Final Breath

CHAPTER TWO

Portland, Oregon--Two years later

"So, sweetheart, I'm thinking of Tom, Bernie, and Pat for my groomsmen," Jared said to Leah as they walked from his car toward one of their favorite haunts, Thai Paradise on Hawthorne. It was 8:40 on a cold Tuesday night in early December. Holiday lights and decorations adorned the storefronts, but right now the street was nearly deserted.

Jared had his arm around Leah's shoulder. They were an attractive couple. Jared, tall and lean with wavy blond hair, blue eyes, and perpetually pink cheeks, looked like a thirty-year-old version of Prince William. Leah was thin and pretty, with short chestnut hair. "Waiflike" was how Jared's mother described her, and Leah wasn't entirely sure if that was meant to be flattering or not.

"You mentioned your cousin, Lonnie, as a candidate if I wanted someone from your side of the family as a groomsman," Jared went on. "But you guys aren't really that close. Maybe Lonnie could do a reading or something..."

Leah didn't say a word. She eyed the restaurant's red awning with green Christmas lights wrapped around the poles. She felt the knots in her stomach tightening.

"Are you pissed off?" Jared asked. "If having Lonnie in the wedding party is really that important to you--"

"No, it--it's fine," she said. But it wasn't fine at all. Everything was so screwed up. Jared didn't know it yet, but she couldn't go through with this wedding.

She needed to break up with him--tonight. That was why she still couldn't settle on a wedding date. Poor Jared--in a role usually reserved for the bride--became preoccupied with wedding plans, and she--like an apathetic groom--merely shrugged and said, "That's fine," every time he told her about some terrific caterer or a really cool place to hold the reception. Last week her mother came over and started talking about the wedding. Then Jared chimed in, and Leah had nuptial talk in stereo. It was all she could do to keep from running out of the room, screaming.

It wasn't fair to Jared, stringing him along like this. He was a terrific guy, who did very well at his accounting firm. Leah repeatedly told herself she was lucky to be his fiancee. Everybody else--her family, his family and all their friends--told her the same thing

But she didn't love Jared. Her infatuation with him had petered out two months ago. If she'd had any guts, she would have told him "no" on Thanksgiving night when he'd surprised her with the seventeen-thousand-dollar engagement ring. Thank God he didn't have it engraved or anything. He could still get his money back.

She couldn't marry him. It was that simple.

Leah planned to tell him tonight over dinner in Thai Paradise. She figured he couldn't yell at her or cause a big scene in one of their favorite restaurants.

Jared held the door open for her. "You feeling okay?" he asked. "You're awfully quiet tonight."

She shrugged. "I--think maybe I'm just hungry."

The restaurant felt almost steamy after the cold night outside. A blend of sweet and spicy aromas filled the place. The busboy who met them at the door wasn't much bigger than Leah. He was in his mid twenties, with long black bangs that fell over one eye. He had a sweet, handsome face, and he smiled a lot--perhaps to compensate for the fact that his English was horrible. That never stopped Jared from trying to strike up a conversation with him.

Tonight was no different. While the busboy led them past the empty counter area and around the huge tank full of tropical fish, Jared asked how he was, and how business was, and gosh, it sure didn't seem too busy tonight.

The busboy just nodded and smiled--until he sat them in a secluded booth against the wall in the windowless, dimly lit eating area. Leah used to think it was charming the way Jared was so friendly with waitpersons and salespeople. Now it just got on her nerves. It seemed phony and oversolicitous.

Slipping into the booth, Leah shed her coat and thanked the busboy as he handed her a menu.

"Looks like we're just about the only ones in here," Jared said to their busboy. "Hope we aren't screwing up your chances for an early quit tonight."

He doesn't have a fucking clue what you're saying, stupid, Leah wanted to tell her dear, well-meaning fiance. But she just kept a pleasant smile frozen on her face, and took a quick inventory. Jared was right. There were only two other customers in the restaurant--in a booth across from them. They were finished with their dinner and donning their coats. Leah's hopes that Jared wouldn't pitch a fit in a restaurant full of people vanished as she watched the other couple head for the door. She and Jared were now the only customers in the place.

The busboy filled their water glasses. Leah waited until he left their table, then she cleared her throat. "I need to talk with you about something, Jared," she said, squirming a bit in the booth's cushioned seat. "This has been really heavy on my mind lately..."

He looked up from his menu. "What is it, sweetheart?"

The busboy returned with their tea in a medium-size stainless-steel pot. "Tea very, very hot," he said, filling their cups. He set the pot on a trivet on their table.

Leah's stomach was still in knots. She watched the busboy retreat toward the front of the restaurant. He hung the CLOSED sign on the door. It occurred to Leah that after tonight, she wouldn't want to come back here again. It would always be that place where she broke up with Jared. This was probably her last time in here, and it was too bad, because she loved their garlic chicken with wide noodles.

"What is it?" Jared repeated.

Leah couldn't answer him.

The waitress approached their table. Delicate and pretty, she had a round face and a shy manner. Her black hair was swept back in a barrette, and she smiled a lot--like the busboy. In fact, they were brother and sister. Her English was better than his. After Jared subjected her to his requisite chitchat, she took their drink orders.

