“My husband and I had our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary last night at Le Cirque. We’d planned it with Jacob for months. Jacob’s grandfather flew in from Bordeaux for the occasion. Jacob would not have missed it. He is our only child. You don’t understand how close we are. He would not have missed our special event or the rare chance to see his grandfather.”

I was starting to understand her concern. What she was telling me did seem strange.

“Did he say anything to you when you last spoke to him? Anything odd? Someone new he might have met or-”

That’s when the phone on the antique sideboard beside her rang. She stared in horror at the caller ID number, then at me as it rang again.

“I don’t know that number,” she said, raw panic in her voice. “I don’t know that number!”

“That’s okay,” I said, trying to calm her down. I scratched down the number, and let my instincts kick in.

“Listen, April. Look at me. If it’s someone involved with Jacob being gone-I don’t think it is, but if it is-you need to ask them exactly what you need to do in order to get your son back, okay? And if you can, say that you want to speak to Jacob.”

Tears were streaming down her face as the phone rang again. She used a shaking fist to wipe them away before she grabbed the receiver. I listened at an extension in the adjacent study. I pressed the phone’s answering machine’s Record button as I lifted the receiver.

“Yes? This is April Dunning.”

“I have Jacob,” a strangely serene voice said. “Listen.”

There was a click and hum on the line and then what sounded like a recording.

“Question number nine: If you were born in Sudan, what would be your chances of living to forty? And what does that have to do with your cute little red iPod nano?”

“I don’t know,” a young man sobbed. “Stop. Please stop.”

The recording clicked off.

“You’ll receive instructions in exactly three hours,” the calm voice said. “Follow them to the letter or you’ll never see your son alive again. No police. No FBI.”