He kept low and darted to another tree. He looked, he assumed, rather goofy a guy six-feet four inches tall and comfortably over two hundred pounds darting between bushes like something left on the cutting room floor of The Dirty Dozen.

But what choice did he have?

He couldn't just casually walk down the street. The kidnapper might spot him. His whole plan relied on the fact that he could spot the kidnapper before the kidnapper spotted him. How to do this? He really did not have a clue. The best he could come up with was to keep circling closer and closer to the Coldren house, looking out for, er uh, something.

He scanned the surroundings- for what, he wasn't sure. Someplace for a kidnapper to use as a lookout spot, he guessed. A safe place to hide, maybe, or a perch where a man with binoculars could survey the scene. Nothing.

`The night was absolutely windless and still.

He circled the block, dashing haphazardly from one bush to another, feeling now very much like John Belushi breaking into Dean Wormer's office in Animal House.

Animal House and The Dirty Dozen; Myron watched too many movies.

As he continued to spiral closer to the Coldrens' residence, Myron realized that there was probably a good chance that he'd be the "spottee" rather than the "spotter." He tried to hide himself better, to concentrate on making himself become part of the night, to blend in to the background and become invisible.

Myron Bolitar, Mutant Ninja Warrior.

Lights twinkled from spacious homes of stone and black shutters. They were all imposing and rather beautiful with a tutelary, stay-away coziness about them. Solid homes. The third-little-piggie homes. Settled and staying and proud homes.

He was getting very close to the Coldren house now.

Still nothing not even a single car parked on the roads.

Sweat coated him like syrup on a stack of pancakes. God, he wanted to take a shower. He hunched down andwatched the house.

Now what?

Wait. Be on the lookout for movement of some kind.

Surveillance and the like was not Myron's forte. Win usually handled that kind of stuff. He had the body control and the patience. Myron was already getting fidgety. He wished he'd brought a magazine or something to read.

The three minutes of monotony was broken when the front door opened. Myron sat up. Esme Fong and Linda Coldren appeared in the door frame. They said their good-byes. Esme gave Linda the firm handshake and headed to her car. Linda Coldren shut the front door.

Esme Fong started her car and left.

A thrill a second, this surveillance stuff`.

Myron settled back behind a shrub. There were lots of shrubs around here. Everywhere one looked, there were shrubs of various sizes-and shapes and purposes. Rich blue bloods must really like shrubs, Myron decided. He wondered if they had had any on the Mayflower.

His legs were beginning to cramp from all this crouching.

He straightened them out one at a time. His bad knee, the one that ended his basketball career, began to throb.