Ben Brice lives alone in the New Mexico wilderness where he battles memories of Vietnam with oceans of Jim Beam. Miles away in Texas, his estranged son, John, an Internet geek-turned-billionaire, half watches his daughter Gracie's soccer game while conducting business on his cell phone. When her mother Elizabeth arrives, the coach reports that her uncle has already collected Gracie. But Gracie has no uncle--she was kidnapped.

From international best-selling author Mark Gimenez comes a terrifying child-in-jeopardy thriller in which dark family secrets make the finding of ten-year-old Gracie Brice more uncertain with every passing minute. And so begins a furious race against time to save Gracie from unknown kidnappers. With the FBI camped out in the Brice mansion, the family offers a reward of $25 million. Somehow, Ben and John Brice must find Gracie before it is too late. As the story unfolds with riveting twists and turns, the reader discovers that behind the kidnapping is an extraordinary government plot that could change the course of American history. And time is running out....

DAY ONE

4:59 a.m.

Ben Brice opened his eyes to a dog needing to pee.

“Don’t worry, Buddy. I’m still alive.”

This man’s best friend slapped a wet tongue across Ben’s face once more just to make sure. Ben wiped the golden retriever’s saliva on the sheet and pushed himself to a sitting position. He groaned. Each beat of his pulse through the veins in his head felt like a ball-peen hammer pounding the inside of his skull. He didn’t remember finishing off the empty whiskey bottle sitting on the night table. But then, he never did.

He rubbed his bare arms against the chill of an April dawn and stood, but he had to grab the door to stay upright. He leaned against the wall until the world stood still, then he rode a hand-hewn pine log into the main room of the small cabin. He let Buddy out the back door and dropped down to the floor.

Lying face down on the coarse wool rug in his long underwear bottoms, he inhaled the Navajo scent that would forever inhabit the native weave. He closed his eyes and considered trying to sleep again, but he knew it would be in vain: a lifetime of hitting the deck at 0500 wouldn’t allow it. Resigned to his fate, he brought his legs together, placed his hands palms down under his chest, inhaled deeply, and exhaled as he pushed. His triceps trembled as his rigid body rose from the rug. One. He dropped down hard and felt as if he might pass out. But he inhaled and exhaled and pushed his body up again. Two. Down to the rug. Pushed up. Three. Down. Up. Four. He reached a rhythm at twenty-five and finished at fifty.

He rolled over onto his back. He locked his hands behind his head, lifted his knees to a ninety-degree angle to his spine, contracted his abdominal muscles until his shoulders lifted off the rug, and twisted his torso to touch his left elbow to his right knee then his right elbow to his left knee. Then down. And up again and twist right then left and down. And up. Right. Left. And down. Fifty times.

He stood, steadied himself, and walked over to the kitchen sink. He stuck his head under the gooseneck faucet and turned the cold water on full; he braced himself as the well water traveled four hundred feet from inside the earth’s gut and sputtered then gushed out of the pipe. His body shivered; it felt like he had plunged his head into a bucket of ice water. He dried off with a dishtowel then opened the refrigerator and drank orange juice out of the carton. He closed the door and paused to look at her—the blonde hair, the blue eyes, the bright smile. The refrigerator door was covered with photos of her, alone and with her family, the only blonde in the bunch.

Ben walked out the back door of the cabin and without looking dropped the empty whiskey bottle into the recycling bin filled with empty whiskey bottles. His breath fogged in the cold air. He was now wearing jogging shoes, sweats, and a baseball cap pulled down low to shield his blue eyes from the bright morning sun. The endless sky was empty except for a vulture circling breakfast in the distance. He went over to the garden, picked a few weeds, and watered the neat rows with the sprinkler bucket. Buddy was barking, ready to get it on.

“Okay, boy, let’s go.”

They ran into the rugged terrain surrounding the cabin, Buddy leading the way, Ben lagging behind; his body ached from sixty years of life and thirty years of Jim Beam. He soon lost sight of Buddy in the sagebrush. But Ben knew he’d find his four-legged friend at the rock outcropping two miles out; and when Ben arrived, Buddy was there, sitting and waiting patiently for him to run up, bend over, and throw up, a morning ritual.

Ben spat out the last of the bile and wiped his mouth with a red handkerchief; he took a moment to gather himself. Only his hard breathing broke the silence of the land. All around him stretched the vast solitude that is New Mexico: the Taos Plateau bordered by the snow-capped peaks of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range rising tall into the blue sky, a land so beautiful and harsh that only an artist or a man running from his past would find it hospitable. To the north was Colorado, to the south Albuquerque, to the west Taos, and to the east the solitary cabin situated on a low rise, the metal roof reflecting the sun.

“Beat you back to the cabin, Buddy.”

Ben ran toward the rising sun and Buddy gave chase, delighted—this was the fun part.

Half an hour later, Ben had cleaned up and was wearing jeans, boots, and a corduroy shirt, eating a granola bar, and drinking a cup of coffee brewed from the strongest beans available in Taos; they had come with a money-back guarantee to break through the haze of the worst hangover.

He walked outside, past the garden, and to the workshop. Inside, woodworking tools hung on the walls and what rich people in Santa Fe regarded as fine art in the form of furniture crowded the floor. He pulled a low stool next to the rocking chair he had fashioned out of mesquite, ran his hands along the arms, and began sanding the rough spots. Buddy spun around three times, plopped down in the doorway, and settled in for the day. The sound of sandpaper scraping over wood and Buddy’s snoring soon joined in a melody of sorts, the only music of Ben Brice’s life.