Once the waitress withdrew, Leah sighed and nervously drummed her fingers on the table top. "Listen, Jared, if I've seemed distracted and on edge lately, well, there's a reason..."

Staring at her, he put down his menu.

"This just isn't working out," she said finally.

"What isn't working out, babe? This booth? You want one on the other side of the room?"

She quickly shook her head and then looked down at her engagement ring. "No, that's not it. I'm sorry, Jared, but it wouldn't be fair to you if I--"

"No, we closing, we closing!"

Leah glanced up--just past the fish tank, toward the front of the restaurant. The busboy was shaking his head and half-bowing to two men who must have ignored the sign on the door. "We closing now!" he repeated.

But the two men were already in the restaurant, and they didn't look as if they were ready to leave. One was tall and skinny, with long, greasy, wavy black hair and a goatee. He wore jeans and a black leather jacket, and had a tattoo on the side of his neck. He muttered something to the busboy. Leah was too far away to see what the tattooed image was, and she couldn't hear what he'd just said. But she had a terrible feeling about this. The meek little busboy was still shaking his head at him and his friend.

"What's wrong?" the man asked loudly. "Answer me in English, asshole. What? Are you all out of food? Did the kennel stop delivering the dog meat?"

Jared half-turned in the booth and looked over his shoulder. "What the hell?" he murmured.

The tall, creepy man's friend laughed--a high-pitched cackle. Shorter and stockier than his buddy, he had a marine buzz cut and muscular arms covered with tattoos. Despite the frigid weather, he wore only a T-shirt and jeans. He was all twitchy and seemed hopped up on something. Still laughing, he reached over and slapped the busboy on his shoulder.

"You go, please, we closing!" the busboy repeated. He pointed at the sign on the door.

A hand over her heart, Leah watched as the cook emerged from behind the counter. A thin, older man, he had a red apron over his short-sleeve shirt and baggy black slacks. He, too, was shaking his head at the intruders and pointing to the door. Between his hushed tone and the broken English, Leah wasn't sure what he was saying. The young waitress hovered behind him.

"Fuck you, old man," the skinny goon said, laughing.

"Who do these scumbags think they are?" Jared muttered. He started to climb out of the booth, but Leah grabbed his hand to stop him.

"Please, Jared, no--don't," she whispered urgently. The scumbags obviously hadn't yet noticed two customers were still in the restaurant. Part of Leah wanted to stay inconspicuous, just lay low until all of this was over. It seemed like the safest option right now: avoid a confrontation at any cost.

Then the stocky man suddenly pulled a revolver from the waistband of his jeans. His T-shirt had been camouflaging it. All at once, he slammed the butt end of the revolver over the older man's forehead. The waitress let out a scream as the cook collapsed on the floor. "No, no, no!" she cried, rushing to his aid.

But the stocky man grabbed her. His friend pushed the busboy against the counter and sent him crashing into two tall counter chairs. They tipped over and fell to the floor with a loud clatter while the busboy clung to the counter for balance. The chubby guy thought this was hysterically funny.

Paralyzed, Leah watched in horror. "Oh my God," she whispered. "Call 9-1-1...."

Jared quickly dug into his pants pocket for his cell phone.

The two assailants still hadn't spotted them on the other side of the large fish tank.

The skinny one grabbed the busboy by his hair, and then hit him in the face. The waitress screamed out again as her brother tripped over the fallen counter chairs and tumbled to the floor. The thug kicked him in the ribs.

"Who else is back there?" he asked, nodding toward the kitchen area behind the counter. He glanced at the waitress. "You got somebody washing dishes back there?"

Tears streaming down her face, the waitress shook her head and said something. Leah couldn't hear it. All the while, the hulky creep pawed at her and cackled.

"Do you have a safe in this dump? A safe?" the tall one asked her.

Once again, Leah couldn't hear her reply. But the man must have heard it. "Fuck!" he hissed. "Okay, so where do you keep the money?"

With the phone to his ear, Jared peered over the top of their booth. His earlier fortitude had disappeared. Leah could tell he didn't want to be a hero right now any more than she did. This was something for the police--if they ever picked up.

"Yes," Jared whispered into the phone--finally. "I'm reporting a--a--a robbery in progress at--um, at Thai Paradise on Hawthorne...No, I'm sorry. I can't speak up. I'm here in the restaurant. It's happening right in front of me..."

The busboy let out a frail cry as the tall, skinny creep savagely kicked him again. It broke Leah's heart--and enraged her--to see that sweet, quiet young man brutalized. His sister sobbed uncontrollably in the other thug's clutches. "I'm getting some of this yellow tail before the night is over," he announced, groping her.

"Take her into the can," the one with the goatee said. "Let's move them all in there and get away from this front window. I'll clean out the register. Then we'll cap them all. I don't want any fucking witnesses..."

"Oh, my God," Leah murmured. She'd heard that term cap in a movie about street gangs. It meant shooting somebody in the head.

