She opened the bathroom door and walked out, calling, "Em, love, are you ready? Do you know what? I'm going to buy you a duffel bag, just like mine."

"Can it be a Mingus Raiders duffel? Yours looks like a soldier's."

"Okay, Mingus Raiders it is." She said over her shoulder to Ramsey, "The Mingus cartoon good guys also include Mingus cartoon good girls. They're hot stuff."

THEY drove all that day and night, spelling each other, and reached Truckee the next evening at just after six o'clock. They spent that night at a Best Western Motel.

The next morning Ramsey went to a local realtor's office and looked over the rental houses available. They didn't want a condo, too many people around, they told the woman. They were a family on vacation. They'd saved their money for this and didn't want to use credit cards.

If the woman didn't believe this, she didn't argue, just showed them properties. Emma fell in love with the third one, a small two-bedroom house that sat off by itself, backed against a forest and fronting a small creek. Tree-covered mountains rose all around it. Lake Tahoe was only about four miles distant. It was safe. Everyone was pleased.

They paid five hundred for the week, including the security deposit. They stocked up for a week at Food Giant.

When they returned to Nathan's Creek, it was well into the afternoon. Emma was asleep in Molly's arms. Ramsey took her and carried her up to the larger of the two bedrooms.

When he met Molly downstairs in the kitchen, she handed him a glass of iced mineral water.

"Come in the living room," he said. "It's time."

"All right," she said. "You're right. It is time. We've got to do some talking and some planning."

He waited until she sat down in a big recliner that was well worn, a real guy's chair, then said, "Now, no more stalling. Who are you, Molly? What are you still keeping from me?"

"I know it's impossible that Emma's kidnapping has anything to do with what you don't know."

"Molly, I'm going to throw this water glass at you."

"I was Margaret Lord before I married."

He just stared at her, then breathed out hard. His leg started hurting.

"Shit," he said. "Your daddy is Mason Lord?"

JOE Elders loved those few precious minutes just before the sun arched up over the low-lying barren hills just a mile or so from his farm. He stood there, breathing in the fifty-degree air, filling his lungs, letting the silence and soft air fill him.

The sun struck his eyes with brilliant light and he smiled into it, closing them. He heard Millie moo. She was soon joined by half a dozen of her cousins. It was time to begin his day, and that meant milking his girls. He whistled as he walked to the cow barn, brand-new, just completed a month before, with all the new technology they told him would at least put him in the same ballpark as the big dairy outfits. And he'd had the money to pay for it all. He'd been smart, really smart. They hadn't taken advantage of him, no they hadn't. After his deal, he hadn't had to borrow anything. He paused, sniffing the air.

He could swear it was the sweet clinging scent of marijuana. He kicked one of the goat's favorite old chewing gloves out of his path. He cursed. It was pot he smelled. Nancy was smoking and carrying on again, and after she promised him and her mother that she would straighten up. Pot, of all things. She was sixteen years old, popular at school. He hoped she wasn't that popular. No, she was too young to really have the hots for any of the boys he'd seen around. But pot, hell and damnation.

He opened the barn door. He was greeted with a chorus of moos, most of them welcoming, a couple pissed, he could tell. They didn't like all the new equipment that relieved them of their milk.

Shirley was the one who hated the machines the most. Since she was one of his old girls, he'd decided just the week before to milk her himself. She enjoyed that, turning her head to look at him while he pulled on her teats.

He got all the other cows set up. It still took him a while. Well, he'd get better and faster at it soon. Then he took his old stool down to where Shirley was standing, still and fat with milk, watching him come closer.

"Good morning, old girl," he called out, giving her a wink like the one he'd given her every dawn for the past seven years.

He began to whistle as he set the stool down beside her. "Now, let's make you a couple of pounds lighter."

He heard a soft whooshing sound. It was close, real close. He wrenched around on the stool. There was a man standing over him. He was black, his eyes hard and wide, his head bald. Joe never even had a chance to ask the man who he was.