The sun’s rays now angled low across the workshop floor, the only evidence that another day of his life had passed. Ben laid his tools down, stood, and stretched his back. He walked outside and around to the west side of the cabin porch and sat in his rocking chair where he would watch the sun melt and the sky over Taos turn orange, where he would listen to the coyotes’ lonesome cries and sometimes he would answer them, where he would remain until the distant city lights dimmed and the night chill set in. His thoughts would then return to the past, always to the past that owned his life like a bank holding a mortgage that would never be paid in full. He would think of the life that might have been—a young man’s dreams, the great adventure that was not, the death of the brother he never had, a wife who loved him but left him . . . and then he would think of his failures, revisiting each one until he arrived at the failure that would forever haunt his nights, and he would reach for the bottle. And so his life would go until one morning he would not answer Buddy.

But the day was not yet over and his thoughts not yet there. He whistled, and Buddy appeared and bounded up onto the half-size rocking chair next to his. Ben reached over and scratched Buddy’s neck then ran his fingers over the block letters carved into the seat back: GRACIE.

5:47 p.m.

Seven hundred miles away a blonde-haired girl was sprinting down a soccer field in Texas.

“Run, Gracie, run!”

Gracie Ann Brice could run like a boy, faster than most boys her age, ten going on thirty, which made playing soccer against girls her own age seem almost unfair. But she was fun to watch, if your daughter was on her team.

She was driving the ball up the sideline, past the parents cheering in the stands and Coach Wally wearing a Tornadoes jersey and her dad filming her with the camcorder—she made a face for the camera—while shouting into his cell phone: “Cripes, Lou! Tell those New York suits it’s my killer app, it’s my company, it’s my IPO—and the price is gonna be thirty a share and not a freaking penny less!”

Multitasking, he called it.

Without breaking stride, Gracie drove the laces of her white Lotto soccer shoe into the ball, kicking it over the oncoming defenders’ heads and right to Brenda on the far side of the field. Then she pulled up and looked back at her skinny thirty-seven-year-old SO (Significant Other) on the sideline. He was now gesturing with the camcorder, swinging it up and down and videotaping the ground, the sky, the ground, the sky, all of his attention on the cell phone. She couldn’t help but shake her head and smile, the kind of smile grownups use on small children, but only those related to them by blood.

“God bless him,” she said.

Her father was a total geek. He was wearing black penny loafers with white socks, wrinkled khakis, a long-sleeve blue denim shirt with the tail hanging out, a yellow Mickey Mouse tie (the one she had given him last Father’s Day), and narrow black-framed glasses; his curly black hair looked like he had styled it by sticking his finger in an electrical socket. (Mom always said he looked like Buddy Holly with a blow dryer, but Gracie didn’t know who that was.) All that was missing from this picture was a white pocket protector stuffed with mechanical pencils. John R. Brice was a doofus to the max, but Gracie loved him dearly, as a mother might love a child with special needs. He was now filming the parking lot.

“God bless him,” she said again.

“Gracie, gosh darnit, we need a goal to tie! Quit foolin’ around and score!”

Jeez, Coach, don’t have a cow. Gracie turned away from her dad and focused on the game. Across the field, Brenda was losing the ball to number twenty-four, the Raiders’ star player (she was eleven) and a real snot. Brenda was chubby and not much of an athlete. She hadn’t scored a goal in the three seasons they had played together. Gracie grimaced as the snot charged Brenda and knocked her to the ground then stole the ball. Bad enough, but then the snot stood over Brenda like the football guys do after a big hit and snarled down at her: “Give it up, Fatty!”

Gracie felt the heat wash over her, the same as right before she had beaten up Ronnie down the street for tripping Sam, a five-year-old alien who had taken up residence in their home. (They swear he’s her brother.) Afterward—after running down the street to a safe distance, of course—Ronnie had yelled “lesbo” at her, which had seemed a particularly mean remark given that she was in love with Orlando Bloom like every other girl in fourth grade. She figured Ronnie had called her that because she was a tomboy and kept her blonde hair cut boy short, or because she had bigger leg muscles than him, or because she could bloody his big fat nose—or maybe because she wanted a tattoo for her eleventh birthday. Mom, however, said that her superior athletic ability threatened Ronnie’s masculinity, always a fragile component of the male psyche. Um, whatever. The next time Gracie saw the little dweeb, she threatened his life and gave him a black eye.

“Gracie, she’s on a breakaway! Stop her!”

The snot was now driving the stolen ball down the field toward the Tornadoes’ goal, obviously suffering from some kind of—what had Mom called it?—oh, yeah, diminished capacity, thinking she could actually outrun Gracie Ann Brice to the goal. As if. Gracie turned on the speed.

“Watch out for number nine!” someone yelled from the Raiders’ bench. Gracie wore number nine because Mia Hamm wore number nine. The select team coaches currently competing for her talents said that with proper coaching (by them), she could be as good as Mia one day. Mom said they were just blowing smoke up her skirt, saying anything to get her to play for their teams. Still, the thought of being another Mia Hamm and leading the USA team to World Cup victory, that was, like, way too cool to imagine.

“Gracie, block the shot!”

But maybe she’d better lead her team to victory in the girls’ ten-to-eleven-year-old age bracket first.

Up ahead, the snot was slowing down and maneuvering for the best angle on goal; Gracie was sprinting up from behind and thinking, You know, for an eleven-year-old, she’s got a really big butt. But she also had a really good shot opportunity at low post. The snot planted her left foot, kept her head down, and drove her right foot into the—

Air?