Jared was still whispering into the phone, explaining he couldn't talk any louder. "These guys have guns!" he said under his breath. He peered over the top of the booth. "They're going to shoot everyone in the place, for God's sake. Please, send help..."

"Where's the restroom?" the skinny one asked the waitress.

She timidly pointed toward the dining area--past the fish tank. The man's gaze followed, and suddenly, he locked eyes with Leah.

She gasped and tried to duck. Jared shrank back in his seat as well. But they were too late. They'd been spotted.

"Shit, we got company," the skinny creep muttered. "Let's round them up."

"My God, they've seen us," Jared whispered into the phone. "Tell the police to hurry. Did you hear me?"

Leah flinched at a loud, tinny clattering sound. Peeking around the edge of the booth, she saw the taller one kicking the fallen counter chairs aside. He grabbed the dazed, beaten busboy by the arm, and pulled him up from the floor. Blood streamed from the young man's nose. He could hardly walk. The tall guy seemed to hold him up as they moved toward the dining area. The stocky thug followed them, his tattooed arms still around the waitress. Both assailants had their guns ready.

"Come out of there, you two," the skinny one called.

"Yeah, come out, come out, wherever you are!" his friend chimed in, laughing.

The two hoods stepped into the dining room area with their terrified hostages.

Leah recoiled in the corner of the booth. Sitting up straight, Jared switched off his cell phone and nervously stared back at them.

"Get up," the skinny guy whispered. With one hand, he had the trembling busboy in a choke hold. With the other, he pointed a gun at Leah and Jared. "Get the hell up," he repeated. "We're gonna stick all of you in the restroom for safekeeping."

But neither Jared nor Leah moved. Her heart was racing.

The tall, ugly gunman violently shoved the busboy to one side. The young man collided into a table, knocking it over. Glasses, plates, and silverware flew in every direction. He hit his head on the top of a chair, then fell to the floor, unconscious.

The stocky one cackled. Following his friend's lead, he hurled the poor waitress toward another table. The petite girl slammed into a chair, but somehow managed to keep from falling. Wincing in pain, she clung to the chair and caught her breath.

Horrified, Leah sat frozen in the booth, watching it all.

"Yahoo!" the hulky guy yelled. He swiveled around and fired his gun three times--at the large fish tank. There was an explosion of glass and water. He must have hit some electrical wiring, because sparks shot out from the top of the tank. There was a loud bang, and the lights in the restaurant flickered. Water gushed from the broken receptacle, and suddenly the restaurant floor was a quarter-inch deep in water and flopping, floundering exotic fish.

The stupid thug seemed to think this was hysterical, but his skinny friend was visibly annoyed with him. He glanced down at all the water and the fish twitching at his feet. Still chuckling, his buddy went to step on one of them.

Leah gazed at them. Then she turned and glanced at the stainless-steel teapot on their table. Something kicked in--maybe anger, maybe a survival instinct. Whatever it was, she suddenly grabbed that teapot by the handle and flung it at the tall man's face.

She was close enough to hit her stationary target dead-on. The lid flew off just as the pot struck his cheek. He let out a startled howl. Scalding tea splashed his face. It must have burned his eyes, because he dropped the gun and immediately covered his eye sockets. Staggering back, he spewed a stream of obscenities--between loud, high-pitched, agonizing shrieks.

Before the stocky guy seemed to realize what was happening, Jared shot out of the booth and rammed into him. The body blow sent him careening toward the broken fish tank. They tipped over chairs and tables in their path.

Meanwhile, Leah snatched up the tall thug's revolver. She almost slipped on the wet floor, but caught her balance. The tall man wasn't so lucky. He blindly staggered around the dining room until he tripped over a chair. He fell down on his knees.

Leah aimed the gun at him, but hesitated before pulling the trigger. He was incapacitated, defeated. The guy couldn't hurt anyone now.

But apparently, the waitress didn't feel that way. Wiping her tears, the delicate young woman picked up a chair and cracked it over his head.

The man collapsed on the wet floor. A couple of fish struggled and splashed around him in the thin layer of water.

"Son of a bitch!" bellowed the stocky thug--over the clatter of dining room furniture.

Leah swiveled around in time to see him punch Jared in the face. His fist connected with Jared's eye. He staggered back from the blow, but didn't collapse. Wincing, Leah aimed the gun at the big man, but Jared charged him again. Jared slugged him in the gut--a sucker punch.

The chubby man reeled back and grabbed the top of the shattered fish tank to steady himself.

Suddenly, the lights flickered again, and the big man froze. His mouth opened in a silent scream. He started to shake violently as the electric currents raced through his body. Sparks arced out from where he clutched the top of the fish tank.

Jared started to back away. Leah reached out to her fiance, touching his shoulder. He turned and wrapped his arms around her. Clinging to each other, they tried to catch their breath. But they couldn't yet.

Only a few feet in front of them, the thug stood with his hand seared on top of the fish tank. Spasms racked his body. He wouldn't stop twitching and convulsing, and yet that stunned expression seemed stuck on his oafish face. His skin turned red. Smoke enveloped his feet.

