for this altercation. “Come inside, and I’ll get some ice for you,” Jax offered, as he took her bag and ushered her into the loft.

Dee nodded mutely, giving Jerry a wide-eyed stare as she followed Jax into the apartment. She could feel pain everywhere, and it wasn’t just her own that she was sensing, although her tired muscles and sore face were beginning to ache terribly. She could feel their pain as well, and although theirs was emotional while hers was physical, theirs seemed just as acute - especially that of the dark-haired one. His pain felt deep and long-standing, but she also perceived a new, more intense pain there as well, as she got the impression that he blamed himself entirely for Brenda’s present circumstances.

She remembered that Brenda had referred to the dark-haired man as JD. She had said that he was the one who had left her alone and pregnant all those years ago and who had just returned to rekindle that love. But Brenda had left out a very important part of the puzzle when she spoke of him - JD was a dangerous man. Perhaps not the man himself - although Dee had experienced firsthand just how volatile this man’s nature could be - but she guessed that his actions just now were driven more by the circumstances of the situation than by any innate violence within him. More likely, danger surrounded him. Judging from his show of agility and strength, he was possibly in the military or in some sort of law enforcement. Possibly something ugly from his profession had followed him and touched Brenda, which would explain why Dee now had the overwhelming sense that he felt responsible for whatever had happened to Brenda tonight.

She turned her attention to the blonde who had greeted her at the door and who was now busily preparing a makeshift ice pack for her bruised face. He was the one Brenda referred to as Jax, an odd name Dee had thought at the time. She sensed his pain as well, but his pain was different from his brother’s. Whereas JD’s pain had been with him for so long that it had hardened him and closed him off emotionally, Jax’s pain was new and it made him more vulnerable, yet at the same time more attuned to himself and those around him. She sensed that this new acuity of his had allowed him to instinctively know that she was no threat, while his brother seemed unconvinced of her innocence even now.

Jerry followed them into the apartment, pulling the door shut hard behind him. He slid his gun into the waistband at the back of his jeans, as he watched Jax motion for Dee to sit at the table while he wrapped some ice cubes in a towel and handed it to her. Despite Jax’s apparent willingness to accept this woman at her word, Jerry was still wary of her and her story, which is why he opted to keep his gun with him rather than to put it back into his jacket. This woman could very well be just who she claimed to be - an acquaintance of Brenda’s from the flight, merely returning the picture Brenda had left behind. Or she could be the accomplice of the man who had Brenda now, and this picture could be the delivery the kidnapper had told Jerry to expect here at the apartment. He was usually very good at sizing up people instantly, but for some reason his usually sharp instincts weren’t helping him with her. On the one hand, his gut told him that she wasn’t involved in hurting Brenda in any way, yet he still sensed something about her that unsettled him, and that made him all the more wary of her.

Meanwhile, Jax continued to apologize to Dee. “We don’t usually go around assaulting strangers, Ms. Hotchkiss…” he began.

“Call me Dee, please,” she interjected, smiling sweetly at Jax, despite the fact that that simple act felt like a painful contortion to her face.

“Okay, Dee…” He returned her smile with one of his own. “It’s just that…” His voice trailed off, as he wondered how to explain this without alarming this woman and drawing her further into this mess?

“Brenda’s missin’, isn’t she?” Dee said, as she lowered the ice pack from her face to look at them as she spoke.

“How did you know that?” Jerry demanded, moving to within inches of where she sat, his hand already on the gun in his waistband. “What do you know about all of this?!”

“I didn’t know anythin’ for certain until I got here,” she said quietly, her voice and her incredible green eyes conveying her anxiety. “But it was what I was afraid had happened…”

Now Jax was beside her, too. “What do you mean?” he asked, his tone as anxious as Jerry’s.

Jerry didn’t wait for Dee’s response. “Why would you have any reason to think something would happen to Brenda, Ms. Hotchkiss?” he asked, his hand remaining behind his back and on his gun.

“She left this picture on the plane and I tried to find her at the airport to return it to her, but I was too late. I had a feelin’ as soon as I touched that picture that somethin’ was wrong, and then when I finally found a porter who remembered helpin’ Brenda into a limo…” Dee answered, her voice trailing off as she remembered the bad feelings that had driven her since she’d gotten off the plane several hours before.

“Did you get a description of the limo and its driver?” Jax interrupted. He had no reason to doubt this woman’s veracity, and he hoped that this was the break they needed to help them know whether the man that they were looking for was Hanover or Jackson.

Dee shook her head sadly. “No, the porter couldn’t describe the limo driver at all. He said he was too busy lookin’ at Brenda to notice the driver. He said that she was nearly passed out - ‘drunk as a skunk’, as he put it - and she was so pretty and had a limo pickin’ her up, he figured that she was a celebrity, so he was tryin’ to remember if he’d ever seen her before and he wasn’t payin’ attention to the driver at all.”

“Brenda was drunk when she got off the plane?” Jax asked, thinking that it didn’t sound like Brenda at all.

“That’s just it,” Dee explained. “That didn’t make any sense at all to me. She wasn’t drunk when she left the plane. In fact, she hadn’t been drinkin’ anythin’ but gingerale on the plane - said she wasn’t feelin’ well. She ate next to nothin’ on the plane, too.”

Jax looked up at Jerry, as he explained: “That sounds right. She complained of a terrible headache in my office. She even fainted. I had Dr. Breyley look at her, especially after she said she’d passed out several hours earlier as well.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that, Jax?” Jerry growled, angry that Jax hadn’t mentioned Brenda’s physical state before this.

“I guess with everything else that we’ve been dealing with, it slipped my mind,” Jax snapped.

Jerry ignored the sarcasm, instead intent on finding out what else Jax might have forgotten to tell him. “What did Dr. Breyley say was wrong with her?”

“She drew some blood and said she’d need to run some tests, but she thought that Brenda had probably just had too much stress and too little food or rest over the past few days. She said that she probably just needed to eat properly and relax for a couple of days,” Jax answered evenly. “Although when I was looking for Brenda after she’d left for the airport, Dr. Breyley told me to have Brenda call her as soon as possible,” he added, remembering his last conversation with the doctor.

“Did she say why she wanted Brenda to call her? Do you think there’s something seriously wrong with Brenda?” Jerry asked anxiously.

“She said it wasn’t urgent that Brenda call her, but she said it was important. I tried pushing her on it, but she wouldn’t say any more than that - patient confidentiality and all,” Jax answered, although now that he thought about it, Dr. Breyley did sound anxious when they’d spoken.

“She’s possibly ill and now the bastard’s drugged her on top of that!” Jerry shouted, slamming his fist onto the table right next to Dee, making her jump.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think she’s seriously ill. I think the doctor’s initial assessment was right and that it’s just a combination of everythin’ over the past few days,” Dee inserted, which drew an immediate glare from Jerry.

“I take it that you’re a doctor and that this is your expert opinion after having examined her thoroughly while flying cross-country with her?” Jerry replied sarcastically.

Dee took a deep breath, knowing that what she was about to say was not going to do anything to relieve his skepticism toward her. “Of course not - it was just my impression after bein’ with her for several hours.”

“Your impression?” Jerry scoffed. “Just like the impression you had as you got off the plane that something bad was happening to Brenda?” he added scathingly.

Dee hesitated, as she saw the continued distrust in Jerry’s eyes. If she told him the truth he’d think she was crazy, and if she didn’t tell him the truth he’d continue to think that she was somehow involved with Brenda’s disappearance. She decided that the truth was the only way to go, no matter how outrageous it would sound. Dee nodded, her green eyes flashing. “Yes, it was a very strong feelin’, so I knew it was important,” she said, straightening in her chair, as she continued to look up at Jerry. She knew that would never satisfy this man. She could see the cynicism in his eyes.

In for a penny, in for a pound, she decided as she squared her shoulders and calmly continued: “I get feelin’s sometimes about certain people - not everyone, mind you - and I’ve never had such strong feelin’s about anyone in my life as I’ve had about Brenda… I have a little Gypsy blood in me on my Mama’s side and she always said that was why I had this sort of sixth sense.” She paused, knowing immediately what his response would be.

“So you’re a psychic… ESP… that sort of thing,” Jerry replied disdainfully. Either this woman was very clever in pretending to be crazy or she truly believed what she was saying and she really was crazy, but either way she could still be a danger.

“No,” Dee answered quickly, understanding that he still perceived her as a threat. “Nothin’ like that… It’s more like very strong intuition.” She looked from brother to brother, as she easily sized each of them up. “And I get the impression that each of you survives your daily lives by relyin’ a great deal on your gut instincts, as most men prefer to call it.”

“Good guess, but anyone who’s done their homework would know that Jax is a very successful businessman and that I like to gamble, so we would both need to rely heavily on our instincts to survive those lifestyles,” Jerry pointed out. His instincts told him that this woman wasn’t involved in Brenda’s abduction, and he certainly didn’t believe her ramblings about having Gypsy blood and her supernatural link to Brenda, yet he still couldn’t explain the unease he felt around her.

