By then, Jacob's good humor was a thing of the past. Right after the bombing, Connor MacLeod disappeared. For the first time in three hundred years, Jacob lost track of him. And that was when everything began spinning out of control. The police didn't mount much of a search. They soon decided MacLeod wasn't a suspect in the murder, and there was no evidence he himself had met with foul play. Then Jacob made a big mistake. He probably could have discovered the truth long before he did if he'd used old-fashioned methods. But he decided his best bet was to hack into the Watchers' computer files. There he learned that MacLeod's Watcher, a woman named Dana Brook, had told her superiors she didn't know what had become of him. She and other members of the organization were discussing three ideas. One was that a depressed MacLeod had picked a fight with some unknown Immortal, let down his guard, and allowed his foe to take his head. Another, that he'd persuaded Duncan to take it. But the argument against both those theories was that the other Immortal's Watcher-- assuming he had one, and Duncan certainly did--should have seen and reported it. The third possibility was that he'd gone into seclusion, perhaps in a monastery. That was what Jacob wanted to believe--that his victim was still alive. Duncan took over payment of property taxes on the ruined antique shop, suggesting he too was at least clinging to hope. But his Watcher wasn't aware of any contact between the MacLeods. Even knowing for sure Connor was alive would have been small consolation for Jacob. If he was in a monastery, it could be any one of thousands...*and there was no way to hurt him*. In a cloister, he wouldn't even hear of an enemy's killing Duncan. Jacob could only seethe in impotent fury. His moods grew darker. And we saw him become more and more unbalanced during his decade-long search for Connor MacLeod. *** We spent those years spying on Duncan--mostly just tapping his phone, and hacking into both his e-mail and his Watcher's Chronicle--and investigating the backgrounds of monks. Thousands of individual monks. That chore could drive anyone nuts...and our leader had been none too stable to begin with. He made me nervous when he started talking about a way to get around the holy ground prohibition. If he identified the monastery, he said, he'd hire a mortal to set it afire--forcing the monks to flee. He didn't spell out what he'd do after that. I found myself hoping he never would identify it. By October 2002, Jacob was at the snapping point. That was when he did what he should--from his point of view--have done in the first place. He snatched Dana Brook and used truth serum on her. The results were startling. It turned out Brook's online chats with her bosses about MacLeod's mysterious disappearance had been bull--on her side. She'd known where he was all along. Connor MacLeod had been one of the handful of Immortals who knew about the Watchers. Jacob didn't ask how he'd learned about them, or when. What mattered was that in '92, he knew about the organization and was acquainted with Dana Brook. She spoke to him after Rachel's death, and he said he was going into a monastery. He meant to let Duncan leave New York without telling him anything, then send a letter to his Seacouver address, explaining his plans and asking Duncan to leave him in peace. But an hour later, Brook received a phone call from a man named Matthew Hale. After going through some rigmarole to convince her he was a high-ranking Watcher, Hale inquired how MacLeod was coping with his daughter's death. When she told him, he told *her* about the top-secret Sanctuary--and urged her to recruit MacLeod. Brook didn't like the idea, but Hale made it clear she had no choice. Even knowing the potency of the truth serum, Jacob and the rest of us found the story hard to believe. Brook said the Sanctuary had existed for a thousand years-- been moved from France, during World War II, to a site near New York. A former Capuchin monastery, though the "monks" there now were really an elite corps of Watchers. The few Immortals who'd gone into it were guaranteed safety on holy ground. And more than that, in an underground bunker--which meant that no one but the Watchers could be routed by fire. The Immortals were lovingly cared for, but kept drugged and restrained. The idea was that if the Gathering was a real possibility, and posed a threat to mortals, no Immortal would ever become the last survivor and win the Prize. Volunteering to be a captive zombie seemed like the stuff of nightmares. Staying alive had always been my top priority, but what kind of life was *that?* Still, Connor MacLeod had jumped at the chance. On reflection, I thought I understood why. Since he didn't know Jacob was alive, he must have despaired of ever identifying his enemy. With Rachel gone, Duncan was the one person left that he cared for--and the best way to protect him was to go into hiding, in this most secure of retreats. Safer even than a monastery, because so few people knew of its existence. If he had chosen instead to die, an enemy who'd learned beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was dead might have turned on Duncan out of sheer frustration. Besides, by going into the Sanctuary, Connor could tell himself he was making a sacrifice for a noble ideal. So he did it, but mailed his original letter to Duncan. He told Duncan he was going into a monastery headed by an Immortal they both knew, a Brother Paul. Duncan didn't worry about him until almost two years later-- when he spoke to Paul and learned Connor had made an inquiry, but never followed up on it. By then Duncan had become friendly with his own Watcher, Joe Dawson. He asked Dawson if the Watchers had any information on Connor, and Dawson told him-- truthfully--that to the best of his knowledge, they didn't. Brook said Duncan was still in the dark, but not unduly alarmed. According to Dawson, he thought Connor had deliberately thrown him off the track by mentioning one monastery, then gone into another. After we learned all that, I was sure Jacob would kill Dana Brook. He surprised me--released her unharmed. Then he explained that her disappearance would have aroused suspicion. As it was, we were in no danger. No Watcher would dare tell her superiors she'd been kidnapped and had revealed secrets. *** Jacob was calmer than I'd expected. That made me uneasy. Connor MacLeod had thwarted him...hadn't he? He was safe on holy ground, with no possibility of his hearing about anything Jacob did. If he'd been in a monastery, he might eventually have left--probably sooner rather than later, because a man with no real vocation would have been bored out of his skull. But there was no chance of his leaving the Sanctuary. Whether the Watchers would have held him against his will was a moot point; Immortals there couldn't change their minds, because they were never fully conscious. Jin began trying to convince Jacob *he* had actually won. Driven MacLeod to condemn himself to a living death. But Jacob wasn't listening. When Jin had been talking for ten minutes, he cut in and said simply, "We're going to raid the Sanctuary."