His arms and legs, flat on the carpet, felt pleasantly light. The adrenaline rush of the past ten minutes was fading out. He didn’t feel tired, but his body had never been so exhausted. He wanted nothing more than to keep his eyes closed and lie here doing nothing at all.

He thought of Dani and Lauren, somewhere out in the darkness of the cornfield, heading north for Station 14. Dani would worry when he didn’t show up there right away, but she would understand later, when he explained. Hell, if she knew the circumstances, she would insist he stay right here for now. In the meantime, she and Lauren wouldn’t have to wait alone: Pierce would meet them there soon enough.

A thought made him smile: Remember to ask Lauren what the darts were all about.

What the hell were they about?

Dani’s assessment came back to him now: Belly buttons and a pool table. If there’s a connection, I’m missing it.

He thought about it for another few seconds and then let it drift away.

He let everything else drift away, too. All the sounds. All the worries. Everything was good now. Everything was just—

His eyes opened and he flinched as if someone had kicked him in the side. He swiveled his head and stared across the floor at the steps leading down to the rec room.

“The darts,” he whispered.

He sat up fast, got to his feet, crossed to the stairs and descended them three at a time.

The rec room was dark, like the rest of the house, but his eyes were adjusted well enough. A narrow shaft of streetlight glow shone through a little window on the front wall, up near the ceiling—the side of the basement that faced the front yard.

On the room’s end wall were the movie posters. Superman and Rambo still had the darts stuck into their navels. Sam went past them to the pool table, centered in the space of the long room.

He went to the table’s nearest corner, leaned over it, and stared straight down.

In the faint light he could see the dart there, deep inside the opening.

If there’s a connection, I’m missing it.

He’d missed it, too.

Because the darts weren’t just hidden in the pool table.

They were hidden in its pockets.

Navels and pockets.

And there sure as hell was a connection there, wasn’t there? A simple one. The kind Lauren could have come up with in the minute or two when she’d been down here, listening to her father confront the kidnappers upstairs. The minute or two that she’d had in which to write a message, hide it, and point the way to that hiding place for anyone who came looking later on.

Navels and pockets.