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lucid witness, the disturbing footprint on the pathway that leads to one of the outside gates—what else could this be?
    Nothing else. Emma’s gone. Someone took her.

DAY TWO
    N EITHER OF THEM SLEEPS all night. Until about eleven, the telephone rings intermittently, normal social calls from friends. Not the call they’re awaiting, hoping for, dreading. Doug fields these calls; Glenna’s in no shape to talk to anyone. He gives the same rote answer to each caller: “Glenna’s asleep, and I’m expecting an important long-distance business call, so I have to keep the lines open.”
    Finally, at four o’clock, Doug makes Glenna take a sleeping pill and puts her to bed. She’s out before he pulls the covers over her. Then he shaves, showers, puts on a good suit, white shirt, and tie (he often goes to work in khakis and golf shirt, he’s a notably laid-back boss), and drives the deserted streets to his television station.
    He takes Cabrillo Boulevard, the road that runs along the beach. It’s still dark out, but there’s enough moonlight to see the palm trees lining the road, swaying sentries against the nighttime sky. The beach stretches a hundred yards from the bike path that parallels the road and the ocean. The water is flat, baby waves lapping up onto the sand. Beyond that, looming in the gloom, are the Channel Islands, twenty miles offshore.
    He leaves the beach and drives up into the hills where his station is located. KNSB, Channel 8 on the television dial from Thousand Oaks to Monterey, is one of the most profitable regional television stations in the country. It and the other stations Doug owns have made him a multimillionaire. As “media moguls” (a term Doug despises), he is rich beyond any possible human need, want, or desire—which is a plausible and compelling reason why their daughter, their only child, is missing. They have a lot of money to buy her back, if that’s what this is about.
    Doug has never gone in for superelaborate security: the ever lurking bodyguards just out of one’s vision, the security firms patrolling one’s home twenty-four hours a day, the major video setups and other kinds of surveillance that some of his wealthy acquaintances swear by. That stuff happens to other people, he’s always thought, people with high profiles like politicians, film stars, ball players.
    Now he’s about to become one of those people—he and Glenna and (pray God) Emma. From now on, regardless of the outcome of this affair, their lives won’t be as unconsciously free and mobile as they always have been. They’re going to be, if not celebrities, notorious. Their pictures smeared across the pages of the National Enquirer , that kind of shit.
    It’s starting to hit home how heavy this might get.
    Normally at this time of the morning the station runs a skeleton crew, the minimum needed to get out the prenetwork news and feature program. The day really kicks in around 8:00 and goes until 11:30 P.M. , when the nightly news is done.
    Today, however, his top people—Jane, Wes, Joe—are already there when he arrives. As soon as he walks in the door, Doug feels the tension. He’s aware that everyone at the studio—cameramen, floor managers, whoever’s there—is uneasily checking him out. That’s normal; he’s the owner. But this is different.
    It takes on a life of its own, he thinks. It’s like an invisible gas. You think you can contain it, but it finds all the nooks and cracks and oozes out, escaping into the world.
    He’s used to broadcasting the news, not being it. He’d better get used to it, he realizes with a pang. Glenna is going to have a hard time with this: reporters coming around, hovering at the edges of the house, waiting for her to come out so they can take pictures, ask questions. Television cameras in their faces—some of them their own.
    He and his keys meet in the conference room. It’s half an hour to airtime for the six o’clock news show. Everyone offers condolences.