Jax, on the other hand, felt very comfortable with Dee Hotchkiss. In fact, he genuinely liked this woman. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt incredibly at ease with her… like she was meant to be here with them at this moment. He glanced over at Jerry, and he could see that Jerry still didn’t appear to trust this woman or her story, which was his prerogative, but Jax didn’t like Jerry’s continued ill treatment of this woman. He and his brother needed to talk about that. “Jer, could we talk privately - now?” he said, his voice and his raised eyebrows indicating that he wouldn’t be put off.

Jerry saw Jax’s look and knew immediately why he wanted a private conference. He nodded, motioning for his brother to move with him over in front of the bookcases, out of earshot of Dee, but still close enough to keep an eye on her. “Say what you have to say, Jax,” he sighed wearily, as they both stood looking back at Dee, who had the makeshift ice pack back on her cheek.

“What is your problem?” Jax asked, in a harsh whisper. “You’ve been treating her like a common criminal since the moment you laid eyes on her! I understood why you grabbed her in the hallway the way that you did. We were expecting a delivery from the kidnapper, and she could have been making that delivery. But now she’s explained herself, and yet you still continue to treat her with contempt. I think that she’s exactly who she says she is - an acquaintance of Brenda’s from the plane.”

“I think you’re probably right there,” Jerry conceded, never taking his eyes off Dee.

“Well, if you believe she had nothing to do with Brenda’s kidnapping, then why are you being so rude to her?” Jax asked, exasperated by his brother’s attitude.

“I can’t explain it, Jax, but there’s something about the woman that bothers me… those cat eyes of hers and all that talk about her sixth sense…” Jerry let his voice trail off.

“Okay, I agree that she’s maybe a little eccentric, but I think she’s harmless… Although she pegged us both up pretty well, didn’t she?” Jax laughed slightly. “And I doubt that she’s been researching us as you suggested.” He glanced over at Dee and then back to Jerry, who continued to stare warily at her. “Listen, Jer, you and I both know that following our instincts has saved both our hides on more than one occasion - mine financially and I imagine yours literally.”

Jerry nodded grudgingly, knowing where this was leading.

“So we both know that feelings about things can be real, yet you act like she’s crazy or something. And you and I both felt a strong connection to Brenda almost immediately, so why is it so difficult for you to believe Dee’s story that she felt connected to Brenda as well?” Jax asked, then added: “I think you need to cut her some slack here and realize that she’s just as worried as we are about Brenda.”

Jerry sighed and distractedly ran a hand through his dark hair. “I’ll lighten up on her,” he finally agreed, “but I still don’t feel comfortable around her.” He could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up as Dee turned in her chair to look at them. He wondered what it was about this woman that affected him this way? After all, he’d stared in the eyes of certain death countless times and felt less intimidated than he did now. “In fact, I’d like nothing more than to send her on her packing, but, like it or not, she’s involved in this mess now and so she’s here for the duration. I think it would be safest for everyone involved - including this Hotchkiss woman and especially Brenda - for her to stay here until after the exchange is made and we have Brenda back, but she’d better not interfere in any way.”

He tore his eyes away from Dee and glanced at the grandfather clock, just to the right. It was already 10:30. “There’s only ninety minutes left until the deadline, so I expect we’ll hear from Hanover or Jackson - or whoever the hell has Brenda - in the next hour, with instructions as to where to wire the funds. I think I can manage to tolerate this woman for that length of time - just keep her out of my way.”

Jax nodded. “I’m going to go back and check on that fax Dad was sending us on Jackson. Will you be okay alone with her for that length of time?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.

Jerry grinned slightly. “I promise to play nicely while you’re gone.”

Jax groaned and turned to leave, but Jerry grabbed his arm and added: “While you’re back there, call Dad and Mike and have them run a quick check on this woman - just to be on the safe side. If she is somehow connected to Andrew or the Agency, I want to know about it. And if she is exactly who she says she is - just someone who innocently wandered into this mess - then I want to know that for sure, too.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Jax answered, as he headed back toward Brenda’s studio. “I won’t be long.”

Dee watched as the brothers huddled together, obviously discussing her and her story. She knew that Jax believed her, but she could sense Jerry’s continued distrust of her. She needed some time alone with him to convince him that they were both on Brenda’s side in this - whatever it was. She saw her opportunity when Jax headed into another area of the apartment, leaving her and his brother alone there.

“My head’s really beginnin’ to throb now… Do you suppose I could have my purse so that I could get some aspirin?” she asked, slowly rising from the chair to retrieve her purse, which Jax had set on the kitchen counter. Her Southern drawl had all but disappeared as she relaxed and felt more in control of herself.

“Help yourself,” Jerry nodded, as he headed back to the kitchen to get her a glass of water to wash the pills down. He immediately picked up on her lost accent. “I notice that you seem to have lost most of your accent just as you got that headache,” Jerry pointed out, as he handed her the water. “Hard to remember what your act is supposed to be when you’re hurting, huh?” Despite his promise to Jax to be civil with her, there was something about her that was inexplicably disquieting to him and he needed to understand what it was, which is why he continued to push her like this.

“I assure you that the accent is genuine,” Dee replied calmly, tossing the pills into her mouth and washing them down with a quick swallow of water. “It’s just that I try to keep it to a minimum when I’m north of the Mason-Dixon line, since a great many Yankees tend to view anyone with a Southern accent as slow-witted or eccentric. It does tend to creep out when I’m under stress, though, and since I wasn’t expectin’ the welcome I received outside, I guess that it just slipped out,” she replied calmly, taking another sip of the cold water.

“And now you’re no longer under stress?” Jerry countered. Her sudden serenity made him even more uncomfortable.

“I didn’t say that,” Dee replied, staring unwaveringly up into his deep blue eyes. “It’s just that now I feel more in control of myself.”

She smiled at him, and that smile sent a chill down Jerry’s spine; it was almost as if she could see inside his soul, and that rattled him. She might feel in control of herself now, but he suddenly felt far from in control of himself, and he hated that. His life was about control, and this night demanded that he remain in control if he was to get Brenda back safely, and yet, looking into this woman’s eyes now, he felt more vulnerable than he had in years.

Dee regarded him for several seconds. “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?” It was more a statement than a question. His discomfort was palpable.

“Why should I be?” Jerry shrugged nonchalantly, as he returned to the living room area to retrieve his phone from the coffee table. “After all, you’ve gone to great lengths to protest your innocence in Brenda’s kidnapping, and we both know that you’re no match for me physically.” He knew what she was referring to, and, despite his bravado, Jerry felt unusually defenseless with her.

“I’m not talkin’ about physical intimidation, and you know that,” Dee replied quietly, as she followed him, continuing to stare unabashedly at him. “You know that I’m not a threat to you or your brother physically and you know in your heart that I’m not a threat to Brenda in any way either, yet I still get the sense that I frighten you. Why is that?”

Jerry tried to ignore her, as he once again hit redial in an effort to connect with the owners of Luxury Limousines. It rang once, twice, and by the time it had rung six times with no answer, Jerry slammed it shut and threw it back down on the coffee table.

Undeterred, Dee continued her analysis of Jerry: “I think, despite your openly scornful attitude toward me since I revealed how I knew about Brenda being missin’, that you do believe in my abilities to feel things. And that’s what scares you about me! You’re afraid of what I may sense about you - or what I may have sensed about Brenda and her intentions toward you - or your brother…” she said, nodding her head in the direction in which she’d seen Jax go minutes before.

Jerry stared at her impassively, but inwardly he realized that she had indeed hit on what had been bothering him about her all along.

“That’s it,” Dee said softly, feeling his unconscious wince despite the calm façade he maintained. “You’re afraid that Brenda has either confided her feelin’s to me about you and your brother or that I’ve sensed her feelin’s about both of you. But either way, it intimidates you.”

“You and your possible feelings are of no concern to me at all. My only concern right now is finding Brenda and bringing her home alive and unharmed!” Jerry growled, but her uncanny accuracy unnerved him.

“That’s my only concern, too,” she replied quietly, her vivid green eyes suddenly moist with tears. “That’s really why I came here, you know. It would have probably been easier - and certainly less painful - had I just gone to my hotel and had the picture messengered here, but I couldn’t do that. I was drawn here for a reason, and I think that reason was to help find Brenda.”

Jerry’s frosty demeanor warmed a bit as he heard the sincerity in her voice and saw the tears in her eyes as she spoke. His instincts told him that her plea to help was earnest, but he remained stoically silent, merely staring at her as she spoke.

Dee took his silence to mean that he was still skeptical of her “abilities,” so she continued: “Listen, I know that you think that I’m just some crazy Southern belle prattlin’ on about Gypsy blood and a sixth sense, but I assure you that my abilities are real. As I said, I don’t get these feelin’s about everyone, but when I do get them they’re valid.”

