Special Agent Regan saw something during her trip from Kennedy out to the northern shore of Long Island that people saw all too often these days. Moving vans predominated in the light traffic, even this late at night. As she drove through Queens, and even when she reached the more opulent areas of Long Island after exiting the expressway, she saw many homes with vans out front or, worse yet, furniture, appliances, and other stuff planted on the lawn or in the driveways with For Sale and Foreclosure signs prominently displayed on the lawns. It all looked so eerie in the moonlight.

When she arrived at the Knight estate at about midnight, Regan followed the butler into the living room where he invited her to sit. She nodded her thanks but didn't sit down. While the butler went off to announce her, she made a quick examination of the room. It screamed of wealth...no surprise, given the occupants of this huge house. The doorbell rang, and the butler answered it. What a very, active house for so late in the evening!

Multiple footsteps came down the stairs, and the butler said, “This package just arrived for Ms. Kohn, sir.”

“Thank you Charles; just deliver it upstairs,” a male voice replied, and footsteps went back up the stairs.

After a moment, a man followed by a woman came into the room and said, “I am Justin Knight. Let me introduce to you my daughter's tutor, Ms. Elizabeth Kohn.”

“Call me Lizzie,” the woman interjected.

“Special Agent Catherine Regan,” Regan said, showing them a photo ID. They shook hands with Regan, and the three sat down to talk.

Justin said, “I assume they briefed you about the case. You people knew about it even before I reported the crime.”

“Yes,” Regan replied, “but please tell me the story yourself.”

About five minutes later, Justin finished telling the story, although he omitted some of his discussions with Lizzie as they agreed earlier he should do. Regan sensed the incompleteness of the story, but she nodded her head at all the right places. She turned to Lizzie when he finished. “And where do you come into all this?”

“Well, as Mr. Knight said, he knocked on my door when he asked me whether I'd seen his daughter. I told him I saw her in her room about 20 minutes earlier.”

Despite her relative youth compared to other agents, too many years on the job told Regan she had heard an incomplete report. No matter. It would come out sooner or later. It always did. It just required patience and a little sympathy.

“Regarding the video that this Mr. Porter came to see you about: may I see it?” Regan inquired.

Regan noticed Justin hesitate. He glanced at Lizzie, as if seeking reassurance from her. She glanced right back at him. Are they lovers? Are they involved in taking the video together? Regan bet herself that something like that happened.

When neither showed any inclination to answer her question, she decided on a subtler approach.

“You know, my father used to be a banker like you. Perhaps you knew him? Paul Regan?”

Justin's reaction exceeded her wildest hopes.

“You are Paul Regan's daughter?”

“So you did know him?” she asked calmly.

“Oh yes, I met him. I cannot tell you how sorry I was to hear of his death. You must have been very proud of him.”

Regan's face darkened, which confused Justin. Still, she affected a light, professional air. “How well did you know him?” she asked politely, masking her emotions.

Justin hesitated a long minute, studying his hands. Finally, he looked up and replied with determination, “Well enough to know that he did not commit suicide.”

Lizzie snapped her full attention to him.

“That was what the official report said,” Regan pointed out, struggling to maintain her composure. This wasn't going the way she wanted it too.

“Of course, I do not know for sure,” he prevaricated.

Both women stared at him and exchanged quizzical glances. Regan practically saw the wheels turning inside the other woman's head.

“Tell us what you think,” Lizzie suggested, staring at Justin. Regan stiffly nodded her approval.

Justin got up and started to pace the room. His hands stayed in his pockets, and he stared at the floor as he paced. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself. Then he started to talk while staring out the window.

“Three months ago, I met your father for the first and only time, two days before they reported him missing. He came to me with a most unusual story. He did not know where to start, so I tried to put him at his ease by asking him some polite questions about his bank.

“I suppose most people thought of us as competitors and adversaries. Actually, his Western American Bank operated mostly on the West Coast and in the Midwest, while my bank engaged in international finance and East Coast operations. Our banks might occasionally go head to head, but for the most part they did not. At my inquiries, he replied that his bank was in trouble, but not because of bad investments. He said that a top regulator from the Federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency contacted and informed him that they planned to declare his bank insolvent and that he would hear from the FDIC shortly. When your father demanded to know their grounds for the ruling, they refused to give a clear answer. He told them his bank maintained all regulatory and reserve requirements meticulously, and his bank's current default rate still ranked among the lowest. The regulator who called him disagreed. Their audits, he claimed, showed that your father cooked the books. They planned to close down the bank and arrest him for conspiracy to commit fraud.”

