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through so much! And now this!”
    “What do you mean? What have they ‘been through’?”
    Annette Tabor shook her head. “Nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

5
    A ngels looked down on Lee Colson from the stainedglass windows of the hospital’s chapel.
    A shaft of sun had pierced the clouds to find him. Grace Garner and Perelli seated him in one of the oak pews. A whispery air of reverence mingled with the smell of candle wax in the room’s soft light. The flowing water of a hanging wall fountain failed to soothe him. His knuckles were scraped, his fingernails were worn, and his face carried the emotion of a man standing in the path of a freight train that was bearing down on him.
    Dr. Raj Binder, a Harvard grad no older than Colson, joined them with a nurse, and spoke with the compassion of a lifelong friend.
    “Lee, Maria is upstairs undergoing surgery at this time.”
    Colson looked to the others, then back to Binder.
    “She’s suffered a major concussion. Her brain was shaken by a blow to her head. It happened when her head struck the curb, shearing tiny nerve fibers. She’s had an intracerebral hemorrhage. There’s bleeding in her brain.”
    The train was getting closer.
    “She was unconscious when she came to us, when we treated her. Our best neurological team is operating now. It could take hours. It’s too soon for anyone to predict the outcome. Maria may make a complete recovery without memory loss, or she may have periodic amnesia. She may remain unconscious, or”—Binder touched Colson’s shoulder—“she may never awaken. I’m very sorry.”
    “She could die?”
    “Yes, I’m very sorry.”
    The train was upon him.
    Colson’s knuckles whitened as he clasped and unclasped his hands.
    “How did this—I—I don’t understand. I just can’t—where’s Dylan?”
    The oak bench creaked sharply. Grace sat beside him.
    “There’s more,” she said.
    “More? What the hell’s happened?”
    “Lee.” Grace knew time was hammering against them but waited until his eyes met hers. “Your son’s been abducted.”
    “ Abducted? What? Who—how?”
    “From what we know, Maria left Dylan in front of Kim’s Corner Store with an employee while she went inside to make a purchase. The employee, a teenage female, stepped into the store and during that time, a vehicle, we think a van, stopped. Someone got out, took Dylan, and fled in the van. Maria witnessed it from the store, rushed out, and when she tried to stopthe van, she was struck by it. We’re going to need your help now.”
    The train. Oh Christ. It’s making the earth shake.
    “Lee, do you have any idea who would want to do this?”
    “No. NO!”
    This was crazy. They’re all nuts.
    Colson’s eyes searched Grace, Binder, Perelli, and Cindy, the nurse from psychiatric services, for a hint of deception, an error, the trace of a cruel joke that maybe the guys at the shop had set up because these people had to be joking, because you just don’t tell a man that his wife is dying and his son’s been stolen.
    But staring into their sober faces; at Binder’s scrubs, his white smock with the faded blue ink marks on his breast pocket; at Cindy’s few strands of gray and small pearl earrings— Maria loves pearls —at the leather straps of Perelli’s shoulder holster and the butt of his gun peeking from his jacket, Colson knew.
    As columns of sunlight shifted through the stained glass and distant sirens rose over the gurgling fountain, he knew the godawful truth.
    And when he surrendered to it, lightning flashed in the back of his skull, his skin began to prickle, his scalp tingled, and his intestines twisted as if the train had slammed through him, forcing bile to gush up his throat, causing a reflex gag, making him spasm forward before Grace and Binder steadied him.
    Gasping, he studied the chapel like a trapped man.
    In his job, Colson had helped people in distress, people stranded with a flat tire, a