All the Rage

"Awfully small for a silencer. Will this work?"

"First off, a silencer it's not. It's a suppressor. You can't silence a pistol; you can only make it maybe less noisy. And will it work? Yes, it will work. It's a Gem-tech Aurora. It uses the latest wet technology that will knock twenty-four decibels off your shots for up to two clips. After that it won't be so good."

"I figure I'm only going to need a couple, three rounds."

"Pretty much takes care of the muzzle flash as well."

Jack shrugged. "This'll be daylight."

"And here's what you should load." Abe plunked a box of .22 LRs on the counter. "Subsonic, of course."

"Of course."

No sense in using a silencer—OK, suppressor—if the bullet was going to cause a racket along its trajectory, a teeny tiny Concorde doing Mach Two and cracking the sound barrier all the way.

Jack noticed the FMJ on the box. "Full jacket?"

"Hollows or soft-points could be deflected going through the wipes inside the suppressor."

Jack grimaced. "Don't want that. And speaking of wipes, can I borrow your gloves a minute?"

Abe reached under the counter and produced a pair of cotton gloves, originally white, now gray with grime and gun oil. Jack slipped them on.

Abe was staring at him. "Those rounds have maybe someone's name on them?"

Jack said nothing. He poured out a dozen rounds and wiped them with the gloves. Then he began loading them into the P-98's clip. He routinely and obsessively collected his spent brass, but in certain situations it simply wasn't possible. In such a case, he didn't want to leave any fingerprints behind.

"Jack," Abe said softly. "You're mad at some people, I know, and with good reason. And you've got that look in your eyes that means big tsuris for somebody, but is this the way you want to go? This isn't you."

Jack glanced up at Abe, saw the concern in his face. "Not to worry, Abe. The target is cardboard."

"Ah. Now it's all clear," Abe said. "Especially the need for a suppressor. You're going to shoot a box and you don't want to startle its fellows. That's my Jack: always considerate. And where is this cardboard?"

"Brooklyn."

The last place Jack wanted to go tonight was Brooklyn. He had a throbbing headache, his scorched skin itched and burned, and the healing scalp cut stabbed periodic zingers down to his left eye. Add to that the general lousy feeling the drug had left in its wake, and the only place he wanted to go was bed. But he needed to settle this. Tonight.

He wiped the clip and slid it into the grip; it seated with a solid click. The last item in the package was a new SOB holster. He removed the suppressor, wiped and pocketed it, wiped the pistol, then slipped it into the holster, and the holster within the waistband at the small of his back. He let the rear of the extra-large turtleneck jersey fall back over it.

"Since when do you wear turtlenecks?" Abe said.

"Since an hour ago." The long sleeves and high collar covered his burns. And he might have another use for the rolled collar. "Check this out."

He pulled—gently—a floppy khaki boonie hat down low on his head, then slipped on oversize aviator glasses.

"How do I look?"

"Like a Soldier of Fortune subscriber. But it does cover a multitude of sins."

Jack had checked himself out at home. The getup hid his stitches and his black eyes. Didn't know if a police sketch of him was making the rounds after this morning's escapades or if the cops had issued a BOLO for a man with a scalp laceration and a scorched, banged-up face.

Jack headed for the door. "Breakfast tomorrow. I'm buying. What do you want?"

"Eggs Benedict, but with foie gras instead of ham."

"You got it."

'You got it,' he says," Jack heard Abe snort behind him. "A fat-free bagel with tofu spread I'll get."

Jack stopped at a pay phone and dialed Nadia's cell phone for the third time since he'd been back. Still no answer, so he tried her home number. A woman with a thick Polish accent answered. Nadia wasn't home, she said. Jack picked up something in her voice.

"Is anything wrong, Mrs. Radzminsky?"

"No. Nothing wrong. Who is this?"

"My name is Jack. I…" He took a blind stab here. "I was helping her look for Douglas Gleason."

"Doug has been found. He call this afternoon."

Well, at least there was some good news today. "Did he say what happened to him?"

"My Nadjie go meet him, but she never call. She say she will call, and she always calls, but today she didn't call."

"I'm sure they're just so glad to see each other that she forgot."

"My Nadjie always call."

"I'm sure she'll check in soon."

But as he hung up Jack knew he wasn't at all sure. He'd never met this Doug but couldn't imagine a guy looking to develop his own software would smash his computer and then go out for a two-day stroll. According to Nadia, both she and Gleason knew damaging details about GEM. And now no one knew where either of them were.

Maybe he'd find out before the night was through.

13

Jack was on the leading edge of rush-hour traffic so he and the Buick made decent time over to the GEM plant in the Marine Terminal area. Found a parking spot a few blocks away and wandered back to the GEM loading dock. A ten-foot Cyclone fence topped with razor wire separated him from the action where two-hundred-pound barrels stamped with gem pharma and tricef rode a conveyer belt into the rear of an 18-wheel semi. Heat-packing uniformed security guards patrolled the area.

Obviously a very valuable antibiotic.

Jack wished it were five hours from now with the sun down and night well settled in, but Nadia's disappearance was urgently bumping him from behind. Daylight did have certain advantages, though.

Jack returned to his car, pulled the P-98 from its holster, and fitted the silencer to the barrel. Drove back to GEM and double-parked by the loading area. A quick glance around showed nobody on the sidewalks. He chambered a round, raised the window to the height he wanted, rested the pistol on it—with the front sight gone he needed all the aiming help he could get. Took a bead on the leading edge of a cardboard barrel just starting its conveyor ride, made sure no one was standing behind it, pulled the trigger.

The phut sounded loud in the car, but he knew it had been swallowed by the ambient street noise. Saw the target canister wobble on the belt. Bull's-eye. Lowered the pistol and raised a pair of compact binoculars. Powder trickled from a tiny hole beneath the g in gem. Blue powder. Berzerk blue.

To kill some time Jack drove around the area, wending his way through blocks of warehouses, under the BQE and back again, down to the rows of old docks. Couldn't see Manhattan from here—Red Hook got in the way—but had a nice view of Lady Liberty. The sight of her, standing tall and green out there holding her torch over the water, never failed to tweak some deep-buried part of him.

When he passed the factory again, the conveyor belt had been moved away and a guy who looked like the driver was closing and locking the rear doors. He and one of the security guards climbed into the cab. Another uniform opened the gate, and they were rolling.

Didn't matter what their final destination, they had to reach the expressway first. Jack got a head start, then pulled over next to a fire hydrant on the right. Leaned his elbow out the window to hide the pistol…

And had second thoughts.

This was so crude, not at all up to his standards. What he should do is follow a couple of trucks to their destinations, see where and how they off-loaded their cargo, then figure a way to get his hands on a load of Berzerk without anyone being the wiser. Do it with style.

Fuck style, he thought as the rig rambled by. He pumped two quick rounds into the sidewall of the tractor's right front tire. No time for style this trip. Barely had time for crude, direct, and effective.

Like a massive beast that doesn't know when it's been wounded, the truck kept rolling, but its front tires were the only set not doubled. Eventually it would get the message that something was wrong.

Jack followed until the next corner, then turned off and parked in a tow-away zone on the side street—didn't plan to be long. Adjusted the boonie cap and shades, added a Saddam Hussein mustache, tucked the pistol into his belt under the loose shirt, and hurried after the truck on foot.

Found it half a block down, the driver and the guard standing by the flat tire, scratching their heads. Probably made a hundred of these runs without a lick of trouble, so they weren't expecting any. Jack slowed to a stroll, approaching along the sidewalk behind them, then ducked between two cars. No strollers about—this was strictly industrial and burnoutville—so he pulled the pistol, snaked his turtleneck collar up over his nose, and came up beside them on the right.

"OK, guys," he said through the fabric of his collar. "This is what flattened the tire." He held his pistol where it was shielded from the street but these two couldn't miss it. "And it will flatten you guys too without a peep if you don't play nice."

The driver, a twenty-something with a wispy blond goatee, jumped and raised his hands chest high, palms out. The guard was an older, heavier black. Jack saw the fingers of his gun hand twitch.

"You're thinking about doing a very bad thing, aren't you," Jack said quickly. "You're thinking, they're paying me to protect this shipment and that's what I've got to do. I respect that, my friend, but a word of advice: don't. Not worth it. I'm not here to hurt you or hijack your truck. I'm here just for a sample. So take off your gun belt, hand it to me gently, and we can all end the day with the same amount of blood in our veins as we started with."

The guard stared at him, chewing his neatly mustachioed upper lip.

"Hey, Grimes," the driver said, his hands shaking. "Come on, man!"

Grimes sighed, unbuckled the belt, and handed it over. Jack tossed it into the cab of the truck.

"Good. Now let's go get that sample."

At Jack's prodding, the driver led the way around to the rear of the semi. Jack kept both men ahead or to his left where he could cover them and keep the pistol out of sight. The driver unlocked and opened one of the doors, revealing canisters stacked four high, right to the edge. Jack noticed the guard eyeing him, looking for an opening, so he put him to work.

"Here," he said, handing him a medium-size Ziploc. "Fill this."

"With what?"

Jack quickly angled the pistol toward one of the barrels and snapped off a shot. The pop of the impact with the cardboard was louder than the bullet report.

The driver jerked back. Grimes only raised his eyebrows appreciatively.

Jack pointed to the fine stream of blue power dribbling from the hole. "Fill 'er up."

Grimes held the bag under the stream.

"Hell of a way to fill a prescription, man," the driver said.

When the bag was full, Grimes zipped it closed and tossed it to Jack.

Jack backed away and lowered the pistol.

"Thanks, guys. Sorry about the tire. I'd help you change it but… gotta run."

Before turning away, Jack raised his chin, causing the turtleneck collar to slip from the lower half of his face, exposing the mustache. Then he ran back the way he'd come, hiding the pistol under his shirt. He hopped into the car. He removed the hat, sunglasses, and mustache immediately, got rolling, and wriggled out of the turtleneck at the first red light. He had everything plus the pistol safely stuffed under the front seat by the time he reached the BQE ramp. The driver and guard hadn't seen his car, and any description they'd give would include a mustache, so no need to worry or hurry. He took the Brooklyn Queens Expressway north, obeying the speed limit all the way.

14

The intercom buzzed.

The limo already? Luc thought as he reached for the button. It's too early.

Raul's voice came through. "A package came for you, Dr. Monnet. I left it outside your door."

"Outside my door? Why didn't you ring?"

"I did but you didn't answer. Maybe the bell is broken. I'll have it checked tomorrow."

"Yes, do that." Do anything you want tomorrow. I will be long gone. "What sort of package?"

"A bottle from K&D."

Luc knew K&D well—a busy wine store over on Madison. Who would be sending him a bottle now?

Luc walked through the living room, skirting the three large bulging suitcases that waited by the door. The wine crates were gone—the shipper had wheeled out the last of them an hour ago—and the room seemed empty now without them. He just hoped to God DHL took good care of them. Some of those bottles were irreplaceable.

He unlocked the door and had pulled it open only an inch or two when it suddenly slammed back in his face, knocking him to the floor. He scrambled tahis feet and stared in dry-mouthed horror at the intruder.

"Good evening, Dr. Monnet," Milos Dragovic said, grinning like a great white as he closed the door behind him.

"You… what… how…?" Luc couldn't form a coherent thought, let alone speak it.

"How?" Dragovic said, his eyes taking in the living room as if he were cataloguing it. "My driver is keeping your doorman company for the time being. I made it quite clear to him that—" He stopped as his roving gaze came to rest on the suitcases. "Oh? Planning a trip? You've had your fun with me and now you're running off, is that it?"

What was he saying? "Fun with you? I don't know what you—"

He didn't see Dragovic's arm move but suddenly the thick back of his hand crashed against the right side of Luc's face. Pain exploded in his cheek and jaw, sent him stumbling, staggering back. He almost fell again. The room blurred through the tears in his eyes.

