When he finally got up again, they followed him into Neiman Marcus, leapfrogging around the store while he looked at shoes and men’s shirts. It almost seemed like he was deliberately killing time for some reason.

And then suddenly he was gone.

“Tango, you got him?” I heard.

“Negative. Hang on a second. Hold on. I think he went into the bathroom.”

Another fifteen seconds ticked by. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!

“What’s going on there?” I said.

“This is Tango. It’s not him in the bathroom. I think we might have lost him.”

“Lost him?” I said, trying not to rip anyone’s head off — yet. “Or he gave you the slip?”

“I really don’t know,” he said. “But we’re going to want some more eyes in here.”

I resisted the urge to run inside myself. I didn’t want to lose my head and blow this thing. But I sure as hell didn’t want to lose Rodney Glass, either.

THIS WAS PURE misery. A disaster — and I’d been in charge. I was so angry at myself, even if I couldn’t have done anything differently now.

I was going crazy, watching Glass’s Subaru from the confines of my own car, and listening to nothing but radio silence while my guys scoured the neighborhood.

Both malls.

The parking lots.

Side streets.

Then, just after seven o’clock, I spotted Glass.

He came sauntering around the corner from the front of the mall and cut diagonally across the parking lot. That son of a bitch!

“I got him,” I radioed. “He’s headed back to his car. Get out here, and get yourselves ready to go.”

It was dark by now, but the parking lot was well lit. I used a small pair of binoculars to try and see what Glass was carrying. He’d been empty-handed on the way in.

The shopping bag he had in one hand was from Anthropologie, I saw. The kind of place where my kids might shop. Or the president’s kids, for that matter. Nothing in there for someone like him. He was a tall, strapping guy — a grownup, for starters. He favored L. L. Bean and Carhartt, as far as I could tell. Not the trendy fashions of this place. What was that about?

In his other hand, he had a tall cup with a straw sticking out the top. The logo on the side said AMC. That meant the movie theater, not the food court.

Jesus. Had I been tearing out my hair for three hours while Rodney Glass had taken himself to a matinee?

Or was that just what he wanted us to think? Was this all for show? Where else might he have been all this time?

As I watched him throw his bag into the back of the car — casually, maybe too casually — I started to get a horrible, sinking feeling. It was nothing I could prove to myself either way, but my gut was starting to tell me what my head didn’t want to know.