Nothing but air, girlfriend! Gracie thought as she slid feet first under the snot, executing the most totally awesome sliding tackle in the history of girls’ youth soccer, clearing the ball from goal, and leaving the snot’s foot kicking at nothing but air.

The crowd cheered!

But not the snot. “She fouled me!” she screamed, pitching a red-faced hissy fit right in the middle of soccer field no. 2. “She fouled me!”

But the referee shook his head and said, “All ball.”

Gracie jumped to her feet and chased down the loose ball. She had the entire field and eight defenders between her and the Raiders’ goal and not much time to get there. She decided on a sideline route—duh—but she first had to eliminate some of the defenders. So she dribbled the ball straight up the middle of the field, suckering the defenders in from their sideline positions—come to mama, girls—until five of the Raiders had congregated at the center line close enough to hold hands like the kindergartners on a class outing. Then Gracie exploded—drive hard right at them, stop on a dime, spin left, and go, girl!—and left them in her dust as she hit the sideline and turned on the speed, an all-out race down the chalk line, past the Tornadoes’ stands, parents on their feet and shouting—

“Go, Gracie!”

“Run, Gracie!”

“Score, Gracie!”

—Coach’s arms windmilling her on as he ran down the sideline with her, his exposed belly jiggling like pink Jell-O below his jersey—now that is like, majorly gross—past her SO filming the other parents in the stands, God bless him, and to the Raiders’ goal and—POW!—blasting the ball past the diving goalie’s outstretched arms and into the net.

Tie game!

Gracie threw her arms into the air. She considered ripping off her jersey and throwing it into the air, too, revealing her stylish black Nike sports bra, but she decided against it because she wasn’t wearing a bra. Mom said her breasts might come in next year.

The other girls mobbed her and congratulated her and jumped up and down with her . . . but they all froze when those two words boomed out from the Raiders’ sideline, instantly silencing players and spectators alike and making Gracie feel as if someone had punched her in the stomach.

“Not again,” Brenda groaned.

They all turned to the Raiders’ sideline as the words rang out again—“Pa-a-a-a-nty che-e-e-ck!”—and hung over the field like a foul odor. The man had a megaphone for a mouth, the big creep! He was dressed in a slick suit, grinning like a fool and drinking from an oversized plastic mug—and from his red face he was drinking something stronger than Gatorade.

“Does he really think there’s a penis in your panties?” Brenda said.

“He knows you’re not a boy,” Sally said. “He’s just jealous ’cause you’re way better than his daughter, that little snot.”

He was the snot’s father and a big butthead, a football dad at a girls’ soccer game, taunting the players from the sideline. Gracie bit her lower lip and fought back the tears. Coming from Ronnie the dweeb down the street was bad enough, but from a grownup? She wished she were bigger and older; she would run over and beat this guy up, too. She looked over at her dad, wishing he would—Daddy, do something! Please!

But he did nothing. He hadn’t even heard the jerk. He was in his Helen Keller mode (deaf, dumb, and blind to the real world), facing away from the field, holding the phone to his ear with one hand and waving the camcorder around with the other like he was swatting gnats by the pool. Of course, what could he do anyway? The big butthead was twice his size; he would pound Dad’s meatware (as he called his brain) into the turf. Gracie instinctively touched the silver star dangling on her necklace.

“Pa-a-a-a-nty che-e-e-ck!”

Sally said, “If your mother was here, she’d kick his big butt into next week.”

Mom was definitely not one to turn the other cheek. She was one to rip your face off. Don’t get mad, get even. Mom’s words of wisdom. Not exactly “sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you,” but then, her mother was a lawyer. She wished Elizabeth Brice, Attorney-at-Large (as Dad called her behind her back), was here.

But most of all, she wished to die.

Over on the Raiders’ sideline, the other parents were shaking their heads in disgust at the creep, but he was too big to risk saying anything and getting punched out, always a possibility with a football dad. A mother, obviously the creep’s wife, was pulling on his arm, desperately trying to move his big butt away from the field. He was protesting all the way: “What’d I do? I was just kidding, for chrissakes!” From Mrs. Creep’s embarrassed expression, she had been there and done that with Mr. Creep before. Brenda shook her head and sighed.

“Another deranged dad at a children’s sporting event.”

Brenda’s words brought the smile back to Gracie’s face and another original country song by Gracie Ann Brice to mind. Facing the Creep family, she started singing, loudly, in her best Tammy Wynette twang:

“D-I-V-O-R-C-E,

Hey, lady, don’t you see?

Your man ain’t no Or-lan-do B.,

You best dump his fat ass A-S-A-P.”

The girls laughed. The referee, a way cute guy about fifteen, smiled at her. The parents in both stands applauded. Shoot, maybe she had the next hit single for the Dixie Chicks! Gracie’s spirits soared; the creep was now a distant memory, just another painful life experience for her to sing about. Like all the country girls say, you’ve got to experience pain in order to sing about pain, especially in front of fifty thousand screaming fans chanting

Gra-cie, Gra-cie, Gra-cie . . .

“Gracie! Gracie!”

That was no screaming fan. That was a screaming coach. Gracie snapped; the whistle had blown to restart the game, and Coach Wally was spazzing out on the sideline, frantically pointing at his watch like he had just discovered time.

“Time’s running out! We need another goal to win! Gracie, it’s up to you!”

Focus, girlfriend!

Gracie’s official position was striker, but Coach had told her to play the entire field. That required extra running, but she could run the whole game. She could run all day. She was running now, to the sideline, to the ball—

—to the ground, face first, breaking her fall with her hands and elbows, hitting hard, sliding across the field, and eating dirt and grass.

