He did have something of a point, I thought. He was actually kind of persuasive. His voice sounded cultured, like an academic’s. Intelligent, I wrote on my pad.

“But the wind is blowing in a different direction now,” he continued. “The hand of destiny knocks upon the door. That’s why I’m doing this. To wake people up. To make them rethink the way in which they conduct themselves. Because these wings are no longer wings to fly but merely vans to beat the air. The air which is now thoroughly small and dry. Smaller and dryer than the will. Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.”

God, now he was talking gibberish. I underlined Unstable. Beside it, I wrote, Drugs? Schizophrenic? Psychotic? Hearing voices?

“Now getting back to Jacob,” I said. “Could we speak to him?”

He let out a deep breath. Then he gave me by far the largest shock of our conversation.

“I’ll do better than that. You can have him back, Mike,” he said.

I stood holding the receiver, stunned.

“You’ll have to come for him, though,” the voice continued. “Give me your cell phone number. Get in a car. I’ll call you in ten minutes.”

He hung up after I gave him my number.

“It’s over?” Dunning said happily, with surprise. “He’s going to give him back? I guess he changed his mind, is that it? He must have realized how crazy this was. April! Honey! Jacob’s coming home!”

I watched Dunning run out of the room. He was grasping at any hope now.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t as optimistic. The individual who’d taken Jacob seemed highly organized. He wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to just give him back.

What was filling me with even more dread was the way he kept changing the subject when I asked about Jacob.

I could tell by the skeptical look on Parker’s face that she was thinking exactly the same thing.