"It's too late for games!" Dragovic said.

Luc blinked and pressed his hands over his throbbing face. "What are you talking about?"

Two long quick steps and Dragovic was on top of him. Luc cringed, expecting another blow, expecting many blows. The thought of fighting back flashed through his brain, exiting almost before it entered. Luc didn't know how to fight. And if he tried he might only further enrage Dragovic.

But Dragovic didn't hit him. Instead he grabbed Luc by the back of his neck, wheeled him around, and steered him toward the large TV set at the far end of the room.

"There!" he said, pointing to the screen where the news was running. "How many times have you watched it?"

"Watched what?"

The grip on his neck tightened, fingertips digging deep into his flesh. The words spoken close to his ear were distorted by rage.

"You know exactly what! If we wait long enough they will show it again and we can watch it together!"

"You mean the film of you… from last night?" It had to be that.

"Yes!" The word hissed through clenched teeth and the pressure on his neck increased further. "The film you so cleverly arranged!"

"No! You can't believe that! No, it wasn't me!"

"Liar!" Dragovic shouted and gave Luc a violent shove.

Luc stumbled forward and fell against the television. Something popped inside and the tube went blank. His mind screamed, He's going to kill me!

"I swear!" Luc cried. "I swear by all that's holy I had nothing to do with it! Nothing!"

"You and Garrison and Edwards!" Dragovic said, his voice low and menacing. "You thought you'd get me out of the picture! Well, we'll see who's out of the picture!" He looked around. "Where's your phone?"

"In the kitchen."

"Find it! Now! You have some calls to make."

Luc glanced at his suitcases as he headed for the kitchen. So near… a few minutes more and he would have been on his way to the airport. Now he was sure he was headed for some lost corner of hell.

15

Jack hung up the pay phone at Eighty-seventh and Third. Nadia's mother still hadn't heard from her. The old woman said she'd left in the early afternoon, and was sure Nadia would have called sometime during those hours just to let her know everything was all right. She was worried.

So was Jack. He tried to think of reasons why this should be someone else's problem, anyone's but his. Didn't work.

OK. He figured he had scores to settle with both Monnet and Dragovic. But since he wasn't sure Dragovic was even in town, he'd chosen to settle with Monnet first. Now Nadia's whereabouts gave him an extra reason for a little tete-a-tete with the good doctor.

He turned and faced Monnet's building. The late-day sun reflected from the tall windows on its western flank. Was Monnet behind one of them? Wished he could find out. He'd called the GEM offices but they said he hadn't been in all day; all he got at Monnet's home number was the answering machine.

He'd parked his car nearby, blocking a delivery driveway that didn't look like it was going to be used soon. If it got ticketed, that was the breaks. He'd pay it tomorrow. He always paid his tickets. First off because the car was in Gia's name, and second because if he was ever stopped he didn't want the word scofflaw popping up when his plate was run through the computer.

The air lay warm and heavy after the earlier rain, too hot for the black-and-white nylon warm-up suit he was wearing, but he sensed a good possibility that tonight's work might turn wet, and nylon left no fibers. Had another reason for wearing the warm-up: zippered pockets. The Berzerk was in one, and his burglary tools—lock pick set, glass cutter, latch lifter—were scattered through the others. If Monnet didn't come out, Jack was going to have to find a way in. Not easy with a doorman, but he'd done it before.

Watched the Bentley idling before the front entrance. It had been sitting there when he arrived. He was wondering how much money he'd have to have before he even considered plunking down over a hundred large on a car when Monnet stepped through the front door.

Excellent.

And who was following right on his heels but Dragovic himself. Jack fought the urge to race across the street and put a pair of .22 LRs into his eyes.

The Serb had sent two men after Jack, but that wasn't the problem. It was understandable. After all, Jack had turned him into an international laughing stock, and when you dish it out you've got to expect some to come back to you. But Dragovic's men had threatened—no, they'd promised to rape Gia, and even Vicky. At least the one in the back seat with Jack had, and Jack had known from the dark joy dancing in the guy's eyes that he meant it, was looking forward to it.

Maybe going after noncombatants was Dragovic's policy; maybe it wasn't. Didn't matter. If the guys in the Beamer were typical of the kind the Serb had working for him, then Gia and Vicky would be in danger as long as Dragovic lived. Pretty much the same as leaving Scar-lip alive and well in the city. Jack wasn't about to tolerate either.

He'd have to fix it… the alive and well part.

But he needed to talk to these two first. One of them was behind Nadia's disappearance. Her fiance's too. Might be too late for both of them. If so, Jack wanted to know.

Patience, he told himself. Patience. You'll get your chance. And it'll be a twofer.

As a third guy came out and quick-stepped around to the driver seat, Jack hurried to his car. He followed the Bentley around to the FDR Drive where it turned downtown. Traffic wasn't so bad for six-fifteen in the rush hour. Made good time until they exited onto Thirty-fourth Street and began an excruciating westward crawl.

Only one place they could be headed: the GEM offices. That could present a problem. While waiting for Nadia outside the building the other day, Jack had noticed a guard in the lobby. Looked now like it was going to be quarter to seven or later by the time Monnet and Dragovic reached the building. The guard would pass them right through but was sure to want to see some ID from Jack before he directed him to the elevators.

But if Jack got there first…

He spotted a park sign and pulled into a garage. As he trotted along Thirty-fourth he put on his gloves, boonie cap, and shades, then ducked into a doorway and quickly stuck the mustache under his nose again. He'd have them all removed before he returned to the garage later.

He passed the Bentley within a block and easily beat it to the office building. He strolled into the lobby, all geometric chrome and marble, and went directly to the jowly middle-aged Hispanic sitting in the tiny security kiosk.

"Hi. Did Dr. Monnet arrive yet?"

The guard shook his head. "Haven't seen him."

Jack put on a relieved look. "Whew! That's good. I was supposed to meet him here and I'm running a little late. Traffic's murder out there."

The guard, whose name tag said GAUDENCIO, looked at him as if to say, What would Dr. Monnet want with you?

"I'm gonna be doing a little work in his office for him. You know, custom electronics. That's my thing."

The guard nodded. He'd bought it. "You doing work for the other partners too?"

"Who?"

"Edwards and Garrison. They're up there waiting for him. Sent everybody else home."

Jack did not have to fake it as he rubbed his palms together with relish. "No kidding? That's great! He's already bringing some other guy with him. Hey, this could turn out to be a very good day! Want me to sign in?"

The guard pushed a pen toward Jack. "Go ahead, but I can't let you up without clearance from upstairs." He reached for the phone.

"That's OK. I'll just wait and go up with the man himself."

After signing in as "J. Washington," Jack turned and saw the Bentley pull up to the curb out front.

"Here he comes now." He winked at the guard. "Don't say anything about how I just got here, OK?"

Monnet and Dragovic pushed through the revolving door as the Bentley pulled away.

"Evening, Dr. Monnet," the guard said.

Monnet nodded absently. His right cheek looked swollen, and he seemed to be a little out of it.

"How we doin' tonight, gentlemen?" Jack said with a big, vacant grin.

When neither acknowledged his existence, he fell in a couple of steps behind them and gave the guard a Who-can-figure-these-rich-guys? shrug.

The guard's answering shrug said he knew the type too well.

Jack followed them into an open elevator car. Saw Dragovic press 16, reached past him and pressed 18.

Again the urge to pull out the P-98 and finish it right here. So simple. But that wasn't going to do it, especially with the other two GEM partners waiting upstairs. One of them had to know what had happened to Nadia.

So Jack lowered his head and leaned in a far corner of the cab, watching.

Not a word out of either on the way up. Dragovic looked stiff with anger, Monnet almost limp with fear; the tension between the two of them flooded the cab. When they stopped on 16 and Jack saw Dragovic push Monnet out, he knew something heavy was going down.

He sidled over to the control panel and thumbed the door open button to watch a little longer. They stood before a glass wall etched with the GEM Pharma logo. He saw Monnet run a card down a magnetic swipe reader on the right, heard a buzz; then Monnet pushed open the glass door. The receptionist desk beyond the wall was empty.

Jack let the elevator doors close and rode up to eighteen. Once there he pressed the 16 button, and a minute later he was standing before GEM's glass wall.

No way to bypass the swipe reader with the crude tools he'd brought along. Same for the electronic lock in the brass-trimmed door: it was set solid, and even if he did manage to jimmy it, the door was alarmed—open it without swiping a card and all hell was sure to break loose.

That left the glass.

The panel opposite the free end of the door was untrimmed and maybe three-eighths of an inch thick. Jack pulled out his glass cutter and knelt. Leaning into the cutter, he scored an arc into the glazed surface, starting two feet up on the free edge and running down to the floor. Worked the diamond tip back and forth half a dozen times in the same groove, hot work that sweated up his hands inside the leather gloves. Next he cut a straight score along the floor line. That done, he lay back and gave the section a quick sharp kick. Once. Twice. On the third try the quarter-round piece of glass cracked along the scores and flopped inward onto the carpet.

Jack crawled through, then peeked into the main corridor to give it a careful twice-over. No visible security camera and no likely places to hide one. Good.

He straightened his warm-up and went hunting the lords of Berzerkdom.

16

"You didn't eat," the girl squeaked.

Nadia sat next to Doug on the cot and sized her up where she stood in the doorway of the trailer. She had a high-pitched voice and an undersized head, made smaller-looking by the tight ponytail she wore. She didn't seem too bright, and looked so frail Nadia was sure she could bowl her over and leap to freedom through the open door. But Nadia was also sure that even she and Doug together would never get by the pair of hulking dog-faced roustabouts standing a few feet outside.

"I can't," Nadia said.

Half an hour ago the girl had brought them each two hamburgers, two hot dogs, and large cups of fruit punch—all from the concession stand, Nadia was sure. Doug had eaten his, but Nadia could barely look at it.

"You must. Oz says so."

"It's too hot," Nadia said, hoping to keep her talking. The longer she lingered, the longer the door would stay open, allowing fresh air to waft through the stuffy interior. "And I'm scared."

"Aw," the girl said with what sounded like genuine compassion. "Don't be scared. Oz is nice."

"Who's this Oz?" Doug said, putting his hand on Nadia's thigh and leaning forward.

"He's the boss." Her tone said, Everybody knows that.

"But why did he kidnap us? Why is he keeping us here?"

A shrug. "I don't know. But he's feeding you good, right? And he gave you a nice trailer."

Nadia lowered her voice. "Can you help us out of here? Please?"

"Oh, no!" The girl's hand flew to her mouth and she started backing away. "I could never do that! Oz would be so mad!"

"Would he hurt you?"

"Us? No, Oz would never hurt us. He protects us; he helps us."

"Then help us. Please!"

"No-no-no!" she said. She turned and jumped through the door. "No-no-no-no-no!"

"Wait!" Nadia said, rising, but one of the roustabouts slammed the door in her face. Fighting back tears, she slumped back onto the cot and leaned against Doug. "What are we going to do?"

"Hang in there," he said, slipping an arm around her. "We'll think of—"

A clank from the front of the trailer cut him off. The floor tilted back a few degrees, then rocked forward. A chain rattled. Nadia rose and stumbled toward the noise.

Pressing her eye to a crack in the board over the window allowed her a slit view of the outside world.

She saw the rear of a pickup truck… Their trailer was hitched to it.

Suddenly the trailer lurched forward and she fell backward. Luckily Doug was there to catch her.

"What's happening?" he said.

"They're moving us."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

She had an awful feeling they were about to find out why they'd been abducted.

17

Who are they? Jack wondered. Houdinis? Where the hell did they go?

He'd crept around, peeking in all the offices and cubicles. He'd even checked the rest rooms and the small, well-equipped kitchenette but had found no one. Only area he hadn't explored was a short corridor near the center of the space. He'd avoided it after spotting a security camera set into the ceiling at one end. Hung there for all to see. Why?