“Panty check!”

A snarling voice from above. Gracie rolled over to see the snot glaring down at her. The snot had tripped her from behind, a flagrant foul and a real cheap shot, especially for a girl.

What a total hussy!

The snot ran off. Gracie spat out the gritty dirt and grass and vaulted to her feet; her teeth and fists were clenched and her entire four-foot-six-inch eighty-pound being was filled with an overwhelming urge to chase after the snot and thrash her right there in the middle of soccer field no. 2.

“Gracie, get a goal!”

But the victory was more important than introducing the snot’s face to Ms. Fist. So Gracie chased after the ball instead, barely noticing the blood and burning on her elbows.

Sally blocked a shot at goal and cleared the ball. Gracie antici¬pated Sally’s kick and thigh-trapped the ball. One quick fake and she was sprinting up the sideline toward the Raiders’ goal; the referee was keeping pace down the middle of the field, and the snot, her face screwed up with anger, was closing down on Gracie. The snot had the angle, which meant Gracie couldn’t simply outrun her. So Gracie slowed slightly, allowing the snot to catch up, then she took a big step forward, hoping the snot would think she was going hard up the sideline like she had on the previous goal. The snot went for the fake big time, taking one step that way to protect the sideline route, one step too many—and Gracie punched the ball between the snot’s open legs, spun around the snot, and recaptured the ball. The snot tried to stay with her, but she lost her balance and hit the ground hard, right on her big butt, and rolled out of bounds. Gracie glanced down at her and said, “I’m so sorry . . . Not!”

Then she raced to the goal—a breakaway!—only the goalie standing between her and a last-second victory for the Tornadoes and glory for Gracie Ann Brice, the next Mia Hamm. The referee put his whistle in his mouth and checked the time; only seconds remained in the game. Gracie moved into position for her patented power kick—the goalie ran out to meet her this time, leaving the goal unprotected—aimed just inside the near post, planted her left foot, timed her kick perfectly, and—

—slotted a through ball to Brenda in the goal box behind the goalie instead. Brenda kicked the ball into the open goal just before the cute referee blew his whistle to end the game.

The Tornadoes’ stands erupted in cheers!

The Raiders’ goalie was now looking at Gracie with a stunned expression on her face, as if to say, You passed off the game-winning goal? Gracie shrugged. She figured Brenda needed the glory more than she did. Heck, Mia Hamm was a team player.

The other girls mobbed Brenda. Gracie was about to join in when she heard a manly voice: “Number nine—you’re a player!”

The studly referee was walking past and pointing to her—and winking at her. Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, Orlando, but I’m like, totally in love! She stopped dead in her tracks and stared open-mouthed at the referee as he walked off the field; he was dreamy and she was dreaming of him coming to the house after the game on a Friday night like tonight and picking her up to go to a movie—of course, it would have to be rated PG because she was only ten, which might prove a bit of a problem but

. . . she was rudely bumped back to reality by Coach Wally barreling past. His big belly was bouncing, his arms were spread wide, and he was blubbering like a baby. He scooped up Brenda and bear-hugged her like he hadn’t seen her in years. Coach Wally was Brenda’s dad.

The other dads were running onto the field and bear-hugging their daughters. But not her dad. Sometimes, like this time, Gracie wanted him to be more like a dad and less like a big brother who played Nintendo with her and took her and Sam to Krispy Kreme every Saturday morning and giggled until it hurt when Mom caught them throwing water balloons from the balcony off her bedroom at Ronnie and the other boys rollerblading down the sidewalk, and whose worst threat of punishment was to eBay her. Just once, she wanted him to be a real father, to scoop her up and bear-hug her like he hadn’t seen her in years—to be her grownup manly DAD, for Pete’s sake! She looked for him.

“Stupid, stupid rat creatures! Lou, you tell those brain-damaged bagbiters I’ll take my IPO and go home!”

A shrill whistle interrupted John R. Brice’s rant. He glanced over to see the girls formatting themselves in a linear sequence in the middle of the field while the parents were forming parallel lines and joining hands overhead to configure an arch. Cripes, the victory arch, a post-game protocol that required social engin¬eering, interpersonal contact with the other parents. John was thinking, Maybe I’ll give it a miss this week, when he spotted Gracie giving him the eye and gesturing for him to get out there! Beam me up, Scotty. He much preferred interfacing with AI systems over liveware, not that he was antisocial in the extreme; he was just uncomfortable (Elizabeth would say inept) when exchanging content in an offline mode, like most hackers who had spent the vast majority of their lives interacting with a cathode ray tube rather than with human beings. Part of the firmware.

He sighed and said to the phone, “Time out, Lou . . . the arch thing.”

John jogged over and joined camcorders and cell phones overhead with a GQ dude who was everything John was not: tall, handsome, Hollywood hair, athletic build, wearing a starched white shirt, a stylish tie knotted like he knew how, and a beeper clipped to his belt—a college jock upgraded to real-estate, no doubt. Another football dad.

“Great game, huh?” the dude said through outstretched arms.

“Yeah, great.”

“Who’s your girl?”

John sighed again. He never missed Gracie’s games, and he couldn’t help but enjoy himself, his daughter the star player, particularly since he had never been much of an athlete himself. Fact is, he was so lame at sports that back in grade school the girls were picked for the recess teams before he was. Little Johnny Brice. He was ten years old before he realized Little wasn’t his first name. Fast forward twenty-seven years and now Little Johnny Brice was standing in the middle of a soccer field across a victory arch from one of those guys who was picked first for every recess team and the dude’s asking him who his daughter is and his daughter is the best athlete on the field but he doesn’t want to tell this room-temperature-IQ lamer that because he knew all too well what was coming next. John braced himself.

