“I wonder what the ‘other thing’ is,” Brody says, almost whimsically, as my last hope dies. “Care to tell me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Pity.”

Regan holds up Caitlin’s silver Treo. “And her editor thinks she and the mayor got into a fight and left to argue it out. Good thing we moved your Audi. I texted him back that she’s fine.”

Caitlin groans softly.

With surprising flexibility, Brody Royal crosses his legs on the sofa. “Well, then. As you see, for you two, there’s only one way out of here alive. The witness’s name. Colonel Knox is waiting for my call, and every minute your father stays on the run is a minute he could be shot as a cop killer.”

Cornered at last, I run through possible names that might buy us an hour. If I make up a name out of whole cloth, they’ll soon discover my ruse, but at least that will eat a little time. A real name would buy us more but would also put someone’s life at risk. The best course might be to tell Brody that I won’t give him the name until he cancels the APB, but given the circumstances of our abduction, I’m unlikely to get far with that.

“There is no witness,” Caitlin says, as though tired of keeping up a charade.

Brody’s eyes narrow. “What?”

“Nobody ever saw you at Albert Norris’s store that night. Nobody but Albert himself. Penn made up another witness to try to force you to help Tom. That’s all we want—Tom back safe. We don’t care about the cases anymore.”

The boldness of her gambit takes me aback, but there’s genius in it. We don’t know the witness’s name because there isn’t one. No threat exists, at least from that quarter, ergo you don’t need to kill us.

Brody draws back his head, looking smug. “Nice try, Princess. But I already saw a reference to that witness in your personal computer file. I believe Henry Sexton calls him ‘Huggy Bear’? Randall tells me that was the name of a colored pimp on an old cop show.”

My heart thumps against my breastbone. Royal is two steps ahead of us, and maybe more. “I think Huggy ran a bar,” I say uselessly.

“Huggy was a nigger pimp,” Regan declares, looking up from his computer. “A jive-talking pimp who dressed like Superfly.”

Brody sighs, for the first time showing his irritation. “I think we’re drifting from the main point. I’ve tried to be reasonable, but clearly neither of you is acting in good faith. Your plan was to push me to get Dr. Cage to some safe place, then throw me to the dogs. Obviously, I can’t let that happen.”