Steele suspected it was the presence of Laura's sweatshirt on the parking lot pavement that spurred the police to act right away. It was suspicious, that sweatshirt being there. It hadn't been right next to the Rabbit, as if Laura had just accidentally dropped it. It had been about 20 feet from the car, in the opposite direction of the apartment building. What on earth had she been doing? Where had she been going? Did she leave the sweatshirt deliberately as a clue? Or did it fall to the ground in a moment of violence?

Steele felt totally out of his element. He had been beginning to think he had this detective thing down, that he had been becoming quite adept at following clues and drawing conclusions. Now all he knew was that Laura was gone and he didn't know where she was.

He didn't even know if she was still alive.

The police searched Laura's car and found her purse and her keys. There were no shopping bags, so she hadn't stopped off anywhere between work and home. They got the building manager to let them into her loft, but it was clear she hadn't been there since morning. Her bed was neatly made, the coffee pot half full and cold, and a dirty coffee cup was in the kitchen sink. Her cat, Nero, followed the officers around the apartment, whining for its food, until someone set out a tray of milk for it.

Steele and Mildred were questioned, as were the neighbors. Nobody saw or heard anything. Laura's picture was circulated around the neighborhood and given to patrolmen. Nothing. Tuesday morning, Steele and Mildred were back at the office, sitting in silence, both trying to keep thoughts of what could have happened to Laura out of their minds.

"Boss?"

"Yes, Mildred."

"I think Frances and Donald must be back by now. I'm going to try to call them."

"Good idea."

"Maybe she's been with them the whole time."

"She would have said something. Frances would have said something."

"I know."

Steele returned his attention to the folder he was looking at. It was a list of sexual predators in and near Laura's neighborhood. There were so many of them. If someone touched Laura, hurt her in any way, Steele didn't know . . . well, he just didn't know. A strange anger boiled up inside of him at the thought. It was an uncontrolled kind of anger, a kind of anger that made him want to rip a person apart.

Detective Travon from the Missing Persons Division of LAPD had given Steele the list. Steele didn't plan on sharing it with Mildred. Or Frances. Or Abigail Holt. Why put them through what he was going through?

Laura wasn't necessarily taken by a sexual predator, Detective Travon had assured him. Maybe she had decided to take off on her own without telling anyone. This seemed unlikely Her luggage was untouched in her closet, her purse with all her ID and money had been left in her car, and where could she have gone without her car, anyway, and no money to pay for a cab?

Steele hadn't told Mildred about the terrible conversation he had overheard between Travon and some uniformed officers. It had to do with two known serial killers in the area and their MO's.

How could there be sexual predators and serial killers just wandering around with regular people? How could the police be so calm about the whole thing? "Check the morgues," Travon had told the uniforms. "Check dumpsters."

They were looking for a body. Laura had been missing 82 hours, and they were already looking for a body. Every hour that passed, Travon had told him, made it that much more likely that she was dead.

He hadn't said it in so blunt of terms, but that was what he'd meant.

The worst part was the feeling of helplessness. What if Laura was waiting for him to help her? To rescue her. And he didn't even know where to begin.

Mildred knocked and let herself in. Steele quickly closed the folder and put it in his desk drawer.

"I called Frances. Laura's mother is flying out here now; Frances and Donald are on their way over."

"Thank you, Mildred."

"Um . . . boss? There's someone here to see you."

"I'm not interested in any new cases at the moment, Mildred."

"She's not here for that. She's . . . well, I can't explain it . . ."

"Show her in, Mildred."

The woman who entered was average in every way: average height, average weight; her hair was an average brown color; her clothes were neither flamboyant nor dowdy. Just . . . average. Steele couldn't tell what color her eyes were, as they were hidden behind large, dark-framed glasses. He rose to greet her and shook her hand before she seated herself on the chair near his desk.

"My name is Mary Anderson," she began. Average name, thought Steele. "I know that you don't know me and I don't know you, and I certainly have no need for a private investigator, but, well, something happened on Saturday night that just won't seem to leave me alone."