He paused to check Regan's face, but it remained stoic.

“I thought it especially interesting to learn later that some other banks with greater default rates avoided takeover by the regulators while your father's bank did not,” he said, watching Regan. She still didn't react.

“Your father went on to assure me that the charges against him were completely fabricated. I believed him. He did not act like a guilty man at all. He acted like a very confused man who had no idea why his bank was under attack from the government or why they were telling him their plans in advance. He wanted to know if I ever had heard of such a thing before.”

Regan finally spoke up: “And had you?”

Justin shook his head. “The whole story seemed most irregular. The regulators handled the case in a highly unusual manner. When a regulator plans to shut your bank down imminently, you get no warning before he shows up at your door with a team of sheriffs, accountants, lawyers, and staff in tow. The only advance notice you get from the regulators comes when the bank's rating gets lowered, and the bank receives a cease-and-desist order. That comes weeks or months in advance, never just days before.

“I offered to help if I could. He thanked me and said I already had. He said it with conviction and determination. Then he left my office, and I never saw him again.”

“That's all?”

Justin nodded. “Two days later, when I heard him reported missing and his yacht found abandoned at sea, I immediately suspected foul play. Later, when they declared him dead, I knew. You see, everything about the man told me that suicide never occurred to him. No, I would bet good money that Paul Regan did not drown himself in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

Regan stared at Justin for a moment. “I couldn't help but notice that your bank didn't hesitate to jump on the carcass when they bought what was left of my father's bank at a bargain basement price.”

Justin stared at the floor, troubled. “Yes, the price offered by the regulators was too good to pass up.”

Regan sat down smoothing her clothes.

“Actually, I have long doubted the official report regarding my father's death. So what you say does not surprise me.”

Her comment surprised both Lizzie and Justin. Lizzie in particular displayed new interest. “What do you think happened to your father?”

“Actually, I was hoping Mr. Knight could answer that.”

“Why do I suspect your father's disappearance has something to do with the reason they assigned you to this case?” Lizzie asked.

“Perhaps, but first we must get that video back. Before we go any further, I must ask that you turn the video over to me.”

Justin's eyes checked Lizzie's before he answered, “I do not think we can do that. The video is our ticket to getting my daughter back in one piece.”

Regan smiled. “Then I must insist that you accompany me to our local field office in Melville, where we can discuss this further.”

Justin started to object, saying, “Now see here...” but Lizzie interrupted.

“Special Agent Regan, you must realize the danger to Mr. Knight's daughter, quite possibly life-threatening danger. We need to focus on getting her back ahead of all other priorities. We cannot afford to waste time on this other matter until she is safely back in her father's arms.”

“I understand completely, but I can confidently say that we can cover what needs to be covered at the office much more quickly and completely than we can here. I plan to put the bureau's resources to work locating your daughter, Mr. Knight.”

“You would do that?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Knight,” Regan replied with a slight smile. “While getting back the video tops our priority list, we frown on kidnapping and will make every effort to help you get your daughter back.”

“We want to start getting her back tonight,” Lizzie clarified. “We don't want to wait.”

“Then let's go,” Regan replied. “The sooner we go to the field office and record statements from the two of you, the sooner we can get to work finding your daughter. Shall we go?”

Justin shrugged at Lizzie, who turned back to Regan and said, “Just let me get my bag upstairs. Mr. Knight, would you please come upstairs, too? We need to have a private word before we leave. If you'll excuse us for a moment, Agent Regan?”

Lizzie walked upstairs with Justin following her. They went to her room, and she picked up the package that Charles had placed on her couch. Opening it, she pulled out the contents and handed the vest to Justin.

“Please put it on,” she said, “then call your attorney and fill him in.”

Justin grunted affirmatively and carried the item down the hall to his own room. Meanwhile, Lizzie grabbed the video disk and typed a quick message to Michaela on her laptop:

“We're meeting with the FBI right now. Don't worry about any delay. Your father loves you, and we are working hard to find you. We will be there soon, so hang tight. Don't panic if you don't hear from us right away. Just stay calm. We're coming once we get the cavalry on our side!”