Leah heard a hissing, sizzling sound. It could have been the electrical charges making that noise. Then a new pungently sweet odor wafted through the dining room--just as the stocky man teetered and fell facedown to the floor.

Leah stared at his corpse, and realized what she'd heard--and what she still smelled.

It was human flesh cooking.

Six months later

"With wedding bells and jingle bells on their minds, a Portland, Oregon, couple, Jared McGinty and Leah Dvorak, stopped by their favorite Thai restaurant one night last December for a late dinner. They were making wedding plans..." The anchorman punctuated this lead-in with a dramatic pause. The program was On the Edge, a prime-time TV newsmagazine. The handsome newscaster, with a tan and premature silver hair, was Sloan Roberts, recently voted one of People Magazine's Ten Sexiest Bachelors.

This was a rerun. The man watching the TV program in his Portland hotel room had seen this episode about Jared and Leah before--shortly after the incident had happened, six months ago, around Christmastime. Still, his eyes were riveted to the TV.

The screen-within-the screen just to the right of Sloan's shoulder bore the words: Movers & Shakers. Appropriately enough, the letters in these words kept shaking and twitching.

"Jared and Leah had no idea they were about to come face-to-face with death," Sloan continued--in an ominous tone. "On this week's segment of Movers & Shakers, Sydney Jordan tells us how Jared and Leah fought the bad guys, fought the odds, and survived--thanks to a little teamwork."

The picture on the TV screen switched to a pretty, thirty-nine-year-old, swaddled in a trench coat. Her wavy, tawny-brown hair blowing in the wind, Sydney Jordan stood under the red awning of Thai Paradise, and spoke into a handheld mike. Her breath was visible that night back in December when they'd originally filmed the segment.

"Jared McGinty and Leah Dvorak are 'regulars' here at Thai Paradise in Portland's charming Hawthorne District," she announced.

The picture switched to Jared and Leah, sitting in front of a fireplace in twin chairs. Except for Jared's black eye, already starting to fade, neither of them showed much sign of the trauma they'd endured just three nights before. "Well, we almost always order the same thing when we go there," Leah said with a timid smile. "Creatures of habit, I guess. The garlic chicken with broccoli and wide noodles is my favorite."

"I usually order the Pad Thai," Jared said, giving Leah a goofy grin. "But Leah always ends up eating most of it."

She laughed, and slapped his arm. "Oh, I guess that's true!"

"Thai Paradise is a family business," Sydney Jordan announced. The cozy image of Leah and Jared together dissolved into a still photo of the owners proudly posing in front of the restaurant on its opening day. "It was started by Som and Suchin Wongpoom, who immigrated to the United States with their nephew and niece, Nuran and Sumalee, just five years ago. Som and Suchin do most of the cooking--old family recipes. Nuran and Sumalee are on the waitstaff..."

A lullaby with an Asian lilt provided the soundtrack for a brief montage of old family photos and video clips of the Wongpooms interacting with customers at birthday parties and other special occasions in the restaurant.

"It didn't take long for Portlanders like Leah and Jared to discover the wonderful food and warm atmosphere in this family-run restaurant." The camera returned to Leah and Jared sitting together, zooming in for a close-up of Leah's hand as she caressed his arm. It was hard to miss the diamond ring that sparkled on her finger.

"Leah and Jared were engaged three weeks ago," Sydney Jordan chimed in--over this image. "They still haven't set a date yet..."

The picture changed back to Sydney in front of the restaurant again. "The couple were discussing their wedding plans when they stopped in here at Thai Paradise for dinner late last Tuesday night." The brunette reporter gave a nod over her shoulder. "Jared and Leah had no idea that just down the street, parked in a stolen car, two men were hatching a plan of their own..."

It was jarring to see the TV screen suddenly filled with side-by-side police mug shots of the skinny, long-haired man and his stocky friend. "Dwight Powell and Harvey Ray Loach were both convicted felons--career criminals--who met while serving jail time at California's Folsom State Prison," Sydney Jordan explained in voice-over. "Police were already searching for the duo in connection to a Portland convenience store robbery in which a twenty-three-year-old clerk was murdered."

There was grainy footage--obviously recorded by the store's security cameras--of the robbery in progress. The two gunmen approached the counter with their guns drawn while a young, gangly clerk raised his hands and backed away from the register. Even at a distance, and even with the poor quality of the videotape, the boy looked scared. On the Edge or their Movers & Shakers correspondent, Sydney Jordan, had the good taste not to show the terrified young clerk casually--and mercilessly--gunned down.

Sydney Jordan gave an account of what had happened at Thai Paradise that night. She briefly interviewed the busboy, Nuran, his face still bruised, and his sister, Sumalee. They still seemed traumatized. At one point--in the bottom corner of the screen--the camera caught a glimpse of the young waitress clutching Sydney Jordan's hand while she tearfully spoke in her broken English.

More airtime was given to Jared and Leah, who seemed like a sweet couple, very much in love. At one point during the interview, Leah started to cry. "When I heard they planned to--to take us all into the bathroom and shoot us, I was just so scared," she admitted.