“Number nine,” he said.

“Gracie?”

The dude’s thick eyebrows shot up, and he looked John up and down with that familiar bemused smile.

“Gracie’s your daughter?”

It wasn’t the first time John had suffered that bemused smile at one of Gracie’s games. Point of fact, it had become an every- game thing ever since the football dads started attending the girls’ soccer games. Five years ago, when Gracie had first started playing soccer, John had been the only dad at the games, the football dads no doubt thinking, What’s the point if the girls can’t even hit each other? But now, Elizabeth had informed him, federal law required gender equality in college sports, so girls were getting scholarships to play soccer, softball, volleyball, and just about every sport but football. And that had brought the football dads to their girls’ soccer games like sleazeware to

cyberspace: Suzie might not be able to play middle linebacker at the University of Texas, but if her soccer skills could save dear old daddy tuition and room and board for four years, he’d dang sure make her games.

Problem was, these high-testosterone dads brought their football instincts with them to the soccer field, yelling and screaming and getting into fistfights with other dads whose daughters were trying to steal Suzie’s scholarship. The quest for college scholar¬ships had turned youth soccer into a ruthless competition among the parents. So John always stayed by himself down the sideline and never commingled with the other dads, except for the post-game victory arch and the inevitable bemused smile. After next week’s game, John R. Brice would throw his narrow shoulders back, look the dude straight in the eye, and say, Dang right, she’s my daughter! And I’m a freaking billionaire!—a response guaranteed to wipe that bemused smile off his smug face. But this week Little Johnny Brice just shrugged.

“Yeah.”

The dude shook his head as if pondering one of the great mysteries of the universe. “I played college ball at Penn State, but my girl’s not in the same league as Gracie. Guess you never know where it comes from.”

“eBay.”

“What?”

“I bought her on eBay.”

The girls filed past the other team, exchanging low fives like they were afraid of getting cooties, as Gracie would say, then raced through the arch as their parents cheered insanely:

“Great game, girls!”

“Way to go!”

“Yeah, Tornadoes!”

The final girl ran through, the arch broke up, the mothers embraced each other, the dads swapped hard high fives like they had just won the freaking Super Bowl, and John R. Brice stood there in the middle of a dang soccer field holding a camcorder and cell phone and feeling like a lurker in a chat room, as he always felt when male bonding broke out. So he said, “I’m outta here,” hit the Esc key, and exited this app.

Gracie got her concession ticket from the team mom then waited for Brenda and Sally. When they arrived, Brenda leaned in close and whispered, “Thanks for giving me the goal.”

Gracie gave her a little hug. “I gotta tell my dad we’re going to the concession stand.”

They walked over to dadrnerd@we_be_geeks.com; he was yelling at the phone and filming his shoes now, God bless him.

“Harvey doesn’t have the brainwidth to understand the value of the technology! Lou, this is the next big thing, dude!”

He ran the phone and his hand through his curly black hair—it was now standing on end—and he stood out like a, well, like a geek among grownups. The other fathers wore suits and ties and starched white shirts and looked like the lawyers and doctors they were. Her dad looked like the college kid who lived next door. The other girls choked back giggles. Dad noticed her and smiled and aimed the camcorder directly at her face. Gracie reached up and switched the camcorder off then pointed to the concession stand and whispered, “Snow cones.”

“Hi, honey,” Dad said. Then, into the phone: “No, not you, Lou, my daughter. Hold on a minute.”

John R. Brice squatted, wrapped his arms around his daughter, and embraced her; he inhaled her sweaty scent. A thin glaze of moisture glistened on her flushed face, her short blonde hair was damp and stuck to the sides of her head, and her blue eyes sparkled like a multimedia LCD monitor. He placed the camcorder on the grass, flicked a drop of sweat from her cheek with his finger, and admired her. She was swell.

Dad was looking at her like she was a brand new eight-hundred-gigabyte hard drive just out of the box.

“Gracie version ten-point-oh,” he said. “Best of breed.”

Gracie said to the other girls, “I’m the applet of his eye.” With her index finger she pushed the glasses up on her father’s face. “And he’s my favorite propellerhead in the whole W-W-W.”

Dad grinned like he was embarrassed. “Your shoe’s untied,” he said. She held her foot out like Cinderella trying on the glass slipper. He reached down for the white laces but grabbed his blue shirtsleeve instead. It was stained. He looked from his sleeve to her arms.

“Hey, you’re bleeding!”

Gracie examined her hands and arms. She was bleeding, from both elbows, where she had hit the ground when the snot had tripped her—which reminded her. She looked across the field to the Raiders’ sideline and spotted the snot standing next to her father, the big butthead. Their eyes met; the snot raised her hand. Gracie thought she was going to wave, ready to put their hard-fought athletic competition behind them; instead, the snot stuck her tongue out and gave Gracie the finger. Gracie’s face flashed hot, as if she had just stuck her head in the convection oven—she wanted the snot alone, like way bad. But it wasn’t going to happen here and now. She turned back to her dad.

“No big deal,” she said. She glanced over at the parking lot. “Guess Mom’s trial didn’t end. Oh, well, maybe she’ll make the playoffs. You want to get a snow cone with us?”

Dad held the phone up. “I gotta talk to Lou.”

“Hi, Lou!” Gracie shouted at the phone.