Then she sent the message, put her laptop to sleep, slipped it into her carry-all bag with the video disk, and carried it downstairs. Justin arrived a moment later.

“Let's get going,” Regan said.

The sparse traffic to Melville moved quickly at this late hour. A short time later, they walked into a nondescript but well-lit building. Regan let them in with her pass card and moved them quickly past a deserted security desk. She took them into a small room with lounge chairs and a table. A computer sat on another, smaller table in the corner. She went over to it, slid her pass card in the slot, typed some stuff, and came back to the center of the room, gesturing to the chairs in an invitation to sit down.

“This is a secure room, and I turned off all recording features. We will make no record of this conversation. We can speak candidly here,” Regan said.

“First things first,” she continued. “Now that we are in a secure location, I need to tell you both something. The FBI must retain a close working relationship with your bank, so we made an extraordinary concession to them. We promised them not to try to discover the contents of the video. The President of the United States granted this concession to your bank, anxious to accommodate them. The President therefore ordered the Director of the FBI to conduct our investigation with this restriction in place,” she said very seriously.

“However, we also have another priority. I hope I can trust you with knowledge of the nature of that priority. You must agree never to divulge it to anyone, particularly Mr. Knight's uncle or other bank employees. Do you agree?” Regan asked both of them.

Lizzie nodded her head immediately. Justin hesitated, but nodded his assent.

“Good!” Regan said. She paused. “Your bank's security department became an intelligence agency of its own. While crudely organized, your bank funded Roone's department very well. The people he recruited to work with him barely qualify a rung or two above common thugs, but we expect the quality of their hires will improve over time. Eventually, they'll start to attract more professional, higher skilled operatives. Even in its nascent, crude state, the FBI now takes them seriously, due to the money power behind them.

“They have become a threat to our territory,” she continued, “and I don't mean just your bank. Each of the top banks and some of the largest corporations in this country have similarly large intelligence gathering outfits. They often undermine the FBI's authority within the government. So, we engage in various kinds of secret counterespionage as a counterweight.”

It irritated Justin to learn that his daughter's welfare hung on an FBI turf war, but he wanted Regan's help, so he didn't say anything.

“Okay,” she said, “first I need you to describe to me what that video contains.”

Justin hesitated. Lizzie spoke up first.

“Why do you need to know the contents of the video?”

“Because I need to know why the bank took the extraordinary step of kidnapping a young girl in order to get their hands on it.”

Lizzie pressed her lips together for a moment. “We think we know Michaela's approximate location.”

Reagan's eyes widened. “How do you know that?”

“Because she contacted us. She’s waiting for us to come rescue her. Special Agent Regan, we must get this over with quickly so we can find her and bring her home safely.”

“If you help me collect my daughter, I will answer all of your questions about the video,” promised Justin. “But first I need my daughter back.”

Regan thought quickly. “For now, I only need to know what the video said. Tell me that, and we can go get your daughter. I can hold off my other questions until later.”

Lizzie checked with Justin. He hesitated but relented with a nod of his head. Lizzie took out her bag, opened it, and pulled the small disk out of one of the pockets. She also took out her laptop, slid the disk into the player, and typed something into the laptop. Within a minute or so, the video started to play. Lizzie turned the laptop toward Regan so she could watch it.

A short while later, Regan sat back in her chair digesting what she saw. Now she knew why the bank wanted the video back. She also knew why the bank didn't want the FBI to know what it contained. It portrayed potentially explosive revelations. It also undermined the bank's official position that Justin Knight and his daughter threatened national security. Yes, public revelation would undermine that position significantly.

“That recording didn't come from the bank's video cameras. Who recorded it?” she asked Justin.

Lizzie replied instead, “Someone hid the camera in a corsage worn by David Knight's secretary without her knowledge. She didn't know that she recorded the video. I can't tell you more.”

Meaning that she refuses to tell me more, and likely with good reason.

After another moment of reflection, she sat forward. “Okay, I know what I needed to know. Where do you think your daughter is?”

They told her the story about how Michaela got in touch with Lizzie.