“She’s not lying, Jer,” Jax said, and both Jerry and Dee looked up as Jax walked back into the living room area of the loft, carrying a sheaf of papers that had just been faxed. “Ms. Dee Hotchkiss was born Delora Leigh Beaudroix in West Monroe, Louisiana, and she divides her time between there and a condo in Santa Monica, California. She’s a romance novelist, who’s quite prolific, with over 100 books published in the past twenty years. In fact, she’s Peachtree Publishing’s best-selling author, and she’s in New York now to discuss her latest, which is just about to be released, and also to discuss future books. She has no children, despite having been married and divorced three times - by the way, Hotchkiss was her married name at the time that she published her first novel and she stuck with Dee Hotchkiss as her pen name for luck. She had a brief fling with her editor, Simon Kinsey, a few years back, but they parted amicably, and he still edits her work for her. She has never been arrested - never even had a parking ticket - and she pays her taxes in full and on time.”

“Okay, so she’s a bloody paragon of virtue,” Jerry interrupted impatiently. “What does all this have to do with her claims that she can sense things about certain people and things?”

“I was just getting to that, Jer,” Jax answered, looking up briefly from the top paper on his stack. “It seems that Dee has had previous experience in helping in missing persons’ cases - twice, in fact: one a kidnapping and the other a child who’d simply wandered away from home, both in Louisiana. The local sheriff in Ouachita Parish, where the child went missing, and the Louisiana State Police are very high on her, and even the New Orleans office of the FBI had only good things to say about her after she helped to locate a possible kidnapping victim.”

“And just how did you get involved in those cases?” Jerry asked, still somewhat skeptical of Dee’s claims, despite the evidently irrefutable documentation that Mike Moriarity had just faxed them.

“The first time was the missin’ child, and that was when I was just barely out of college. One of my former beaus was a deputy at the time, and he asked me to help out. He knew that I sometimes had strong feelin’s about people, and he hoped that was one of those times - and it was. The child - a little boy, not yet four- had wandered away from his yard in the few moments that his mama had turned her back to him. When I arrived, the child had been missin’ for nearly five hours in the cold rain and with night beginning to fall. They had combed the area pretty thoroughly by then and they were desperate, so Arden - that was my former beau and the deputy - finally convinced Sheriff Richelieu to contact me to see if I could ‘feel’ the boy.

“I was hesitant at first because I had never used my gift for much more than the occasional parlor trick before that - you know, amusin’ my friends by revealin’ their innermost secrets, and then only those with whom I felt some sort of a connection. As I said, I have no control over this, and I don’t feel things about everyone. But Arden knew that if I could connect with this child that I might be his only chance to be found before it was too late.”

“And did you connect?” Jerry asked.

“Yes,” Dee nodded, as she recalled that day. “I went to his home and laid my hands on his mother’s, and almost immediately I knew where he was. He’d fallen into a drainage ditch about 300 yards from his home and struck his head. He was driftin’ in and out of consciousness and partially hidden beneath the tall grass in the ditch, which is why the search party had missed him when they’d searched in that area before. It was only God’s grace that had kept the ‘gators from him, but he was fine. He had a mild concussion from the fall and a mild case of pneumonia from being wet and cold for so long, but he survived. In fact, today he’s a law student at Tulane. I still get Christmas cards from him and his family every year…”

“And the kidnap victim?” Jerry prodded. “How did you get involved in that case?”

“That was in the mid-eighties,” Dee answered, settling into the large chair behind her. “I was in Cleveland on a book tour with my latest book, Heart of Fury. I was waitin’ to do a local mornin’ TV talk show to promote that book, and my particular segment was just after their newsbreak. The newsperson read her copy at a desk that was just to the left of where my interview was to be done, and since this was like the twentieth such interview that I’d done in the past week, I was more than prepared for the interview, so I listened to the news while I waited to go on. The lead story that day was about the college-age daughter of a wealthy industrialist from that area, who’d been snatched off the streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras. It had been four days since she’d disappeared, and the ransom had been paid the previous day, but she had yet to be found. The authorities, who had advised the family against payin’ the ransom, were pessimistic that she would be found at that point. But the minute that I saw her picture on the monitor, I knew that she was alive and I had a strong feelin’ as to where she could be found.

“I barely made it through the interview coherently, but the host was gracious and didn’t think I was a babblin’ idiot when I told him afterwards what had upset me. In fact, he had one of the producers escort me to the Cleveland office of the FBI, who connected me to the New Orleans office. I told them what I’d felt about the girl and her disappearance and they acted on it and found her and her so-called kidnappers.”

“Wait a minute,” Jerry interrupted. “Are you telling me that the FBI welcomed your unsolicited ‘help’ without batting an eye?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t hard convincin’ them that I wasn’t some crackpot, but luckily the agent in charge in the Cleveland office was an open-minded man -” She paused and gave Jerry a pointed look, to which he merely rolled his eyes. “ - So he gave me the benefit of the doubt and called New Orleans and told them what I’d sensed.”

“Which was…?” Jerry asked, irritation lacing his tone.

“That the girl had never been kidnapped in the first place, and that she was hidin’ out in New Orleans, not far from the spot where she was supposedly abducted.

“It had all been a scheme to get an exorbitant amount of money from her family and then simply disappear. It seems that she was a party girl, who had been kicked out of several colleges and went through money like water through a sieve. Her parents had cut her off financially and this was to be her ultimate revenge against them: get them to pay several million dollars for her return and then make it appear that she’d been murdered by the kidnappers. She’d have their money, and they’d have to live with the guilt for the rest of their lives that they had somehow caused her death.”

“But you foiled her plans,” Jax interjected, glancing up at Jerry, who seemed to be impressed by what Dee was telling them.

Dee nodded as she continued: “Well, the Bureau had questioned the authenticity of the kidnappin’ as well and had searched the better area hotels and the airport for someone meetin’ her general description. But once I told them what I had sensed about her, they were able to track her down.

“I had had this impression of the girl surrounded by fish and whiskey, and the FBI eventually found her at a dive just off Bourbon Street in the old cannery district, where there are a lot of bars and cheap hotels, both populated by drifters. She’d been hidin’ there with her boyfriend since her so-called abduction. This new boyfriend, whom the family was unaware of, had helped her plot out the logistics of it all and had hired the muscle to handle the actual kidnappin’. She had cut and colored her hair, and they had fake passports and one-way plane tickets for Buenos Aires for the next day. Instead, they both got one-way tickets to prison.”

“I’m betting that she doesn’t send you a card every Christmas,” Jerry muttered, suppressing a grin.

“Hardly!” Dee laughed, glad that Jerry had warmed to her somewhat. She watched as a small smile briefly lit his face. She bet that he really was a charmer when he wasn’t trying to be aloof and superior; once you got past his cool exterior and military-style toughness, she imagined that he was as warm as his brother. She knew that Brenda had been drawn to each of them by that warmth and charisma - not to mention the fact that they were both drop-dead gorgeous. Yes, looking at them now and sensing what she felt coming from both men, she could easily see how Brenda had fallen in love with each of these men.

“Well, I think that my brother and I owe you an apology,” Jax began, extending his hand to Dee, “both for attacking you earlier outside and doubting you after you’d told us your story… Isn’t that right, Jer?” Jax asked, arching his eyebrows as he looked sharply at his brother.

Jerry reluctantly offered his hand to Dee as well. “Yes, well, I hope that you understand that we couldn’t afford to take any chances here… and your story is rather fantastic.”

“I understand. I sometimes have trouble believin’ it myself,” Dee laughed slightly as she shook Jerry’s hand, adding: “Besides, this is an emotional time for both of you… I can feel how much she means to both of you, and I know what both of you mean to her… I only just met her, but in those hours we were together on the plane, we struck up a genuine friendship, and I share the anxiety that you both feel.”

Jerry quickly withdrew his hand from Dee’s, fearful that this was about to turn into a warm and fuzzy moment and neither he nor Jax had time for that now. “What else did Dad and Mike send us?” he asked, turning to Jax, who immediately handed him the stack of papers he’d been holding.

“Here’s everything that they could quickly uncover on both Hanover and Jackson,” Jax replied. “I haven’t looked them over carefully, but, from the looks of things, it appears that this Hanover could be our man. His file is three times the size of Jackson’s. In fact, Mike found very little on Jackson…”

Jerry quickly scanned both files, concentrating on the individual pictures of both men. “I know this man,” Jerry said, holding up Rick Jackson’s grainy image for Jax to see.

“You do?” Jax asked excitedly. “From where?”

“I don’t mean that I know him exactly, but I’ve seen him before…” Jerry muttered, wracking his brain as to why the man seemed so familiar to him. Suddenly he got a flash of where he’d seen Jackson - coming out one of the back doors of the Agency late the other night. “This is the man!” Jerry exclaimed. “This is the man who has Brenda!”

“But Andrew’s own diary - this file - they all point to Hanover being the likely suspect,” Jax argued, holding up the faxed file on Hanover, whose documented high crimes and misdemeanors were as long as his arm.