Since the corridor was open on both ends, he was able to approach the camera from behind. Pulling a chair from one of the cubicles, he inspected the camera close up. No swivel mechanism. Aimed at the middle of the hallway. Interesting. Was it running? And if so, was anybody monitoring it? One way to find out…

Jack used a roll of Scotch tape he'd borrowed from one of the desks and stretched three strips across the lens, then retreated.

When no one came to investigate, he moved back into the corridor. As he reached the midpoint, he heard a faint thump to his left. He turned and saw a door labeled: conference room. The sign was small, the handle recessed, and the door flush with the wall. Virtually invisible unless you were on top of it.

Conference room… of course. Where else would they be? He pressed an ear against the door and thought he heard raised voices—whether in anger or terror he couldn't be sure.

He stepped back. Soundproofed. And situated in the center of the GEM space, which meant no windows. Good thinking. If you need an electronic- and microwave-proof room, you don't want windows. The door had buried hinges and a recessed pull instead of a knob. That meant it opened outward. Gave it a gentle pull to test it. Wouldn't budge. Probably secured by a bolt on the inside.

Jack leaned back to consider his options. Can't kick down a door that opens out… didn't come prepared for this… have to improvise…

So what materials did he have at hand?

Took him about a minute to shape a rough plan.

Slipped back to the file room and rock-walked one of the smaller cabinets down to the door; then he returned to the kitchenette and picked through the utensil drawer until he found what he wanted.

18

"Lies!" Dragovic screamed, pounding the table with both fists. "You think I am stupid?"

How do I convince him? Luc thought as he cowered between Brad and Kent. Dragovic stood on the far side of the table, his back to the door, glaring at them like a maniac. He'd forced Luc to call an emergency meeting with his partners, telling them to clear both floors of all personnel.

And now he had the three of them trapped in this stifling room.

We are three, Luc thought. Why should we fear this one man? He may be armed, but after his arrest on multiple weapons charges last night he may be wary of carrying a pistol. The odds are on our side. If I give the word, the three of us could attack him…

He glanced left and right at his two partners: sweat rolled off Kent in buckets, soaking his collar, spreading dark stains from his underarms; and Brad was almost in tears.

Then again, maybe not…

"You've got to believe us!" Brad cried.

Dragovic's lips curled with scorn. "A strange creature gives us Loki, and now you say it's dying? I am to believe that?"

"Christ, please, yes!" Kent said. "If we were going to make up a story, we wouldn't make up something as crazy as that!"

Luc had hoped the unhappy truth about the creature would turn Dragovic from his paranoid fantasy, but it had only incensed him.

"I can show you the creature," Luc said. "You can see with your own eyes."

"Another trick!"

"No tricks. You'll see it; then you'll believe. And then you'll understand that it was not us who plotted against you. Think: why would we be trying to steal the Loki trade from you when there will be no more Loki?"

Dragovic stared at him for a few heartbeats, a flicker of doubt in his raging eyes. He opened his mouth to speak but was stopped by a knocking sound.

Everyone froze, listening. It came again.

Someone was pounding on the door.

Luc stepped away from the desk to the security console and turned on the hallway monitor. The screen lit but the image was blurred. Someone was standing outside the door but Luc could not identify him.

Dragovic motioned Brad toward the door. "See who it is!" he said, stepping away. "And no tricks!"

Luc noted with relief that he did not pull a weapon, a good indication that he didn't have one.

Brad pressed the intercom button next to the door. "Wh-who is it?" His voice would play through a speaker in the hallway ceiling above the door.

The reply was garbled… something about "security service" and "malfunction."

On the monitor, the blurred image of the man was waving at the camera. What security service? Luc wondered. And how did he get up here?

Dragovic pushed Brad away from the intercom and pressed the button. "Go away. We are busy. Come back tomorrow."

Another garbled reply, but one phrase came through loud and clear: "… the room may be bugged."

"What?" A chorus from four throats.

"More of your tricks?" Dragovic snarled, glaring at Luc. He turned to Brad. "Open it!"

Before Luc could protest, Brad's trembling hand fumbled the bolt back. He pushed on the door, and then things happened too fast.

The door was violently pulled open, almost catapulting Brad into the hall; then he suddenly reversed direction, stumbling backward against the conference table as if he'd been shoved.

And then Luc realized with a shock that he indeed had been shoved—by the odd-looking stranger who leaped into the conference room with a drawn pistol.

"Everybody hold still!" he shouted.

He was addressing all of them, but he kept his pistol—Luc noticed with alarm that it was fitted with a silencer—trained on Dragovic. Something familiar about him… the warm-up, the hat, the sunglasses. And then Luc recognized him: this man had shared the elevator with Dragovic and him a short while ago.

"Thank God!" Brad cried. "I don't know who you are, but you arrived just in time!" He pointed to Dragovic. "This man—"

"Shut up!" the stranger yelled, pushing Brad toward the end of the table. "Over there with your buddies." Then he turned to Dragovic. "You carrying?"

Dragovic stared at him. "Do you know who I am?"

"Yeah, now answer the question: what are you carrying?"

Dragovic sneered. "I have no need to carry."

"So you say. Take off your jacket and prove it."

"Go to hell!"

Without warning, the stranger's pistol coughed once and Dragovic fell back into a chair, his breath hissing between his teeth as he clutched his thigh. Luc saw that a splintered hole had appeared in the mahogany door of the cabinet behind him.

"Take off your jacket," the stranger said, "or the next one will go for the bone instead of creasing you."

Leveling a murderous glare at the stranger, Dragovic removed his suit coat, balled it in his bloody hands, and hurled it across the room at him.

"You are a dead man."

"You already tried that once today," the stranger said, catching the coat with his free hand. "Now it's my turn."

Luc watched Dragovic's expression change from anger, to bafflement, then to… was that fear? Luc turned his attention to the stranger who was emptying the jacket pockets. He wished he could see the eyes behind those dark glasses. He seemed to be brimming with rage, more than Dragovic, if that were possible. What was it between these two? Luc glanced at Brad and Kent who looked as baffled and frightened as he.

A cold band tightened around his chest. Have we traded one madman for another—this one armed?

19

Jack had loved shooting Dragovic—took just about all he had to keep from pulling the trigger again—but relished the mix of terror and bafflement scooting across his face right now almost as much.

"You?" Dragovic said; then his eyes narrowed. "Yes, it is you! That mustache is fake. I have seen you!"

Jack found only a cell phone in Dragovic's suit coat. He dropped the phone on the table and tossed the coat back.

"No, you haven't."

"Yes. You were at my front gate!"

Damn security cameras, Jack thought.

"I knew it!" Dragovic shouted, purpling with rage as he pointed to Monnet. "You work for him, don't you! He hired you to humiliate me!"

Where'd he get that idea? Jack wondered, but decided not to straighten him out. This might work right into his plans.

"Just sit there and be quiet while I talk to these bozos," he said, dismissing Dragovic—which had to hurt him worse than another bullet. He turned to Monnet. "Where's Nadia Radzminsky?"

Monnet seemed jolted by the question. But maybe frightened too. Hiding something? Jack couldn't tell for sure.

"Nadia?" Monnet gave this nifty little Gallic shrug. "Why… home, I suppose."

"She's not. She's missing." He turned to the other two. "How about you guys? Any idea where I can find Nadia Radzminsky?"

"How should we know?" said the heavier, sweaty one.

"Radzminsky?" said the nervous ferret type. His eyes darted Monnet's way. "Luc, isn't that the new researcher we hired?"

"How do you know Nadia?" Monnet said.

Jack ignored him, concentrating on the other two. "How about Gleason—Douglas Gleason? He's another of your people who's MIA. Know anything about him?"

Bull's-eye, Jack thought when he saw the ferret's shocked expression. Here was a guy he'd like to play poker with.

Keeping a peripheral watch on Dragovic, Jack pointed his pistol at the ferret's head.

"Nice haircut, but I think the part would look better on the other side, don't you?"

The ferret clapped his hands against his scalp and ducked, crying, "Tell him, Luc! Tell him about Prather!"

Monnet closed his eyes and Jack stared at him, stunned. The only sound in the room was ripping cloth. Jack glanced at Dragovic and saw him tearing the silk lining from his suit coat and tying it around his wounded thigh.

'Tell him!" the ferret screamed.

"Shut up, Brad!" Monnet said through his teeth.

"Ozymandias Prather?" Jack said, and watched the three partners' faces go slack with shock.

"You know him?" Monnet said.

"I'm asking the questions."

"No-no," Monnet said, an excited look replacing the shock. "This is important! If you know him, then you must have seen the creature he calls the Sharkman."

"Yeah. Saw it a few hours ago." Where was this going?

"Then please tell this man," Monnet said, pointing to Dragovic. "Tell him how the creature looks, how it's at death's door."

"You kidding? It looks great—ready to bust out of its cage."

Monnet looked ill as Dragovic pounded his fists on the table and shouted something about liars and traitors, but Jack wasn't following because a sickening scenario was playing out in his mind.

He stepped closer to Monnet and pointed the pistol at his face.

"You!"

The doctor cringed. "What?"

"What did Oz and his boys do to Gleason?"

"Nothing."

Jack jammed the muzzle of the silencer against Monnet's temple, hard enough to make him wince. "You've got three seconds… two seconds…"

"He made him disappear!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know!" Monnet cried. "He just said he'd found an 'absolutely foolproof means of disposal' and we'd never have to worry about him again. That's all I know; I swear!"

You bastard! Jack thought, aching to pull the trigger. You rotten lousy bastard. He'd bet all he owned that Oz's foolproof dispose-all had yellow eyes and a scarred lower lip.

"And Nadia? What about her?"

Monnet closed his eyes.

"Only one second left on your clock," Jack said, then held his breath, pretty damn sure he wasn't going to like this answer.

Monnet nodded. "The same." His voice seemed caught between a whisper and a sob.

"Aw, jeez."

It now seemed a possibility that the suddenly healthy rakosh hadn't lunched on Bondy as Jack had first thought. Oz must have fed it Gleason… and Nadia was probably next on the menu.

He backed away, trying not to give in to the increasingly insistent urge to redecorate the room with this son of a bitch's brains. That was too good for him. Too good for all of them.

"All right," he said. "I want all pockets emptied onto the table. Everyone. Now. Do it!"

The three executives got to it with gusto. Jack could see relief on their faces: Emptying pockets meant robbery. They understood that, and it sure as hell beat getting shot.

Dragovic didn't move. He simply sat there pressing a hand to his thigh and glaring at Monnet. Jack remembered his shouts about liars and traitors a moment ago. Looked like this little business arrangement was falling apart. He let Dragovic be—he already had what he wanted from him.

"Hurry!" Jack shouted, and meant it. Gleason was probably gone, but maybe he still had time to save Nadia. "I want all pockets turned inside out."

He didn't care about the wallets that landed on the table. The cell phones were what he wanted. Three more of them joined Dragovic's.

"You," he said, pointing to Mr. Sweaty. "Rip out every phone in the room and dump them here on the table." As Sweaty hopped to it, Jack pointed the ferret—the one Monnet had called Brad—in the direction of the wet bar at the far end of the room. "You bring me four glasses and a pitcher of water."

When all the phones had been collected, including the conference speaker-microphone in the center of the table, Jack wrapped them in someone's suit coat and tossed them out into the hall.

"Now," he said, tugging the Ziploc of Berzerk from his pocket and sliding it across the table to Brad. "Put a handful of that in each of the glasses."

The look on Brad's face left no doubt about his familiarity with the powder.

"W-why?"

"Just do it."

Brad's hand was shaking like a wino with the DTs, but he managed to get the job done.

"Now fill each glass halfway with water and pass them around."

A minute later, each of the four men had a glass of blue-tinged fluid before him.

