Chapter 4

Reese scans the streets around the bank, but sees no sign of her. It's strange, now, after spending the morning looking for an unidentified woman, to know exactly what he is looking for. He'll know her, he's certain, even now. He'll know the way she walks, the way she carries herself, gracefully. All he has to do is see a glimpse of her, and he'll know.

"I'm accessing the bank's surveillance cameras," Finch says. "Perhaps we can see what direction she headed."

Silence on the line as Reese continues to scan the streets, vigilant, but fruitless. And then —

"Mr. Reese, we have a problem. She was pulled into a white van about 20 minutes ago. Someone else got to her first. Broad daylight, but it was so fast none of the bystanders even seems to have reacted. One second she's there and the next, she's gone."

"Damn it!"

"I've got a partial license plate off of the van," Finch says. "I'm running it now. You should come back in, John. There's nothing you can do out there right now."

Reese knows he is right, and yet he still can't shake the desire to do something. He walks back to where he's parked the latest in a line of throwaway cars, and wants to stop random people in the street, pull his gun on them and ask if they've seen her, ask how a beautiful woman could have been abducted in broad daylight in Manhattan without anyone so much as yelling. Instead he keeps on walking. He should have known this would not be easy.

Jessica, lying prone on the cold metal van floor, can feel it begin to slow beneath her, can see even through the blindfold that they are in a darker place before it stops. The engine cuts out, and she is hauled upwards, out of the van and onto her feet. She stumbles forward, losing the heels that match the suit she'd paid cash for in the vast, tourist-filled anonymity of Macy's.

A hand on the back of her suit collar holds her standing, and another pulls first the blindfold and then the gag from her face. Even in the dark of what she takes to be a warehouse, it takes her eyes awhile to adjust. Standing in front of her is a balding man in a suit not much more expensive than her Macy's special.

"Scream if you like, but no one will hear you, out here. You cooperate with us, and you might just get to live," he says. "You see, Ms. Arndt, we have nothing against you, but we've been looking for a friend of yours for quite some time, and when we discovered you were still alive, we knew the perfect bait had just been dropped into our laps."

"This isn't about Fuller?" she can't help but ask.

"I'm sure there are people who still care about your corrupt little former employer," he says. "But I'm not one of them. We're only interested in the man you knew when he was John Campbell."

Jessica tries not to react — visibly, anyway — but surely the man must see her respond to his name. So he is alive. She hasn't been sure of that, not since she saw John Campbell's name listed among those missing in action in Afghanistan. It was certainly plausible that he was missing and likely dead, but it was also plausible that the CIA, or NSA, or whoever it was he was working for, had done it to create a cover identity. She'd hoped, prayed, he was still alive, but thought she would never know for sure. After all, even if he was alive, he was a world apart from her, and she was officially dead.

"John doesn't even know I'm alive," she tells the man.

"Oh, he will," he says, and pulls out a cell phone, blinding her momentarily with the flash on the camera. "I want two sets of eyes on her at all times."

The balding man strides off, and she is pushed into a corner of the warehouse, thrown down onto a clean-feeling nylon sleeping bag. The man behind her ties her hands tight behind her back, and then her feet, but he does not replace the blindfold or the gag, and for this she is grateful. She curls up on the sleeping bag, but knows she will not sleep tonight.