“I’ll call you in an hour, let you know where. That should give you enough time to get that sucker running. Maybe it needs a jump.”

And he hung up.

“What did he say?” Trevor asked. “How’s Angie? Did you talk to Angie? Have they hurt Angie?”

“Shut up,” I said.

I got out my wallet, hunted for my auto club card, found it and punched in an 800 number.

“My car’s dead,” I told the woman. “This is a huge emergency. How long will it take someone to get here?” I gave her my location.

I could hear her clicking away on a computer. “They should be there in no more than half an hour, sir.”

Too long, I thought. But I told them to come, anyway, and put the phone into my jacket.

“I can’t wait,” I said, and got in behind the wheel of the Virtue and turned the key. I figured, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. I might get lucky.

Nothing.

“Mr. Walker,” Trevor said, “why don’t you let me—”

I turned on him. “Go home.” I didn’t even know whether Trevor had a home, but I knew he didn’t belong here with me.

He shook his head. Quietly, he said, “No, I’m not leaving. I can help.”

“I don’t see how, Trevor.”

He paced briefly, then said, “I’ll be right back, I have to go to my car, make sure Morpheus is okay.” He ran off. What a dipshit, I thought. My daughter’s missing, and he’s worried about his dog.

I got out of the car, put my hands on the roof, felt the cool metal on my palms. An idea began to form in my head. If the auto club got here soon enough, or if I could get the car going myself, there was another errand I was going to run before I got my next call from Angie’s abductor, who was, it seemed clear now, Barbie Bullock.

The voice on the phone matched the bully from the auction, and Cheese Dick Colby had identified him from Stan’s photos as Barbie Bullock, the man in charge of Lenny Indigo’s operations ever since Lenny got sent away to cool his heels for a while.

So why would Bullock have been at the auction? Hadn’t I noticed him looking at the Virtue around the time I first laid eyes on it? Was it possible he was there to buy it, that he was planning to bid on it, but pulled out after he’d attracted so much attention getting into a fight with Stan?

Who had this car belonged to before the feds had seized it?

And what was in it that the feds had missed, that Bullock figured he could obtain for himself by buying it?