“I don’t care where the facts seem to be pointing. Andrew muttered his name with his dying breath. And on top of that, I saw this man coming out of the Agency’s building just the other night. I remember that he gave me the creeps at the time, but I couldn’t figure out why,” Jerry said, remembering vividly every detail of that brief encounter. “Rick Jackson is our man! I’d stake my life on it!”

“I hope you’re right because we’re staking Brenda’s life on it!” Jax retorted hotly.

“I’m right…” Jerry insisted adamantly. “I can feel it in my gut,” he added, a small smile gracing his lips as he looked directly at Dee.

It had been hard won, but Dee knew at that moment that he had accepted her at her word and was in his own way welcoming her into their tight little fold of persons working desperately to bring Brenda home safely.

The insistent clanging of the grandfather clock as it struck the quarter-hour focused everyone’s attention on the lateness of the day. It was 11:15 and the promised delivery from the kidnapper had yet to arrive, and neither Jax’s office nor Jerry had heard anything further about where to wire the ransom. While Dee had spent the time looking at the myriad of photographs that lined the walls and shelves throughout Brenda’s apartment, Jax and Jerry had spent the past 45 minutes alternately pacing the floor and calling both the Fiorrellas and LA to conference with their father and Mike Moriarity.

Mike had finally convinced Jerry to allow the FBI to come in on a limited basis, and they had discreetly checked Rick Jackson’s Brooklyn row house, Mark Hanover’s dingy apartment in Queens, and the Fiorrellas’ palatial home in Montclair, New Jersey, but all three places were empty. The Bureau put taps on all three phone lines, as well as Brenda’s, and left agents discreetly watching each place as well. Thus far, the only calls to the Fiorrellas had come from Jerry, and the other two lines had had no calls whatsoever. There had also been no activity at any of the residences either, and the frustration in the loft apartment grew more intense as the clock ticked away each passing minute.

“Dammit!” Jax swore, pounding his fist down on the peninsula of kitchen counter that separated the kitchen-dining room area of the loft from the living room. He walked to the nearby windows that lined the exterior wall of the loft apartment and leaned wearily against the cool glass, staring out at the darkened street below that was lit only by the warm glow of the street lights and the headlights of the occasional passing car. “He’s got her out there somewhere and he’s had her for hours, doing God knows what to her, and yet we’re still no closer to finding her than we were when we started!” he exclaimed, turning around to face his brother.

Jerry had been uncharacteristically quiet for the past several minutes and Jax discovered why when he saw his brother on the couch, staring down at the cover of a book that lay unopened on his lap. As Jax drew closer, he recognized that it was the book on European castles that he’d seen Brenda try to hide from him days before and the one that he now knew that Jerry had given her while they were together. “Top shelf, thirteenth book from the left,” Jax muttered when he saw it, as all the events of the first night that he’d seen that book came racing back to him.

“Huh?” Jerry asked, finally drawn out of his daze. “Did you say something?”

“It wasn’t important,” Jax replied, as he settled into one of the chairs across from the couch and watched Jerry, who continued to hold the book, tracing the outline of the cover photo with the index finger of his right hand. Jax scrutinized Jerry’s face, which was etched with the same fatigue and worry as his own, and he wondered when was the last time that his brother had truly rested? Jax knew that rest had not come easily for him since all of this had started, and Jerry had been wrestling with all of this for far longer than he had. He was about to suggest that Jerry lay down for awhile when Jerry spoke.

“I promised her that I’d build her a castle one day and slay all of her dragons for her and that we’d live happily ever after,” Jerry murmured, as he set the book on the coffee table in front of him, unable to open it and face the memories it contained. “I gave her this book to seal that promise, but I never managed to keep that promise, did I? … In fact, instead of making life a fairy tale for her, I managed to turn her life into a nightmare… I’m responsible for all the pain and misery that she’s had - first, leaving her the way that I did; then, costing her our child; now, this... If I had it to do over, I’d just walk away without ever meeting her…”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Jax countered, which drew a surprised look from Jerry. “And I don’t thank that Brenda would want that either… Listen, I learned a lot about Brenda in the short time that I’ve known her, and one of the things I learned was how important JD - you - were to her. You shaped her life, made her who she is now. Sure, losing you and the baby tore her up and caused her more pain than anyone that young should have had to handle - especially alone - but that experience also strengthened her. And she learned about love from you…”

“You were ready to kill me just a few hours ago when you first found out that I was JD,” Jerry pointed out. “And rightly so… I wreaked havoc on her life from the first moment that I touched her, whether that was my intention or not… Now you’re telling me that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself?”

“Well, I’ve learned a few things since then… Besides, I’m just saying that you can’t beat yourself up like this. What’s happened has happened, and you can’t go back and change the past. We deal with life as it is now, not the way it could have been or should have been,” Jax answered. “You know that better than I do - in fact, you were the one who used to preach that to me all the time, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Jerry replied wearily, as he rose from the couch and walked to the spot at the windows that Jax had vacated just moments before. “I do that daily in my work - deal with situations as they come, making adjustments when necessary, always accepting that the past can’t be changed. I’ve watched colleagues and informants killed and I’ve had to accept and deal with it because it’s all just part of the job.”

He paused momentarily as he watched a young couple kissing beneath the neon glow of a street light. “I learned to compartmentalize my life as a defense mechanism, especially after I met Brenda,” he continued. “I had to shut off the feelings that she had awakened in me - my compassion, my humanity, my love… Otherwise, I would have gone crazy - or gotten myself killed. I became coolly efficient at what I did, and the longer that Brenda and I were apart, the more automated my responses to life became. I evolved into a robot in a lot of ways, not questioning, merely reacting, but always getting the job done, no matter what it took…”

His mind drifted back to his first assignment after he and Brenda were forcibly separated. That particular incident was never far from his mind, but it had come to the forefront ever since he’d told Jax about it earlier. And now he seemed unable to contain those memories at all, as they seemed to vie in his subconscious with his fears for Brenda’s safety. “Remember how I told you about the assignment that initially took me away from Brenda - the one that several of my colleagues and I had worked for so many months to set into motion?”

“The one involving the take down of that Mexican drug lord,” Jax answered, remembering well that story that had acquainted him with his brother’s dangerous and unsavory work.

“Juan Carlos Sanchez,” Jerry nodded, turning away from the windows to look at Jax now. “Well, I gave you the sanitized version of that assignment, skipping the lurid details that actually brought that sting down in shambles and nearly cost me my life. And it did cost several good men and women their lives - some agents, some innocent bystanders caught in the fallout…”

“Jerry, what does all of this have to do with what’s happening now with Brenda?” Jax asked, wondering if fatigue and anxiety were finally taking their toll on his brother?

“Trust me, Jax, there are parallels - ugly ones, at that…” Jerry answered. “I told you that the Agency had worked for the better part of a year to get all of our men in position to topple Sanchez and destroy his little drug kingdom once and for all. And I told you that I was in Monte Carlo resting up for a few weeks before we put the final phase of the plan into play and that when they pulled me away from Brenda that summer, it was to finish that mission. I also told you how that particular mission seemed to stretch on endlessly before finally falling apart completely. But what I neglected to tell you was that I caused it to fall apart… I was the one who allowed Sanchez to escape with his life, and I was the one who cost all of those people their lives….”

“Are you saying that you collaborated with Sanchez…?” Jax asked tentatively, hoping that he was misunderstanding what his brother seemed to be confessing here.

“No, it was nothing that blatant, but it was just as despicable and just as deadly… Like I said before, that mission should have wrapped in two to three weeks tops, but continued for several more weeks after that. Every time it looked like we could nail the bastard, something would happen to delay us. I wanted out so badly that I could taste it, but, unfortunately, I’d been the one who’d ingratiated myself to the man, and my presence was essential from that point on… He trusted me. He even thought of me as his friend; shared his food with me, his liquor - he even tried sharing his women with me, but I always declined that particular invitation.

“…He was generous with all of his women, but one - Maria. She was beautiful and exotic, and she was Sanchez’s and Sanchez’s alone - his own personal property - and he killed any man who dared to even look at her longingly… She never interested me because my heart belonged to Brenda by the time that we met, but she seemed intrigued with me from the first day that I set foot in Sanchez’s compound…

“My cover had been carefully constructed,” Jerry continued. “I became James Barrington, a wealthy American, who’d amassed a sizeable fortune through very questionable means and was looking to branch out to further increase my wealth and power. We knew that Sanchez was very extravagant with his money and liked to gamble and that he was intrigued by others who with similar propensities. He was also looking for a partner who appeared respectable, but who wasn’t when you scratched the surface. And my alter ego was created to specifically fit that bill.

“The Agency created a deep background for me: divorced, no family, several estates around the globe, and a bank account and a stock portfolio that would make Bill Gates envious. And then it planted news items about me in a few of the investment magazines and newspapers that we knew that Sanchez read regularly. It seems that Sanchez had plenty of money and lots of power, but what he really craved was respectability. He had no desire to forgo the lucrative drug trade to go legitimate, however, so he simply wanted to merge with respectability instead - or at least the veneer of respectability. And he found that perfect partner in me - or at least in James Barrington.

