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by Michael Crichton

  He said, “Jamie, go get Alex. Tell her I need to see her for a minute.”

  “But Dad—”

  “Do it. And don’t say anything to the police.”

  Alex staredat the screen. “I’m going to get that son of a bitch and I’m going to blow his head off. You touch my kid, you’re dead.” Her voice was flat, cold. Henry felt a chill. She meant it.

  “Where’s he going?” she said.

  “He’s left the coast and heading inland, but he may just be avoiding the Del Mar traffic. He may go back to the coast again. We’ll know in a few minutes.”

  “How far away is he?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Let’s go. You bring that,” she said, nodding to the laptop. “I’ll get my gun.”

  Henry looked out the front window. There were three cop cars flashing their lights at the curb, and six cops on the front lawn. “Not that easy.”

  “Yes, it is. I’m parked around the corner.”

  “They said they want to see me.”

  “Make an excuse. I’ll be in my car.”

  He told themDave needed medical attention, and he had to take him to the hospital. He said that his wife, Lynn, had witnessed everything and could tell them what had taken place. He said he would give a full statement when he returned, but he needed to take Dave to the hospital.

  Since Dave’s hands were bloody, they accepted it. Lynn gave Henry a funny look. He said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He walked around the back of the house and cut through the property behind. Dave followed him.

  “Where are we going?” Dave said.

  “To find that guy. The guy with the black beard.”

  “He hurted Jamie.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I hurted him, too.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “His ears came off.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Next time his nose.”

  “Dave,” he said. “We need to show restraint.”

  “What’s re-straint?” Dave said.

  It was too complicated to explain. Alex’s white Toyota was up ahead. They got in the car. He got in front, Dave got in back.

  “What is this?” Dave said, pointing to the seat beside him.

  “Don’t touch it, Dave,” Alex said. “That’s a gun.”

  She put the car in gear and drove off.

  She calledBob Koch, on the off chance that he had news.

  “I do,” he said. “But I wish it were better.”

  “He let it go?”

  “He held over until tomorrow.”

  “Did you try—”

  “Yeah, I tried. He’s confused. It’s not the usual legal area for Oxnard judges. That’s probably why they filed there.”

  “So, tomorrow?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and hung up. There was no point in telling him what she was about to do. She wasn’t even sure she would do it. But she thought that she probably would.

  Henry was ridingshotgun, looking at the computer. Now that he was out here, in a car, the connection sometimes dropped out for a minute or two. He began to worry about losing it altogether. He glanced back at Dave, who was shoeless. “Where are your shoes?”

  “They camed off.”

  “Where?”

  “In the white car.” He meant the ambulance.

  “How?”

  “One was in his mouth. The man. Then the car falled.”

  “And your shoes came off?”

  “Yes, they camed off.”

  Apparently Alex was thinking the same thing, because she said, “Then his shoes are still in the ambulance. Not the Hummer. We’re following the wrong car.”

  “No, the ambulance crashed. It can’t be the ambulance.”

  “Then the signal…”

  “It must have fallen out of his shoe, and slipped into the guy’s clothes. Somehow.”

  “Then it could slip out again.”

  “Yeah. It could.”

  “Or they could find it.”

  “Yeah.”

  She didn’t say anything after that.

  He continued watching the screen. The blue dot went north, then east. Then north. And finally east again, passing Rancho Santa Fe, going back to the desert. Then it curved onto Highland Drive. “Okay,” he said. “I know where they’re going. Solana Canyon.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a spa. Very big. Very high-end.”

  “With doctors?”

  “I’m sure. They may even do surgery. Maybe face-lifts, liposuction, something like that.”

  “Then they have surgical facilities,” she said grimly. She stepped on the accelerator.

  The one hundred acresknown as Solana Canyon represented a triumph of marketing. Only a few decades earlier the region was known by its original name, Hellhole Palms. It was a flat, boulder-strewn region, without a canyon in sight. Thus Solana Canyon had no canyon, and precious little to do with the coastal town of Solana Beach. The name simply tracked better than the other choices, which had been Angel Springs, Zen Mountain View, Cedar Springs, and Silver Hill Ashram. Compared to the other choices, the name Solana Canyon conveyed a muted, understated quality in keeping with a resort that charged thousands of dollars a day to rejuvenate the bodies, minds, and spirits of its clients. This was accomplished through a combination of yoga, massage, meditation, spiritual counseling, and diet help, all delivered by staff who greeted guests with prayerful hands and a heartfelt “Namaste.”

  Solana Canyon was also a favorite spot for celebrities to dry out.