"Bottoms up, gentlemen," Jack said.

Mr. Sweaty got sweatier. "No," he said shaking his head and staring at the glass like he'd been poured a shot of battery acid. "It'll kill us."

"Yeah, well, you gotta go sometime. Drink up; then I'm gone."

Dragovic snorted derisively, raised his glass as if he were toasting the room, and chugged the Berzerk. Then he hurled the glass across the table at Monnet, missing him by inches.

"I can't!" Brad wailed.

Jack put a bullet into the mahogany tabletop directly in front of Brad. The three executives all but jumped out of their seats; Dragovic was cool, though. Barely blinked. Under different circumstances, Jack could have almost liked him.

"I don't have time for this, so I'll tell you that we can do this two ways: you can swallow it, or I can shoot you in the gut and pour it in."

Mr. Sweaty drank his. He looked sick when he set his empty back on the mahogany. Brad choked halfway through his, and for a second or two Jack was afraid he was going to blow it all over the table, but he kept it down.

Monnet was the last. "Do you have any idea what this will do to us?"

"Firsthand. I got the dose you or Dragovic set up for Nadia."

"I have never heard of this Nadia," Dragovic said. "Who is she? Should I know her?"

"Then it was you," Jack said, staring hard into Monnet's eyes. He wanted so much to hurt this man. Instead he held up his free hand, the leather-clad thumb and index finger a hair apart. "This morning I came this close to hurting two people very dear to me because of you. I think you'd better drink up."

Monnet drank.

"Why?" Monnet asked when he'd drained the glass. "Why are you doing this?"

"Nadia hired me," Jack said, wanting to smash his teeth because Nadia was gone, maybe dead, because of this man.

"To do this!

"No. To keep an eye on you." Jack pointed to Dragovic. "To protect you from him. She thought you were in trouble. She was worried about you. She cared about you."

He watched Monnet crumble. "Oh, my Lord."

He surprised Jack by dropping his face into his hands and sobbing.

Jack reached into a pocket, pulled out the paper-towel-wrapped collection he'd assembled in the cafeteria, and dropped it on the conference table.

"For your amusement. Just remember the Law: not to spill blood. Are we not men?"

He enjoyed their confounded expressions as he backed to the door and pushed it open. He couldn't resist aiming a Parathion shot at Dragovic.

"Got any old tires you care to sell?" he said in the Thurston Howell lockjaw accent he'd used on the phone. "Oily ones, perhaps?"

"You!" Dragovic cried, rising from his seat. "Why would you do that to me!"

"Nothing personal," Jack said. "I was hired to do it."

With that he ducked out and slammed the door closed. Immediately he tipped the filing cabinet, letting it fall against the door, wedging it against the opposite wall. Then he ran for the elevator, praying he could make it to Monroe in time.

20

Luc was vaguely aware of what was going on around him… Kent moving to the door, trying it, unable to open it… he and Brad futilely throwing their weight against it… their panicked cries about being trapped.

Other words had a death grip on his thoughts… She thought you were in trouble. She was worried about you. She cared about you…

Each word, each syllable was a drop of acid eating through Luc's brain.

Poor Nadia. She was looking out for me while I was contracting her death. What have I become? What sort of monster am I? What brought me so low?

He raised his head from his pool of misery and found Dragovic staring at him from the far side of the table.

"So," the Serb said with a lopsided grin. "It is just the four of us again." He rose and moved along the table with a barely perceptible limp. The wound wasn't slowing him down. He pointed to the stranger's package. "Let's see what your man left us."

"He's not our man," Kent said. "We've never seen him before in our lives. At least I haven't."

"Me neither," said Brad.

"He said you hired him."

"Never!" Brad cried. "He said he 'was hired.' But not by us."

All eyes turned to Luc.

"You got rid of the Radzminsky woman without checking with us," Kent said. "Did you hire that man as well?"

Luc said nothing. He no longer cared what they thought.

Dragovic pulled at the paper towels wrapped around the stranger's package. They unrolled in one long strip until four carving knives fell free and clattered onto the table.

"Oh… my… God!" Brad whispered.

Dragovic picked up the longest and ran his finger along the edge. "Sharp," he said, grinning. He shoved the point toward Luc. "Want to feel?"

Luc gripped the front of his shirt and ripped it open, sending a button bouncing across the table. He thrust his exposed chest at Dragovic.

"Do it! Go ahead—do it!"

Luc was not bluffing. He was sick to his soul and could almost welcome ending it all right here.

"Don't dare me. Because I will—and your two partners as well."

"Don't even joke about something like that!" Kent cried.

"Who's joking?"

"Start with me," Luc said. "I don't care anymore."

It was something of a shock to realize that he truly did not care, and that granted him a bounty of wild courage.

Dragovic stared at him, his grin gone. "You will care when this bites into your throat."

"Stop this talk!" Brad said. "You can't get away with harming any of us. We're all trapped here until the cleaning service shows up." He glanced at his watch. "And they should be here within the hour."

"Right," Kent said. "You don't want them to find you here with a dead body and blood on your hands, do you? Even your lawyers won't get you off on that one."

Dragovic considered this, then shrugged. He tossed the knife onto the table. "Some other time, then." He leaned closer to Luc. "When you care. Because I want you to care."

"We've got to stay calm," Brad said. "That man, whoever he was, wants us to kill each other—expects us to kill each other. But we can outsmart him and have the last laugh if we just… stay… calm. We've all got Loki starting to run through our brains right now, enough to make half a dozen people crazy. But we're all intelligent men, right? We're smarter than Loki. We can beat it."

"Right," Kent said. "If we all sit quietly, saying nothing to upset anyone else, we can all survive until the cleaning service comes."

Brad moved to the far corner of the table and patted the chair there. "Milos, you sit here. Kent—"

"No!" Dragovic said, dropping into the chair opposite Luc. "I sit here."

"Very well," Brad said. "I'll sit here. And Kent will sit opposite me. That way we'll all be as far as possible from each other. Now: everyone be quiet and just… stay… calm."

Silence. Luc closed his eyes and listened to the faint hum of the air conditioning. After a few minutes he realized that his mood was lifting. He felt nowhere near as miserable as when the stranger first imprisoned them.

Thoughts of Nadia returned, but he found he could view them from a fresher, more realistic perspective. Absurd to blame himself for Nadia's demise when clearly it was her own doing. If she'd kept her attention focused on the task she'd been assigned, she'd still be alive and welL But no… she had to go sticking her nose where it didn't belong. If you play, you'd better be ready to pay.

And hadn't she lied to me about her relationship with Gleason? Damn right. Told me they were just friends when all the time they were engaged. Engaged! Serves the bitch right. Can't lie to me and get away with it.

Luc opened his eyes and found Dragovic staring at him.

"What are you looking at?" he said.

Dragovic sneered. "Dead meat."

"Please," Brad said from the far end of the table. "If we don't talk we won't—"

"Shut up!" Luc said. "God, how I'm sick of your whining, wheedling voice!"

"OK," Brad said, his face twitching as he pressed his palms flat on the table. "Fine. Let's leave it at that."

Luc bit back another remark. Brad was right. Tensions could soar under the influence of Loki. A casual remark could spark a war. He and everyone else had to keep quiet.

But damn he felt good! Hard to believe that just moments ago he'd been mired in some morass of guilt over what he'd done to Nadia. The Loki was letting him see the idiocy of expending even a nanosecond of thought, let alone guilt, on a nobody like her.

Loki… he regretted never trying it before. This was wonderful. His senses were turned to a higher pitch—he could feel the air, the individual oxygen molecules, hear the ticking of Dragovic's Rolex or whatever that garish contraption was on his wrist, feel the grain of the mahogany writhing beneath the varnish of the tabletop.

And his mind—so clear. He could see all the errors of his life, especially during the past few weeks, and how things would have been completely different if he'd had a little Loki to clear his vision.

He glanced around the table again.

Brad and Kent… what a pair of losers: the complete wimp and the flabby blowhard. How did I ever let myself become involved with them? And Dragovic—he's not so tough. Bigger and stronger, perhaps, but brawn carries you only so far. Even in a hand-to-hand fight, he'd be no match for my intellect. Why was I ever afraid of him?

He hated them all and wanted to be rid of them. The carving knives on the table beckoned to him, but no… too crude. Surely someone with his brain could think of a way to dispose of the three of them without drawing suspicion. Perhaps—

A shout interrupted his thoughts. Brad was on his feet, leaning over the table, jabbing his finger at Kent's face.

"Stop sweating! I can hear you sweating and it makes me sick!"

"I make you sick?" Kent said, leaping to his feet. "Listen, Twinkle-toes, if anybody around here makes people sick it's you and your pretty-boy clothes and incessant whining."

Brad's jaw dropped. "What? What are you implying?"

"I'm not implying a goddamn thing! I'm telling you you're—"

"Here!" Dragovic shouted.

He'd grabbed two of the knives and now he slid them down the table. They rotated lazily along their course and stopped between Brad and Kent.

Brad stopped, eyes wide.

"Look at him!" Kent laughed. "What a pussy!"

"Pussy?" Brad's face contorted with rage. His hand flashed out and snatched up one of the knives. "I'll show you who's a pussy!"

He leaped at Kent and they both went down beyond the far end of the table, out of Luc's line of sight. He heard thumping and thrashing and grunts and cries, saw Kent's bloody hand appear, watched it feel around, find the other knife, then disappear again.

Luc didn't stand, didn't move beyond turning his head toward Dragovic. It sounded as if Brad and Kent were killing each other, and he prayed that was the case. That would leave only Dragovic.

The Serb's eyes were on the battle playing out on the floor in front of him. He watched it avidly, grinning like a shark who smells blood and is waiting to feed on both the victor and the vanquished.

Then the thrashing stopped and a gasping and very bloody Kent Garrison struggled to his feet. Luc saw Dragovic pick up one of the two remaining knives and palm the handle upside down, rising and approaching Kent with the blade hidden against the underside of his forearm.

"Are you all right?"

Kent grinned. "Better than you'll be!"

Without warning, he slashed at Dragovic. But the Serb seemed to have expected it. He ducked back, then whipped his own blade across Kent's throat. Blood sprayed across the table as Kent dropped from view with a bubbling groan.

Luc's mind raced at light speed. Perfect! Kent gets blamed for killing Brad, Dragovic gets blamed for killing Kent, and I kill Dragovic in self-defense. He made no conscious decision: he was suddenly up on the table with a knife in his hand and in full charge toward Dragovic as the Serb turned toward him…

21

Between the traffic jam at the Midtown Tunnel and the overturned tractor-trailer at the Springfield Boulevard overpass on the LIE, Jack felt almost lucky to reach Monroe in two hours.

His tentative plan was to drive across the grass in the darkness and pull right up to the tent, duck under the flap, splash Scar-lip with gas, light a match, and send it back to hell. Then, during the ensuing panic and confusion, look for Nadia.

But as he took the narrow road out to the marsh, he began to feel a crawling sensation in his gut.

Where were the tents?

Slewed his car to a halt on the muddy meadow and stared in disbelief at the empty space before his headlights. Jumped out and looked around. Gone. Hadn't passed them on the road. Where—?

Heard a sound and whirled to find a gnarled figure standing on the far side of his car. In the backwash from the headlights he could make out that the man was old and grizzled and unshaven, but not much more.

"If you're looking for the show," the man said, "you're a little late. But don't worry. They'll be back next year."

"Did you see them go?"

"Course," he said. "But not before I collected my rent."

"Do you know where—?"

"M'name's Haskins. I own this land, y'know, and you're on it."

Jack's patience was fraying. "I'll be glad to get off it; just tell me—"

"I rent it out every year to that show. They really seem to like Monroe. But I—"

"I need to know where they went."

"You're a little old to be wantin' to run off with the circus, ain't you?" he said with a wheezy laugh.

