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It wasn't that she didn't want to pray for Sam. She just wasn't sure how.

IT DIDN'T MAKE SENSE.

Ella had dragged him all the way up to Greenwich, cooing and purring about some private time together, enjoying the romance of the countryside on an autumn morning.

So what did she do the moment they arrived?

She dropped herself into a chair at the most Manhattan-like cafe she could find and ordered a double martini.
At ten forty-five in the morning.

George ordered coffee for himself, then reached across the table and took her hand.

"This was a great idea," he said, hoping to divert her attention away from her drink. "You and me, the country . . ."

Ella nodded, glancing around the cafe.

"So what's on the agenda? Picnic on the Sound? A little sailing, perhaps?"

Ella sighed. "Oh, I don't know. Shopping, maybe."

"Shopping?" George raised an eyebrow. "Honey, you can shop anytime in New York. I thought the idea was to come up here and do something that involved grass and trees and quiet country lanes." He'd known when he married her that she wasn't exactly an outdoorswoman, but surely even the most pampered Manhattanite would be enchanted by the old-time New England charm of this town.

Ella wrinkled her nose. "Country lanes, George? Really."

"Sure. Me and you, the breeze, the sunshine. Some cozy little grotto somewhere . . ."

She looked as if she was considering it. "Well . . ." She sighed, lifting her dazzling eyes to his.

A wave of pure attraction washed over him. The truth of it was that he didn't really much care what they did,
as long as they were together.
He would try to talk her into doing something slightly more romantic than signing credit card receipts, but he wouldn't push. Whatever she wanted was, in all sincerity, fine with him.

So he was smitten with his own wife. So sue him.

The beverages came, and George let go of Ella's hand to allow the waiter to deliver her martini. When he reached for it again, she made a quick grab for the drink.

George sat back in his chair, telling himself
she was just thirsty.

"What time is it?" she asked.

He checked his watch. "Close to eleven. Why?"

Ella lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "We'll take the two-thirty train back to Grand Central."

"Back?" George tore open a sugar packet and poured it into his coffee."We just got here. Listen, there's supposed to be a beautiful little horse farm just a few towns away. I read about it in the travel section of the
Times
." He gave his wife what he hoped was an irresistible grin. "How about we shop this morning, then we can spend the afternoon cantering through some of those sprawling open fields we passed on the way into town?"

"Those weren't open fields. Those were people's yards."

He laughed. She didn't.

"C'mon. What do you say to a little horseback riding?"

She sighed again, causing her ample chest to swell against the satin of her blouse. "I'm not exactly dressed for riding," she said, then gently, seductively caught her lower lip between her teeth. "But if you really want to . . ."

She had him. And
they both knew it.

"Shopping it is." George lifted the cup to his lips, tramping down the prickle of disappointment. A moment or two passed before he spoke again. "Have you noticed that Gaia's been acting a little distracted lately?"

"Distracted?" repeated Ella, as if she herself hadn't been paying attention. She looked over her husband's shoulder and out the window.

"I'm worried about her." "Don't be." Ella traced the rim of her martini glass with one slender finger. "She's a teenager. They're a species unto themselves. What looks peculiar to us is perfectly normal for them."

"Normal, huh? Saturday night she came home sweating, panting, all out of breath --"

"Oh?" Ella pursed her lips in
disdain.
"Were you waiting up, George?"

"No. Well, not exactly. I just happened to be awake."

This time she did laugh. "And did you go to her? Ask her if all was well? Tuck her in?"

George shook his head. "Maybe I should have."

"She's seventeen!" Ella exclaimed in a patronizing tone. "And as far as the sweating and panting goes, well, that's exactly the kind of reaction a teenage girl would experience after spending hours teasing some poor boy in the backseat of his car!"

"C'mon, Ella," said George, his face flushing at her inference. "I don't think Gaia --"

"Oh, please! She's no angel, George, as much as you'd like to believe she is." Was it his imagination, or was there
bitterness
behind her voice?

"She's been through a lot," George said, eyeing his wife warily.