As they described the part where Michaela made the talkscape connection, Regan interrupted. “Can you reestablish contact with her?”

Lizzie replied, “Yes, but I need an Internet connection.”

Regan got up and went over to the corner computer.

She typed in a couple of commands. “Go ahead, you should be able to log onto the Internet now.”

A few moments later, Lizzie found that she had a good Internet connection. She initiated a talkscape call to Michaela. Shortly thereafter, they heard Michaela's frantic voice.

“Dad? Lizzie? Where are you? I was afraid you weren't going to call me back!”

“Good girl, Michaela. You found a microphone,” said Lizzie.

Her father added, “Sorry about the delay sweetheart. We've got a new friend helping us. Say 'hello' to Special Agent Regan of the FBI.”

“Oh!” Michaela gasped. “Hello Special Agent Regan!”

Regan smiled, “You can just call me Cathy, Michaela. It's nice to meet you. We want to come get you now. If I send you a small program as an attachment, can you install it? It will help us find you.”

“I think so,” Michaela said.

“Good girl,” said Regan. She walked quickly over to the computer in the corner, opened a drawer, and pulled out a CD. She walked back to their table and said to Lizzie, “May I?”

Lizzie hesitated, but gave her permission with a wave of her hand. Regan turned the laptop toward herself, opened the disk player, pulled out the video disk, put it in her pocket, and slipped in her other disk. Lizzie and Justin watched her do it but said nothing, although they did exchange glances. Once the second disk spun up, she attached a small file to the chat screen.

“Michaela, you should be able to download the attachment. Do it now.”

“Okay,” said Michaela. They waited a few moments, and heard Michaela report, “Okay, I installed it. What do I do now?”

“Hang on,” said Regan, and she went back to the computer in the corner.

She quickly ran a program, and within seconds she said, “Got her! She's in a building on Nassau. I found the address. I need to arrange a team. I'll be right back.” With that, she walked out of the room.

Lizzie turned the laptop and spoke into its microphone, “Michaela, Cathy went to get some people to help us. I need to disconnect for a moment, but we'll call you back in just a minute or two, okay?”

“I'm scared!” said Michaela.

“We are coming, sweetheart,” her father assured her, and Lizzie saw the blood rushing to his face. “We will be there soon. Just hang on.”

“Okay,” Michaela sounded more like a frightened eight-year-old than a 14-year-old.

Lizzie quickly ended the talkscape call, then opened another program and typed a command into it. Within a minute, she connected a different kind of call. She typed a couple of messages and disconnected.

As she quickly worked to reestablish contact with Michaela, she said to Justin, “That's for backup.” Within a moment, he chatted with his daughter again, assuring her that they would come soon.

Regan soon came back into the room.

“All set. We can go.”

“We can come with you?” Justin reacted with surprise. “I would have thought that you would try to keep us away from the scene.”

“Normally I would, but this is an extraordinary situation. We need to act quickly, and having you nearby might prove helpful. I'll send the team in to extract her, but you'll stay with me. Now let's move!”

They got onto the highway again at 2:00 a.m., and Regan tried to engage Justin in conversation. He felt too excited to talk much, so she decided to focus on Lizzie instead.

“You know, it surprises me how well informed you are about all this, Ms. Kohn,” Regan began. “You seem more than a mere tutor.”

“Well, I suppose you could say that I'm something of a monetary policy and banking expert. I planned to become an instructor of economics at Fenwick University when the position of tutor to Mr. Knight's daughter became available. After spending a lot of years getting my degrees, I needed a break from academia. Tutoring a lone teenage girl and living on an estate sounded like a nice, easy job at the time.”

“Got a bit more than you bargained for?”

Lizzie laughed.

“Well, yes and no. As Mr. Knight knows, I took the job in part because of his role in the banking industry. I wanted the opportunity to interact with someone on the inside, as sort of an anecdotal way to test some of my ideas about money and banking. Most economists, by the way, consider my ideas to be radical at best.”

“How so?”

“Well, I take the position that much of modern banking derives from legalized behavior which we might otherwise consider fraudulent.”

“Yes, I can see how that idea might ruffle a few feathers,” Regan laughed.

“You don't know the half of it! I must admit it surprised me a bit when Mr. Knight hired me. He knew about my theories, of course,” Lizzie said with a smile.