That did it. "Where did they go?"

'Take it easy," the old guy said. "No need for shouting. They're makin' the jump to Jersey. They open in Cape May tomorrow night."

Jack ran back to his car. South Jersey. Only a couple of possible routes for a caravan of trucks and trailers: the Cross Bronx Expressway to the George Washington Bridge would take them too far north; the Beltway to the Verrazano and across Staten Island would drop them into Central Jersey. That was the logical route. But even if he was wrong, the only way to Cape May was via the Garden State Parkway. Jack gunned for the Parkway, figuring sooner or later he'd catch up to them.

WEDNESDAY

1

Took Jack another two frustrating hours just to reach Jersey. Midnight had come and gone and Cape May was still better than a hundred miles away. The limit on the parkway along here was sixty-five. Jack set the cruise control on seventy and kept his foot off the gas pedal. If he had his way he'd be doing ninety, but that would put a cop on his tail and he'd had enough cops already for one day.

Some day. When was it going to end? He was pretty sure the Berzerk had cleared his system, but his aches and pains seemed to be getting worse instead of better. Especially his head. He'd had the radio on earlier and some station had played "You Keep Me Hanging On." Now it kept droning through his frazzled brain, Diana Ross's voice like a power saw hitting a nail.

And worst of all, he saw a good chance this whole trip might be for nothing. Had no idea how often or how much a rakosh ate, but if it had fed on Bondy first, then Gleason, he might still have a chance of finding Nadia alive. A slim one, but he had to give it a shot. Might have a hard time living with himself if he didn't.

He'd figured a train of freak show trucks and trailers would be next to impossible to miss, but he damn near did. He was too intent on an all-news station's big breaking story as he flashed by the New Gretna rest area…

"… mass murder in midtown: gangland figure Milos Dragovic, known in many quarters as 'the Slippery Serb,' is dead, apparently of stab wounds, along with three top executives of a pharmaceutical firm. The four were found locked in a conference room in the GEM Pharma offices in midtown by a cleaning crew a short while ago. This is not Dragovic's first appearance in the news today. He was—"

Jack was a good hundred yards past the rest stop, congratulating himself on how well that stunt had worked, when something familiar about the motley assortment of vehicles clustered in the southern end of the parking lot registered in his consciousness.

He slowed, found an official use only cutoff, and made an illegal U-turn across the median onto the northbound lanes. Half a minute later he pulled into the rest area and found a parking spot near the Burger King/ Nathan's/TCBY sign where he had a good view of the freak show vehicles.

At this hour on a Wednesday morning in May, the rest area was fairly deserted. Except for a few couples straggling back from Atlantic City, Oz's folk had the lot pretty much to themselves. But why this rest area of all places? This was the only one Jack knew of that had a State Police barracks for a neighbor.

He slumped in the seat. Bad thought: if Oz was traveling with someone he'd abducted, this would be the last place he'd stop. Sick foreboding settled on Jack like a wet tarp.

But he'd come this far…

He scanned the area. No way to sneak up on them, so he settled for a direct approach. Of course the smart thing to do was to dime Oz out to the New Jersey State cops a couple hundred yards away, but that didn't sit right. Never would. And besides, if Nadia had become rakoshi chow, the state cops would find nothing. And the Scar-lip problem would remain.

Jack opened the trunk and stared at the gasoline can. His plan had been Scar-lip first, then Nadia. He'd have to reverse that now. Find Nadia if possible, then go for the rakosh. He pulled the silenced .22 from where he'd hidden it beneath the spare, stuck it in the waistband under his warm-up, walked toward the Oddity Emporium vehicles.

Counted two 18-wheelers and twenty or so trailers and motor homes of various shapes and sizes and states of repair. As he neared he heard hammering sounds; seemed to come from one of the semi trailers. Two of the dog-faced roustabouts stepped from behind a motor home as Jack reached the perimeter of the cluster. They growled a warning and pointed back toward the food court.

"I want to see Oz," Jack said.

More growls and more emphatic pointing.

"Look, he either gets a visit from me or I walk over to the State Police barracks there and have them pay him a visit."

The roustabouts didn't seem to feature that idea. Looked at each other, then one hurried away. A moment later he was back. Motioned Jack to follow him. Jack lowered the zipper on his warm-up top to give him quicker access to the P-98, then started moving.

One of the roustabouts stayed behind. As Jack followed the other on a winding course through the haphazardly parked vehicles, he saw a crew of workers trying to patch a hole in the flank of one of the semi trailers. He pulled up short when he saw the size of the hole: five or six feet high, a couple of feet wide. The edges of the metal skin were flared outward, as if a giant fist had punched through from within. And Jack was pretty sure that fist had belonged to something cobalt blue with yellow eyes.

Shit! He closed his eyes and slammed his fists against his thighs. He wanted to break something. What else could go wrong today?

But his spirits suddenly lifted as he realized Oz hadn't wanted to park his troupe near the police barracks—he'd had no choice. Maybe Nadia was still alive.

The roustabout had stopped ahead and was motioning him to hurry up. Jack did just that and soon came to the trailer he recognized as Oz's. The man himself was standing before it, watching the repair work on the truck.

"It got loose, didn't it?" Jack said as he came up beside him.

The taller man rotated the upper half of his body and looked at Jack. His expression was anything but welcoming.

"Oh, it's you. You do get around."

Took most of Jack's dwindling self-control to keep from taking a swing at Oz right then and there. He was bursting to ask about Nadia but forced himself to stick to the rakosh. That was old news between them; he'd cover that, then press on.

"Had to feed it, didn't you? Had to bring it up to full strength. Damn it, you knew the risk you were taking."

"It was caged with iron bars. I thought—"

"You thought wrong. I warned you. I've seen that thing at full strength. Iron or not, that cage wasn't going to hold it."

"I admire your talent for stating the obvious."

"Where is it?"

For the first time Jack detected a trace of fear in Oz's eyes.

"I don't know."

"Swell." He glanced around. "Where's that guy Hank?"

"Hank? What could you want with that imbecile?"

"Just wondering if he was bothering it again."

The boss slammed a bony fist into a palm. "I thought he'd learned his lesson. Well, he'll learn it now." He turned and called into the night. "Everyone—find Hank! Find him and bring him to me at once!"

They waited but no one brought Hank. Hank was nowhere to be found.

"It appears he's run off," Prather said.

"Or got carried off."

"We found no blood near the truck, so perhaps the young idiot is still alive."

"He is alive," said a woman's voice.

Jack turned and recognized the three-eyed fortuneteller from the show.

"What do you see, Carmella?" Oz said.

"He is in the woods. He stole one of the guns and he carries a spear. He is full of wine and hate. He is going to kill it."

"Oh, I doubt that," Oz said. "Going to get himself killed is more likely."

Jack understood taking a gun, but not the spear; then he remembered the pointed iron rod Hank and Bondy had used to torture it. Neither would do the job. If Hank ever caught up with the rakosh, he wouldn't last long.

He stared at the mass of trees rising on the far side of the parkway. "We've got to find it."

"Yes," Oz said. "Poor thing, alone out there in a strange environment, disoriented, lost, afraid."

Jack couldn't imagine Scar-lip afraid of anything, especially anything it might run across around here.

"On the subject of lost, alone, and afraid," Jack said, motioning Oz toward his trailer, "I need to ask you something."

Oz followed him until they were all but leaning on the battered wall of the old Airstream, out of earshot of the others.

"What?"

"Where's Nadia Radzminsky?"

Oz's eyes told him nothing, but the way his body tensed spoke volumes.

"Nadia… who?"

"The one Dr. Monnet paid you to eliminate. Where is she?"

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're—" Oz spotted the pistol Jack had pulled from his waistband.

"I have it straight from Dr. Monnet and his partners," Jack said softly as he began unscrewing the silencer. "They say they hired you to 'remove' Douglas Gleason and Nadia Radzminsky, so playing dumb won't cut it." He lowered the barrel, pointing it at Oz's right knee. "Now, I'm going to ask you again, and if you give me any more bullshit, I'm going to shoot you. Nothing immediately fatal, but it's going to hurt like hell. And then I'm going to ask you again. And if I don't get the truth, I'll shoot you again, and so it will go."

Jack had to hand it to Oz—he was cool. He glanced at a pair of his doggie roustabouts—how many did he have?—who had noticed the pistol. Low growls rumbled in their throats as they edged closer.

"They'll tear you to pieces before you get off that second shot. Perhaps before you get off the first."

"Don't count on it." Jack leveled the barrel at Oz's midsection. "I can pull this trigger lots of times before I go down. Any idea what a hollowpoint round, even a twenty-two, can do once it breaks up inside you?"

Jack's pistol was loaded with FMJs, but no need to tell Oz that.

"And don't think the shots will go unnoticed over there." Jack cocked his head toward the State Police barracks. "So not only will you be dead, but a bunch of troopers will be treating this whole area as a crime scene. They'll go through it with a fine comb. What'll they find?"

Oz's expression fluctuated between fear and rage. Jack pressed on, heading for home.

"You've gathered a nice little family around you, Oz. What will happen to them when you're gone and they've been broken up and scattered because of certain crimes you've committed? All because you wouldn't answer a simple question."

Jack hoped the bluff would work. He knew he'd be beaten to a bloody pulp if he pulled the trigger, and even if he survived, he feared police scrutiny as much as Oz. More. But Oz couldn't know that.

"Let's suppose, just suppose," Oz said, "that they were here. What happens?"

They? Jack fought to keep from showing the relief surging within him.

"They leave with me and that's that."

"How do I know you won't stop at the first phone and report us?"

"You've got my word," Jack said. "I've got nothing against you, Oz. I have a business relationship with Nadia. If I get her out of this, you and me are even. I'm happy never to see or hear of you again, and I'm sure it's mutual."

"But what about them?"

"I think I can square it with them. Let's go ask."

Oz held back. "There's still the matter of Dr. Monnet. He—"

"He's dead."

The eyes narrowed. Oz wasn't buying. "Really." He drew out the word.

"Just turn on the radio. It's on all the news stations."

"You?"

"Never laid a finger on him. Dragovic, I'd guess."

"I see," Oz said, nodding. A small smile played about his lips. That obviously made sense to him.

"Monnet paid you to off them," Jack said, "but I assume you had other plans. Sushi for the rakosh, right?"

"The creature's eating habits appear to be similar to those of a big snake," Oz said, neither confirming nor denying. "It gorges itself, then doesn't eat again for days. I haven't had time yet to learn its cycle."

"And now that it's gone, you've got no use for the food you've stockpiled for it. Am I right?"

He nodded and sighed. "I suppose that settles it, then."

He led Jack toward the center of the vehicle cluster. Playing it safe, Jack followed close behind, his pistol trained on Oz's back. The roustabouts—three now—followed. Oz stopped before an exceptionally run-down red trailer.

Jack heard something thumping against the inner walls and faint cries for help. Oz pointed to the padlock on the door and one of the roustabouts unlocked it.

As the door swung open, Jack slid his pistol behind his thigh. An idea of how to make this a smooth extraction was forming, but it might not work with artillery on display.

The cries and pounding ceased. For a moment nothing happened; then a sandy-haired man poked his head out. He looked pale, haggard, uncertain, but Jack recognized him as Douglas Gleason from the photo Nadia had shown him. Then Nadia appeared beside him.

All right, Jack thought. All right. Now to get them out of here.

"Good evening, Dr. Radzminsky," he said.

Her head pivoted toward him and her eyes widened in recognition and relief.

"Jack!" she cried, her voice harsh and ragged from shouting for who knew how long. "Oh, Jack, it's you!"

"Jack? Who's Jack?" Gleason was saying, but Nadia shushed him.

"It's all right. He's a friend. Jack, how did you get here? How did you manage—?"

