Leaning against a flagpole in the heart of Riverbend, Indiana, Tony Viera understood what it meant to be in the middle of nowhere.

He was somewhere, of course. He was standing in the shadow of the courthouse in Riverbend?s main square, his gaze fixed on the drugstore across the street. In a little while, he?d pay a courtesy call to the local police station to make sure the cops didn?t have any problems with his taking care of the business that had brought him here. But first he wanted to get a sense of where he was.

The middle of nowhere.

The clean, spring-fresh scent of the air, the sporadic traffic, the wide-open blue of the sky ? it was like an alien landscape. Tony was a New Yorker, used to pollution, rumbling buses, bustling pedestrians, the vitality that electrified the city?s streets. Here, the tranquility seemed otherworldly.

Peter Linnett was in Riverbend ? quite possibly in the drugstore. Tony?s boss had told him to find the kid and, if necessary, bring him back to New York. The whole thing shouldn?t take more than a day ? which was good, because Tony didn?t think he could stand spending any more time than he had to in this one-horse town.

The drugstore door swung open. He started forward, energy coiling inside him. Not that he expected Peter to stroll outside and straight into his waiting arms, but as a police detective, he was perpetually ready for anything and everything.

The person who emerged wasn?t Peter ? unless Peter had undergone a sex-change operation in the past couple of months. It was a young woman in a crisp blouse and slacks. Maybe five-five, taffy-colored hair framing a heart-shaped face, a cute pink mouth and a faraway look in her wide-set hazel eyes. She held a small canvas bag with a zipper-lock, the kind of bag shopkeepers used for carrying cash to the bank. Propping the door open, she turned and shouted something over her shoulder.

A clerk, he figured. If she worked for Peter Linnett?s father, she might know the kid.

It was so quiet he could actually hear the lilt of her laughter as she backed away from the door. Half-turning, she was still laughing, shaking her head as she stepped off the curb between two parked cars.

She obviously hadn?t noticed the white van cruising down the road, with Sterling Hardware & Building Supply painted across its side. It wasn?t going too fast, and neither was she, but someone was going to have to stop moving to avoid a disaster. The driver of the van probably couldn?t see the woman slipping out into the street between the parked cars, and she was still chuckling at whatever someone inside the store had said to her, and ?

"No!" Tony roared, sprinting toward the street.

Too late. With a muted thud, the woman bounced off the edge of the van?s bumper and fell to the asphalt. She lay there, perfectly still.

Deathly still....