“So why did you hire her, Mr. Knight?” Regan also smiled.

He answered with a straight face. “Ms. Kohn has not mentioned her academic background. A Harvard undergraduate degree, a master's degree from MIT, and a PhD in Economics from Columbia made her overqualified for the job from most people's point of view. I wanted someone who could really challenge my daughter intellectually, so her qualifications attracted me. Ms. Kohn has proven to be an able catalyst for Michaela.”

“I can imagine,” said Regan. “What kind of challenges do you give her?”

“Well, I challenge her with issues like this: we all know that banks make money by lending out deposits and collecting interest on the loans. So why is it morally okay for the banks to lend out that money in the first place?”

“Well, what's wrong with it?” Regan replied, astonished.

Lizzie answered her. “That money originally came from a deposit by its owner in the bank for safekeeping. Deposits into checking and savings accounts, sometimes known as 'demand deposits', promise that the funds can be withdrawn on demand. Yet banks will often lend the money out for many years at a time, as a mortgage, for example. Once they loan it out, it can become impossible, under certain circumstances, for the bank to meet its obligations to its depositors.”

“But isn't that why banks keep some money on reserve, to provide instant cash if depositors demand their money back?”

“Yes, but many times historically even the reserves couldn't cover depositor demands. The worst problems occurred during the 19th and early 20^th centuries up until the Great Depression, when bank runs and failures happened frequently,” Lizzie explained.

“Didn't they create the Federal Reserve System to prevent bank failures?” asked Regan.

“Yes, but before we discuss that, I want to go back to my original question. Why is it okay for a bank to loan out depositor money over the long term in mortgages, car loans, business loans, etc. while simultaneously promising depositors that they can have their money back at any time, on demand? If you or I tried to do that, we would call it fraud. Why isn't it fraud when a bank does it?” Lizzie asked.

Regan thought it a very good question. It surprised her because she never really thought about it this way before.

“Interesting point,” she said. “You discuss this sort of thing with a 14-year-old girl?”

“No,” said Lizzie. “Only the simplified version.”

“I might understand the simplified explanation.”

“Okay. If a bank lends from its own assets, we could understand, but lending other people's money regardless of what those people think about that lending surely stretches morality–at the very least.”

Regan mused, “You don't have to keep your money in that bank, though. You could always take it out and deposit it somewhere else.”

“True, but where could you find a bank that doesn't lend out your money at all? If you don't want any bank to make money off your money, where can you deposit it? No bank in existence anymore will take such a deposit.”

“You could open a safe deposit box,” Regan pointed out.

“Yes, but that would prevent you from writing a check against it or using a debit card to withdraw it. You can only use modern banking tools for buying and selling goods and services if you put your money in an institution that lends your money out to someone else. I know that legally such behavior isn't considered fraud. I want to know morally why it isn't fraud, particularly since none of us have any choice about the nature of the banks that handle our financial tools.”

“That's certainly an interesting question, but isn't it really academic in this day and age? I mean, why get all worked up about nothing?”

“But that's just the point,” Lizzie explained. “It's not academic any longer, and it's not 'nothing' anymore. These days the mortgage crisis dominates the news. Everyone knows that our financial system teeters on the edge of disaster, and no one really knows how to iron it out. The practice I described helped cause the crisis. Surely, no better time exists to bring up questions like the ones I'm asking.”

“But I thought the current crisis came about because of foolish lending and borrowing practices?”

“Yes, all of that certainly happened, but those are only symptoms. The root cause lies elsewhere. The crisis stems from a foolish and dangerous monetary system.

“Have you ever asked yourself where the banks get all the money they lend out?” Lizzie quizzed her. Central banks create new money with the stroke of a pen. It's literally nothing more than an entry in their bookkeeping. Once they've created it out of thin air, they loan it out, usually to the government first.”

“What does creating new money have to do with what caused the crisis?”

“Actually, you just raised my next point. Money supposedly serves as a stable medium of exchange, a storehouse of value, but when the money supply increases, prices tend to rise, and money's buying power decreases. Another way of saying the same thing: inflation makes money worth less. So why is it not fraudulent to create money out of thin air, as the Fed does? After all, creating new money sucks some of the value out of the existing money.