"Long story. Suffice for now that Monnet and his partners arranged for Mr. Prather here to kill you and your fiance."

"Oh, no!" she said with more despair than shock.

"Knew it!" Gleason said. "Had to be him!"

"But why?"

"He and Dragovic were making Berzerk, and you knew it. But Mr. Prather is not a murderer," Jack said, nodding toward Oz, whose eyes widened in surprise. "So he merely kept you out of sight and out of harm's way until he could find a solution for your, um, predicament."

Jack was winging this. He glanced at Oz for a little backup.

"Yes," Oz said, barely missing a beat. "Dr. Monnet was blackmailing me, so I couldn't go to the police. I didn't know what to do. But now that he's dead—"

"Dead?" Nadia said. She looked at Jack.

"Milos Dragovic killed him."

"With him gone," Oz said, "it's safe for me to release you."

Jack said, "But there's one matter we have to settle first: This never happened. Mr. Prather needs your word on that."

Gleason needed about a second before nodding. "I can handle that."

But Nadia hesitated, frowning, not onboard yet.

"Come on, Nadj," Gleason said, putting his arm around her. "We weren't harmed. They even fed us."

"I've never been so frightened in all my life!"

"Yeah, but it's better than being dead. He could've killed us—he was supposed to kill us, and it would have been easier, but he didn't. We owe him something, don't you think?"

Come on, Nadia, Jack thought, trying a little telepathy. Say yes and we're out of here.

Finally she shrugged. "I don't know about owing him," she said, glaring at Oz. "But I guess we can keep it to ourselves."

Jack repressed a sigh of relief. He fished his car keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Gleason.

"My Buick's in front of the Burger King sign. Wait for me there. I've got one more matter to settle with Mr. Prather."

After Nadia and her beau had hurried from the scene, Jack turned to Oz.

"Where'd the rakosh break out?"

"About a mile back. Right near mile marker fifty-one-point-three, to be exact. We stopped but could not stay parked on the shoulder—we'd have the police asking what happened—so we pulled in here."

"We've got to find it."

"Nothing I'd like better," said the boss, "although I have a feeling you'd prefer to see it dead."

"You've got that right."

"An interesting area here," Oz said. "Right on the edge of the Pine Barrens."

Jack cursed under his breath. The Barrens. Shit. How was he going to locate Scar-lip in there—if that was where it was? This whole area was like a time warp. Near the coast you had a nuclear power plant and determinedly quaint but unquestionably twentieth-century towns like Smithville and Leeds Point. West of the parkway was wilderness. The Barrens—a million or so unsettled acres of pine, scrub brush, vanished towns, hills, bogs, creeks, all pretty much unchanged in population and level of civilization from the time the Indians had the Americas to themselves. From the Revolutionary days on, it had served as a haven for people who didn't want to be found. Hessians, Tories, smugglers, Lenape Indians, heretical Amish, escaped cons—at one time or another, they'd all sought shelter in the Pine Barrens.

And now add a rakosh to its long list of fugitives.

"We're not too far from Leeds Point, you know," Prather said, an amused expression flitting across his sallow face. "The birthplace of the Jersey Devil."

"Save the history lesson for later," Jack said. "Are you sending out a search party?"

"No. No one wants to go, and I can't say I blame them. But even if some were willing, we've got to be set up in Cape May for our show tonight. And frankly, without Dr. Monnet buying its blood, I can't justify the risk of going after it."

"That leaves me."

If Scar-lip got too much of a head start, he'd never find it which he could live with… unless the drive to kill Vicky was still fixed in its dim brain. Seemed unlikely, but Jack couldn't take the chance.

"You're not seriously thinking of going after it."

Jack shrugged. "Know somebody who'll do it for me?"

"May I ask why?" Oz said.

"Take too long to tell. Let's just leave it that Scar-lip and I go back a ways and we've got some unfinished business."

Oz stared at him a moment, then turned and began walking back toward his trailer.

"Come with me. Perhaps I can help."

Jack doubted that but followed and waited outside as Oz rummaged around within his trailer. Finally he emerged holding something that looked like a Game-boy. He tapped a series of buttons, eliciting a beep, then handed it to Jack.

"This will lead you to the rakosh."

Jack checked out the thing: it had a small screen with a blip of green light blinking slowly in one corner. He rotated his body and the blip moved.

"This is the rakosh?" Then he remembered the collar it had been wearing. "What'd you do—rig it with a LoJack?"

"In a way. I have electronic telltales on our animals. Occasionally one gets loose and I've found this to be an excellent way to track them. Most of them are irreplaceable."

"Yeah. Not too many two-headed goats wandering around."

"Correct. The range is only two miles, however. As you can see, the creature is still within range, but it may not be for long. Operation is simple: Your position is center screen; if the blip is left of center, the creature is to the left of you; below center, it's behind you; and so on. You track it by proceeding in whatever direction moves the blip closer to the center of the screen. When it reaches dead center, you'll have found your rakosh. Or rather, it will have found you."

Jack swiveled back and forth until the locator blip was at the top of the faintly glowing screen. He looked up and found himself facing the shadowy mass of trees west of the Parkway. Just as he'd feared. Scar-lip was in the pines.

But this'll help me find it, he thought.

And then something occurred to him.

"You're being awfully helpful."

"Not at all. My sole concern is for the rakosh."

"But you know I'm going to kill it if I find it."

"Try to kill it. The pines are full of deer and other game, but the rakosh can't use them for food. As you know, it eats only one thing."

Now Jack understood. He grinned. "And you think by giving me this locator, you're sending it a CARE package, so to speak."

Oz inclined his head. "So to speak."

"We shall see, Mr. Prather. We shall see."

"On the contrary, I doubt anyone will ever see you again."

"I'm not suicidal; trust me on that."

"But you can't believe you can take on a rakosh single-handed and survive."

"Wouldn't be the first time."

Jack headed for his car, relishing the look of concern on Oz's face before he'd turned away. Had he sounded confident enough? Good act. Because he was feeling anything but.

2

"Here he comes," Doug said.

Nadia lifted her head from his shoulder and glanced through the car window. Jack was about a hundred feet away, striding toward them. The sight of him elicited a warm glow against the deep chill that pervaded her. She couldn't remember ever being so glad to see someone as when she'd looked through the open door of that awful trailer and found Jack standing outside. She couldn't imagine how he'd tracked her down or why, but when she'd most needed someone he'd shown up.

"Good," she said. "Now we can get out of here."

She'd been huddled against Doug in the rear seat, feeling cold and tired, totally wrung out, but mostly sad.

Dr. Monnet wanted me dead.

She'd been forced to accept the truth of that, and yet… how could it be? Horrifying enough to learn that anyone wanted you dead, but Dr. Monnet… and after she'd been so worried about his well-being. It was too cruel.

To her surprise, Jack walked past the car and into the food court. Minutes later he emerged with a canvas shoulder bag emblazoned with Atlantic city in Day-Glo green letters.

"How's everybody doing?" he said as he slipped into the front seat.

"Better now," Doug said. "Thanks to you." He extended his hand over the seat. "I'm Doug Gleason."

They shook hands.

"Jack." He gave Doug's wrist a quarter-turn. "Is that a Quisp watch? Neat."

"You want it? It's yours."

Jack waved him off. "No, that's OK."

"I'm serious," Doug said. "I don't know how to thank you."

"You will in a minute."

Jack backed the car out of its spot but didn't drive far. To Nadia's dismay he parked in another spot in a far corner of the rest area by the rideshare info sign. She wanted to go home.

"Aren't we going back?"

"Not yet." Jack pulled a couple of bottles of Snapple from the canvas bag and handed them back. "If you're thirsty, drink up; otherwise, dump it out on the pavement."

Nadia drank half of her lemon-flavored iced tea quickly. She hadn't realized how thirsty she was. Jack had opened his door and was emptying bottle after bottle into the parking lot.

"Shame to waste the stuff, I know," he said, "but it seems Snapple's about the only thing that comes in glass bottles these days."

Then he took out a glass cutter and began scoring the flanks of the bottles.

Baffled, Nadia said, "What are you doing?"

"Trick I learned from an old revolutionary. Ups the chances these'll shatter on contact."

Then he pulled an Atlantic City souvenir T-shirt and a newspaper from the bag. He began tearing up the shirt.

Nadia studied his face, his deft, sure movements. Where was the easy going fellow she'd seen off and on over the past few days? He'd been replaced somehow by this fiercely focused man whose sense of purpose radiated through the car. His expression was grim and the brown eyes she'd once thought mild now gleamed with intensity.

"What's going on?" Nadia said.

"One of Oz's attractions escaped. I have to go after it."

"He hired you?"

"No. This is my own thing."

"Why on earth—?"

"It may harm someone who matters to me."

"Can't you call the police?"

"They'll think I'm nuts, or trying to scam them with a Jersey Devil story."

Doug said, "This 'attraction' wouldn't happen to be a big, strange-looking creature with yellow eyes and dark skin."

Jack looked up. "You saw it?"

"Yeah. I think so. The night I was kidnapped they brought me into one of the tents and pushed me up against the bars of a cage with this huge guy in a stinking rubber monster suit inside."

"That wasn't a suit."

"Bullshit."

Jack focused those eyes on him. "Do I look like I'm bullshitting?"

"No." Doug swallowed. "And to tell the truth, afterward I got to thinking either that's the most convincing rubber suit on earth or I was face-to-face with a real live demon. So I kept telling myself that nothing like that ever existed in real life, so it had to be a suit."

"What happened when they put you up against the bars? Did it take a swipe at you, try to grab you?"

"No. It pretty much ignored me. It seemed more interested in getting out of its cage."

Jack simply stared at Doug.

"What?" Doug asked.

Jack shook his head. "When you get back home, do yourself a favor and buy a lottery ticket. If your luck's still holding, you'll wake up a multimillionaire."

He stepped out of the car, opened the trunk, and returned with a metal can and a flashlight.

Nadia remembered something. "Jack, is this the creature you told me about this morning—the source of the drug?"

"One and the same."

"I think I saw it when I was peeking through a crack between the boards over our windows. I saw them loading a big blue-black creature in a steel cage onto one of the trucks." And she remembered thinking at the time it had to be some sort of gimmick attraction because nothing that looked like that should be living and breathing on this earth. "That… that was real?"

Jack nodded. He squatted outside the car and began refilling the empty Snapple bottles from the big metal can.

Oh, no, Nadia thought, fighting a surge of panic as she watched him. He's not really—

But he was. Oh, yes, he was. The smell of gasoline was unmistakable.

Dizzy, she closed her eyes and hung on, wondering what had happened to her world in the past few days. She felt as if she'd tumbled down a rabbit hole into a nastily surreal Wonderland. The molecule she'd been assigned to stabilize had turned out to be an illegal drug, her fiance had been abducted, a man she'd known for years and deeply respected, had even made love to, had ordered her death, and then he himself had been murdered. And now she was parked in a rest stop helping a man she barely knew make Molotov cocktails to go after some awful creature from a nightmare.

Nightmare… that's where she was right now.

She wished she'd never heard of Jack. If she hadn't hired him, maybe none of this would have happened.

She opened her eyes again and looked at him. "You're really going to chase after that thing? Alone? In the dark?"

He nodded. "Not exactly my idea of a fun time, but…"

"I'll go with you," Doug said.

Nadia wanted to punch him and scream, How can you be such an idiot? but held her tongue when she saw Jack immediately shake his head.

"This doesn't involve you."

"I could watch your back," Doug said, pressing. "I feel I owe you something."

Nadia wanted to kill him. The only hunting Doug had ever done was on a computer screen.

Jack finished tightening the cap on the last bottle.

"I appreciate the offer, but this is a one-man operation." He glanced at her and winked. "Good man."

"I know," she said, clutching Doug's arm. And I want to keep him good and alive.