  Alex drove right past the adobe-style main gate, artfully concealed behind giant palms. They were following the tracking signal, which was going around the back of the resort.

  “He’s taking the service entrance,” Henry said.

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “Once. A lecture on genetics.”

  “And?”

  “I wasn’t invited back. They didn’t like the message. You know the old saying. Professors attribute the intelligence of their students to environment and the intelligence of their children to genes. Same with rich people. If you’re rich or good-looking, you want to hear that your genes make you that way. That enables you to feel inherently superior to other people—that you deserve your success. And then you can give other people as much crap as you—hold on, they’re stopping. Slow down.”

  “What now?” she said. They were on a side road, and there was a service entrance up ahead.

  “I think they’re in the parking lot.”

  “So? Let’s get them right there.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “There’s always a couple of security guys at the parking lot. You show a gun, and there’ll be trouble.” He watched the screen. “Stationary…now moving again. Now stationary.” He frowned.

  She said, “If there’s security guards, they’ll see Jamie struggling when he gets out.”

  “Maybe they’ve drugged him. Or…I don’t know,” he said quickly, seeing the pain on her face. “Wait, moving again. They’re going around the back road.”

  She put the car in gear and drove to the service gate. The gate was open. Nobody was on duty. She drove through, into the parking lot. The back road was at the far corner of the lot.

  “What do we do?” she said. “Follow them down the road?”

  “I don’t think so. If we do, they’ll see us coming. Better park.” He opened the door. “Let’s take a walk through beautiful Solana Canyon resort.” He looked at her. “You going to leave that shotgun here?”

  “No,” she said. She popped open the trunk, found a towel, wrapped the shotgun in it, and said, “I’m ready.”

  “O-kay,” Henry said. “Here we go.”

  “Goddamn it,”Vasco said, stepping on the brakes. He was driving around the back road to park behind the surgicenter. The plan was for Dr. Manuel Cajal to come out of the surgicenter, slip into the Hummer, do the biopsies, and go out again. Nobody sees
it, nobody’s the wiser.

  But now the back road was blocked. Two backhoes, digging some big trench. No way across, and no other road. A hundred yards from the surgicenter.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” he said.

  “Take it easy, Vasco,” Dolly said. “It’s no big deal. If the road is blocked, we just walk to the center, go in the rear door, and do it there.”

  “Everyone will see us walking through the resort.”

  “So what? We’re just visitors. Besides, everybody at this place is completely self-absorbed. They have no time to think about us. And if they did, and if they decided to call someone—which they never would—the procedure’d be finished before the call was finished. Manuel can do it faster in there than out here.”

  “I don’t like it.” Vasco looked around, stared at the road, then at the spa grounds. But she was right. It was a quick walk through the garden. He turned to the kid. “Listen,” he said. “This is how it is. We’re going to take a walk. You just be quiet. And everything will be fine.”

  “What’re you going to do?” he said. “To me.”

  “Nothing. Just take a little blood.”

  “Are there needles?”

  “Just a little one, like at the doctor’s.”

  He turned to Dolly. “Okay, call Manuel. Tell him we’re coming. And let’s get going.”

  Jamie had beendiligently taught to yell and scream and kick if anyone ever tried to kidnap him, and he had done those things when they first grabbed him, but now he was very frightened, and he was afraid they would hurt him if he made any trouble. So he walked quietly along the path of the garden, with the woman keeping her hand on his shoulder and the big mean guy walking on the other side, wearing a cowboy hat so his ear wouldn’t show.

  They passed people in bathrobes, women mostly, chatting and laughing, but nobody really looked at them. They walked on through another garden area, and then he heard a voice say, “I say, do you need help with your homework?”

  He was so startled he stopped. He looked up.

  It was a bird. A sort of gray-colored bird.

  “Are you a friend of Evan?” the bird said.

  “No,” he said.

  “You’re the same size as he is. What’s eleven take away nine?”

  Jamie was so surprised, he just stared.

  “Let’s go, dear,” Dolly said. “It’s just a bird.”

  “Justa bird !” the bird said. “Who are you calling abird ?”

  “You really talk a lot,” Jamie said.

  “And you don’t,” the bird said. “Who are these people? Why are they holding you?”

  “We’re not holding him,” Dolly said.

  “You gentlemen aren’t really trying to kill my son, are you?” the bird said.

  “Ah Christ,” Vasco said.

  “Ah Christ,” the bird said, exactly duplicating his voice. “What’s your name?”

  “Let’s get going,” Vasco said.