Jared put his arm around her, and--on camera, at least--Leah seemed to gather some strength from him. Jared said he managed to stay focused and keep his head throughout the whole ordeal because Leah was there. She claimed the same thing about him.

Sydney Jordan stressed it was teamwork that enabled the young couple to overcome the two armed, murderous thugs.

Harvey Ray Loach was pronounced dead--from electric shock--at the scene. Dwight Powell was treated for a mild concussion and second-degree burns on his face and neck. The scalding tea had indeed temporary damaged his eyes, and he was blind for a few days. "But my sources here say Dwight Powell should regain his sight in time to watch this broadcast from his jail cell at the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, where he's being held without bail." Sydney Jordan announced.

The picture switched to Sydney, walking with the elder Wongpooms through the wreckage of their restaurant. Sydney Jordan was limping slightly. There were close-ups of broken chairs, and all the shattered plates and glass on the water-damaged carpet. The camera pulled back to show Suchin pointing and wincing at the mess. The older woman started weeping on Sydney's shoulder. The reporter gently patted her back. Her voice-over continued, "Som and Suchin's insurance won't completely cover the cost of water damage, the destroyed aquarium and all its fish, as well as business lost while Thai Paradise remains closed for repairs."

They cut to Sydney Jordan flanked by Leah and Jared, and about a dozen other people outside Thai Paradise. Everyone looked chilled to the bone, but they were smiling. "That's why Jared, Leah, and several of their neighbors--all regulars here at Thai Paradise--have so far collected four thousand eight hundred dollars to help offset repair costs for Som and Suchin."

"Oh, Thai Paradise is one of my favorite places to eat," said one middle-age woman, in close-up. "And they're really wonderful people, too."

"My wife and I are regulars," said a forty-something man with a baseball cap. "It's the best Thai food around."

Sydney Jordan turned to Jared and Leah. "Some people might say you two have already done enough to help Som and Suchin and their restaurant. But I understand you don't intend to quit until you've collected eight thousand dollars for them."

Leah snuggled up to her fiance. "It's the least we can do for these nice people who have had us over to dinner so many times."

The pretty news correspondent turned toward the camera. "I'm Sydney Jordan--with two very special Movers & Shakers here in Portland, Oregon. Now back to you, Sloan."

The picture switched to dapper, silver-haired Sloan Roberts at his news desk again. Seated beside him was his pretty blond co-anchor. "Here's an update on that story since it aired last December," Sloan said. "Thai Paradise opened its doors again in early January. If you'd like to eat there, reservations are recommended. It's so popular, Som and Suchin plan to open Thai Paradise II some time next year. As for Jared and Leah, they've set a date and will be married in September."

"Maybe they could have the reception at the restaurant," chirped Sloan's co-anchor.

Grinning, he nodded. "They're sure to get a discount. Thank you, Sydney Jordan--for that moving story. Stay tuned for more as On the Edge returns."

A commercial for margarine came on.

The man in the Portland hotel grabbed the remote and switched off the TV. Funny, they reran Sydney Jordan's Movers & Shakers segment with Leah and Jared tonight. He'd started making plans for them shortly after watching that piece when it had originally aired six months ago. He'd been watching Leah and Jared for nearly a month now. He knew the old five-story apartment building where they lived in Portland's Northwest district. He'd learned how to get inside the place undetected. He'd acquainted himself with every inch of it--from the roof to the dark, dank recesses of the basement. He'd even broken into their apartment already, just long enough to study the layout and go through their closets to make sure they didn't keep a gun on the premises. Before making his clandestine exit, he'd left a calling card. He'd peed in their bathroom, left the toilet seat up, and hadn't flushed. He'd imagined Leah later bitching out Jared for being such a pig, and that had made him chuckle. Yet a part of him had wanted them to know someone else had been inside the apartment. Part of him had been daring them to figure it out. Last week, he'd been cocky enough to take risks like that.

But not anymore. He had to be very careful now that their Movers & Shakers segment had been recycled for On the Edge. Jared and Leah were in the limelight again, maybe not for long. But he had to pull back for a while, maybe even delay his plans for a few more days.

Turning away from the TV, he glanced down at the hotel's king-size bed, where he'd laid out his burglary tools--a collection of files, skeleton keys, and wires. He'd used them to break into Leah and Jared's building and their apartment. On the ugly maroon and hunter green paisley bedspread, he'd also set out a pair of gloves, a knife, and a 9-millimeter Glock handgun. And on the pillow was a neatly folded, lightweight, clear plastic rain jacket.

Everything he needed.

Just a few more days, he thought. He could wait. He was a patient man.

And then Sydney Jordan's friends, Jared and Leah, would be on the news again.

"You're clearly limping here in this scene," the hotshot, twenty-something exec said. He had black, spiked hair, designer glasses, and a black designer suit--with no tie. He also had a Bluetooth phone attached to his ear. Leaning back in his chair at the conference table, he unclasped his hands from behind his head to point to the big TV screen for a moment. "See what I mean?"

His assistant, a young East Indian man, worked the DVD remote control. With a flick of the button, he backed up the scene on the big-screen TV of Sydney Jordan assessing the wrecked restaurant with the Wongpooms.