Jack gently placed the six gasoline-filled bottles back into the canvas shoulder bag and worked sections of newspaper between them to keep them from clinking, then threw the pieces of T-shirt on top.

"What you can do for me is drive," he said, moving into the passenger seat.

Doug scrambled around, leaving Nadia alone in the back. They drove north through the New Gretna toll, then turned around and came back south through the toll again.

"We'll be stopping soon," Jack said. He seemed to be eyeing the mile markers closely. "After you drop me off, head back to the rest area and wait inside where you can hear the public phones. I've got the number of one of them. When I'm done I'll call you on my cell phone and tell you where to pick me up."

"How long do you think you'll be?" Nadia said.

"Can't say." He tapped the dashboard clock. "Just about two A.M. now. If you don't hear from me by six… go home."

"Without you?"

He cleared his throat as he scribbled on a scrap of paper. "If you don't hear from me by then it means things have gotten complicated. Go back to the city and call this number. A guy named Abe will answer. Tell him what you know. He'll take it from there."

Doug said, "But what—?"

"Whoa! Here's my stop."

Doug pulled over and Jack jumped out. He slipped the straps of the bag onto a shoulder and pulled the flashlight from a pocket.

"See you later," he said.

Nadia noticed how he limped as he hurried down the slope toward the trees.

I hope so, she thought as they pulled away. She felt a cold weight growing in her stomach. When she looked back, Jack had disappeared into the tall shadows.

3

Jack trained his flashlight beam on the scrub at the base of the slope, looking for broken branches. He found them. Lots of them. Something big had torn through here not long ago.

He stepped through and followed the path of destruction. He was glad he'd kept the boonie cap; without it the branches would be tearing at the sutures in his scalp. Already had a throbbing headache and a banged-up hip. Didn't need to start bleeding.

When he was sure he was out of sight of the highway, he stopped and pulled out the electronic locator. He was facing west and the blip was at the top edge of the screen. Had to move. Scar-lip was almost out of range.

He pressed forward until he came to a narrow path. A deer trail, most likely. Flashed his beam down and saw what looked like deer tracks in the damp sand, but they weren't alone: deep imprints of big, alien, three-toed feet, and work-boot prints coming after. Scar-lip, with Hank following—obviously behind because the boot prints occasionally stepped on the rakosh tracks.

What's Hank thinking? Jack wondered. That he's got a gun and maybe he learned how to hunt when he was a kid, so that makes him a match for the Sharkman? Maybe he's not thinking. Maybe a belly full of Mad Dog has convinced him he can handle the equivalent of taking on a great white with a penknife in a sea of ink.

Jack began following the deer trail, keeping one eye on the locator and turning his flashlight beam on and off every so often to check the ground. Scrub pines closed in, forming a twenty- to thirty-foot wall around him, arching their branches over the trail, allowing only an occasional glimpse of the starlit sky.

Quiet. Just the sound of insects and the branches brushing against his clothes. Jack hated the great outdoors. Give him a city with cars and buses and honking cabs, with pavements and right angles and subways rumbling beneath his feet and—best of all—streetlights. It wasn't just dark out here, it was dark.

His adrenaline was up but despite the alien surroundings, he felt curiously relaxed. The locator gave him a buffer zone of safety. He knew where Scar-lip was and didn't have to worry about it jumping out of the bushes and tearing into him at any second. But he did have to worry about Hank. An armed drunk in the woods could be a danger to anything that moved. Didn't want to be mistaken for Scar-lip.

The trail wound this way and that, briefly meandering north and south, but taking him generally westward. Jack moved as fast as the circumstances allowed, making his best time along the occasional brief straightaway, but his left hip felt like someone had lit a blowtorch in the socket.

The green blip that was Scar-lip gradually moved nearer and nearer the center of the locator screen, which meant he was gaining steadily on the rakosh. Looked like the creature had stopped moving. Why? Resting? Or waiting?

He guesstimated he was about a quarter-mile from the rakosh when a gun report somewhere ahead brought him up short. Sounded like a shotgun. There it was again. And again.

And then a scream of fear and mortal agony echoed through the trees, rising toward a shriek that cut off sharply before it peaked.

Silence.

Jack had thought the woods quiet before, but now even the insects had shut up. He waited for other sounds. None came. And the blip on the locator showed no movement.

That pretty much told the story: Scar-lip had sensed it was being followed so it hunkered down and waited. Who comes along but one of the guys who used it as a pincushion when it was caged. Chomp-chomp, crunch-crunch, good-bye, Hank.

Jack's tongue was dry as felt. That could have—most likely would have—been him if he'd gone after Scar-lip without the locator.

But that's not the way it's going to play. I know where you are, pal, so no nasty surprises for me.

He crept ahead, and the crack and crunch of every twig and leaf he stepped on sounded amplified through a stasdium PA. But Scar-lip was staying put—eating, perhaps?—so Jack kept moving.

When the blip was almost center screen, Jack stopped. He smelled something and flashed his light along the ground.

The otherwise smooth sand was kicked up ferociously for a space of about a dozen feet, ending with two large oblong gouts of blood, drying thick and dark red, with little droplets of the same speckled all around them. A twelve-gauge Mossberg pump-action lay in the brush at the edge of the trail, its wooden stock shattered.

Only one set of prints led away—the three-toed kind.

Jack crouched in the scrub grass, staring around, listening, looking for signs of movement. Nothing. But he knew from the locator that Scar-lip was dead ahead, and not too far.

Waiting to do to me what he did to Hank, no doubt. Sorry, pal. We're gonna play it my way this time.

He removed two Snapple bottles from the shoulder bag and unscrewed their caps. Gasoline fumes rose around him as he stuffed a piece of T-shirt into the mouth of each. Lifted one, lit the rag with a little butane lighter he'd picked up along with everything else, and quickly tossed it straight ahead along the trail.

The small flame at its mouth traced a fiery arc through the air. Before it hit the ground and whoom-phed into an explosion of flame, Jack had the second one in hand, ready to light.

Muscles tight, heart pounding, Jack blinked in the sudden glare as his eyes searched out the slightest sign of movement. Wavering shadows from the flickering light of the flames made everything look like it was moving. But nothing big and dark and solid appeared.

Something small and shiny glittered on a branch just this side of the flames. Warily, Jack approached it. His foot slipped on something along the way: the sharpened steel rod Bondy had used to torment the rakosh lay half-buried in the sand. Jack picked it up and carried it in his left hand like a spear. He had two weapons now. He felt like an Indian hunter, armed with an iron spear and a container of magic burning liquid.

Closer to the flames now, he stepped over a fallen log and his foot landed on something soft and yielding. Glanced down and saw a very dead Hank staring up at him through glazed eyes. He let out an involuntary yelp and jumped back.

After glancing around to make sure this wasn't a trap, he took another look at Hank. Firelight glimmered in dead blue eyes that were fixed on the stars; the pallor of Hank's bloodless face accentuated the dark rims of his shiners and blended almost perfectly with the sand under his head; his throat was a red pulpy hole and his right arm was missing at the shoulder.

Jack swallowed hard. That could be me soon if I don't watch it.

Stepped over him and kept moving. The fire from the first Molotov cocktail was burning low when he reached the branch. Some of the brush had caught fire but the flames weren't spreading. Still they cast enough light to allow him to identify the shiny object.

Scar-lip's telltale collar.

Jack whirled in near panic, alarm clamoring along his adrenalized nerves as he lit the second cocktail, and scanned the area for signs of the rakosh.

Nothing stirred.

This was bad, very bad. In the middle of nowhere and he'd given himself away with the first bomb. Now tables were reversed: Scar-lip knew exactly where Jack was, while Jack was lost in the dark with only four cocktails left.

Dark… that was the big problem. If he could find a safe place to hide for a few hours, the rising sun would level the playing field a little. But where?

Looked around and fixed on a big tree towering above the pines ahead. That might be the answer.

Jack tossed away the locator and hooked the straps of the canvas bag around his shoulders, knapsack style. Spear in one hand, Molotov in the other, he edged ahead in a half-crouch, ready to spring in any direction.

Sweat trickled down his back as he swung his gaze back and forth, watching, listening, but heard nothing beyond his own harsh, ragged breaths and his racing pulse drumming in his ears.

Hopped over the dying flames of the first Molotov and saw that the trail opened onto a small clearing with the big tree at its center. Good chance Scar-lip was somewhere in or near the clearing, maybe behind the tree trunk. One good way to find out…

Tossed the second firebomb—another flaming whoomph! but no sign of Scar-lip… yet. Had to get to that tree. Angled around so he could see behind it—nothing. Clearing empty.

Dropped the iron spear—it would only get in his way—hustled over to the trunk, and began to climb.

Not fun. His hip shot pain through his pelvis and down his leg, and the effort worsened his headache.

Did rakoshi climb trees? Jack couldn't see why not. Doubted they were afraid of heights. Kept climbing, moving as fast as his battered body allowed, ascending until the branches began to crack under his weight. Satisfied that the far heavier Scar-lip could never make it this far up, he settled down to wait.

Checked the luminescent dial on his watch: just about 3:00 A.M. When was sunup? Wished he paid more attention to things like that. Didn't matter in the city, but out here in the sticks…

Tried to find a comfortable perch but that wasn't going to happen, and a nap was out of the question. At least his hip pain had eased now that it wasn't bearing his weight. And he found some solace in the realization that no way was Scar-lip going to catch him by surprise up here.

Through the leaves of the big oak he could see patches of the sandy clearing below, gray against the surrounding blackness. On the eastern horizon, a dim glow from the parkway and the rest area; but to the west, nothing but the featureless black forever of the Pine Barrens—

Jack stiffened as he saw a light—make that two lights—moving along the treetops to the west… heading his way. At first he thought it might be a plane or helicopter, but the lights were mismatched in size and maintained no fixed relationship to each other. His second thought was UFOs, but these didn't appear to be objects at all. They looked like globules of light… light and nothing more.

He'd heard of these things but had never seen one… The Pineys called them pine lights but no one knew what they were. Jack didn't want to find out and would have preferred to see them heading elsewhere. They weren't traveling a straight line—the smaller one would dart left and right, and even the larger one meandered a little—but no question about it: those two glowing blobs were heading his way.

They slowed as they reached the clearing and Jack got a closer look at them. He didn't like what he saw. One was basketball size, the other maybe a bit larger than a softball. Light shouldn't form into a ball; it wasn't right. Something unhealthy about the pale green color too.

Jack cringed as they came straight for the tree, fearing they were going to touch him—something about them made his skin crawl—but they split within half a dozen feet of the branches. He heard a high-pitched hum and felt his skin tingle as they skirted his perch to the north and south. They paired up again on the far side but, instead of moving on, spiraled down toward the clearing.

Jack craned his neck to see where they were going.

Toward Hank's body? No, that was on the north side of the tree. They were moving the other way.

He watched them hover over an empty patch of sand, then begin to chase each other in a tight circle—slowly at first, then with increasing speed until they blurred into a glowing ring, an unholy halo of wan green light, moving faster and faster, the centrifugal force of their rising speed widening the ring until they shot off into the night, racing back toward the west where they'd come from.

Good riddance. The whole episode had lasted perhaps a minute but left him unsettled. Wondered if this happened every night or if Scar-lip's presence had anything to do with it.

And speaking of Scar-lip…

Checked the clearing as best he could through the intervening foliage, but still nothing stirred.

Tried to settle down again and make plans for sunrise…

4

Jack didn't wait for full light. The stars had begun to fade around four-thirty. By five, although still probably half an hour before the sun officially rose, the pewter sky was bright enough for him to feel comfortable quitting the Tarzan scene and heading back to earth.

Stiff and sore, he eased himself toward the ground, continually checking the clearing—still empty except for Hank. Soon as he hit the sand he opened the Snapple bottles and stuffed their mouths with rags. He kept one in hand and held the lighter ready.

