Some day. When was it going to end? He was pretty sure the Berzerk had cleared his system, but his aches and pains seemed to be getting worse instead of better. Especially his head. He’d had the radio on earlier and some station had played “You Keep Me Hanging On.” Now it kept droning through his frazzled brain, Diana Ross’s voice like a power saw hitting a nail.

And worst of all, he saw a good chance this whole trip might be for nothing. Had no idea how often or how much a rakosh ate, but if it had fed on Bondy first, then Gleason, he might still have a chance of finding Nadia alive. A slim one, but he had to give it a shot. Might have a hard time living with himself if he didn’t.

He’d figured a train of freak show trucks and trailers would be next to impossible to miss, but he damn near did. He was too intent on an all-news station’s big breaking story as he flashed by the New Gretna rest area…

“… mass murder in midtown: gangland figure Milos Dragovic, known in many quarters as ‘the Slippery Serb,’ is dead, apparently of stab wounds, along with three top executives of a pharmaceutical firm. The four were found locked in a conference room in the GEM Pharma offices in midtown by a cleaning crew a short while ago. This is not Dragovic’s first appearance in the news today. He was—”

Jack was a good hundred yards past the rest stop, congratulating himself on how well that stunt had worked, when something familiar about the motley assortment of vehicles clustered in the southern end of the parking lot registered in his consciousness.

He slowed, found an official use only cutoff, and made an illegal U-turn across the median onto the northbound lanes. Half a minute later he pulled into the rest area and found a parking spot near the Burger King/ Nathan’s/TCBY sign where he had a good view of the freak show vehicles.

At this hour on a Wednesday morning in May, the rest area was fairly deserted. Except for a few couples straggling back from Atlantic City, Oz’s folk had the lot pretty much to themselves. But why this rest area of all places? This was the only one Jack knew of that had a State Police barracks for a neighbor.

He slumped in the seat. Bad thought: if Oz was traveling with someone he’d abducted, this would be the last place he’d stop. Sick foreboding settled on Jack like a wet tarp.

But he’d come this far…

He scanned the area. No way to sneak up on them, so he settled for a direct approach. Of course the smart thing to do was to dime Oz out to the New Jersey State cops a couple hundred yards away, but that didn’t sit right. Never would. And besides, if Nadia had become rakoshi chow, the state cops would find nothing. And the Scar-lip problem would remain.