The sound Peter had heard was one of the men going to the bathroom. He heard the toilet flush, and then a swear word as whoever it was stubbed his toe on his way back to bed. And a few minutes later, he heard one of the others. Peter lay very still on the empty bed, and then decided to get up himself. He didn't want one of them coming into the room and discovering that Sam was gone.

He walked on bare feet into the living room, looked out the window cautiously, saw nothing, and sat down.

“You're up early,” a voice said behind him. Peter gave a start and turned. It was Carlton Waters. He looked bleary-eyed after their excesses of the night before. “How's the kid?”

“He's fine,” Peter said without much apparent interest. He had seen enough of these men to last a lifetime. Waters was bare chested, wearing only the jeans he had slept in, as he opened the refrigerator, foraging for something to eat, and emerged again with a beer.

“I'm going to call his mother when the others get up,” Waters said, as he sat down on the couch across from Peter. “She'd better have the money ready for us, or we're done,” he said matter-of-factly. “I'm not going to sit here forever, like a sitting duck, waiting for the fucking cops to show up. She'd better get that into her head, if she's jerking us around.”

“Maybe she doesn't have it,” Peter said, and shrugged. “If not, we've wasted a lot of time.” Peter knew the score but Waters didn't.

“Your guy wouldn't be going to all this trouble if she didn't,” Waters said, and then got up to look out the window. The sky was pink and gold by then, and there was a clear view of the first turn in the driveway, and as he looked at it, he stiffened, and ran out on the porch. He had seen something move and disappear. “Fuck!” he said, running back in for his shotgun, and shouted for the others.

“What's wrong?” Peter asked, getting up out of his chair and looking concerned.

“I'm not sure.” The other two had emerged sleepily by then, and each of them grabbed one of the machine guns as Peter's heart sank. There was no way to warn the men who were making their way down the driveway on their bellies with Sam. They hadn't gone far enough yet, Peter knew, to be safe.

Waters signaled to Stark and Free to get outside, and then like ghosts they saw them. Peter could see past Waters and the others to a man in black crouching and running, and he had something in his arms. The something he was carrying was Sam. Without warning, Waters fired at them, as Stark let off a machine-gun round.

Fernanda and Ted heard the sounds where they were sitting. They had no radio contact with the commandos. Fernanda squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed Ted's hand. There was no way for them to know what had happened, all they could do was wait. They had lookouts watching for them, but they had seen nothing yet. But from the rattle of the machine gun, he knew they were on their way with Sam. He didn't know if Peter would be with them. It would be riskier for the boy if he was.

“Oh God…oh God…” Fernanda whispered as they heard the guns go off again, “please…God…” Ted couldn't look at her. All he could do was stare into the dawning light, and hold her hand tightly in his own.

Rick Holmquist had taken a step out of the nest and was standing, as Ted turned to him. “Any sign of them yet?” Rick shook his head and the guns went off again. They both knew there were a dozen more commandos lining the driveway, in addition to the three who had gone in from the top. And beyond them were an army of men waiting to go in once Sam was out.

The gunfire stopped then and they heard nothing. Waters had turned to Peter and looked at him. “Where's the kid?” Something had aroused his suspicions, and Peter had no idea what it was.

“In the back room. Tied up.”

“Is he?” Peter nodded. “Then why the fuck do I think I just saw a guy running across the driveway with him… tell me that… will you …” He slammed Peter backward against the wall of the house, with his shotgun just under Peter's neck, choking him, and both Stark and Free stared. Waters turned to Jim Free then and told him to go in the back room and check, and he came back running seconds later.

“He's gone!” Stark looked panicked.

“I knew it… you sonofabitch …” Waters looked Peter dead in the eye as he slowly strangled him, and Malcolm Stark pointed the machine gun at him. “You called them, didn't you … you fucking pussy… what happened? Did you get scared? Felt sorry for the kid? You'd better start feeling sorry for me. You fucked us out of fifteen million dollars and yourself out of ten.” Waters was blind with rage and fear. He knew that whatever happened, he wasn't going back to prison. They were going to have to kill him first.

“If she had the money, she'd have come up with it by now. Maybe Addison was wrong,” Peter said hoarsely. It was the first time the others had heard his name.

“What the fuck do you know?” Waters turned back to look down the driveway as far as he could, and took a few steps away from the house as Stark ran after him, but there was nothing to see. The men who had Sam with them were halfway down by then. Rick had just caught a glimpse of them running, and he turned to signal Ted. And then at almost the same moment he saw Carlton Waters and Malcolm Stark appear, and they started shooting at his men. Sam flew out of one man's arms, and was grabbed by another. They passed him along like a baton in a relay race, as Stark and Waters just went on shooting at whatever they could see.

Fernanda's eyes were open by then, and she and Ted were staring down the driveway. She looked just in time to see one of Rick's FBI men take careful aim at Waters and bring him down like a felled tree. He lay facedown on the ground as Stark ran back to the house with bullets flying all around him. Peter and Jim Free had gone back into the house, and Stark was screaming when he ran in.

“They got Carl!” he shouted, and then turned on Peter, still holding the machine gun. “You bastard, you killed him!” Stark said as he fired a round at Peter. Peter had time to look at him for only a fraction of an instant before the bullets sawed his body in half, and he fell at Jim Free's feet.

“What are we going to do?” Jim Free asked Stark.