"I'm terribly sorry, Ms. Anderson," said Steele. "We have a bit of a crisis happening around here right now, and I just don't see that I . . ."

"It's about Laura Holt, isn't it?" she interrupted.

"How do you know about her?" Steele immediately looked upon the woman with suspicion. Could he be looking face to face with Laura's kidnapper? Surely this woman alone couldn't have overtaken Laura in that dark parking lot Friday night. Unless, of course, Laura was unable to fight back.

"I don't know anything about her. We've never even met, which is why I don't understand . . . Please, just hear me out. Then maybe we can make some sense of this together."

"Continue, then," said Steele. The anger was boiling up again. How could this woman know anything about Laura if she wasn't involved?

"It was Saturday night, and I was at home watching television. I had made a pot of tea, and I was home alone. Well, I'm usually home alone, but I guess you wouldn't know that. Anyway, I guess it was around 10:00 when the TV started flickering on and off, like it does sometimes when it's real stormy outside. Only the sky was perfectly clear, there was no wind, nothing like that. So I couldn't figure it out. Then there was this name in my head, clear as day. It was like there was someone in the room with me, telling me the name. 'Laura Holt,' the voice said. And then – and this was the part that really freaked me out – then the voice said, 'Help me.'"

Steele's stomach lurched. Was this a joke? Was this woman involved somehow? There was to be a piece about Laura on the front page of The Times tonight. Other than that, the only people who knew about Laura's disappearance were Mildred, Laura's family, the police, and himself. Maybe this woman knew someone who worked for the LAPD and had overheard something. Or maybe she worked for The Times.

"Where do you work?" he asked.

She seemed puzzled. "At a pet store," she said. "I'm a groomer."

"How did you hear about Laura?" Steele asked. It took everything he had to keep control and not shake this woman down for information.

"I just told you," the woman said. "I've never heard about Laura Holt before Saturday night. But that's not all. That Saturday I was a little freaked, but I thought it must have been my imagination or something. Maybe some bad chicken cacciatore. So I went to bed and tried to forget about it. You might think what happened next was a dream, but I don't. It was too real. I don't know what time it was, but it was still dark when something woke me. I was terrified. I couldn't move. I just lay there in bed, with my covers pulled up around me, so afraid I couldn't close my eyes. My room got real cold, too. I could see my breath. I heard sobbing. I thought it was me at first, but I was too scared even to cry. Then there was this weird blue light in the corner of the room. It got brighter, and I saw . . ."

She stopped, seeming to become aware of how crazy her story actually sounded. She fretted with the hem of her sweater for a moment.

"Continue," prodded Steele. "What did you see?"

"A woman. She was sitting hunched over in the corner. She was, uh, bound. Her ankles and her wrists were tied up with duct tape. There was also duct tape over her eyes and her mouth. But she still looked up at me. It was the creepiest thing. It was as if she could see me, even through the tape."

"What did she look like?" Steele asked. "What was she wearing?" If this woman knew that, then that meant the woman also knew something about Laura's disappearance.

"It was hard to tell what she looked like because of all the tape," Mary Anderson replied. "But she was thin, and she had brown hair that was a little longer than shoulder length. She was wearing gray slacks," she continued, closing her eyes to remember. "A white blouse. A lavender sweater. Her feet were bare."

Laura had been wearing a white blouse and a lavender sweater on Friday. "How do you know all this?" asked Steele. "What do you know about Laura's disappearance?" He wanted to grab the woman, hit her, shake her until she told him what he wanted to know. She seemed to sense or see the anger in his eyes.

You don't believe me. I can see that. There is one more thing I can tell you that may convince you that I saw what I saw. After I saw the vision, I heard that voice in my head again. It was like it was somebody speaking to me in the same room, but at the same time it was inside my head."

She stopped talking. She looked apprehensively around the room. Steele was ready to lose it right there. "What did the voice say, Ms. Anderson?" he asked with forced restraint.

"It said, 'Get Remington Steele. Tell him to find me. Tell him to forget Cannes.' I have no idea what that means, but I looked Remington Steele up in the phone book and found your agency. And, well, here I am."