"That," Sabrina shrilled, "was the worst service I've ever had. The food took forever to come, and when it did it was stone cold, even the coffee. And that waitress never apologized once. All she said when we complained was, 'Do you want me to take it back, then?'" (Sabrina's voice went even higher in furious mockery.) "She didn't care at all. And then it took nearly as long to come the second time! My blood-sugar got so low I almost passed out. She couldn't even bring the drinks on time. And they were too warm, and my glass was dirty, and when the food did come it was too salty; I've never tasted anything so disgusting. . . ."

She'd been making the same complaint over and over for the past ten minutes.

"I'm sorry," the shift manager said, in a weary voice. "I've given you a 20% reduction for your inconvenience."

"The meal should be free!"

"The first serving was free. You ate the second."

"I had to scrape the salt off! You'd think someone had dumped a shaker over it on purpose."

"Forget it, Sabrina," Max grunted. "Our taxi's waiting, and I need to make some more calls about the car. There has to be some guy around here with a tow truck who'll come out on Christmas Eve."

As they swept out the door, she paused to announce loudly over her shoulder, "We're certainly never coming back to this dump again!"

"Thank God for that," the manager said-but not until the door had closed behind them. "What on earth happened there, Betty? They do something to annoy you?"

Betty was their best waitress. She'd been working there longer than he had, and had a reputation for unfailing cheerfulness, friendliness, and accuracy with the orders. He couldn't remember anyone ever making a complaint about her before.

"You could say that," she replied, flatly. "We don't need their type in here. You can take the first meal and the twenty-percent out of my wages."

The manager shook his head.

His nineteen-year-old son, who was learning the trade in the kitchen, grinned at the waitress as she went by and said, "Man, Betty, everyone always thinks you're the nicest person around, but I wouldn't want to get on your bad side."

"See you don't, then," she said with a wink, and picked up the plates for her next table.

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Rodney Parsons was having a great afternoon. Along with a bunch of his buddies from the Crabapple Cove Snowmobile Club, he had been tearing along the trails just south of Route 1. Now they were heading home. There was good powder along the side of the secondary road, and they were spread out wide, boondocking away. When they passed a red Jaguar, crumpled nose buried deep in a bank thrown up by the snowplow, Rodney threw back his head and laughed. Those city slickers with their sports cars had no idea how to drive in winter. He leaned forward and gunned it some more, sending up a wave of powder that showed what he thought of anyone who didn't ride a sled.

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Sometime between 3:30 and 4:00, Donna finished her wrapping and went looking for her children. She was surprised to find Sally asleep on her bed. She'd thought Sally had dropped her afternoon nap a year ago.

"Wake up, sweetie," Donna said tenderly, stroking her daughter's hair. "You want to be able to sleep tonight, or Santa won't come, you know."

Sally sat up at once and rubbed her eyes.

"Let's go find Noah and have some hot chocolate, shall we? And you can make those cookies with Granny and Grandma."

Sally scrambled out of bed and followed her mother happily. Noah must be back by now. There was the gingerbread he would have brought her, as well as her grandmothers' cookies, to look forward to.

But Noah's room was empty.

"He must be downstairs," Donna said, not at all concerned. But he wasn't downstairs-not in the kitchen, not in the living room, not in the dining room, not in the small guest room off the dining room, where Josh's mother was sitting in a comfortable chair, reading.

Donna ran back upstairs. He wasn't in the bathroom. He wasn't in her parents' room -where her father was stretched out taking a nap, while her mother was wrapping a few last small gifts at the table under the window. Donna double-checked his room, and Sally's. There was no sign of him anywhere at all.

"He must have gone outside again," she thought, and went to the front door to look out. No sign of him on the slope running up to the crest, either. But of course the agent by the door would know where he was.

"He went inside with Sally three hours ago, ma'am," the agent said. "He hasn't been outside since."

"But he isn't inside. I've looked everywhere!"

The agent blinked, just once. Then his phone was in his hand, and he was calling for a complete search of the property.

Five minutes later, he was calling Ron Butterfield.

"Drop the net," Ron said tersely, and started to run towards the Oval.

