Programmed for Peril

push her aside roughly and reach for the instrument. “We’re talking kidnapping here.”
    “We been talking murder for weeks,” Dino growled. “What the hell difference has it made? You cops haven’t done nothing!” Two strides took him to Danny D.’s side. “This woman may be making the right decision. Why don’t you cool off?”
    “Why don’t you mind your own business, doughboy?” Danny D. began to press the phone buttons.
    “No!” Trish shouted. Her eyes found Dino’s face. “Don’t let him!”
    Dino’s arm swept down and snatched the phone cord. A sudden jerk tore it from the wall jack.
    “What do you want? Trouble?” Danny D. asked. “You’re obstructing an officer.” He frowned, surprised at Dino’s assertiveness.
    “Do what the lady wants. It’s her kid, to live or die.”
    “I got responsibilities in a situation like this.”
    “Bag them!”
    “Back off, fella.” Danny D. raised a hand as though to reach for a hidden holster. Dino grabbed his wrist, spun him around. Somehow the wrist ended up behind the cop’s back. Dino bent the man forward and propelled him headfirst against the side of the heavy oven. He went down with a grunt.
    Trish and Dino exchanged a wordless glance of alarm over what he had done. He said, “In that drawer over there is some thick cord. Get it!”
    She gave him the ball. “You’ve got yourself in trouble.” His head spun toward her. “You wanta talk? Or you wanta go and start the rest of your life with Carson? Get going!”
    “I am. Now.” She snatched up her purse and groped for her car keys.
    Dino looked up from his knots. “You know, I could maybe still be some help. Maybe I could sneak over there, too, and try a trick or two that I know. Maybe take Carson out.”
    “No! I’ve decided what the best thing is to do.” She hesitated. “I—didn’t think it would end this way between us. Me gone, and you in trouble with the law.”
    Dino’s smile was a thin glimmer of the real thing. “Story of my life.”
    “Thank you. God bless!”
    Rushing to her car, she thought that should she be successful in saving Melody, one of the first places she would go would be right back to this bakery with its comforting heat and more comforting owner.
    She reminded herself it was important that all her actions be completely transparent. It couldn’t look as though she was trying anything desperate. Driving with her knees, she pulled the pistol from her purse and checked the action as Jerry had taught her. She cocked it.
    As she pulled up in front of 2260 Manifold Boulevard her knees began to tremble. She could think only of Melody. She had rebraided her pigtail that morning, urged her to wear her pretty blue jumper. Off to the bus she had gone with her books and recorder. She couldn’t bear not to have some kind of instrument within reach.
    She was sure that Carson was somehow watching her get out of the car. Who knew what kind of electronic gadgetry had been mounted to assure him that she was alone? No, there were no concealed SWAT teams, rooftop snipers, rangers, rompers, or rovers to cramp his style. Should even one exist, he would kill Melody.
    Because now he knew she wasn’t his daughter. Rather than driving him away, that information had only given him a weapon against her.
    In the elevator she found her attention flying away from Melody and centering on herself and Carson. Worse than simply being her personal devil, he could peer unimpeded into the worst side of her humanity. He had gathered the fuel for the fire of his four months of increasing torment nowhere else but in the forest of her character. In resisting him she had been forced to change that character for the better. Only now, as she pressed the seventh-floor button, did she understand that the impurities removed from her personality now lodged in his.
    She understood she was coming here not only to recover her daughter and her soul. She came to destroy forever the shadowed side of both her heart and her past.
    She checked the pistol in her big purse, nudged it butt up, hid it under a swirl of silk scarf. The elevator car rose swiftly. She got out on seven, still feeling that she was somehow being watched. She walked down the carpeted hall. She glanced at the room numbers. Raising her eyes, she counted to 724 in the distance. Along the hallway she went. A cold draft blew through her chest. She found it hard to draw breath. Her knees trembled with each stride.
    She stood before