“At any rate, over a matter of several weeks, we faced each other several times across the gaming tables in his favorite casino, the Casino del Caribe in Bocagrande, Argentina, a city where he did a great deal of his business as well. He found me to be a worthy adversary there, and once he’d done some investigating of Barrington’s credentials and background, he befriended me before actually approaching me about doing business with him. We did that dance for several more weeks, since the Agency didn’t want me to appear too eager. But after a suitable wooing period, where he tried to sell me on the advantages of being his front man in the States and I feigned needing time to consider the possibilities, James Barrington finally agreed to go into business with Juan Carlos Sanchez.

“It was the Agency’s idea that I take the eight weeks of vacation in there. If I’d had my way I would have simply sealed the deal then and there, but my story to Sanchez was that I needed to take that time to set up a suitable front for smuggling the drugs into the States. He bought that, and I went to Monte Carlo, where I met Brenda…

“It was during that time with her that I had a change of heart about my entire life, so I planned to leave the work immediately after completing that assignment with Sanchez. But the Agency called me back early and forced me to have no contact with her for the duration of that mission, and that was sheer torture for me. I had known all along that it would be hard for me to clear my head of thoughts of her when I returned to Mexico and to Sanchez, but I’d had no idea that it would be nearly impossible for me to do. I concentrated on the task at hand - completing the final phase of the negotiations with Sanchez and setting my men into place at his base of operations to protect my interests in this deal - but thoughts of Brenda haunted my private moments.

“During those several weeks, I was a guest at Sanchez’s jungle compound - he said that he felt more comfortable knowing that my every need would be properly seen to and that this way we would never need to be wary of the wrong people hearing our discussions. But I learned later that he had doubts about me, and this was his way of controlling the situation. The Agency didn’t want me to stay there for that length of time, but my arrogance and my impatience won out and I convinced them that this mission could be better handled with me inside than out. We already had several operatives working within the compound in various roles - housekeeping, maintenance, even in security - but I was the key to bringing this man and his operation down.

“As I said before, Sanchez was very generous to me, offering me anything that he had available to him, even his women, of which he seemed to have an ever-changing harem. But his Maria was never part of that offer, and everyone knew that - as did Maria.

“She seemed intrigued that I never took Sanchez up on his offers of any woman. I tried to explain that the charms of a woman during those times of delicate negotiations would muddy my mind and throw me off my game, and Sanchez seemed to accept that, but not Maria. She seemed determined to break my will and bed me - both Sanchez and me be damned.

“At first her seduction attempts were very subtle, and I wasn’t even sure that she was actually flirting with me, but as the weeks wore on, her flirtations when we were alone became more bold. She was a beautiful woman - exotic, with long, black hair and almost coal-black eyes - and, unfortunately, she reminded me all too much of Brenda, and that was what finally brought me and the entire operation down…”

“You slept with her and Sanchez found out,” Jax concluded, standing to face his brother, who was now pacing in front of the windows.

“No, but I came close and in the end, it didn’t matter whether I did or didn’t because the results of that foolhardy night were the same…” Jerry answered, stopping in his tracks and turning back to once again stare out the windows at the night. “She came to me in my room that last night, smelling of jasmine and looking like she’d just stepped out of a dream, which, for me she had… I’d been missing Brenda terribly that night and had retired early with a full bottle of Tequila and my head full of memories. After finishing over half the bottle, I’d finally fallen asleep and Brenda and I were once again together, as we were every night in my dreams.

“An hour or so into my drunken stupor, I was roused from sleep when Maria came into my room. She left the lights off, so the only light in the room came through the windows from the security lights outside that lit the compound grounds nightly. If I hadn’t been half-drunk and half-asleep, I would have known immediately that she wasn’t Brenda, but I had just been dreaming of Brenda and when I saw Maria and felt her slip into my bed, I wanted her to be Brenda so I followed that desire.

“We kissed and explored one another for the longest time, but just as I was about to enter her, I finally came out my liquor-induced haze and I realized then that she wasn’t Brenda. The light from outside was streaming across her face, and I could clearly see that she was not the woman I had thought that I was holding and caressing and about to make love.”

He shook his head ruefully as he continued: “It hadn’t seemed to bother Maria that I had been whispering Brenda’s name while we engaged in our passionate foreplay. In fact, she seemed to delight in the fact that she was about to dupe me into having sex with her. As I look back, I think that her plan was to hold the fact that we’d had sex over me as a way to control me from that point on. It was some sort of a sick game she needed to play - perhaps as a way to get even with Sanchez for his control over her, or as a way to get even with me since I had never shown the slightest interest in her before. But when I realized that she wasn’t Brenda and I ordered her out of my bed, she became livid. She screamed at me that I had baited her and lured her there and that I had been trying to seduce her since the day I’d arrived there.

“I knew immediately that she was angry enough with me then that she would most likely go straight to Sanchez and tell him that very story. So I quickly dressed and tried to get to the other operatives in time to warn them of what was most likely about to happen. But I wasn’t quick enough…”

Jerry turned back to look at Jax, his face more haggard and drawn than even before, and Jax could tell then that this already lurid tale only went downhill from there.

“Two of Sanchez’s men grabbed me and dragged me to his suite. Sitting on one of his silk couches in his opulently appointed bedroom, Sanchez looked like an angry king on his throne. Maria lay at his feet, crying hysterically. At first, I assumed that she had run immediately to him and fed him the lies that I had seduced her and that she was merely crying now as part of that act. But then Sanchez reached down and grabbed her hair, yanking her head back so that I could see that she had good reason to cry… Her once beautiful face was battered and bruised where Sanchez had evidently slapped her hard and mercilessly, and a mixture of blood and tears streamed down her cheeks and matted her hair.

“Sanchez told me that I had done that to her and that I was responsible for what would happen next. And with that he calmly pulled a gun from beneath the pillow beside him and stuck it to her temple and pulled the trigger - all within the span of a few seconds. He was crying as he did it, and I think that even his bodyguards were as shocked by his actions as I was because they were momentarily distracted. It was then that I was able to break free from them and grab for the weapon that they had failed to find hidden in my boot.

“I took out both bodyguards easily and got off several shots at Sanchez as well, hitting him at least twice before more of his security team descended and the entire compound erupted in gunfire and then flames. I tried to get to the other operatives, but by then the place was like something out of Dante’s Inferno, and I barely escaped with my life. I took a bullet in my left shoulder from Sanchez as it was, but that was nothing really compared to what the entire Agency suffered. We lost five men and women that night, not to mention Sanchez himself. Only Sanchez didn’t die; somehow he survived both the shots I’d managed to put into him, as well as the fire that consumed the place. His body was never found; he vanished completely. My theory is that he was most likely swallowed up by the flames of Hell that had delivered him into this world in the first place…”

“From the sound of the man, it seems like a plausible theory to me,” Jax interjected quietly, when Jerry paused and turned back toward the wall of windows once again. “Sanchez was downright evil - not only for his drug activities, but also because he could so easily and callously kill the woman that he professed to love.”

“Oh, he loved her - in his own sick, twisted way, he loved her - but in a way he was right: I killed her that night. I may not have pulled the trigger, but my impatience and my carelessness killed her just the same… Had I not been drunk, I would have turned her away long before she ever made it into my room, let alone into my bed. I wanted so badly to be with Brenda that I accepted the illusion that I’d built of her with dreams and liquor and poor Maria, and it cost Maria her life - and the others, as well.

“And I’ve done the same thing all over again this time, Jax… I got impatient in wanting Brenda again because I sensed that she was moving on, and that impatience made me careless enough to go to her, which resulted in her kidnapping. And I may have cost Brenda her life now, just as surely as I cost Maria hers!” Jerry finally exploded, letting out the fury that he’d felt since the moment this all had begun.

“She’s not dead,” Dee announced firmly, startling both brothers. Jax and Jerry turned immediately at the sound of her voice. She had been elsewhere in the apartment for so long looking at Brenda’s work that they had assumed that she was resting back in Brenda’s bedroom.

Jerry’s anger at himself quickly turned on Dee now. “How long have you been listening?” he demanded angrily, upset that she may have overheard everything, not only for the intimacy of it as it pertained to him but also for the confidentiality of it as it pertained to the Agency. It was one thing to confide in his brother, whom he knew he could trust, but another still to confide in this virtual stranger, despite her supposed ties to Brenda.

“I just now came in - just in time to hear you say that you may have cost Brenda her life,” Dee assured him. “But that was more than enough! She’s not dead!” Dee repeated adamantly. “I can still feel her as strong as ever, and I think that both of you can, too. Otherwise, you’d be throwin’ caution to the wind and callin’ in every law enforcement agency in the country for an all-out search to find this crazy that took her. Instead, you’re bein’ justifiably discreet about this because you do still have that feelin’ that she’s alive. Trust that feelin’ - it won’t lie to you.”