The plan was simple: start at Hank's corpse and follow Scar-lip's footprints from there. He'd keep it up as long as he could. Didn't know how long he could go without food and water, but he'd give it his best shot. Right now what he wanted most was a cup of coffee.

As he approached the corpse, he noticed that the pinelands insects hadn't been idle: flies taxied around Hank's head while ants partied in the throat wound and shoulder stump. The thought of burying him crossed Jack's mind, but he had neither the time nor the tools.

A noise behind him. Jack whirled. Put down the bag and thumbed the flint wheel on the butane lighter as he scanned the clearing in the pallid predawn light.

There… on the far side, the spot where the pine lights had done their little dervish a couple of hours ago, a patch of sand, moving, shifting, rising. No, not sand. This was very big and very dark.

Scar-lip.

Jack took an involuntary step back, then held his ground. The rakosh wasn't moving; it simply stood there, maybe thirty feet away where it had buried itself for the night. Hank's arm dangled from its three-fingered right hand; it held it casually, like a lollipop. The upper half of the arm had been stripped of its flesh; the pink bone was coated with sand.

Jack felt his gut tighten, his heart turning in overdrive. Here was his chance. He lit the tail on the cocktail and stepped over the shoulder bag, straddling it.

Slowly he bent, pulled out a second bomb, and lit it from the first.

Had to get this right the first time. He knew from past encounters how quick and agile these creatures were in spite of their mass. But he also knew that all he had to do was hit it with one of these flaming babies and it would all be over.

With no warning and as little windup as he dared, he tossed the Molotov in his right hand. The rakosh ducked away, as expected, but Jack was ready with the other… gave it a left-handed heave, leading the rakosh, trying to catch it on the run. Both missed. The first landed in an explosion of flame, but the second skidded on the sand and lay there intact, its fuse dead, smothered.

As the rakosh shied away from the flames, Jack pulled out a third cocktail. His heart stuttered, his hand shook, and he'd just lit the fuse when he sensed something hurtling toward him through dimness, close, too close. Ducked but not soon enough. The twirling remnant of Hank's arm hit him square in the face.

Coughing in revulsion as he sprawled back, Jack felt the third cocktail slip from his fingers. He turned and dived and rolled. He was clear when it exploded, but he kept rolling because it had landed on the shoulder bag. He felt a blast of heat as his last Molotov went up.

As soon as the initial explosion of flame subsided, Scar-lip charged across the clearing. Jack was still on his back in the sand. Instinct prompted his hand toward the P-98 but he knew bullets were useless. Spotted the iron spear beside him, grabbed it, swung it around so the butt was in the dirt and the point toward the on-rushing rakosh. His mind flashed back to his apartment rooftop last summer when Scar-lip's mother was trying to kill him, when he had run her through. That had only slowed her then, but this was iron. Maybe this time…

He steadied the point and braced for the impact.

The impact came, but not the one he'd expected. In one fluid motion, Scar-lip swerved and batted the spear aside, sending it sailing away through the air toward the oak. Jack was left flat on his back with a slavering three-hundred-pound inhuman killing machine towering over him. Tried to roll to his feet but the rakosh caught him with its foot and pinned him to the sand. As Jack struggled to slip free, Scar-lip increased the pressure, eliciting live wires of agony from his already cracked ribs. Stretched to reach the P-98—spit balls would probably damage a rakosh as much as .22s, but that was all he had left. And no way was he going out with a fully loaded pistol. Maybe if he went for the eyes…

But before he could pull the pistol free of his warm-up pocket, he saw Scar-lip raise its right hand, spread the three talons wide, then drive them toward his throat.

No time to prepare, no room to dodge, he simply cried out in terror in what he was sure would be the last second of his life.

But the impact was not the sharp tearing pain of a spike ramming through his flesh. Instead he choked as the talons speared the sand to either side and the web between them closed off his wind. The pressure eased from his chest but the talons tightened, encircling his throat as he straggled for air. And then Jack felt himself yanked from the sand and held aloft, kicking and twisting in the silent air, flailing ineffectually at the flint-muscled arm that gripped him like a vise. The popping of the vertebral joints in his neck sounded like explosions; the cartilage in his larynx whined under the unremitting pressure as the rakosh shook him like an abusive parent with a baby who had cried once too often, and all the while his lungs pleaded, screamed for air.

His limbs quickly grew heavy, the oxygen-starved muscles weakening until he could no longer lift his arms. Black spots flashed and floated in the space between him and Scar-lip as his panicked brain's clawhold on consciousness began to falter. Life… he could feel his life slipping away, the universe fading to gray… and he was floating… gliding aloft toward—

—a jarring impact, sand in his face, in his mouth, but air too, good Christ, air!

He lay gasping, gulping, coughing, retching, but breathing, and slowly light seeped back to his brain, life to his limbs.

Jack lifted his head, looked around. Scar-lip not in sight. Rolled over, looked up. Scar-lip nowhere.

Slowly, hesitantly, he raised himself on his elbows, amazed to be alive. But how long would that last? So weak. And God, he hurt.

Looked around. Blinked. Alone in the clearing.

What was going on here? Was the rakosh hiding, waiting to pop out again and start playing with him like a cat with a captured mouse?

He struggled to his knees but stopped there until the pounding in his head eased. Looked around again, baffled. Still no sign of Scar-lip.

What the hell?

Cautiously Jack rose to his feet, his hip screaming, and braced for a dark shape to hurtle from the brush and finish him off.

Nothing moved. The rakosh was gone. Why? Nothing here to frighten it off, and it sure as hell wasn't turning vegetarian, because Hank's arm, the one Scar-lip had thrown at Jack, was missing.

Jack turned in a slow circle. Why didn't it kill me?

Because he'd stopped Bondy and Hank from torturing it? Not possible. A rakosh was a killing machine. What would it know about fair play, about debts or gratitude? Those were human emotions and—

Then Jack remembered that Scar-lip was part human. Kusum Bahkti had been its father. It carried some of Kusum in it and, despite some major leaks in his skylights, Kusum had been a stand-up guy.

Was that it? If so, the Otherness probably wanted to disown Scar-lip. But its daddy might be proud.

Jack's instincts were howling for him to go—now. But he held back. He'd come here to finish this, and he'd failed. Utterly. The rakosh was back to full strength and roaming free in the trackless barrens.

But maybe it was finished—at least between Scar-lip and himself. Maybe the last rakosh was somebody else's problem now. Not that he could do anything about Scar-lip now anyway. As much as he hated to leave a rakosh alive and free here in the wild, he didn't see that he had much choice. He'd been beaten. Worse than beaten: he'd been hammered flat and kicked aside like an old tin can. He had no useful weapons left, and Scar-lip had made it clear that Jack was no match one-on-one.

Time to call it quits. At least for today. But he couldn't let it go, not without one last shot.

"Listen," he shouted, wondering if the creature could hear him and how much it would understand. "I guess we're even. We'll leave it this way. For now. But if you ever threaten me or mine again, I'll be back. And I won't be carrying Snapple bottles."

Jack began to edge toward the trail but kept his face to the clearing, still unable to quite believe this, afraid if he turned his back the creature would rise out of the sand and strike.

As soon as Jack reached the trail, he turned and started moving as fast as his hip allowed. A last look over his shoulder before the pines and brush obscured the clearing showed what looked like a dark, massive figure standing alone on the sand, surveying its new domain. But when Jack stopped for a better look it was gone.

5

Jack became lost on the way out. His defeat and release had left him bewildered and a little dazed, neither of which had helped his concentration. A low lid of overcast added to the problem. The trail forked here and there and he knew he wanted to keep heading east, but he couldn't be sure where that was without the sun to fix on.

He'd called Nadia and told her he was on his way out and to hang in there. She'd sounded relieved. He'd call her again when he found a road.

But he didn't want to be caught carrying on that road, especially not a pistol that could link him to the bloody mess in the GEM boardroom. He pulled the P-98 from his pocket and opened the breech. He ejected the clip and, using his thumbnail, flicked the .22 long rifles free one by one, sending them flying in all directions. He tossed the empty clip into the brush. Then he kicked a hole in the sand, dropped the pistol into the depression, and smoothed sand back over it with his foot.

The gun was lousy with his fingerprints, but after a couple of rainstorms in this acid soil that wouldn't be a problem. No one was going to find it out here anyway.

He walked on, and the extra traveling time gave him room to think.

I blew it.

Defeat weighed on him, and he knew that wasn't right. Nadia and her fiance were safe; Dragovic wouldn't be bothering Gia anymore; the world's supply of Berzerk would be useless powder in a couple of weeks, and its manufacturers wouldn't be making any more of it—or anything else for that matter; he'd made a guy named Sal very happy, happier than he'd intended; and he'd earned a nice piece of change in the process.

But the notion of Scar-lip roaming free remained a bone in his throat that he could neither cough up nor swallow. He felt some sort of obligation to let it be known that something big and dangerous was prowling the Pine Barrens. But how? He couldn't personally go public with the story, and who'd believe him anyway?

He was still trying to come up with a solution when he heard faint voices off to his right. He angled toward them.

The brush opened up and he found himself facing a worn two-lane blacktop. A couple of SUVs were parked on the sandy shoulder where four men, thirty to forty in age, were busily loading shotguns and slipping into Day-Glo orange vests. Their gear was expensive, top of the line, their weapons Remingtons and Berettas. Gentlemen sportsmen, out for the kill.

Jack asked which way to the parkway and they pointed off to the left. A guy with a dainty goatee gave him a disdainful up-and-down.

"What'd you run into? A bear?"

"Worse."

"You could get killed walking through the woods like that, you know," another said, a skinny guy with glasses. "Someone might pop you if you aren't wearing colors."

"I'll be sticking to the road from here on." Curiosity got the better of Jack. "What're you hunting with all that firepower?"

"Deer," the goatee replied. "The State Wildlife Department's ordered a special off-season harvest."

"Harvest, aye? Sounds like you're talking wheat instead of deer."

"Might as well be, considering the way the herd's been growing. There's just too damn many deer out there for their own good."

"And we're doing our civic and ecological duty by thinning the herd," said a balding guy with a big grin.

Jack hesitated, then figured he ought to give these guys a heads-up. "Maybe you want to think twice about going in there today."

"Shit," said the balding one, his grin vanishing. "You're not one of those animal rights creeps are you?"

The air suddenly bristled with hostility.

"I'm not any kind of creep, pal," Jack said through his teeth. Barely into the morning and already his fuse was down to a nubbin; he took faint satisfaction in seeing him step back up and tighten his grip on his shotgun. "I'm just telling you there's something real mean wandering around in there."

"Like what?" said the goatee, smirking. "The Jersey Devil?"

"No. But it's not some defenseless herbivore that's going to lay down and die when you empty a couple of shells at it. As of today, guys, you're no longer at the top of the food chain in the pines."

"We can handle it," said the skinny one.

"Really?" Jack said. "When did you ever hunt something that posed the slightest threat to you? I'm just warning you, there's something in there that fights back and I doubt any of your type can handle that."

Skinny looked uneasy now. He glanced at the others. "What if he's right?"

"Oh, shit!" said baldy. "You going pussy on us, Charlie? Gonna let some tree-hugger chase you off with spook stories?"

"Well, no, but—"

The fourth hunter hefted a shiny new Remington over-under.

"The Jersey Devil! I want it! Wouldn't that be some kind of head to hang over the fireplace?"

They all laughed, and Charlie joined in, back in the fold again as they slapped each other high fives. Jack shrugged and walked away. He'd tried.

Hunting season. Had to smile. Scar-lip's presence in the Pine Barrens gave the term a whole new twist. He wondered how these mighty hunters would react when they learned that the season was open on them.

And he wondered if there'd been any truth to those old tales of the Jersey Devil. Most likely hadn't been a real Jersey Devil before, but there sure as hell was now.