More sobbing. Myron felt icy fear in his chest. “Please, Lex, listen to me. I need you to calm down, so you can tell me what’s going on.”

“Hurry.”

“Where are you?”

He started sobbing some more.

“Lex? I need to know where you are.”

There was a choking noise, more sobs, and then three words: “In the ambulance.”

It was hard to get more out of Lex.

Myron managed to learn that Suzze was being rushed to St. Anne’s Medical Center. That was it. Myron texted Win and called Esperanza. “I’m on it,” Esperanza said. Myron tried to plug in the hospital on his GPS, but his hand kept shaking and then the GPS kept taking too long, and when he started driving the car, that damn safety feature wouldn’t let him plug the information in.

He got caught up in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, started laying on the horn and waving people over like a madman. Most drivers just ignored him. Some, he could see, picked up cell phones, probably calling the cops to warn them about the crazy person losing his mind in traffic.

Myron called Esperanza. “Any word?”

“The hospital won’t say anything over the phone.”

“Okay, call me if you learn anything. I should be there in another ten, fifteen.”

It was fifteen. He pulled into the hospital’s full and rather complicated lot. He circled a few times and then just figured the hell with it. He double-parked, blocking someone in, and left his keys. He ran toward the entrance, past the huddled smokers in the hospital scrubs, and into the ER. He stopped at the front desk, three people back, bouncing from one foot to the other like a six-year-old needing to go potty.

Finally, it was his turn. He told her why he was here. The woman behind the desk gave him the implacable “seen it all” face.

“Are you family?” she asked in a tone that would need technological help to be any flatter.

“I’m her agent and a close friend.”

A practiced sigh. This, Myron could see, was going to be a waste of time. His eyes started darting around the room, looking for Lex or Suzze’s mother or something. In the far corner, he was surprised to see Loren Muse, head county investigator. Myron had met Muse when a teenager named Aimee Biel vanished a few years back. Muse had her little cop pad out. She was talking to someone hidden behind the corner and taking notes.

“Muse?”