Jax stepped toward Dee, as he tried to explain his brother’s words to Dee. “Neither Jerry nor I have given up hope that she’s still alive -”

“Good!” Dee shot back, interrupting Jax before he could go further. “Because hope has to be what guides both of you now - hope and the love you both feel for her. If you lose sight of either of them, then you will lose Brenda!” Dee said hotly, her green eyes flashing. “But for now, I know she’s still very much alive and I think she’s nearby - I can feel her very strongly, and I could from the moment that I stepped out of the cab.”

Both Jax and Jerry’s hearts leapt into their throats at that. “What do you mean by nearby?” Jax asked, excitedly. “In this building, in this neighborhood, in this borough - what?”

“I can’t pinpoint it exactly,” Dee answered. “It’s not like with that little boy back in West Monroe, where I knew exactly where he was the instant I touched his mama’s hand…”

“Then what is it like?” Jerry asked, trying to temper his excitement with rational thought. He had accepted that she had a gift, but he was almost afraid to hope that it would be strong enough to guide them to Brenda.

“It’s hard to explain -” Dee began. “It’s vague but it’s definitely her that I feel… I get the feelin’ that she’s restrained and it’s extremely hot wherever she is…”

“Well, that pretty much narrows it down to just about anywhere on the Eastern seaboard tonight,” Jerry snarled.

“Jerry, back off!” Jax shot his brother a warning glance. Jerry might still be wary of Dee Hotchkiss and her sixth sense, but he believed firmly in it. “Can you feel anything else?” Jax asked, turning his attention back to Dee now.

“Pictures… I keep seein’ lots and lots of pictures…” Dee said, closing her eyes to better visualize what she was sensing.

“Pictures? Like in a gallery?” Jax asked, immediately thinking about the Ashton Gallery and wondering if Ashton was somehow involved in this?

“Or like all the pictures that you just spent the past 45 minutes looking at here in this apartment?” Jerry scoffed, back into his skeptic mode ever since Dee had walked in on his and Jax’s private discussion earlier.

Dee sighed heavily, wishing that she could easily defend her feelings to Jerry, but the truth was that she could be simply feeling Brenda because she was in her apartment and looking at her work. That was what was so damned frustrating about this so-called gift of hers - it wasn’t always 100% accurate. “I’m not sure… It could be that,” Dee conceded reluctantly, sinking down into one of the large chairs across from the couch.

Jax closed his eyes and leaned against the counter of the kitchen peninsula, sighing wearily. He felt as if cold water had been thrown on him, as his hopes of finding Brenda quickly and before the midnight deadline were dashed once again.

In the background, the grandfather clock struck the half-hour.

Jerry felt much the same way, but he hid his disappointment behind his continued skepticism. He had secretly hoped that Dee would prove him wrong and be able to pinpoint where Brenda was being held, but his hopes were dashed as well by her admission. He was about to say something more when the sound of the fire door in the hall opening, followed by rapid footsteps approaching the loft’s main door, caught all of their attentions.

“The delivery you were promised?” Jax asked quietly, looking anxiously at Jerry.

“Could be. We’ll find out soon enough,” Jerry mouthed, immediately pulling his gun from out of his waistband as he made his way quietly toward the door, motioning for Jax to do the same, but on the opposite side of the doorjamb.

Dee watched silently as the brothers stealthily took their positions beside the large, metal door, her heart in her throat, as she seemed to be getting mixed signals as to whom or what was on the other side of the door. She felt no danger from the actual person who was there, yet she felt the distinct sense of danger from something attached to them.

The footsteps stopped and were followed immediately by an insistent rapping at the door. The sound echoed throughout the empty hallway and the now silent loft. Neither Jax nor Jerry made a move to open the door, which brought another round of persistent knocking, followed by the shrill voice of a woman: “Brenda? Ms. Wilding? It’s me, Mrs. Shapiro - Sylvia - from the third floor. Remember me?”

Jax threw Jerry a puzzled glance, to which Jerry mouthed: “She’s a neighbor - brought the cookies to Brenda.”

Jax nodded, and then they both listened as Sylvia Shapiro continued: “I have something for you again, Brenda… something that a friend of yours asked me to deliver…”

Both Jax and Jerry realized at that moment that the kidnapper had most likely enlisted Brenda’s unwitting neighbor as his bagman.

By then, Dee was also at the door. “I know this woman,” she whispered. “I met her downstairs as she was goin’ out to walk her dog. She knows I’m here because she directed me to take the stairs up here, since it was the only way to access this floor with the service elevator out.”

“Good. You can open the door and take whatever it is that she has with her. But don’t let her in. She doesn’t need to know that Jax and I are here - and she doesn’t need to know that Brenda’s not. Make up some excuse as to why you’re answering the door and why she can’t see Brenda herself,” Jerry whispered, nodding his head for Dee to open the door then.

Dee nodded, understanding exactly what was expected of her at this moment. Plastering a smile on her face, she slid the heavy door open just enough so that she could stand in the doorway, without exposing Jax and Jerry, who remained plastered against the wall on either side of the door. “Hello! We meet again!” Dee said in her most lighthearted tone.

“Yes, we do,” Sylvia Shapiro replied, eyeing Dee suspiciously when Dee didn’t offer to invite her in. “I have a package for Brenda… Is she in?” she asked, trying unsuccessfully to peer around Dee to see inside the loft.

“Well, of course, she’s here,” Dee laughed, nonchalantly fluffing her short, brown hair. “But it’s late and she’s had a rough day, so she’s soakin’ in the tub right now. She asked me to answer the door for her because she doesn’t want to be disturbed…” She looked at the small package that Sylvia Shapiro held firmly under her right arm, and reached for it. “I take it that that is for Brenda?” she asked, trying to keep her voice as calm and light as possible, despite the fact that she felt ready to explode. “Is it from you?”

“No, but had I known before just a little while ago that tomorrow is Ms. Wilding’s birthday, then I would have gotten her something…” Sylvia chortled, her laughter high-pitched and shrill, much like her voice. “I was just returning from my walk with my little Chloe - that’s my dog you saw with me at the elevator in the lobby - when a nice young man approached me and asked me if I’d deliver this to Brenda at precisely 11:30. He said it was for her birthday, which he said is tomorrow, but he said that it was important that she have it now, so that she could begin celebrating at midnight… Since I’m a night owl anyway, I told him that it would be no problem at all.”

“So someone else gave this to you for her?” Dee asked, as Sylvia Shapiro reluctantly handed over the package to her when she realized that Dee wasn’t about to let her inside to deliver the package personally to Brenda. “What did this person look like?” she asked, hoping that Sylvia could supply some kind of a description, even if only a vague one.

“Well, I didn’t get a good look at him - cataracts and all, you understand - and then it was just for a minute or two and these street lights aren’t as bright as they could be…” Sylvia began. “But he seemed like a nice, young man… Had on a baseball cap and wore a T-shirt and dungarees… He said that he was a fan of hers and said that tomorrow was a very special day for her and that he wanted her to have this present. I asked him if he was familiar with her lovely pictures, and he just smiled and said that he was very familiar with both her and her pictures, then he just disappeared down the street. That’s when Chloe and I went back inside the building and up to my apartment. I’ve been watching the clock ever since, afraid that I’d forget to get this to her at the proper time.”

“Well, thank you so much for this,” Dee smiled pleasantly. “I’ll make sure that Brenda gets it immediately, and I’ll have her call you tomorrow to thank you herself,” she added, as she felt Jerry nudge her slightly, signaling that he wanted her to wrap this up and send this woman away immediately.

“Please do,” Sylvia smiled. “Wish her a happy birthday for me and tell her that I’ll bake a very special birthday cake and bring it to her tomorrow.”

“I will,” Dee smiled, closing the door as soon as she saw the elderly woman turn to go back toward the stairs. Within seconds they could hear the fire door, as it slammed closed behind Sylvia Shapiro.

Jerry immediately took the package from Dee’s hands and carried it to the dining table. The package itself was identical to the one he’d received back at his place, which further confirmed his suspicions that whoever had taken Brenda - and his money was still on Rick Jackson - had also been the one that had taken all the pictures of her and Jax together and had somehow gotten Andrew’s private diary.

“Stand back,” he warned, as he examined the package carefully. Finally satisfied that it wasn’t booby-trapped, he slid the ribbon off and slowly lifted the lid. Jax was immediately by his side and they both gasped as Jerry pulled out the two items inside. The first, a black-and-white Polaroid of Brenda, her mouth covered with duct tape and her wrists bound to the headboard of a bed; her eyes closed, and her hair cascading like rivers of dark curls down her shoulders and across her chest. The second was a lock of Brenda’s hair, taped to a boldly printed note, similar to the ransom note Jerry had received earlier.

The note read:

On the other side of the note was the account number to which Jerry was to wire his half of the ransom money. The note was short, but the message was very clear: fail to deliver the money as directed and Brenda was dead.