“Here's my overall point,” Lizzie summarized. “I've raised some questions about the morality of certain very common banking and monetary practices. We can reasonably assume that our current financial crisis occurred primarily because no one ever asked and satisfactorily answered such questions in the past, or perhaps even deliberately ignored them. I think we should declare such behaviors fraudulent and prohibited by law.”

“But if we did that, we wouldn't have any money anymore, would we? That would pretty much destroy the economy,” Regan challenged. She wasn’t a banker’s daughter for nothing, and the conversation had stimulated her analytical powers.

“No, we could still have money...better money. Another form of money preceded the current system, based on silver and gold, and it worked very well except when the banks engaged in the immoral and fraudulent practices I describe.”

“But it wouldn't be practical to carry around gold or silver coins all the time.”

“We have no need to carry around coins. We can have debit cards and checking accounts denominated in gold or silver. We must stop the way banks take advantage of the law to make themselves rich, putting the entire economy at risk, as they have been doing for many generations now.”

Regan admitted to herself that she never considered this angle before.

Before Regan, Justin, and Lizzie arrived, Special Agent Casper led Regan's team as they gained entry to the building with the apartment holding Michaela prisoner. The guard at the desk called the building manager, who gave him authorization to let the FBI team in the building. Casper asked to speak with him.

“Who is this?” he asked after taking the phone from the guard.

“Bill Stevens here,” the voice said.

“Mr. Stevens, this is Special Agent Ron Casper of the FBI. We have reason to believe that a minor is being held against her will in one of your apartments. Do you have a master key to the apartments?”

“Hmm...well, it depends on which apartment she is in. We have masters for some of them, but not all. Some tenants prefer to put their own security on the doors.”

“Agent Casper, we found her,” reported one of the FBI team members. Casper turned to see Agent Wilson coming toward him. “She's on the 12^th floor, apartment 1204.”

“It's apartment 1204, Stevens,” Casper said.

“1204? Hmm! I'm not sure who has that one. I'll come over to the office to meet you. We can check our records there.”

Stevens arrived a couple minutes later and unlocked the door to the office. While he admitted them, Wilson and Casper discussed options.

“We found an optical panel next to the door,” Wilson said.

“Is that a standard feature of the apartments, Mr. Stevens?” Casper asked him.

“No,” Stevens answered. “As I explained, we permit our tenants to add their own security measures to the doors. Let me take a look at the records. Hmm...1204...ah, here we go.” He pulled up a record via computer search.

“Who is the tenant?” Casper asked him.

“The name on the lease is John Smith. It's a cash lease. The customer paid the full year's rent plus deposit in advance by cash, so I don't have much information about him. After all, a cash customer...” he added without elaborating.

“Who is on the door?” Casper asked Wilson.

“Franklin, Grant, and Meyerson,” Wilson told him.

“Can they get past the optical lock?”

Wilson pulled out his cell and walkie-talkied the team members outside the apartment.

“What's your status? Can you get in?”

He listened to the answer then relayed it to Casper.

“They can't get in. The manufacturer is not listed on the panel, but they think it might be a Secureport system.”

Meanwhile, a man dressed all in black and wearing a mask gained entrance to a second floor apartment in a small building at the other end of the block. He carried a black backpack. After jimmying the lock on the apartment door, he quietly but swiftly moved inside, peeking around the door into the hall to make sure no one saw him. He taped the lock and latch on the door open and gently pulled the door to a closed position.

Verifying the apartment's emptiness as he went, he moved quickly into the room that overlooked the street. The flashing colors from the police line down the block filled the room with stroboscopic effects like a discotheque.

He removed the backpack and opened it carefully, pulling out pieces of a very peculiar device. The five pieces snapped and locked together in roughly 12 seconds. When assembled, he held a strange rifle with a telescopic eyepiece and a small magazine of cartridges. He noticed with approval its surprising lightness and balance as he opened the window and took up position.

The gunman adjusted the scope for infrared and peered through it at the police line. The viewer showed unusual colors in a very clear and brightly lit scene. Now he just had to wait.

Michaela heard a noise outside the door. Who could that be? Her fear began to mount. Suddenly, someone pounded on the door.

“Is anyone in there?” she heard a voice shout, a female voice with a strong New York accent.