John R. Brice watched the girls skip off and merge into the stream of colorful bodies flowing toward the distant concession stand set back against the thick woods. He filled his shallow chest with the smell of popcorn riding out on the breeze and smiled. Ph.D.s in the Algorithms Group at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Sciences aren’t given to emotion, as a general rule. Emotion had no place in the virtual world, where logical, ruthless intellect prevailed. In fact, the closest hackers came to emotion was emoticons, using ASCII characters to configure facial expressions in online communications. Virtual emotion. Real emotion belonged in that other world, that nonvirtual arena of pain and shame and smart-ass-ex-college-jocks-upgraded-to-real-estate that John Brice visited (like today) but did not inhabit.

But standing alone on a soccer field in an upscale suburb on a brilliant spring afternoon, he had to admit it: he was feeling pretty dang robust! And why shouldn’t he? For the first time in his life he was on top of a world that was not accessible via a keyboard. In five days the IPO would hit the street and Little Johnny Brice would have his revenge—he would have it all!—everything he had dreamed of having all those lonely days and nights at Fort Bragg: two cool kids, a Range Rover, a big home, a drop-dead gorgeous wife who consented to sex twice a month (an unheard-of frequency during his premarital existence—computer geeks at MIT don’t get much sex, as another general rule), fame, fortune, respect, manhood, and maybe even love. After all those years, moving from Army base to Army base, never fitting in with the other Army brats, being bullied by brutish boys who dreamed only of following in their daddies’ bootsteps, a nerd in a soldier’s world—now, finally, the world belonged to the nerds.

Little Johnny Brice had found his place in this world.

But he had lost Gracie. Cripes. He pushed his glasses up and squinted. He spotted her golden head bobbing between the other girls when she suddenly stopped and turned back to him. The last rays of the setting sun spotlighted her perfect face, and father and daughter shared one of those rare moments in life you wouldn’t trade for the Windows source code. She smiled and waved to him. He loved her and he envied her. She was everything he had always wanted to be: confident and athletic, blonde and beautiful, social and popular, physically strong and mentally tough. She was entirely unlike him, and she was better. Often, like now, he would behold her and wonder exactly what part of her DNA he had contributed. But no matter: she was his daughter. John felt a catch in his throat and an inexplicable urge to run to her, snatch her up, and hug her again. Instead, he waved back with the phone and the moment evaporated—he had forgotten Lou.

“Shit.” He put the phone to his ear. “Sorry, dude, I had a brain fart. Look, Lou, while other kids were outside playing baseball, I was in my room hiding from bullies, hacking code, and dreaming of being a billionaire like big Bill. Thirty bucks a share makes me a billionaire—and that’s the ticket to happiness! A billion dollars buys me everything I ever wanted! . . . Maybe even love . . . Yeah, Lou, geeks need love, too.”

One hundred yards away, ensconced in a silver Lexus sedan circling the packed parking lot in search of an empty space, Elizabeth Brice was jabbing a finger into the climate-controlled air: “Truth and justice demand you acquit the defendant, a good and decent man who is not guilty of looting his bank or hiding a million dollars in an offshore account but only of falling in love with a cheap tramp—Look at her! Those aren’t even real! She’s nothing but a gold digger willing to destroy his reputation, his family, and his bank—for his money! Blame her!”

She paused and smiled at the memory.

“Guilty as sin, and they bought it—lock, stock, and pantyhose. Twelve good citizens with the mental range of a windshield wiper.”

She spotted a family of four heading to their car on the third row from the front. She followed them, hit the turn signal to warn off all competitors for this particular piece of pavement, and waited for them to stow the kids and soccer gear.

And waited.

And waited.

“Jesus Christ, get in the goddamn car!”

Another family walked up and stopped to talk with the first family. That did it. She had neither the patience to wait for the Cleavers’ conversation to end nor the inclination to hike from the farthest reaches of the concrete parking lot in high heels. Nor the need to. She whipped the Lexus around to the front row and into a handicapped parking space, cut the engine, retrieved a blue handicapped permit from the console, and hooked it onto the rearview mirror.

She was not physically handicapped.

In fact, as every married man passing by couldn’t help but notice when she exited the sedan, Elizabeth Brice was physically fit and quite beautiful; her makeup and jet black hair remained perfect even after a long day in court; and her slim figure and shapely legs were showcased by her tailored suit with the short skirt. She always wore short skirts to trial.

Elizabeth Brice had graduated first in her class at Harvard Law, but she had learned the hard way that female lawyers do not win trials on brains and hard work alone. Women needed an edge, something extra to take into court with them, something to level the playing field, especially a female lawyer from New York trying to win in a Texas courtroom: the old joke that Texas had the best football players, politicians, and judges money could buy was no joke. Consequently, bench trials were more financial negotiation than courtroom drama—negotiations the good ol’ homeboys inevitably won.

But jury trials were crap shoots. There was simply no way to predict what a jury of twelve bored and biased citizens being paid minimum wage would do. Thus, most lawyers hated jury trials; but Elizabeth A. Brice loved them. Because she had an edge that no bald pudgy down-home Southern-fried good ol’ boy lawyer could possibly compete with in front of a jury: short skirts. Really short skirts that for the past two weeks had revealed her long, lean, Stairmastered legs to the all-male all-moron jury that had spent more time examining her than the prosecution’s damning evidence.

