Dark Rivers of the Heart

in advance.
        "How soon can we be on the road again?" Spencer asked as they parked in front of their unit.
        "Forty-five minutes tops, probably half an hour," she promised.
        "We're miles from where we took the pickup, but I have a bad feeling about hanging around here too long."
        "You aren't the only one."
        She couldn't help but notice the decor of the room even as she took Spencer's laptop computer out of the duffel bag, put it on the desk next to an arrangement of accessible plugs and phone jacks, and concentrated on getting it ready for business. Blue-and-black-speckled carpet.
        Blueand-yellow-striped draperies. Green-and-blue-checkered bedspread.
        Blue and gold and silver wallpaper in a pale ameboid pattern. It looked like army camouflage for an alien planet.
        "While you're working on that," Spencer said, "I'll take Rocky out to do his business. He must be ready to burst."
        "Doesn't seem in distress."
        "He'd be too embarrassed to let on." At the door, he turned to her again and said, "I saw fast-food places across the street. I'll walk over there and get us some burgers and stuff too, if that sounds like it would hit the spot."
        "Just buy plenty," she said.
        While Spencer and the pooch were gone, Ellie accessed the central computer, which she had penetrated a long time ago and had explored in depth. Through AT&T's nationwide linkages, she had been able, in the past, to finesse her way into the computers of several regional phone companies at all ends of the country, although she'd never before tried to slide into the Colorado system. For a hacker as for a concert pianist or an Olympic gymnast, however, training and practice were the keys to success, and she was extremely well trained and well practiced.
        When Spencer and Rocky returned after only twenty-five minutes, Ellie was already deep inside the regional system, scrolling rapidly down a dauntingly long list of pay-phone numbers with corresponding addresses that were arranged county by county. She settled on a phone at a service station in Montrose, Colorado, sixty-six miles south of Grand junction.
        Manipulating the main switching system in the regional phone company, she rang the Grandjunction Police while routing the call from their motel room through the service-station pay phone down in Montrose.
        She called the emergency number, rather than the main police number, just to be sure that the source address would appear onscreen in front of the operator.
        "Grand Junction Police."
        Ellie began without any preamble: "We hijacked a Bell JetRanger helicopter in Cedar City, Utah, earlier today" When the police operator attempted to interrupt with questions that would encourage a standardformat report, Ellie shouted the woman down: "Shut up, shut up!
        I'm only going to say this once, so you better listen, or people will die!" She grinned at Spencer, who was opening bags of wonderfully fragrant food on the dinette table. "The chopper is now on the ground in the Colorado National Monument, with the crew aboard. They're unhurt but tied up.
        If they have to spend the night out there, they'll freeze to death. I'll describe the landing site just once, and you better get the details right if you want to save their lives."
        She gave succinct directions and disconnected.
        Two things had been achieved. The three men in the JetRanger would be found soon. And the Grand junction Police Department had an address in Montrose, sixty-six miles to the south, from which the emergency call had been made, indicating that Ellie and Spencer were either about to flee east on Federal Highway 50, toward Pueblo, or continue south on Federal Highway 550 toward Durango. Several state routes branched off those main arteries as well, providing enough possibilities to keep agency search teams fully occupied. Meanwhile, she and Spencer and Mr.
        Rocky Dog would be headed to Denver on Interstate 70.
        Dr. Sabrina Palma was being difficult, which was no surprise to Roy.
        Before arriving at the prison, he had expected objections to his plans, based on medical, security, and political grounds. The moment he had seen her office, he had known that vital financial considerations would weigh more heavily against him than all the genuinely ethical arguments that she might have pursued.
        "I can't conceive of any