The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books by Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins Page B

one of them, and so is Steve. Call us.
    No word whether she had been able to reach Buck’s widowed father or married brother. Buck wondered if that was on purpose or if she simply had no news yet. His niece and nephew had to be gone if it was true that no children had survived. Buck gave up trying to reach the office directly but finally connected with his on-line service. He uploaded his files and a few hastily batted out messages of his whereabouts. That way, by the time the telephone system once again took on some semblance of normalcy, Global Weekly would have already gotten a head start on his stuff.
    He hung up and disconnected to the grateful look of the next in line, then went looking for that doctor. No luck. Marge had referred to the innocents. The doctor assumed it was the Rapture. Steve had pooh-poohed space aliens. But how could you rule out anything at this point? His mind was already whirring with ideas for the story behind the disappearances. Talk about the assignment of a lifetime!
    Buck got in line at the service desk, knowing his odds of getting to New York by conventional means were slim. While he waited he tried to remember what it was Chaim Rosenzweig, the Newsmaker of the Year, had told him about the young Nicolae Carpathia of Romania. Buck had told only Steve Plank about it, and Steve agreed it wasn’t worth putting in the already tight story. Rosenzweig had been impressed with Carpathia, that was true. But why?
    Buck sat on the floor in line and moved when he had to. He called up his archived files on the Rosenzweig interview and did a word search on Carpathia. He recalled having been embarrassed to admit to Rosenzweig that he had never heard of the man. As the interview transcripts scrolled past, he hit the pause button and read. When he noticed his low battery light flashing, he fished an extension cord out of his bag and plugged the computer into a socket along the wall. “Watch the cord,” he called out occasionally as people passed. One of the women behind the counter hollered at him that he’d have to unplug.
    He smiled at her. “And if I don’t, are you going to have me thrown out? Arrested? Cut me some slack today, of all days!” Hardly anyone took note of the crazy man on the floor yelling at the counter woman. Such rarely happened in the Pan-Con Club, but nothing surprised anyone today.

    Rayford Steele disembarked on the helipad at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, where the pilots had to get off and make room so a patient could be flown to Milwaukee. The other pilots hung around the entrance, hoping to share a cab, but Rayford had a better idea. He began walking.
    He was about five miles from home, and he was betting he could hitch a ride easier than finding a cab. He hoped his captain’s uniform and his clean-cut appearance would set someone’s mind at ease about giving him a ride.
    As he trudged along, his trenchcoat over his arm and his bag in his hand, he had an empty, despairing feeling. By now Hattie would be getting to her condo, checking her messages, trying to get calls through to her family. If he was right that Irene and Ray Jr. were gone, where would they have been when it happened? Would he find evidence that they had disappeared rather than being killed in some related accident?
    Rayford calculated that the disappearances would have taken place late evening, perhaps around 11 p.m. central time. Would anything have taken them away from home at that hour? He couldn’t imagine what, and he doubted it.
    A woman of about forty stopped for Rayford on Algonquin Road. When he thanked her and told her where he lived, she said she knew the area. “A friend of mine lives there. Well, lived there. Li Ng, the Asian girl on Channel 7 news?”
    “I know her and her husband,” Rayford said. “They still live on our street.”
    “Not anymore. They dedicated the noon newscast to her today. The whole family is gone.”
    Rayford exhaled loudly. “This is