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No. That was from my next-to-last packet of emergency supplies. I’ve been into it twenty, perhaps thirty, times without anything unpleasant happening.

Ketcham became aware that the sound of the vehicle’s passageway over the roadway had changed. For one thing, he sensed that they were moving more slowly than they had been.

The vehicle stopped.

Ketcham heard the sound of the vehicle’s door opening, and then it moved as if someone had gotten out.

He heard a metallic screech and decided, after a moment, that it was the sound of a door opening, and then changed that to suspect strongly that it was the sound a gate in a Cyclone fence—as those surrounding a tennis court—makes when being opened.

The vehicle moved a short distance forward. Ketcham heard the sound of the squeaking gate again. The vehicle tilted as if someone had gotten in the front seat. The door slammed shut and the vehicle drove off.

Ketcham sensed that they were no longer on a paved road, and confirmation of this came when the vehicle, moving slowly, encountered one hole in the road after another.

What are they doing? Taking me out in the woods someplace to kill me?

But if they wanted to kill me, they had ample opportunity in my garage.

If they’re not going to kill me, then what? They must want something from me. What?

If this is a case of mistaken identity, which seems as likely an answer as anything else I’ve been able to come up with, then there will be the opportunity to clear things up, to let them know I’m not who they are looking for.

Or, even if it’s not a case of mistaken identity, if they want something from me—maybe they know I’m a stockbroker, and think we keep large amounts of cash around the office. They’re Italian, they could be the Mafia. That sounds like something the Mafia would do. And they might not know the only cash around the office is in the petty-cash box, and I don’t even know of any negotiable instruments at all. Anyway, if they do want something from me, there will certainly be an opportunity to talk, to negotiate.

Those thoughts made Ketcham feel better.

After two or three minutes of lurching down what Ketcham was now convinced was an unpaved road, the vehicle moved onto a solid, flat, and thus presumably paved surface and stopped.

There was the sound of two doors being opened, the sense of shifting as if two persons had left the vehicle, and the doors slammed shut.

Then Ketcham heard the rear doors of the vehicle being opened.

“Cut that shit off his legs,” a voice ordered.

There was a clicking sound, which Ketcham decided just might be the sound of a switchblade, and a sensation of sawing around his ankles. He felt the pressure that had been holding his ankles together go away.

Ketcham was dragged out of the Suburban and set on his feet. He felt a hand on each arm, as if there was a man on each side of him.

He was pushed into motion. Without quite knowing why, he sensed that he had entered some kind of a building. The sense grew stronger as he was guided down what he now believed to be a corridor, and confirmation came when he was stopped, and heard the sound of a door—a heavy metal door, he deduced. Where am I? In a factory? Or a garage?—being opened.

Ketcham was pushed through the door, led fifteen feet inside, and stopped.

“Cut his hands loose,” the same voice ordered, and again there was the sort of slick clicking sound a switchblade knife made, and again the sawing sensation, this time at his wrists.

And then they were free.

“Without taking the coat off your head, take off your clothes,” the same voice ordered.

“What?” Ketcham asked incredulously.

This earned him a blow in the face.

That wasn’t a fist. That was something hard. A stick perhaps. Or perhaps a gun.

“Without taking the coat off your head, take off your clothes,” the same voice repeated.

The one thing I cannot afford to do, Ketcham told himself, is lose control of myself. They want me to take off my clothes, very well, I will take off my clothes—meanwhile, waiting patiently, and carefully, for my opportunity.

With some difficulty, Ketcham removed the jacket of his dark blue, faintly striped blue suit. Without thinking what he was doing, he held the suit jacket out, as if waiting for someone to take it from him and hang it up.