Soneji drove the van inside. He'd done it; he'd pulled it off.

A black 1985 Saab was parked in the barn. Unlike

55 the rest of the deserted farm, the barn had a lived-in feel.

It had a dirt floor. Cheesecloth was taped over three broken windows in the hayloft. There were no rusting tractors or other farm machinery. The barn had the smell I of damp earth and gasoline.

Gary Soneji pulled two Cokes from a cooler on the passenger seat. He polished off both sodas, letting out a satisfied belch after downing the second cold one.

“Either of you guys want a Coke?” he called out to the drugged, comatose children. “No? Okay then, but you're going to be real thirsty soon.”

There were no sure things in life, he was thinking, but he couldn't imagine how any policeman could get him now. Was it foolish and dangerous to be this confident? he wondered. Not really, because he was also being realistic. There was no way to trace him now. There wasn't a single clue for them to follow.

He had been planning to kidnap somebody famous since-well, since forever. Who that someone was had changed, and changed again, but never the clear, main objective in his mind. He'd been working at Washington Day School for months. This moment, right now, proved it had been worth every sucky minute.

“Mr. Chips.” He thought of his nickname at the school. Mr. Chips! What a lovely, lovely bit of playacting he'd done. Real Academy Award stuff. As good as anything he'd seen since Robert De Niro in The King of Comedy. And that performance was a classic. De Niro himself had to be a psychopath in real life.

Gary Soneji finally pulled open the van's sliding door. Back to work, work, work his fingers to the bone.