Ellen hit a button on the desk and spoke into the intercom. "Dr. Vee, could you please come to your office immediately. It's an emergency. There's someone here who--" "You're damned right it's an emergency," the woman barked at her. "Hadn't you better give me the gun?" Debra asked, holding out her hand and stepping toward her. The woman turned and trained the pistol on her. "Just back off, sister. And keep out of this. I know you work for him but you're just a flunky." "Then could you at least keep your voice down," Debra Connolly said, her composure hard as ice. The jab had bounced right off. Underneath the beauty pageant exterior she was all steel and sinew. "There are patients upstairs...." The hapless security man who'd been trailing behind the woman had gone over to the positive-pressure door of the laboratory and was desperately banging on the glass and waving for Dr. Van de Vliet. A moment later, he strode out, still wearing his white lab jacket. "You," the woman hissed, turning to meet him. "You're the one who has her. You and that bastard Bartlett." "Madam, I must ask you to leave," he said warily as he came up to her. "Immediately." He glanced down at the pistol. "Otherwise I'll have to call the police." Although he was giving the impression that the woman was just an anonymous annoyance, Ally was sure she caught a glimmer of recognition, and a patina of poorly disguised panic, in his eyes. "I want to see Kristen, damn you. I want to know what you've done with her. To her. You and that bastard Winston Bartlett who got her into--" "Kristen?" He seemed puzzled. Then he appeared to remember. "There was a patient here briefly a while back, who I believe was named--" "Kristen Starr. That's right, you fucker. And you damned well do remember her. And me. She's my daughter. Where is she?" My God, Ally thought, could she mean that Kristen Starr, the one who had an interview show on cable. The world around this institute just keeps getting smaller. Ally had actually done an interior-design project for Kristen Starr back when she was first getting up to speed at CitiSpace. It was one of her first jobs. At that time Kristen had just signed a two-year contract with E! and she wanted to renovate her co-op in Chelsea. But then just as the job was completed, she sold the place and moved to a brownstone in the West Village, or so she'd said. Ally didn't know why she had done it or where precisely she had moved to, but she got the impression some very rich new sugar daddy was setting her up and he wanted the privacy of a town house. Could it be that Kristen was the mysterious missing patient Stone was trying to locate and interview? Ally hadn't seen her on TV for a while, so maybe she had moved on to other things. "I really don't know where she is now," Van de Vliet said. "She became emotionally unstable in the middle of her treatment. It's a rarity but it has happened. She checked out. After that, I don't--"