Minutes later, airports were being shut down, the Coast Guard was closing ports, State troopers were blocking highway entrances and exits, and every police officer up and down the coast was being called in to duty.

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Cruising along the stretch of secondary highway between Route 1 and Crabapple Cove, Tom Stephens, a state trooper, saw a Jaguar wrecked on the side of the road. It must have been there a couple of hours; it was covered in a light coating of snow. He called it in.

"Check it out," he was told.

Tom wiped away some of the snow from the driver's-side window and peered in. The car seemed empty, except for a child seat and a lot of shopping bags. The driver had obviously skidded on the ice, smashed the car up, and abandoned it. Cell-phone coverage was iffy here; he probably hadn't been able to reach AAA or a tow truck. Or maybe he just hadn't wanted to wait in the cold. It wasn't that far to the village, though it would be unusual for anyone who owned a Jag to want to do the hike on foot. But maybe there had been another car. . . .

Tom was a careful policeman. He walked around the car, looking for tracks. The snow was trampled down on the far side-there'd been a passenger, then-but he couldn't make out any details. If he'd been there an hour earlier, he would have seen the line of prints where Noah had run into the woods, but Rodney Parsons and his friends had flattened those out when they drove by.

Something caught Tom's eye, and he bent to pick it up. A knitted hat. Not very stylish, not the sort of thing Tom would have expected a passenger in a Jaguar to wear. It was small, too. A woman's? A child's? There was a child seat in the car, but that was for a smaller kid than one who could have worn this.

Tom was no expert in children's clothing, but he had nieces and nephews. At a guess he'd have said his sister's fourth-grader could have worn this hat. Or maybe the third-grader; it would be a little big on him, but not by much.

There was probably a perfectly natural explanation for it. The hat probably belonged to a third- or fourth-grader who'd been riding beside his mother or father in the front seat of the Jag instead of in back. That wasn't a smart place to let a child that age sit, but plenty of people did it.

If this had been any ordinary day, Tom wouldn't have paid the hat any more attention. But this wasn't an ordinary day, and Tom wasn't taking any chances: he switched on his radio, and called it in.

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Donna had been waiting on hold for what seemed like forever. Then, when she'd heard Josh's voice at last, she'd fallen apart.

She'd been beside herself, torn to shreds by terror: for Noah, her baby, lost and frightened and in who-knew-what kind of danger, who-knew-what condition or pain, who-knew-whether-no, she couldn't let herself go there, couldn't let herself think that. But part of her terror was also for herself, because she knew that there was no way on earth she could possibly go on living without him. And another part was for Josh, who couldn't live without him either, of course.

She knew Josh cared about his children every bit as much as she did. She could feel his anguish coming at her over the line, even though anyone who didn't know him as well as she did might have thought his voice was remarkably steady and calm. Her guilt at doing this to him, at being the one who'd been at home, the one who should have been watching, should have been keeping him safe, was overwhelming.

But then something had happened. The whole tone of the conversation had shifted, and Josh suddenly sounded excited, eager, almost-happy.

"Donna," he'd said, "put Sally on the phone."

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Sally came reluctantly, but she came. She'd been holed up in her room with the covers pulled over her head and only-because she couldn't breathe if she was completely underneath them-her face peeking out, and she'd been screaming at her mother to Go away! Go away, go away, go away! But when Donna opened the door one more time and said, firmly, "Sally, Daddy wants to talk to you," she stopped mid-scream.

"Daddy's here?" she asked, not sure whether that was a good thing or a bad one, but knowing that it mattered. Daddy was a different kind of force in her life than Mommy was. Her mother was always there-she scheduled her First Lady meetings for times when Sally and Noah were at school, or at their after-school activities-but her father wasn't able to spend as much time with her, so his presence had more impact. She saw him at bedtime almost every day-it was their special time together, and her favorite hour of the day-but she hadn't seen him yesterday or today at all. She wanted to see him desperately, but she was also a bit afraid to. She couldn't drive Daddy away by screaming at him. He was always harder to get around than Mommy was, harder to ignore.

"Daddy's on the phone. He needs to talk to you now."