Ella rolled her eyes. "So you've said -- often."

"I still think I should have talked to her the other night," George said, turning his profile to her and staring out the window. "She's lost so much." George had no idea what it was like to be a teenage girl. He could barely recall what it was like to be a teenage boy. But he knew what it was like to have someone he loved snatched away.
He remembered that vividly.

"We're all she has," George said, finally turning back to Ella. "Maybe she's lonely --"

"Fine, George," said Ella, sighing. "Gaia's lonely. Not horny -- just lonely. The point is, she probably would have told you to mind your own business, anyway." She paused, then said pointedly, "She's not our child."

At this George felt a familiar jolt -- a longing.
Our child
. His, theirs, hers. His eyes searched Ella's questioningly.

"Oh, no." She held up her hand like a traffic cop and laughed again. "Don't even go there, George Niven. We've discussed it." Her other hand went to her firm, flat tummy. "This figure is not to be tampered with." She cleared her throat, then added, "Yet."

It was the most unconvincing "yet" he'd ever heard in his life. The waiter returned with more coffee for him and a fresh martini for Ella. Three olives this time, instead of two. Clearly he hadn't heard her remark about flat-tummy maintenance. Or maybe he just liked her.

They sipped their drinks without further conversation until the silence was interrupted by the bleating of her cell phone.

She flipped it open. "Yes?"

George watched her near-expressionless face as she listened. After almost two full minutes, she said, "Fine." Then she hung up.

"Who was that?"

"No one important," she said, plucking a plump olive from the toothpick in her glass.

George smiled teasingly. "No one important who?"

She looked at him. "If you must know, it was Toshi. My feng shui appointment has been canceled for tonight."

"Oh." George lowered his gaze to the table.

Toshi, huh? He wanted to believe her, but at the same time he had a very strong hunch that the call had had nothing to do with feng shui.

If Ella had any hunches regarding his hunch, she didn't show it.

She went right on drinking her martini.

And, he imagined, waiting impatiently for five fifteen.

GAIA STUFFED FRANK'S TACKY EEL-skin wallet into the pocket of her faded sweatshirt jacket and shoved the gun into the bottom of the messenger bag. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

So she'd just conducted her first mugging.

It was not a good feeling. Gaia kicked at a crumpled-up McDonald's bag as she walked along the cracked sidewalk. She didn't like playing the part of a lowlife, even if the joke was on Frank.

But it was all about saving Sam. Gaia booted the bag into the sewer. The end justifying the means, and all that.
Very Machiavellian.

So where was the next test? Once again she was left with downtime while Sam was sitting alone somewhere, suffering. Gaia felt her heart squeeze painfully as she remembered Sam's swollen face. She pressed her eyes closed, as if she could block out the image. Could she find fear -- even a tiny shred of it -- if she kept that image in her mind's eye?

This was torture. Maybe that was the point.

Trying to distract herself, she pulled out Frank's wallet again and flipped it open. There was a
stack of bills
inside, and Gaia pulled them out, counting quickly so that no street thugs would spot her and get any ideas. Three hundred and fifty bucks. Not bad. What the hell was she going to do with it?

When she looked up, Gaia noticed she had stopped right in front of St. Joseph's Church. That couldn't be a coincidence. She stuffed the money and wallet back into her pocket and ducked inside the church.

The place was perfectly quiet. There was no one in sight, and the sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows revealed dancing particles of dust. Gaia found herself thinking how weird it was that all churches always smelled the same. Not that she'd been to very many -- just enough to know they all had that same damp, smoky smell.

As Gaia wandered down the carpeted center aisle, she wondered how many times "Amen" and "Please, God" had been whispered in there. She got the feeling that if she listened carefully enough, she might hear the echoes.

It occurred to Gaia that if the kidnappers were still watching her closely, a deserted church would be the perfect place for them to attack. Gaia wished they would. It would be nice to get this over with. Kick some ass, find out where Sam was, get him, and then go the hell home.
She was tired of this already.