Jax cell phone rang and he answered it immediately, knowing at the first ring that it was his father and Mike in LA, letting him know that they had received another fax from the kidnapper, this one with instructions as to where to wire his $5 million. They spoke only briefly, as there was little more that needed to be said, and Jax promised to call them as soon as they recovered Brenda. He decided it was best not to inform them of the picture or the lock of hair that they had gotten on this end.

In the meantime, Jerry had gotten in touch with his banker also, instructing him of the Swiss account to which the funds were to be transferred. He was assured that it would be handled immediately and the funds would be in the new account within minutes.

While Jax and Jerry were busy with their calls, Dee picked up the paper containing Brenda’s hair and touched it slowly and reverently. Settling onto one of the chairs at the table, she closed her eyes tightly, shutting out all other extraneous distractions and concentrating only on what she could sense from the lock of hair. When they’d finished with their calls, the brothers watched Dee quietly, each hoping that she could sense something - anything - about where Brenda was and how she was doing. She sat like that for several minutes, finally gasping, as if she suddenly needed air.

“What is it?” Jax asked anxiously.

“I’m not sure… for a moment there it was like I couldn’t breathe… It was like I was in the middle of a panic attack,” Dee answered, still gasping for breath. “And it was so hot - stiflin’ hot, like I was in a small space….”

“Like a trunk?” Jerry asked, fear tingeing his voice.

“I don’t know - possibly…” Dee answered truthfully. “I just felt hot and bound.”

“You don’t think that he’d be sick enough to leave her in the trunk of the limo on a night as hot as this one, do you?” Jax asked, picking up on what his brother was thinking.

“I wouldn’t put anything past him!” Jerry hissed, as he grabbed his cell phone and once again dialed the Fiorrellas and once again got no answer. He slammed the phone shut in frustration, but as he did so, it rang immediately. “Jacks, here!” he barked, answering the phone.

“Now, now! Where are your manners, Agent Jacks? Are you having a bad night tonight?” It was the Darth Vader voice again, laughing. Jerry had been right: whoever had sent him the pictures and the disk also had Brenda.

“How did you get this number?” Jerry demanded, nodding toward Jax, indicating to him that it was the kidnapper.

“Ah… that isn’t important now, is it? But you should know by now that there isn’t much of anything out there that I can’t get - in one way or another - much like you Agent Jacks,” the voice cackled, obviously enjoying toying with Jerry. “You seem to have been able to get just about anything that you ever wanted whenever you wanted it - wealth, power, and the love of a very beautiful woman - but now it looks as though the tables are turned in my favor, aren’t they? Because I’m the one who’s got wealth now, thanks to you and your brother. I also seem to be the one with the power since I’m pulling the strings now. And on top of that I still have the beautiful woman - although I must admit that her love for me hasn’t been easily forthcoming…”

“You bastard!” Jerry growled. “I swear, if you’ve laid so much as a finger on her -!”

“You’ll what, Agent Jacks?” the voice interrupted. “Hunt me down and kill me?” The voice laughed once again. “I don’t think so, Agent Jacks. Where I’m going, I’ll be beyond the reach of even you, Secret Agent Man,” the voice snarled, baiting Jerry.

That statement unsettled Jerry, but he ignored it, more worried about Brenda and her safety. “We gave you what you wanted! Now where is she?!”

“Don’t worry; she’s safe and sound - for the moment,” the voice replied, but what he said next frightened Jerry to his very core. “But whether she remains that way is up to you and your legendary speed and ingenuity… And since I know that you thrive on challenges, I’m going to give you the ultimate challenge: You have exactly 30 minutes to find her. She’s somewhere in the greater metropolitan area…” Another laugh. “Listen, I’ll even give you a little hint that you’ll only be able to get if you’ve been doing the reading that I sent you… Think first assignment and major loss…”

Jerry’s mind was spinning, as he thought back to his first assignment, which had been in Hong Kong, on the other side of the world, and it had been a rousing success… What was this man, talking about, he wondered? But then his inner voice whispered: He’s referring to Brenda, where she was working on her first professional assignment when she lost the baby. “Harlem! You have her somewhere in Harlem!” Jerry shouted.

The minute that Jax heard Harlem, he called Mike, who immediately relayed that information to the FBI. The FBI dispatched agents to the area in anticipation of further details from Jerry, and they also put a team to work tracking down the origin of the call to Jerry’s cell phone.

“Ooohhh, you have been studying the materials that I sent you,” the voice snickered.

“Jackson! Where the bloody hell in Harlem is she?!” Jerry demanded angrily.

There was a momentary pause from the voice and then: “You are good, Agent Jacks. You were able to figure out who I am despite the red herrings I threw at you. You are a worthy adversary indeed…”

“Worthy adversary?! This isn’t some game we’re playing here, Jackson! This is Brenda’s life!” Jerry snapped. “We held up our end of the bargain, now you hold up yours! Tell me where in Harlem that she is, dammit!”

“Oh, that wouldn’t be any fun at all now, would it?” the voice purred. “After all, it’s the challenge that you love - the adrenaline rush that comes from piecing together the puzzle and pulling off the impossible. If I gave you too much help, it just wouldn’t be as much fun for you now, would it?”

“You sick bastard!!” Jerry growled.

“Oh, now you’ve hurt my feelings, Agent Jacks,” the voice replied sarcastically. “But I won’t hold that against you… I’ll give you just a little hint as to where you might possibly find her: think confined space; think stuffy and dark and unbelievably hot…”

“The limo trunk…” Jerry gasped, his earlier fear now apparently realized.

The voice erupted into momentary laughter, then added: “It’s been nice doing business with you, Agent Jacks… I suggest that you get moving now because the clock’s ticking…”

Then the connection went dead, just as the grandfather clock in the corner of the loft apartment struck midnight…

She was dreaming again…

The warm sun and that same tropical breeze once again washed over her, soothing and comforting her. Nearby, she could hear the steady ebb and flow of the gentle surf as it lapped the shore, lulling her into a state of semi-consciousness as she lay on her stomach, trying to read.

The lilt of childish giggling, followed by a man’s booming laughter, caught her attention, and she stood to see what was happening. She squinted into the sun, shading her eyes with her cupped hand, trying to locate them. And when she did, her heart leapt with joy at the sight: her baby girl weaving and bobbing, playing tag with the waves that gently lapped the shore, and JD, looking tan and fit and appearing to enjoy the romp in the waves as much the toddler. She smiled at that. The past few years had been difficult for them all, but especially for him, and it was good to see him so relaxed and happy.

Brenda watched as JD scooped the giggling child up into his arms and covered her face with kisses, before heading toward her, waving as they walked. She waved back, her heart full of love for them both. When they were within just a few yards of her, the toddler wriggled out of JD’s arms and ran toward her with outstretched arms, as fast as her chubby little legs could carry her.

“Mama!” she squealed, as Brenda scooped the giggling girl up into her arms and cuddled her to her. She was so beautiful, with her dark, curly hair and vivid blue eyes.

“Mama missed you!” Brenda cooed, tickling her under the chin, then nuzzling her wet body close to her as she wrapped a large towel around the child, cocooning her close to her. The little girl smelled of a mixture of sunscreen and saltwater and baby shampoo, and Brenda drank in the scent, feeling intoxicated by the feeling of happy contentment it evoked in her. Life didn’t get any better than this: married to a man she loved more than life itself and holding the evidence of that love in her arms.

She looked back up to see JD still walking slowly toward her, and her heart skipped a beat watching him. It always did whenever she saw him. She was glad that some things never changed…

“And did you miss me, Brenda?” he asked, his sapphire blue eyes twinkling as he finally reached her, kissing her softly on the cheek as he placed one hand on her arm and the other on the little girl’s back.

“Always,” she smiled, returning his gentle kiss with one of her own.

In the distance Brenda could hear a man’s voice calling to them, and she looked up to see an older man quickly striding up the beach toward them, waving as he walked. As he got closer, Brenda could see that it was John Jacks.

The child wriggled out of Brenda’s arms at the sight and sound of him and quickly ran toward John. “Pawpaw,” she squealed, her childish voice filled with love and joy.

Brenda watched as John scooped up the toddler, kissing her on the head and then tickling her tummy, sending her immediately into squeals of delight. “How’s grandpa’s girl?” Brenda heard him ask her daughter.

She felt JD’s arm around her shoulder. “He’s going to spoil her, you know,” he announced, cocking his head toward his father, who was now stooped on the sand, searching for shells and other treasures with the child.

“Well, you’re one to talk!” Brenda laughed, chucking him under the chin playfully. “You get her one more stuffed animal and there won’t be room in the nursery for her!”

“I just want her to know that I love her,” he replied wistfully, as they both continued to watch the pair digging for buried treasure at the water’s edge.

“How could she ever doubt that?” she asked, turning to gaze at him, her eyes bright with both tears and love. “How could either of us ever doubt that?”

She moved to raise her hand to once again caress his face, but as she did, he slowly disappeared; his warm flesh turning icy and then crumbling beneath her touch. She looked to the water’s edge just in time to see both John and her daughter quickly fade away as well.

