Instead he was trapped here, surrounded by ears he didn’t entirely trust, and with no way to call securely for an update. For the first time in eight years, being vice president of the United States was damn inconvenient—all the power in the world but powerless to influence the search for his own daughter. He checked his watch and wound it for good measure.

“Mr. Vice President?” A young aide stood in the doorway of the vice president’s office.

“Yes? Are they ready finally?”

The aide looked unhappily at the floor.

“What now?” Lombard demanded.

“Another amendment, sir.”

He felt his blood pressure rising. “How long?”

“Ninety minutes . . . maybe two hours?”

Lombard looked at his watch. There went getting back to Dallas for the speech. He needed to talk to Reed and start making arrangements for Saturday.

“Close the door.”

The aide stepped gratefully back out into the hall. Lombard sat at his desk and picked up the phone, then put it back in the cradle. He sat staring at it grimly for a long while.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Gibson pulled the Taurus over to the side of the road. Traffic whipped by close enough to shake the car. He sat there, hands on the wheel, and listened to the engine idle. He was thirty miles out of Somerset. That ought to be enough. Would they have followed him? He glanced in the rearview mirror again. Nothing. It wasn’t all that comforting. He wouldn’t see Hendricks unless Hendricks wanted to be seen.

It had been an eventful thirty-six hours. WR8TH had turned out to be Kirby Tate, the wannabe bodybuilder. Gibson’s program had done its job perfectly and drawn a straight line between the corrupted ad server and Tate’s computer. While Rilling had run Tate’s name through state and federal databases, Hendricks and Jenn had tailed Tate to his residence. By the next morning, they were 90 percent sure they had the right guy, and by Saturday afternoon, when Rilling forwarded Tate’s file to Jenn and Hendricks, they were convinced. George had calls in to his contacts at the FBI to present their case against Kirby Tate.

“Our guy’s got a sheet,” Hendricks had said. “Did five and a half years at Frackville for false imprisonment. Must have been where he got jacked, because in his mug shot he’s a skinny little bitch.”

“What did he do?” Gibson asked.

“Got caught with eleven-year-old Trish Casper in his car is what he did.”

“He’s a registered sex offender,” Jenn added.

“Oh, yeah. The girl’s kid brother ID’d the car leaving a supermarket, and the mom called the cops. When the cops pulled Tate over, the girl was trussed up in his trunk. Half-naked.”

“He got out a year and a half before Suzanne disappeared.”

“Sad part is this monster should have gone down for felony kidnapping of a minor,” Jenn said.