Defendant Shay was forty-six, married with two children, and a respected banker from an old Dallas banking family; he was also indicted by a federal grand jury on fifty counts of bank and tax fraud, charges founded on the unfortunate fact that he had used federally insured bank funds to maintain his twenty-four-year-old receptionist/mistress in a comfortable lifestyle and had funneled the money through a Cayman Islands bank account to avoid paying taxes. “Keeping that little gal happy is damn expensive enough with pre-tax dollars,” Shay had advised Elizabeth during one of their attorney–client privileged conferences. The government had tape recordings, surveillance photographs, offshore bank account records, and the mistress as the star witness under a grant of immunity. Conviction was a foregone conclusion, or so the prosecutors from Washington had thought.

But they didn’t know Dallas. Keep your prick out of the payroll was a maxim seldom heeded in Big D. To the contrary, humping the help was not considered a crime but instead a perk, something to be praised and pursued, not prosecuted. If the government prosecuted every businessman in Dallas who had used bank money or company money or investor money or city or county or state money to pay for pussy, there wouldn’t be enough members left in the chamber of commerce to play gin.

So she had carefully selected a jury of white middle-aged men, men who might once have had a mistress or who hoped to one day have a mistress or who would spend most of the trial imagining her as their mistress. Then she made the bank examiner and IRS agent appear to be pathetically incompetent old men on the stand; she called experts who (for sizable fees) ripped to shreds every piece of evidence offered by the government; she brutalized the prosecution’s star witness on cross-examination (the poor thing cried so diligently her thick mascara ran down her face and into her surgically-created cleavage); and she shortened her skirts six inches.

Elizabeth A. Brice, Attorney-at-Law, had won another not-guilty verdict for another guilty client.

Just as she decided that first thing Monday morning she would raise her hourly billing rate to $500, the merry voices of the kids and parents at the concession stand brought her thoughts back to the moment. She looked that way as the cool evening breeze hit her. She wrapped her arms around herself, but the cold she felt was inside her. A vague sense of unease invaded her mind, as if the wind had whispered in her ear.

Grace.

She beeped the Lexus locked and hurried toward the vacant soccer fields and the solitary spectator sitting in the stands.

Where John was saying into the phone, “Oh, and what do you know about love, dude? Lou, are you aware that the boot sequence required to produce an orgasm in a full-grown American female is more complex than the ignition sequence of a neutron bomb?”

She saw him before he saw her. But he felt her presence, like one felt impending doom.

“Spousal unit alert,” John whispered into the phone.

He lowered the phone from his ear—he could still hear Lou yell, “Don’t mention my name!”—pushed his glasses up, and saw her eyes locked on him like proton blasters as she approached at a rapid pace from midfield in her Elizabeth Brice, Attorney-at-Large mode. Fear shot through his brain like a bullet—Cripes, what did I do wrong this time? His wife appeared very much as she had when they had first met in Washington ten years earlier; she was forty now but still insanely attractive (even when she was in a bad mood, like now) and just as intimidating, looking totally perfect in her best closing argument outfit (black on black on black) and acting in complete control of herself and everything and everyone she touched. Elizabeth Brice was a perfectionist control freak, hardwired at the factory. Which made them a complete mismatch, like a Wintel program on a Mac. Which made John wonder, as he had often wondered: Why did she ask me to marry her?

Her fists punched holes in her hips when she arrived.

“Where’s Grace?”

“Dangit, Elizabeth, you promised her you’d make at least one game this season.”

“I promised my client I’d win his case, and I did. Now where’s Grace?”

John opened his mouth to remind his spouse that she had made and broken the same promise to Gracie before every game this season, that Gracie was more important than some bogus criminal even if he did pay her $400 an hour, that . . . but she seemed more agitated than usual tonight, tapping her foot at a furious pace, a sure sign she was seriously fried about something. Elizabeth’s personality was a binary system—off and pissed off. He wanted to ask her now, as he had always wanted to ask her, What are you so mad about? But, as always, he quickly decided that discretion was the better part of not being blasted with a streaming audio of profanities that would make a complete system crash seem pleasurable. So he kept his mouth shut rather than chance a random explosion of his wife’s volatile temper; he thought of it as risk management. And besides, Elizabeth did not allow him sex during her trials; this weekend would present his first opportunity in more than two weeks. He couldn’t afford to blow it with ill-advised flamage. He pointed the cell phone at the concession stand.

“Snow cone,” he said.

Coach Wally bit the top off his cherry-flavored snow cone; some of the cool red juice trickled down his double chin. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his Tornadoes jersey.

Wally Fagan was walking away from the concession stand and toward the field to retrieve the game ball he had left behind in all the excitement of Brenda’s winning goal. He bit into the snow cone again, wiped the juice off his chin, and noticed a woman approaching fast like a distant thunderstorm—dark hair, dark clothes, and a dark expression.

Gracie’s mom.

Wally’s pulse ratcheted up a notch and not because of her short skirt. He had talked to Gracie’s mom only a couple of times in three seasons, but for some reason she had always made him nervous. Fact is, Wally Fagan stood just under six feet and weighed just over two hundred forty pounds, but he was wholly intimidated by the slim woman walking his way. She was maybe ten years older than him, but he always felt like he was talking to his mother—Oh, shit, her mother! Which made seeing her tonight seem odd, now that Wally thought about it.

She approached and they made brief eye contact. Wally smiled politely, waiting for a hint of recognition to cross her face. None did. He was a complete stranger to her. Wally debated whether to speak to her, since she was about to walk right past him. Without consciously deciding, he did.

“Gee, Mrs. Brice, I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”

She turned on him in a heartbeat: “I had a trial, okay!”

Jesus! Her response so startled Wally he almost squeezed the snow right out of his cone. He immediately regretted not letting her walk on by.

