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the circular driveway, two patrol cars sat with their engines idling, while two unmarked Crown Victorias were parked along the street.
    The police cars bookended a black limousine that was double parked in front of a towering wooden front door that featured black, wrought iron hardware.
    Inside the home, there were detectives from the Des Moines police department, FBI agents from the Bureau’s office in Omaha, Nebraska. Their office’s jurisdiction included Iowa, and several members of Senator Archibald Spencer’s team.
    The Senator stood in the middle of the great room, his suit jacket off, his white shirt unbuttoned at the collar and his sleeves rolled up.
    “I goddamn know about the twenty-four-hour rule as much as you do,” he barked at the lead FBI agent who had just mentioned the need to find Rebecca within twenty-four hours. “Don’t fucking tell me about that shit. Fucking find her.”
    Archibald Spencer was a man of angles. He had broad shoulders that were so perfectly square his fraternity brothers used to joke that he would make a perfect coat hanger. His thin face was hatchet-like, with broad cheekbones that narrowed to a sharply pointed chin. With his height, at least six inches over six feet, his presence was imposing, and when he wanted it to be, menacing.
    The senator looked over at the couch where his wife sat.
    Their family doctor had given her a dose of Valium which she’d washed down with a gulp of wine. Now, she was alternating between bouts of sobbing and dazed periods of silence.
    The FBI’s hostage negotiator had arrived fifteen minutes earlier and now sat on one of the Spencer’s dining room chairs that he had turned around to face the living room.
    “When do they usually call?” the Senator asked him.
    “Usually within hours of the abduction,” he said. The negotiator’s name was Sherman and he spoke with a steady, even voice. “But no two abductions ever go the same way.”
    “That’s fucking great,” Spencer said.
    He went into the kitchen, got a glass and poured himself a stiff shot of Irish whiskey. Spencer took the drink, went into his library and shut and locked the door.
    From his pocket he took a cell phone, thumbed through his contact list until he found the name he wanted.
    He sank into the brown leather chair behind his immense mahogany desk. He pressed the phone icon on the screen and put it to his ear.
    While it rang, he looked at the wall of photos opposite his desk. Presidents, politicians, celebrities.
    None of them could help him now, the useless bastards.
    Spencer knew the fucking twenty-four-hour rule, all right. That something like eighty percent of all child abductions ended with the victim killed in the first twenty-four hours. He thought he’d read that it was actually far worse. That something like seventy-five percent of abducted kids are killed within three hours of their capture.
    For that reason, he needed someone who could work fast and smart.
    Someone who was the absolute best at this sort of thing. And someone he knew personally.
    A voice on the other end of the line spoke.
    Spencer let out a long breath.
    “Mack, it’s me,” he said.

10
    Estero, Florida
    M ack steered the boat into the hoist’s cradle, shifted the engine into neutral and shut it off. He caught the nearest post with his right hand to hold the boat steady and then thumbed the power button to raise the hoist.
    The hoist locked into place and Mack hooked up the freshwater hose to the engine to clean out the saltwater, drained the livewells and lifted the coolers from the boat and placed them onto the dock. He clambered out of the boat onto the dock, and slid the cooler with the fish over to the cleaning shelf. He quickly filleted the tuna, rinsed everything off and fed the scraps to a pelican who had flown in, landed, and was waiting patiently in the middle of the river. Mack put the filleted tuna back in the cooler and carried the cooler to the house.
    Mack’s home was