Half an hour later she was ready. She’d chosen a blouse the color of fresh blood, her black interview suit, lip gloss to match, and heels. Miriam didn’t normally hold with makeup, but this time she went the whole hog. She didn’t normally hold with power dressing either, but something about Roland and this setup suggested that his people were much more obsessed with appearances than the dot-com entrepreneurs and Masspike corridor startup monkeys she usually dealt with. Any edge she could get…

A bell chimed discreetly. She straightened up and turned to look at the door as it opened. Here it comes, she thought nervously.

It was Roland, who’d brought her up here from the cell. Now that she saw him in the daylight from the windows with a clear head, her confusion deepened. He looks like a secret service agent, she thought. Something about that indefinably military posture and the short hair suggested he’d been ordered into that suit in place of combat fatigues.

“Ah. You’ve found the facilities.” He nodded. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she said. “I see you ransacked my house.”

“You will find that everything has been accounted for,” he said, slightly defensively. “Would you rather we’d given you a prison uniform? No?” He sized her up with a glance. “Well, there’s someone I have to take you to see now.”

“Oh, good.” It slipped out before she could clamp down on the sarcasm. “The chief of secret police, I assume?”

His eyes widened slightly. “Don’t joke about it,” he muttered.

“Oh.” Miriam dry-swallowed. “Right, well, we wouldn’t want to keep him waiting, would we?”

“Absolutely not,” Roland said seriously. He held the door open, then paused for a moment. “By the way, I really wouldn’t want you to embarrass yourself trying to escape. This is a secure facility.”

“I see,” said Miriam, who didn’t—but had made her mind up already that it would be a mistake to simply cut and run. These people had snatched her from her own bed. That suggested a frightening level of—competence.

She approached the door warily, keeping as far away from Roland as she could. “Which way?”

“Along the passage.”

He headed off at a brisk march and she followed him, heels sinking into the sound-deadening carpet. She had to hurry to keep up. When I get out of this mess, I’m buying a new interview outfit—one I can run in, she promised herself.

“Wait one moment, please.”

She found herself fetched up behind Roland’s broad back, before a pair of double doors that were exquisitely paneled and polished. Odd, she wondered. Where is everybody? She glanced over her shoulder, and spotted a discreet video camera watching her back. They’d come around two corners, as if the corridor followed a rectangle: They’d passed a broad staircase leading down, and the elevator—there ought to be more people about, surely?