Frozen with fear, Michaela couldn't think what to do. The unknown person pounded again and shouted, “Open the door. This is the FBI!”

Wide-eyed, Michaela hesitated before she ran to the door. “I'm in here, but I can't get out!”

“Are you Michaela Knight?”

“Y-yes.”

“She's here, guys,” she heard the voice say, somewhat muffled. Michaela heard running footsteps and two male voices talking over each other at the same time.

After a pause, the female voice said, “Hang on, Michaela. We'll find a way to get in and get you out of there.”

Michaela breathed again, this time with relief. Someone came to help her...a few someones, by the sound of it. “Is my father out there?” she called.

“Not yet,” the female voice replied. “He and your tutor will arrive soon, though.”

Now Michaela laughed with joy. The living nightmare would finally end.

Outside the door, one of the agents, an electronic security expert, began to work on the optical system blocking access to Michaela's comfortable prison. He brought a toolkit with him, and he tried a number of tricks to fool the system into letting them in. None of them worked.

“It's a pretty sophisticated system,” he told his colleagues. “This might take awhile.”

Michaela didn't like the sound of that.

“Why haven't you gotten me out yet?”

“We're working on it,” the female voice said. “Can you sit down and be patient while we figure this out?”

“I'm always asked to be patient!” Michaela muttered under her breath.

“What was that?” the voice asked her. “I couldn't hear what you said.”

“Nothing,” Michaela answered. “What's your name?”

“Oh, I'm sorry, Michaela. My name is Special Agent Theresa Meyerson. You can call me Terry.”

“You're an FBI agent?” Michaela asked, wanting confirmation.

“Yes, I am. Here, I'll hold my badge up to the peephole in the door, so you can see it.”

Michaela crept up to the door and looked through the small hole with one eye. Sure enough, someone held a magnified ID card up to the door. She could see the letters, “FBI” really big, and she saw a picture of the agent. She saw a woman about Lizzie's age, but with red hair. Terry looks nice enough, Michaela supposed, although I really have no idea what a nice FBI agent looks like.

“Okay, I see it,” Michaela said. “When are you going to open the door?”

“We're working on it, dear,” Terry said. “Just be patient. Ummm...do you have a favorite movie?”

“High School Musical,” Michaela answered without hesitating. “I have a signed picture of Zac Efron on my bedroom wall. He signed it himself when my Dad took me to a public appearance he made last summer. He's such a hunk!”

“You met Zac Efron!? Well, that must have been exciting!” Terry exclaimed.

“Oh yeah,” Michaela said matter-of-factly. “We always get great tickets anytime we go to see a show. My father helped finance the Broadway production, so we got backstage passes there, too.”

“You're lucky,” Terry replied. “I've never had backstage passes to anything.”

While she kept Michaela talking, her colleagues continued to work on the door. A call to the optical scanner's manufacturer yielded no useful clues, although the manufacturer's rep did confirm that the security system contained no built-in booby traps. Finally, Meyerson decided to call Regan.

Regan's cell phone rang as she turned onto FDR Drive.

She answered it: “Regan.”

“Meyerson here, ma'am. We've found the apartment, but the lease-holder has an advanced security system on it. We haven't gained entry yet, and the system's manufacturer has not been helpful.”

“You've got her, but you can't get her out?” Regan asked for confirmation. Justin and Lizzie drew their breaths in anticipation.

“That's right.”

“Do anything you have to do. Break the door down. Cut your way in with a torch. I don't care how you do it; just get that girl out of there, stat!”

Terry relayed Regan's order to the others.

The third agent, Grant, said, “Let's try to kick it in.”

“Stand away from the door, Michaela, so we can try to break it down,” Terry called out.

“Okay,” Michaela said, moving to the other side of the living room.

She heard some heavy blows on the other side of the door. Once. Twice. Three times. The door didn't budge.

“It must be steel reinforced or something,” she heard one of the male voices say.

A moment later, she heard Terry call out, “Good! Get that thing over here! Michaela, stay away from the door. We're going to use a blowtorch to cut our way in. Stay far away so you won't get burned by accident.”

“Okay,” Michaela called back.

About ten minutes later, the team got the door open, and Michaela emerged from the apartment. With Terry to accompany her, she ran outside to greet her father when he arrived.