There was an alcove toward the front of the church with a brass stand in it. On the stand were rows upon rows of stubby white candles in little glass holders, some red, some blue. Gaia smirked. Religious
and
patriotic.

Gaia knew what the candles were for. One night when she'd first moved in with George and Ella, she'd stayed up late, unable to sleep, and watched a rerun of
West Side Story
on TV. Natalie Wood, as Maria, had a little setup like this one with the candles and everything, right in her apartment. She was lighting candles and saying prayers.

Gaia went to the alcove and found what she was looking for -- a worn wooden box with Donations painted painstakingly across the front. Gaia was pretty sure she was supposed to make a contribution before lighting a prayer candle. Someone had to pay for all that wax. Fine with her. She stuffed Frank's money into the box. She figured that $350 bought her the right to start a bonfire. But she wasn't exactly good with prayers. She wasn't even entirely sure of what religion she was supposed to practice. Her family was one big melting pot.

Next to the candles there were a bunch of skinny sticks, like extralong toothpicks, sticking out of a little pot of sand. The ends on some of them were charred.

Okay, I get it, she thought. You use a lit candle to light the stick, then use the stick to light your own candle.

She picked up one of the long, fragile sticks. Should she or shouldn't she?

Part of her felt like a serious
hypocrite.
But a bigger part of her felt she needed help from wherever she could get it.

She breathed in the church smell and thought about Sam. He didn't deserve this. No one deserved this. It was all her fault.

Then she poked the stick into the flame of one of the burning candles. What prayer went with that one? she wondered. Had it been bigger than hers? Had it been answered?

She held the stick over an unlit candle and for a moment just watched the flame dance. Then, in spite of her $350 donation, she slammed the burning end of the stick into the sand and got out of there.

It wasn't that she didn't want to pray for Sam. She just wasn't sure how.

GAIA RAN ALL THE WAY HOME, hoping at every turn that she'd be stopped by another crazed fake homeless man with a note. No such luck.

She was ready to scream with frustration when she rounded the corner onto Perry Street and caught a glimpse of George and Ella's front stoop. There was a package. Time for a sprint. It seemed like forever before the box was in her hands, but the card had her name on it. And since she didn't belong to the Jam of the Month club or anything, she was pretty sure it was from her
friendly neighborhood kidnapper.

She let herself inside (still no Ella, thank God) and took the stairs to her room in threes. After slamming her bedroom door and locking it behind her, Gaia pulled the Duane Reade bag out of her messenger bag and shoved it, gun and all, under her bed.

Then she tossed her messenger bag on her mattress, sat down at her desk, and opened the box. Wonderful. There was another video inside. And, of course, another note. This was getting old.

"Wonder what this movie's rated," Gaia muttered.

Gaia gathered up her stuff again and jogged back downstairs to the living room. She shoved the tape into the VCR and hit play.

Gaia's eyes narrowed as an image of her own face --
so close up she could count her own pores
-- flickered onto the screen. The camera panned back to reveal her and Renny sitting by the fountain. She felt the blood start to rush through her veins, bringing an angry flush to her face.

Whoever had filmed this had been so close. How could she have missed him? How stupid was she?

Lowering herself onto the plush couch, Gaia watched as she and Renny crossed the park. It was like some kind of morbid home movie.

Isn't Gaia adorable, sticking that pistol into Frankie's shoulder, stealing his wallet, kneeing him in the groin?

She hit the off button, pulled the cassette out of the slot, and proceeded to
tear its celluloid guts out.
After that, she did the same to the tape of Sam and Heather, which was still in her messenger bag. Then she unfolded the note that had come with the new tape, and read it.

Then she read it again.

"Suddenly Gaia really wished she'd lit that candle.

You are doing surprisingly well. Your next test may not be so easy. Your friend in the wheelchair is to be your next victim. No violence is necessary. What we want is for you to HUMILIATE him. In public.

This humiliation, Gaia, is to be thorough. Uncompromised.

You will emotionally destroy this young man.

And if you are wondering why . . . don't. You need no reason other than that I require you to do it.

IF YOU FAIL, SAM MOON WILL DIE.