"Yes, I'm clearly limping," Sydney said tonelessly. "It's from an old spinal cord injury, Brad."

Brad was an image consultant the network had hired to review her work. He'd shown the old Jared and Leah story to a test audience, and Sydney had flown from Seattle to New York to hear the test findings. She still had some jet lag. Her hair was swept back in a ponytail, and she wore a blue sleeveless dress.

There was only one other person at the long conference table, a young woman in a power suit from the network's public relations department. She took notes and said nothing.

"Well, people don't want to see you limping, Sydney," Brad said. "The test audience was split right down the middle--the ones who knew about your accident and the ones who didn't. The ones who didn't wondered why you were limping. The ones who knew about your injury didn't want to be reminded of it. Made them feel bad. Plus it's distracting, and not very glamorous."

"In the future, I'll try not to walk when we're taping," she replied. Sydney wondered how much the network was paying this guy. Watching this DVD of her work and getting a blow-by-blow analysis reminded Sydney of her figure-skating days, when her coach used to analyze videotapes of her routines. Those screening sessions, which she'd always loathed, had at least focused on her work from the day or week before and helped her to correct her recent mistakes. But this segment from Movers & Shakers was six months old, for crying out loud.

So much had changed in the last six months. Back when she'd gone to Portland to cover Leah and Jared's story, she'd still been based in Chicago and still happily married. Her only real heartaches in life had been her slightly faltering walk and occasionally having to be away from her husband and son while she filmed her stories. Sydney's Movers & Shakers segments profiled athletes, inventors, philanthropists, eccentrics, and everyday people who had done something extraordinary. Sydney loved meeting these individuals and profiling them in her video shorts. She'd always searched for subjects and story ideas in Chicago, so she wouldn't have to go on the road. She'd loved her life at home.

Gazing at herself on the TV, Sydney thought about how that woman up there on the screen had no idea her life was about to fall apart.

"The trench coat is good," Brad was saying. "A very classic reporter look, but you've got a nice figure, Sydney. So for this scene inside the restaurant with the old folks, you should have lost the coat. The test audience liked your hair, and thought you looked pretty. I tell you, with high definition, the lines on some of these female correspondents' faces--goddamn, more bags than Louis Vuitton. I know, I know, it's unfair, but people don't expect male reporters to be pretty. Anyway, not to fear, you passed the HD TV test, Sydney. But some time within the next year or two, you might want to go in for a nip and tuck--just for maintenance."

"I'll make a note of it," she said, her nostrils flaring.

"You might even want to devote a segment to it--when you go in for the touch-up, I mean."

She started drumming her fingernails on the desktop. "Are you serious?"

"People want flashier stories from you, Sydney. Think sexy and edgy. After all, this is On the Edge. The kinds of stories you do aren't as interesting as they used to be. People don't want tales about these do-gooders..."

Sydney glared at him. "No, they want stories about celebrity train wrecks and screw-ups. They want to see who's gotten a DUI, who's in and who's out of rehab, and that way, they can judge them and feel better about themselves. Then they don't really have to aspire to anything. You want me to give the people what they want? How's that going to enlighten or inspire them? Isn't that a reporter's duty--to educate and enlighten?"

Brad touched something on his earpiece, then he held up his index finger. "Just a sec...I've got a call here...Yeah, well, what do the marketing people say?"

Later that afternoon, Sydney waited for her plane in the VIP lounge at JFK. She had an easy chair over by one of the windows. Outside, they were loading bags into a Boeing 747. Sydney was on her cell phone with her brother, Kyle, in Seattle. She'd already spoken to her son, Eli, who was staying with him. "Anyway, my approval rating could be better, and they think I'm due for a facelift next year," she told him.

"Have your boobs done while you're at it," Kyle recommended. "It's important that all female reporters have a good rack. Screw intelligence and creativity, they're overrated."

Sydney laughed--though a bit listlessly.

"You sound tired," her brother said.

"And homesick," she added.

"Which home have you been sick for? Here or Chicago?"

This jaunt to New York had been Sydney's first overnight trip since leaving her husband, Joe, and moving to Seattle. Somehow the excursion had made her miss her life in Chicago even more. Sydney's plane, leaving within the hour, would be flying over Chicago on its way to Seattle.

"I've missed Eli and I've missed you," she said finally. That much was true. But she also missed Chicago--and Joe. "Anyway, I'll see you guys in eight hours..."

After she finished talking with her brother, Sydney took out her laptop computer to check her e-mail. It was mostly junk, a few messages from fans, and one with no subject listed from secondduet4U@dwosinco.com. Sydney opened the e-mail:

Bitch-Sydney,

You can t save them.

She was used to the occasional crank or crazy e-mail. She usually deleted them. "Second duet for you," she murmured, checking the sender's name. "Weird...."

With a sigh, she shook her head and pressed the Delete button.

CHAPTER THREE

The digital timer on the dryer's operating panel indicated thirteen minutes were left in the cycle. Opening the dryer door, Leah pulled one of Jared's sweat socks from the pile of warm clothes. It still felt a bit damp.