Sally climbed reluctantly out from the covers, and followed her mother to her parents' bedroom and the phone.

"Sally," Josh said. "You know Noah isn't there."

"Yes," she said, after a moment's pause. She didn't like talking on the telephone much, but she was used to doing it with Daddy when he had to be away.

"It's important that we find him, Sally. It isn't safe for him to be outside without his agents."

Sally nodded. She knew that. But of course, Noah was with his agents-he'd told her how he was planning to get in the car with them, without their knowing. And after that he'd be in the village, their own village where they'd been going all their lives, where they knew everyone and everyone knew them. That was just as safe as being with the agents, he'd told her, and anyway, they wouldn't be far away-they'd just be at Starbucks, where they always went on their breaks in the summer, and then in the grocery store, which they usually did, too. That was really just as good as having them right there with him, and it would let him go see Santa in the park, and get the gingerbread.

"Sally? Did you hear me?"

"Yes."

"We have to find him. And I know you know where he is, Sally-girl. You told the agents you last saw him outside the shed."

"Ye-es."

"That wasn't quite true, was it?"

Sally was silent.

"Or maybe I should say, it was true, but it wasn't the whole truth?"

Sally swallowed. She had promised Noah. But she couldn't lie to Daddy. Or to Mommy, either, which was why she had screamed at her. . . .

"Sally, Noah didn't come down on the sled with you for that last run, I know that. He never shares a sled with you if he can help it, and he knows he's always supposed to be on top if you do share, to keep you from falling off. The agents said they saw you on top. But you weren't, were you? You came down alone. With his coat and hat under you, to make it look like there were two of you. What I need to know is, where did you leave him? And what was he going to do?"

More silence.

"Sally, I know Noah's told you not to tell. But it's not telling when I already know. So I want you to answer me. Now."

"It's all right," she blurted out. "He went with the agents, in their car. They didn't know he was there, but he was still with them, so we didn't do anything wrong. He had to get to the village. There wasn't any other way to see Santa and tell him what we wanted."

Josh put his hand over the mouthpiece and called out, "Margaret! Cancel that call to Fitzwallace, and get Butterfield on the phone. He's probably at Andrews by now; I want to catch him before he takes off. . . ."

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Special Agents Rawlings and Catalano-sometimes known as Calvin and Hobbes-were barrelling along the highway towards Crabapple Cove when the second call came in. The first had told them that Flashlight was missing, Operation French was cancelled, and they should return to base immediately. The second caused Gary Rawlings to slam on the brakes and pull the Suburban abruptly over to the side of the road. Meg Catalano jumped out and tore around to the back of the car while Rawlings popped the trunk open. Nothing there. Then the back door. A minute later she was back in her seat, the blanket Noah had hidden under in her hand.

"Confirmed," she told the base agent. "Flashlight's been in the car. At least, someone has. He must have gotten out at the inn."

"How the hell did he do that?" Rawlings muttered, as he spun the car around 180 degrees and headed back towards the inn. "It was locked, wasn't it?"

She nodded, her mind racing. A picture surfaced: Noah sitting in the front seat playing with the ignition key and the locks, while she sat beside him showing him some of the ways the SUV had been modified by the Service to meet its security requirements.

"Crap," she said. "That kid is way smarter than I realized."

"His parents aren't any slouches."

"But what's he doing back at the inn? They said he wanted to go to see Santa in the village."

"You wouldn't think a kid as bright as that would even believe in Santa still."

"He must have some other game in mind. . . ."

The radio flared into life again. Rawlings listened, then slammed on the brakes and spun the Suburban another 180 again. With his foot to the floor, they shot off to join the swarm of other agents, troopers, and local police who were descending en masse on Max and Sabrina's oceanfront estate.

The state trooper had snapped a photo of the hat he'd found beside the Jag and sent it in to headquarters, who had forwarded it to the Secret Service base at the lighthouse. Donna and her mother had identified it immediately: Mrs. Moss had knitted it for Noah that fall. IDing the owners of the Jag from their license plate and looking up their address in Maine was a matter of seconds.

Sabrina Maxwell's really bad day was about to get a whole lot worse.

To be cont'd. . . .