“I don’t know,” Charlie said.

“Maybe he’s going to take him hostage?”

Charlie snorted. “If he knows the family personally, then he knows David would make a terrible hostage. His own wife would just as soon shoot him.”

Charlie joked, or so Kelly thought. But it was a fact they could not shoot Falling until they had the baby in their hands. Left alone in an apartment or house, Jimmy would die within two days.

At the harbor, they met Vicki and the other agents. Vicki had already dispatched a boat after David, but had given the agents aboard instructions to stay back a mile. Charlie grumbled—they could not offer David protection at such a distance. Vicki did not care.

“We can’t protect him anyway, if he’s on the boat with the fucker,” Vicki said.

Charlie didn’t agree but held it inside. She had never seen him so tense. Her own nerves were frayed. With David out on the water, she felt helpless.

The second helicopter appeared, landing in the marina parking lot. Vicki climbed aboard and Charlie insisted on coming along. They were at each other’s throats but Vicki knew Charlie was shrewd and wanted his support. Kelly followed Charlie into the craft without asking permission. The chopper was jet powered, capable of carrying six people at high speeds. They were airborne before Vicki noticed her. Vicki said nothing—she had other things on her mind.

The overcast hung low. At three hundred feet they ran into fog. The pilot had to bring them down to two hundred feet. Vicki cursed the lousy conditions and the creator of the universe. Even if they stayed far north of David’s boat—the direction Charlie had advised—they were plenty visible at such a low altitude.

Less than three minutes after lifting off, they were far out over the water. Below Kelly’s feet the ocean looked like a dark desert, sullen and silent. Beside her on the left a guy with a high-powered rifle and night goggles scanned the area outside the harbor. Vicki snapped at him.

“Don’t lose him,” she said.

“I have him,” the guy said.

“Is he alone?” Charlie asked.

“Can’t tell,” the guy replied.

“We have to move in closer,” Charlie told Vicki.

“No,” she said flatly.

They waited, as if they had all day. Kelly marveled at the feelings Falling invoked in her. Anger and frustration, fear and admiration. Where the latter came from she had no idea. A leap of inexplicable intuition made her shudder. She sensed Falling was trying to tell them something about himself, but they were not listening. Did he want his motives understood? She did not know, but she felt him near.