Without the dryer's incessant rumbling noise, it was suddenly quiet in the basement laundry room. Though well lit by two fluorescent lights amid the network of pipes overhead, the uncarpeted, dingy room always gave Leah the creeps.

Someone had tried to make the place more cheery with a few cheesy fake plants gathering dust and cobwebs on a shelf above the laundry sink. They'd hung ugly brown and orange plaid curtains on the small, barred window not far below the ceiling. A "Gardens of the World" calendar hung on the graying, paint-chipped walls. Someone had also left several old romance paperbacks and Better Homes & Gardens on the card table.

Leah shut the dryer door, but hesitated before pressing the On button again. She could hear the mechanical knocks and humming from the old elevator across the corridor, but it sounded like someone was headed up to one of the floors above the lobby level. They weren't coming down to the basement.

Restarting the dryer, Leah settled back into the folding chair and opened up one of the Better Homes & Gardens. She was dressed in a T-shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals. Despite the hot, sticky Fourth of July weather, a little shudder passed through her. In addition to being slightly creepy, the laundry room was also--year-round--the coolest room in the building. Sometimes in winter months, Leah sat on top of the dryer to keep warm.

Just to the left of the washer and dryer was a chain-link, gatelike door to the storage area--a dark annex full of junk stowed in locked cages. There was no outside light switch for it. The few trips she'd taken into that gloomy storage room were with Jared, and she always made him walk in front of her--into the darkness a few steps--where he blindly felt around for a pull-string to the overhead light.

Leah might have been more comfortable if the light were on in that storage area, but she wasn't about to brave the darkness inside there to turn it on. So she did her damnedest to ignore that shadowy nook beyond the chain-link door.

She really shouldn't have been scared right now. It was only six o'clock, and still light out. Over the rumble and roar of the dryer, she heard a shot ring out--and then another. It startled her, but only for a second. Some idiots with their fireworks, she thought. They couldn't wait for tonight to set them off. They were probably in the park next door.

She paged through the magazine, and stopped on a feature called, "Newlywed Nests--Affordable Ideas to Upgrade Your Starter Home!" Leah frowned at the two-page spread showing a happy young couple in their well-appointed little love shack.

She and Jared must have looked just as happy and well adjusted to people watching the rerun of On the Edge a few days ago. In fact, after that incident in Thai Paradise back in December, she'd sort of fallen in love with Jared all over again. Nothing like surviving a life-threatening situation to make two people feel closer than ever--for a while anyway. They were terrific together, everyone said so. She'd bought into all of Sydney Jordan's teamwork talk.

Leah had liked Sydney a lot. For someone who was on TV, she was very down to earth. Sydney had made her feel so relaxed; Leah had almost admitted to the Movers & Shakers correspondent that she'd had some doubts about her relationship with Jared. But she'd decided not to spoil the TV-packaged image of this brave, selfless couple who were very much in love.

In fact, it was how Leah wanted people to think of her.

So now she and Jared had set the date. The rerun of their Movers & Shakers segment for On the Edge only made her feel more pressure from everyone about this damn wedding. That program also produced another strange side effect. Lately, Leah couldn't get over the sensation that someone was watching her.

It wasn't anything she could put her finger on. But lately, while riding the Metro to and from work, or eating her lunch--whether in a restaurant or in the park--she'd suddenly feel someone spying on her. She'd glance around at people in the general vicinity, but Leah never caught anyone staring.

"Oh, you're just picking up on people recognizing you from On the Edge," Jared had told her. "It's nothing. Don't be so paranoid."

She couldn't help it. Something very bizarre and unsettling had happened a few days before the rerun had aired. She'd come home from work, and immediately realized someone had been in the apartment. She must have missed him by only a few minutes, because it smelled different in there. A stranger's body odor still lingered in the air. Nothing was missing. But the sweaters on her closet shelf were askew, and the clothes in her dresser drawers were slightly messed up. Strangest of all--the intruder had urinated in their toilet and left it there un-flushed with the seat up. She knew it wasn't Jared. He never did that. Just to be sure, she checked with Jared and their apartment manager and verified that neither one of them had been in the apartment that afternoon.

But later, after Leah had explained her concerns to him, Jared shrugged and said he must have been in a hurry that morning and used the bathroom without flushing.

Leah wanted to have the locks changed, but Jared told her she was being silly. "C'mon, honey, think about it. Why would someone break in, not steal anything, but then pee in our bathroom--and leave it un-flushed?"

"Maybe he wants us to know he's been here," she remembered telling Jared. "Maybe he wants us to know he's coming back."

"That's just crazy."

So maybe their intruder was insane. This crazy person had relieved himself in their bathroom as some kind of nasty calling card.

Leah had been on her guard ever since.

The dryer let out a loud buzz, startling her. Leah tossed aside the magazine, got to her feet, and unloaded the warm, dry clothes. She started to fold the pants and T-shirts on the table. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a shadow move beyond the chain-link door to the storage room. It's just your imagination, she told herself. She went on folding clothes, but picked up the pace a bit.