“Nooo!” she tried to scream, as she watched those whom she loved disappear into thin air, but there was no sound beyond the frantic beating of her own heart and the steady ebb and flow of the surf as it pounded the beach. And then suddenly there was no sound at all…

Her eyes drifted open, and she immediately felt disoriented and dizzy. It was only a dream, she told herself; it means nothing. But the feeling of panic that it had induced stayed with her. Her head and her heart were pounding wildly, and beads of sweat dotted her forehead, slowly dripping across her eyes and down her cheeks, tickling uncomfortably as they left their damp trails.

She moved to wipe them away, but her arms wouldn’t budge and that’s when she realized that they were stretched above her head. She glanced behind her to see that her wrists were bound to the headboard of an old metal bed. Where was she and how had she gotten here? The panic that she’d felt at the close of her dream was nothing compared to the panic she felt rising in her soul now, as her drug-addled brain slowly recognized her present situation. JD’s organization had made good on its threat against her, and she’d been kidnapped!

Her first instinct was to scream, but there was tape across her mouth, making much more than a muffled moan impossible. Frantically, she looked around, trying to get her bearings, but between the dim light and whatever she’d been given to knock her out, she found it difficult to focus her blurred vision. Gradually her eyesight became somewhat clearer and she scanned her surroundings, desperately looking for a possible means of escape if the opportunity arose.

The room she was in was tiny and hot. It appeared to have only one door, which was closed, and one long, narrow window, similar to the ones in nearly every old apartment building in the city - also closed. The room was dark and dingy; the only light in the room coming from the closed window, which was partially covered with what appeared to be an old blanket.

She squinted in the murky light at the walls. They appeared to be plastered with hundreds of pictures in all shapes and sizes - some in color, others black-and-white. She wondered if the room’s owner was a photographer like herself or merely someone trying to cover the faded, peeling paint that peaked out intermittently amidst the photos. In this light she couldn’t see well enough to make out much more than mere outlines here and there on the various photographs, so it was impossible to tell if there was an overall theme to the room-size collage. If there was a theme here, there most certainly was obsession as well. She shuddered at that thought, but then she almost laughed at the irony of fearing this unseen, unknown person because of his possible obsessive tendencies when she had more than enough reason to fear him because he no doubt planned to kill her!

She tried to remember what had happened and how she had gotten here, but her head hurt so badly it was hard to concentrate on anything but the intense fear that she felt welling up deep inside her. Perhaps she could reason with them, she thought; but she doubted that the same people who had killed her baby without remorse would be willing to bargain for her life now, and that made her panic level rise even higher. Stay calm, she told herself; stay calm and stay alive - if you panic, you’re as good as dead… You’re as good as dead anyway, a little voice whispered. No! She couldn’t give into her fears; she had to relax and try to think so she could figure a way out of this.

She closed her eyes and tried to breathe deeply through her nose to calm herself, but the air, made thick from the heat and an oddly pungent odor, assailed her senses, making her nauseous and dizzy and difficult to breathe. The odor seemed strangely familiar, and she wracked her tired brain trying to place the smell. But her thin grasp on consciousness was quickly disappearing, as that faintly familiar pungent odor mixed with the merciless pounding in her head and whatever drug that still circulated through her bloodstream to render her unconscious once again.

“The clock’s ticking…”

The words echoed ominously in his head, as Jerry tore up Fifth Avenue, heading north toward Harlem. Both he and Jax had been literally on the edge of their seats since they’d learned that they had a finite amount of time to find Brenda before it was too late. Jackson most likely had Brenda locked in the limo trunk and that limo was located somewhere in that part of the city - but where?

Dee had wanted to come along to offer her help, but both Jax and Jerry felt that it would be far too dangerous to bring her along. Besides, she had been unable to sense anything more about Brenda or her location since the flashes she’d had earlier, so she had reluctantly agreed to remain at the loft and wait for their call.

Jax’s quick thinking had gotten the FBI on this immediately. They had tried to trace the origin of the call that Jackson had placed to Jerry’s cell phone, but the man had cleverly used a convoluted series of computer connections that crisscrossed the globe, thus making it virtually impossible to pinpoint his location or even the number of the phone that he used to make the call. That avenue led nowhere for them, but, undeterred, the FBI had descended quickly on the area of Manhattan known as Harlem. Despite looking for a limo displaying the distinctive “LL” logo of Luxury Limousines, all involved knew that finding her before it was too late would still be a daunting task. The Harlem area was vast and without knowing a specific neighborhood in which to look, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

“He didn’t say anything more about her location?” Jax prodded, glancing at the LCD clock on the dash that now read 12:18 a.m.

“No, but I’ve been thinking about that, and as sick as this guy is I’m betting it’s near the site where he assaulted her four years ago,” Jerry answered, as he grabbed his phone. He quickly punched in the number that connected him immediately to Special Agent David Weygandt, an old friend of Mike Moriarity’s at the FBI, and the man who was heading up the small group of Bureau agents who were now involved in finding Brenda.

“Weygandt, here,” Agent Weygandt answered on the second ring.

“Weygandt, it’s Jerry Jacks,” Jerry began. “I have a good hunch where you might find that limo…”

“Good! Because Harlem’s a big area to be searching with the limited number of men that we have and the time restriction as well,” Agent Weygandt replied. “If we’d been called in sooner…”

“We’ll get to the recriminations later, after we’ve found her, but for now we don’t have time for that!” Jerry barked. “Several years ago Brenda was assaulted as she was photographing a construction site on E.126th, between Fifth Avenue and Lenox. I’ll lay odds that that’s where he’s left the limo.”

“That’s just a few blocks from where I am now,” Weygandt replied. “We’re on it! I hope your hunch is right.”

“You and me both,” Jerry prayed, as he closed his phone and put it back onto the console between the seats.

“How far are we from there?” Jax asked, anxiously as the clock advanced to read 12:19 a.m.

“At this speed, we’re less than three minutes from there,” Jerry answered tersely, also glancing at the clock that seemed to be advancing the minutes far too quickly. In the light of the passing streetlights, he could see the grim expression on his brother’s face and the small beads of sweat that dotted his forehead, despite the air conditioner that was set on high and blasting out cold air. “We’ll find her, Jax,” Jerry assured him.

There was a brief moment of silence between them, as Jax seemed to be weighing what Jerry had said and how to respond. Finally, he swallowed hard and looked bleakly at his brother, as he replied, “Yeah, but will we find her in time?”

It was 12:22 a.m. when Jax and Jerry arrived at the former construction site on E.126th Street, now the home of Eaton Enterprises. Weygandt and his fellow agents arrived at precisely the same time. There, parked directly in the middle of the parking lot of the new building was a long, shiny black stretch limo that proudly displayed the “LL” logo in the center of its rear window.

One of the agents immediately opened up the driver’s side door of the limo, which was unlocked, but found the front seat empty. A search of the front interior of the car failed to turn up the keys. Meanwhile, another agent had opened the passenger area of the car to find a camera case and a black leather jacket.

“Those are Brenda’s!” Jax exclaimed, grabbing them from the agent’s hands before the man could show them to Weygandt. “She had them with her when she was in my office!”

“Pop the trunk now!” Jerry yelled frantically, and two other agents immediately pried the Lincoln’s trunk open, while Jax and Jerry waited anxiously to the side.

It was 12:24 a.m. when the limo trunk opened to reveal that it was also empty, except for a spare tire and a note, once again computer-generated in bold letters, identical to the two that Jerry had already received.

One of the agents wearing latex gloves retrieved the note, which read:

“That’s about four blocks from here,” Weygandt said, as he and several other agents headed back to their vehicles, leaving two agents behind to process the limo.

“Arrogant bastard!” Jerry swore loudly, as he slammed his fist against the side of the limo, before he and Jax got back into his Lexus and he drove away like a bat out of hell.

“Clock’s ticking…I’ll just have to take her with me…” The words echoed in Jerry’s head and sent a chill down his spine, as the implications of those words suddenly hit him. He prayed that he was wrong, but something told him that he wasn’t…

The clock had just turned to 12:28 as they pulled up to the address on W.128th, which was a run-down apartment building in a neighborhood that seemed light years from where they’d found the limo. Jerry and Jax were out of the car in a flash, heading for the entrance, when a couple of agents blocked their way.

“Out of the way!” Jerry yelled, as he roughly shoved one of the two men to the side, in an attempt to get closer to the building.

The second agent immediately drew his weapon and pointed it at Jerry’s chest. “Sorry, sir,” he said, looking from Jerry to Jax. “This is FBI business now, and you two need to stay out of the line of fire. We have all entrances to the building covered, so the guy’s not going anywhere except through us!”

“Dammit!” Jerry screamed. “He’s not planning to escape with her! He’s got a - !”

But before he could say another word, an earsplitting explosion shook the building and flames shot out of the windows of the rooms at the right rear of the second floor of the building, in the apartment that was once known as 2C…