Farnsworth poured him a shot of the whiskey he kept in his bottom drawer for nights that followed days from hell.

Silently, Malone took the glass from the chief, toasted him and downed the shot.

“What’ve you got?” Conklin asked from his seat in front of the chief’s desk. He too held a glass in hand.

“Not enough.” Malone dropped into the other visitor chair. “The Feds are making things very difficult in the field.” He filled them in on what Holland and Hill had learned in Knoxville, including their interest in speaking with Mrs. Hamilton again. “The Feds have put a protective barrier around Courtney Hamilton and won’t let us near her.”

“It’s still our case, Jake,” Farnsworth said. “If we need her, we can take her into custody.”

“That may be true, but we’ll need a SWAT team to get her. The mother’s house in Chantilly is a fortress. Her older children arrived today from Chicago and Boston. The family is expressing an interest in seeing Josh, who’s still unconscious from a nearly lethal dose of phenobarbital.”

“What’re the doctors saying?” Conklin asked.

“That it’s a waiting game at this point. Any word from the lab or Crime Scene? We need something to go on. The gunmen who took Cruz and Josh gave us dick earlier.”

“The lab said they’d have something in the morning,” Conklin said, “and we sent Crime Scene back in for another sweep. Carlucci and Dominguez interviewed the eyewitness, who didn’t have anything more to add to what he’d already given us. He saw a person of average height and build running from the vicinity of the Hamilton home on Sunday afternoon around three-thirty. He couldn’t describe the clothing or any other distinguishing features, so that’s more or less a dead end.”

“Did we get video from the surrounding homes? In that neighborhood, everyone has security.”

“Archie’s team is combing through that now,” Conklin said.

“And still nothing on Jacoby?” Farnsworth asked.

“Not a trace.”

With his elbows on the desk, Farnsworth leaned forward. “Finding him is going to be the key to this case.”

“What makes you so sure?” Malone asked.

“Think about it. He was in Knoxville with Hamilton at the time the Rollings child went missing. He’s second in command to Hamilton in the Bureau and falls off the grid at the same exact time that Hamilton is murdered and Josh is abducted. How could his disappearance not be related?”

“I think it’s time we played hardball with the gunmen who abducted Cruz and Josh Hamilton,” Conklin said. “Let’s really go at them, make them think the others are rolling and see what we get. They’re something we have that the Feds don’t, so let’s use them to our fullest advantage.”

Malone got up and put his glass on the desk. “I’m on it.”