Now that he had interrupted her journey, she took the time to look him over: the high-topped Reeboks, the blue coach’s shorts stretched tight around his considerable belly and the gold jersey that didn’t completely cover it, the Texas Rangers baseball cap on backward, the heart tattoo on his left arm, and the cherry snow cone juice dripping down his chin.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

That hurt. Wally wiped his sticky hand on his jersey before extending it to her. She had a very firm grip.

“Coach Wally . . . I coach Gracie’s team.”

“Oh.”

No apology. She was staring at her hand; the sticky had rubbed off. She was apparently trying to decide whether to wipe her hand on her skirt; she said, “Well, Wally, I had an important case go to the jury today, so I was late for Grace’s game.”

“No, ma’am, I meant because of, uh . . . you know . . . your mother.”

She looked up from her hand and frowned. “My mother? What about my mother?”

“Oh, my gosh, don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

Not even his executive experience as a night manager at the Taco House out on the interstate had prepared Wally Fagan to deliver this kind of news. But he had opened his big mouth too far to shut up now.

“Mrs. Brice, your mother had a stroke.”

She recoiled. “When?”

“Uh, today, I guess. She’s in the hospital.”

She appeared confused. She pointed back toward the field. Wally looked that way; a man was sitting alone in the bleachers.

“My husband didn’t say my mother had a stroke.”

“Gracie’s dad was at the game?”

She was now looking at Wally like he was a complete idiot.

“He’s sitting right over there in the goddamn stands!”

Now Wally was confused; he removed his cap and scratched his burr-cut head. He kept his hair cut short because that way he didn’t sweat as much under the hair net at work.

“You’re not looking for Gracie, are you?”

She exhaled loud enough for him to hear. “I didn’t come for the snow cones, Wally.”

“But . . . but she’s . . . she’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“To the hospital, to see your mother.”

“My mother lives in New York!”

“But your brother said your mother had a stroke and he came to take Gracie to the hos—”

The woman lunged at Wally and grabbed his jersey, her eyes and face suddenly wild like an animal; she clawed so close he could feel her hot breath on his face when she screamed.

“I don’t have a brother!”

Wally was so scared he felt a drop of pee drip out. He dropped his snow cone. The wild woman released him and ran toward the concession stand screaming her daughter’s name.

“Gra-cie!”

Police Chief Paul Ryan’s voice mixed with the other voices coming from all around him in the dark, the voices of cops and civilians searching the woods bordering the park for the missing girl, and he thought, Kids don’t get abducted in Post Oak, Texas!

“Gra-cie!”

When he had gotten the call, Ryan figured a rich Briarwyck Farms soccer mom was throwing another conniption fit, as they often did over their very special children. His wife, a teacher over at the elementary school, called it the Baby Jesus Syndrome, every rich mom thinking her spoiled little brat’s the second coming. He had no doubt the mom would get a call on her cell phone and learn the girl had gone home with a friend, and the mom wouldn’t say “I’m sorry” or anything, she’d just wave and climb into her SUV and drive off for the post-game pizza party over at Angelo’s, figuring the police department was her private security force to call out anytime she wanted. But when he had arrived on scene and talked to the girl’s coach, Paul Ryan knew immediately that this was a real abduction: a blond man in a black cap had asked for the girl by name.

“Gra-cie!”

All Ryan could see were the five feet of trees and ground cover in front of him illuminated by his Mag flashlight as he advanced deeper into the dark woods.

11:22 p.m.

He hears the others around him, but all he sees now is a vague vision of trees and vines and undergrowth, dense and impenetrable—a jungle. He’s fighting his way through a jungle on a dark night. He hears a child’s distant cry. He picks up his pace, but it’s like trying to run through molasses. He’s got to hurry, something terrible is about to happen, is happening. He hears more cries. He’s drenched in sweat now as he struggles onward through the steamy jungle. Vines strangle him, branches slash his face and arms, undergrowth grabs his boots, the cries grow louder, his breath comes faster, his heart pounds harder against his chest wall—

—and he suddenly stumbles out of the darkness and into the light. Fires light a hamlet, straw huts burn, and flames spit out of rifle muzzles. He hears the BOOM BOOM BOOM of high-powered weapons, people screaming, pigs squealing, and water buffaloes grunting. He smells the stench of burning animal flesh. He sees women and children being dragged out of their hiding places and thrown into the dirt, the blaze of their burning homes illuminating their terrified faces, their Asian features so delicate and desperate. He watches them being herded up and driven forward down a dirt path, carrying babies wailing in the night and begging for mercy—

“NO! NO! NO! NO VC! NO VC!”

A young girl, a fragile china doll stripped of her clothes and innocence, stumbles along, desperate to escape the savagery suffocating her, pushed forward by big hands connected to big arms. Terror seizes her face because she’s heard stories about what these men do to pretty young girls like her. She searches for sympathy in the hard faces and she finds it in his. She turns to him, silently pleading for help. He knows he must save her to save himself: her life and his soul hang in the balance as she falls face down in the dirt. A big hand grabs at her, but he shoves it away and gently lifts her delicate arm. He hears her sobbing voice in her native tongue: “Save me. Please save me.” The china doll turns her face up to him, in slow-motion she turns into the light, and he sees her face, the face of—

Gracie.

Ben Brice screamed himself awake and sprang to a sitting position in bed, gasping for air. His heart was beating rapidly, his chest and face and hair were matted with sweat, and his ears were ringing. The phone was ringing. He reached for the phone and knocked over the empty whiskey bottle. He put the phone to his ear and spoke.

“What happened to Gracie?” view abbreviated excerpt only...

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