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began to rasp painfully. For an agonizing few moments he couldn’t find the SUV, couldn’t remember where he’d parked it. Then he fished in his trouser pocket and pushed the remote key. Halfway up the line a red van blinked and beeped.
    Angie, Tamara, and the two orderlies were waiting just inside the hospital’s entrance when he tooled the van up the driveway. It was a lot bigger than the sedan he’d left at his apartment building, but it steered easily enough.
    They bundled Angie into the makeshift cot Luke had built into the back of the van. Then Minteer climbed into the right-hand seat, and Luke slid in behind the wheel.
    She gave him an odd look. “I feel like Bonnie and Clyde,” she said.
    â€œYeah. Me, too.” He gunned the engine to life and put the van in gear.
    â€œWe’d better stop at my apartment and let me throw some clothes into a suitcase.”
    â€œRight.”
    And they drove away from the hospital with Angela sleeping peacefully and Luke feeling, not like Bonnie and Clyde, but like the guy who had kidnapped the Lindbergh baby.

 
    Chelsea
    F OLLOWING TAMARA’S DIRECTIONS, Luke drove across the Tobin Bridge over the Mystic River toward the town of Chelsea.
    â€œWhere’s Old Ironsides?” he asked as he steered past a big semi rig belching black diesel fumes.
    Tamara waved vaguely. “She’s docked at a pier over in Charlestown someplace.”
    â€œI’ve never seen the ship.”
    â€œMe neither.”
    She guided him through a maze of streets and up a hill that was crowned by what looked to Luke like a small, rather shabby hospital.
    â€œSoldiers and sailors retirement home,” Tamara explained. Pointing halfway down the street to a modern-looking four-story redbrick apartment building, she said, “That’s my place. You can park in the back.”
    Once Luke slid the van into a parking slot and turned off its engine, she ducked out and hurried toward the building’s rear entrance. “Give me ten minutes,” she called to him over her shoulder as she unlocked the door and stepped through.
    Luke got out, too, his legs already aching from a twenty-minute drive. I’m too old for this, he told himself. How the hell am I going to drive all the way across the country?
    Shaking his head, he walked to the rear of the van and pulled its back hatch open. Angela was sleeping peacefully, on her back, breathing regularly, the IV still in her arm. He tucked the blankets around her more snugly.
    This is crazy, Luke told himself. I ought to have my head examined.
    For December, it was a beautiful day. Cold, of course, but the sky was bright blue, and the wind coming off the harbor wasn’t too bad. Luke pulled his woolen watch cap from the pocket of his windbreaker and pulled it over his nearly bald head.
    Squinting up at the apartment windows, he realized that Minteer could be calling the police instead of packing a bag. He considered taking off without her. No sense letting her turn me in, he thought. Even if they can’t arrest me for kidnapping they’ll take Angie back to the hospital, and that’ll be the end of her.
    Gently, he closed the rear hatch, then went back to the front of the van and climbed in. He started up the engine, to get the heater running again. Then he pulled off his cap and stuffed it back in his pocket. He glanced up at the apartment windows onced more. I can’t get through this without her, he realized. I’m an old man who’s trying to make believe he’s some kind of superhero. Who am I trying to kid? And he knew the answer. He was kidding himself.
    But Angie’s life depends on me. I’ve got to do this, got to get through it somehow.
    The back door to the building opened and Tamara came out, wearing a long, warm-looking dark blue coat and pulling a roll-along bag with one gloved hand.
    Luke popped out of the van again and helped her wrestle the bag onto the