“Get the fuck out of here, if we can.” They already knew the brush was too thick on either side, and there was rock face behind them. They had no equipment to climb it, and the only way out was through the front and down the driveway, which was littered with bodies now, not only Carl's but the men that he and Stark had shot, before they got him. There were three bodies lying on the ground between the front of the house and the road, and Sam saw them as the man carrying him ran. He was like a running back heading for the end zone. He just ran harder and suddenly he was within two feet of Ted and Fernanda. They could see Sam now, as the sun streaked across the road. She was sobbing as she watched him, and then suddenly Sam was in her arms and everyone was crying. His eyes were wide and he looked shell-shocked and filthy dirty, but he was screaming for his mom, and she couldn't make a sound.

“Mommy!… Mommy!… Mommy!!” She was crying so hard, she couldn't say anything to him, she just clutched him to her, as they both fell to the ground, and she lay there, holding her baby, loving him, as she had every second he was gone. They lay there together on the ground for a long time, and then Ted gently picked them both up, and signaled to some of the men behind them to take them away. He and Rick had been watching them, with tears running down their cheeks, as were the other officers. A paramedic came to help them then. He carried Sam to a waiting ambulance, with Fernanda running along beside him and holding Sam's hand. They were taking him to a local hospital to check him out.

“Who've we got left in there?” Ted asked Rick, wiping the tears from his face with the back of his hand.

“Three guys, I guess. Waters is down. That leaves Morgan and two others. I don't suppose Morgan is still alive by now… that leaves two …” Inevitably they would have killed him, when they discovered Sam was gone, and particularly after Waters's death. They had seen Stark run back in, but they also knew that there was nowhere for them to go. They had orders to shoot to kill all of them save Morgan, if he was still alive.

The marksmen and sharpshooters came in then, and a man from the SWAT team with a bullhorn. He told them to come out with their hands up, that they were coming in. There was no response, and no one walked down the driveway and into the clearing. And within two minutes, forty men headed up, with tear gas bombs, high-powered rifles, machine guns, and flash bangs, which when thrown, blinded you with light, disoriented you with an explosion and a burst of pellets that flew everywhere and stung like bee stings. The sound of the ammunition being emptied into the house was deafening, as Fernanda drove away in the ambulance with Sam. She saw Ted standing with Rick in the road as they left, wearing a bulletproof vest and talking to someone on the radio. He didn't see her go.

Fernanda heard from one of the FBI men at the motel that the siege at the house had lasted less than half an hour. Stark came out first, choking on tear gas, with bullets in one arm and one leg, and Jim Free came out right behind him. One of the agents told her later he'd been shaking from head to foot, squealing like a little pig. They were taken into custody on the spot, and would be sent back to prison for parole violations, pending trial. They would be tried for Sam's kidnap sometime within the next year, as well as the murder of two police officers and the FBI agent they'd brought down during the siege, and four more men when they'd kidnapped Sam from his house.

They found Peter Morgan's body when they went in. Rick and Ted watched them remove it. They saw the room Sam had been held captive in, and the window Peter had shoved him through for the escape. Everything they needed was there. The van, the guns, the ammunition. The house had been rented in Peter's name. And Ted knew all three convicts by name. The death of Carlton Waters was no loss to anyone. He had been on the street for just over two months. As had Peter. Two wasted lives, almost since the beginning, and ever since then.

Ted and Rick had lost three good men that day, as had the SWAT team, and along with the four they'd killed in San Francisco when they took Sam. Free and Stark would never see the light of day again, for kidnapping Sam, Ted hoped they would be put to death. It was all over for them. The trial was only going to be a formality, if there even was one. If they pled guilty, it would be simpler for everyone, although Ted knew they weren't likely to do that. They would drag it out as long as they could, and file endless appeals, just to live one more day in prison, for whatever that was worth to them.

Rick and Ted stayed on the crime scene until early that afternoon. Ambulances had come and gone, the dead commandos and agent were removed, photographs were taken, the injured seen to, it looked like a war zone. Frightened neighbors who'd been awakened by machine-gun fire at dawn clogged the road, straining to see what had happened, and asking for explanations. The police tried to reassure everyone, and attempted to keep traffic moving. Ted looked exhausted when he got back to the motel, and went to see Sam in Fernanda's room. They had just gotten back from the hospital, and remarkably, he was fine. There were still a lot of questions they wanted to ask him, but Ted wanted to see what kind of shape he was in first. He was lying in his mother's arms and clinging to her when Ted saw him. He was smiling up at her, had a humongous hamburger on a plate next to him, and was watching TV. And literally every cop and agent in the place had come in to see him and talk to him, or just ruffle his hair and leave again. They had laid their lives on the line for him, and lost friends to him. He was worth it. Men had died for him that day. But if they hadn't, Sam would have died instead. And the man who had made the difference ultimately, and helped save him, was dead too.

Fernanda couldn't take her hands off him, and she beamed at Ted as he walked in. He was filthy and tired, and had beard stubble all over his cheeks and chin. Rick had assured him he looked like a bum, when he left him to get something to eat. He said he had to make some calls to Europe.

“So, young man”—Ted grinned at him, as his eyes brushed Fernanda's—”it's good to see you again. I'd say you've been a real hero. You're a mighty fine deputy.” He didn't want to question him just yet. He wanted to give the kid a little time and room to breathe, but there was a lot they wanted to ask him. He was going to be seeing a lot of the police. “I know your mom is very happy to see you.” And then as his voice went gruff again, he said softly, “Me too.” Like almost everyone else who had been working night and day to find him, he had cried often that day. And Sam rolled over and smiled up at him, but he didn't move an inch away from his mother.