  “My name is Jamie,” Jamie said.

  “Hello, Jamie. I’m Gerard,” the bird said.

  “Hello, Gerard.”

  “All right,” Vasco said. “Let’s get a move on here.”

  “That depends on who’s in the saddle,” Gerard said.

  “Dolly,” Vasco said, “we have to keep to our schedule.”

  “Well, a boy’s best friend is his mother,” the bird said, in an odd voice.

  “Do you know my mother?” Jamie said.

  “No, son,” Dolly said. “He doesn’t. He’s just saying things he’s already heard before.”

  “Your story didn’t sound quite right,” Gerard said. And in a different voice: “Oh, that’s too bad, you got a better one?”

  But now the grown-ups were pushing Jamie forward. He didn’t think he could stay longer, and he didn’t want to make a scene. “Bye, Gerard,” he said.

  “Bye, Jamie.”

  They walked on for a while. Jamie said, “He was funny.”

  “Yes he was, dear,” Dolly said, keeping her hand firmly on his shoulder.

  Coming intothe gardens, Alex first passed the swimming pool area. It was the quietest swimming pool she had ever seen—no splashing, no noise. People lay in the sun like corpses. There was a cabinet stacked with towels and bathrobes. Alex took a bathrobe and draped it over her shoulder, covering the towel-wrapped shotgun.

  “How do you know these things?” Henry said, watching her. He was nervous. Walking with her while she carried that gun, and knowing she intended to use it. He didn’t know if the bearded guy was armed, but chances were that he was.

  “Law school,” she said, laughing.

  Dave walked a couple of steps behind them. Henry turned and said, “Keep up, Dave.”

  “Okay…”

  They rounded a corner, passed beneath an adobe archway, came into another secluded garden. The air here was cool, and the path shaded. A little brook ran alongside the path.

  They heard a voice say, “Mellow greetings, ukie dukie.”

  Henry looked up. “What was that?”

  “Me.”

  Henry said, “It’s a bird.”

  “Excuse me,” the bird said, “my name is Gerard.”

  Alex said, “Oh, a talking parrot.”

  The parrot said, “My name is Jamie. Hello, Jamie, I’m Gerard. Hello, Gerard.”

  Alex froze, stared. “That’s Jamie!”

  “Do you know my mother?” the bird said, sounding exactly like Jamie’s voice.

  “Jamie!” Alex started to shout in the garden. “Jamie!Jamie! ”

  And in the distance, she heard, “Mom!”

  Dave took off,running forward. Henry looked at Alex, who stood very still. She dropped the towel and the robe to the ground and methodically loaded the shotgun. She pulled the action bar back and forward, making achung chung! sound. Then she turned to Henry.

  “Let’s go.” She was very cool. The gun was cradled in her arm. “You may want to walk behind me.”

  “Uh, okay.”

  She started walking. “Jamie!”

  “Mom!”

  She walked faster.

  They couldn’thave been more than twenty feet from the back door to the surgicenter—maybe three, four good paces, no more than that—when the whole thing started.

  And Vasco Borden waspissed. His trusted assistant just melting right before his eyes. The kid cries “Mom!” and she lets go of him. She just stands there. Like she was stunned.

  “Hold on to him, damn it,” he said. “What are you doing?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Mom! Mom!”

  Exactly what I was worried about, he thought. He had an eight-year-old kid screaming for his mother, and all these women in bathrobes walking around. If they weren’t looking at him and the kid before, they sure as hell were now—pointing and talking. Vasco appeared completely out of place, six-four and bearded, dressed entirely in black, with a black cowboy hat he had to pull down low because his damn ear had been bitten off. He knew he looked like a bad guy in a bad cowboy movie. His woman wasn’t helping; she wasn’t soothing the kid or leading him forward, and any minute he knew that kid would turn and bolt.

  Vasco needed to get control here. He started to reach for his gun, but now more women were coming out of rooms on all sides—hell, a whole damn yoga class was emptying into the garden to look, to see why some kid was hollering for his mother.

  And there he was, the man in black.

  He wasscrewed.

  “Dolly,” he snapped, “goddamn it, pull yourself together. We have to take this young man into the surgicenter here—”

  Vasco never finished the sentence, because a dark shape came streaking toward him, leapt into the air, swung from a tree branch about eight feet high, and—right about the time he realized it was that black kid again,that hairy kid, the one that bit off his ear—the black kid slammed into him, hard as a big rock smashing him full on the chest, and Vasco stumbled backward over some rose bushes and went down on his ass, legs up in th
e air.