Some of the building's residents, roused from sleep, milled around outside the taped-off area in night clothes and light jackets, watching the proceedings and wondering what had happened. FBI agents and cops talked with people everywhere, and the block teemed with squad cars flashing their lights.

When Regan's car arrived, Justin got out and ran toward Michaela, who cried, “Dad!” and broke free from Terry's grasp, rushing into her father's waiting arms. The small crowd of onlookers cheered their approval. Lizzie and Regan got out too, and Lizzie also got a hug from Michaela, who now talked at about 300 words per minute.

“I was waiting for your next message, and then there was this noise at the door, and someone knocked and said they were from the FBI, and I said, 'I'm in here!' and they said they were going to try to get in, and then there was all this pounding, and I talked to the agent, and she said I was going to be okay, and that you were coming, and then there was more pounding, and they said they were going to cut down the door and that I should stay back, so I did, and there was this flame coming through the wall...”

Lizzie and Justin laughed and hugged Michaela and nodded their heads while the teenager kept babbling on at top speed. The relief on all their faces showed clearly, and a great weight lifted from them. Some of the people outside the police line smiled as they witnessed the happy reunion.

Down the street, the gunman now took careful aim, waiting for the signal that would tell him to fire.

A black sedan pulled up next to the police line, and two more men in blue and yellow windbreakers that said FBI on the back got out. Justin let go of Michaela and turned in the direction of the newcomers. Suddenly, a very loud bang reverberated in the street from the other end of the block, and startled people cried out as they turned toward the sound. Police and FBI agents pulled out their guns as they all scanned in the direction of the sound, and some of them started working their way toward the source in combat movements.

“DADDY!” Michaela's scream drew their attention back. Justin had flown backwards onto the pavement with a yelp of pain. The gunman silently and invisibly withdrew from the window after he pulled the trigger and disassembled the weapon. It came apart as quickly as it went together.

On the police line, someone shouted to the crowd, “Everybody down!” and people started ducking to the ground. The men in the FBI jackets grabbed Michaela and Lizzie and pulled them to the ground as they added to the chorus of cries to “Get down!”

The gunman stowed the five pieces in the backpack, sealed it, and strapped it on before the cops and agents advancing toward his building had moved halfway down the block. He ripped the tape off the lock and ran out through the apartment door, hurried a half dozen steps to the stairwell, opened that door, and slid down the hand rails to the ground floor, running out the door to a sedan waiting on the side street.

At the police line Lizzie heard someone yell, “Get them in the car.” She felt her body lifted and moved into the nearby black sedan. She also saw someone doing the same thing with Michaela, who screamed again. Someone yelled, “Get going,” and the car squealed away from the scene.

Around the corner at the other end of the block, the getaway car's door flew open for the gunman, and he dove in, pulling the door shut as the driver accelerated to the end of the block and turned right. The driver pushed a button on the dash which changed the license plates on the front and back of the car. He drove a block and turned right again. As they crossed Nassau Street, the gunman gazed out the car window and saw the flashing lights at the scene while a wail of sirens filled the night air.

While all this happened, the first of the running police officers and FBI agents arrived at the corner, too late to see anything. A police cruiser arrived a split second later and turned the corner, its inhabitants scanning in all directions as the cruiser roared down the street, trying to pick up some trace of the getaway car.

Regan noticed the black sedan leaving the police line with Michaela and Lizzie before anyone else did.

She yelled, “Where the hell are they going?” Before anyone could react, the car squealed its tires and disappeared. Regan checked her own car and saw it blocked by a squad car.

“Get that car the hell out of the way!” she yelled too late.

“Damn it! Did anyone get their plates?”

“I'm on it,” yelled a nearby police lieutenant, as he told a police officer to put out an APB. Sirens erupted all over the place now. Two EMT technicians attended to Justin. They moved him onto a gurney to be loaded into a waiting ambulance. Within minutes the ambulance left for the local hospital, with a cop assigned to go along for the ride.

“Lieutenant,” yelled Regan over all the noise, “Has anyone spotted them?”

“We've had eight sightings of black sedans in the past two minutes,” he yelled back, “but so far none of them match the plates we reported.”

“Damn it!” she yelled. “Find me that sedan!”

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