She peered over toward the storage room again--and noticed the shadow once more. It definitely moved. A chill raced through her, and she stood perfectly still for a moment. Clutching a warm T-shirt to her chest, she gazed at the dark room beyond the gatelike door. Leah moved her head from side to side and watched the shadow do the same thing.

She heaved a sigh. "Moron," she muttered. "Scared of your own shadow." Her heart was still fluttering, but Leah forced herself to step over to the chain-link door. In the murky darkness, she could make out the first few storage lockers and the piles of junk inside them--boxes, old bicycles, and things covered with furniture blankets. Leah couldn't see anything past the third set of lockers. The rest of the room was swallowed up in blackness.

She retreated to the table and continued folding clothes. Most of the clothes were Jared's. She should have made him come down here and get his own damn laundry. But he'd stepped out for a few minutes. They were going with friends to watch the fireworks tonight, and he wanted to pick up some beer.

Another shot rang out in the distance, followed by three more. Get used to it, she told herself; they'll be lighting off firecrackers all night and half of tomorrow. She always felt sorry for the poor dogs and cats traumatized by the barrage of bangs and blasts on July Fourth.

Leah continued folding laundry. She still couldn't shake the feeling that someone else was down there--watching her. Only three more T-shirts, and then she'd get the hell out of there. She could match up the socks once she was safely inside the apartment.

Leah heard the old elevator across the hallway suddenly start up with those mechanical knocks and pings, and then the humming. It sounded like the elevator was headed down to the basement.

She quickly folded her last shirt, then tossed the socks on top of the stack of clothes. The elevator had stopped down at this level, she could tell. But she didn't hear the door open or the inner gate--an accordion-like contraption--clanking. Leah reminded herself that sometimes people pressed the "B" button, but got off on the ground floor instead. That was probably what had happened.

Gathering up the pile of clothes, she headed toward the door. But she hesitated before stepping out to the hallway. Leah gazed down the gloomy little hallway. The elevator door was closed--along with the doors to the stairwell and garage. Carrying the stack of laundry, her chin pressed against the mountain of socks on top, she hurried toward the elevator. She was about to press the button, but didn't have to. The elevator was already on the basement level. With one hand, Leah flung open the door, steadied it with her hip, then pulled at the gate. The whole time, she felt as if someone was coming up behind her.

She ducked into the elevator so quickly that a few socks fell onto the cubicle's dirty floor. She shut the gate. The outer door closed by itself. Leah jabbed at the button for the third floor. The cables let out a groan, and the elevator started moving. She slouched against the wall and let out a sigh. How could she have let herself get so worked up and scared over nothing?

Maybe it was having been reminded so recently about her brush with death. That, and the weird break-in they'd experienced. Perhaps this was some kind of delayed post-traumatic stress syndrome or something.

Creaking and humming, the elevator passed the ground floor and continued its ascent. Leah caught her breath. She managed to balance the load of laundry, then squatted down and retrieved the socks from the floor. She heard another muffled bang. It seemed a little closer than the others. Rolling her eyes, she reminded herself again to get used to it.

When the elevator stopped on the third floor, Leah tugged the gate to one side and pushed the outer door open with her hip. In this very familiar corridor--with its ancient, burgundy swirl-patterned carpet and her neighbor's fake ficus by the elevator--she felt safe again.

But then Leah saw the door to her and Jared's apartment was open a crack. She froze. She'd closed and locked the door before going down to fetch the laundry. Since that bizarre break-in last week, she always locked the door, even when stepping out for only a few minutes.

Jared probably came back, dummy, she told herself. Leah pushed the door open with her shoulder. "Jared?" she called. "Honey, are you back? Did you get the beer?"

No answer.

Standing in the small foyer area with the stack of clothes in her hands, Leah stared straight ahead at the living room, but she didn't see Jared. To her left was the kitchen entrance. She poked her head in there. Recently remodeled, the kitchen had green granite countertops and all-new stainless-steel appliances. A six-pack of Coronas was on the counter by the sink, but the grocery bag next to it was on its side, with loose beer bottles spilling out. One bottle had rolled across the counter, and another had fallen onto the black-and-white linoleum floor, although it hadn't broken.

"Jared?" she called again. "Honey, are you okay?"

She set the laundry on the breakfast table, and then continued to the dining room and living area. The bedroom door was open, but she didn't see Jared in there. Off the living room a narrow corridor led to the linen closet and bathroom. They had another door to the bathroom in their bedroom.

"Jared? Honey, what's--" she hesitated.

A musky odor hung in the air. Leah had smelled it before--two weeks ago, when someone had broken into the apartment and left his crude calling card in their toilet.

Leah crept toward the fake hearth and grabbed the poker from the fireplace set. Biting her lip, she moved to the bedroom and peeked past the doorway. On the other side of the bed, she saw the bathroom door--slightly ajar. The light was on.

She thought about calling out Jared's name again, but remained silent. She cautiously made her way around the bed toward the bathroom. Her legs felt wobbly, and she couldn't breathe right.

Clutching the poker, Leah pushed open the bathroom door. It creaked on its hinges. Then she saw what was lying on the tiled floor. "Oh, no," she whispered. "Oh, God, Jared..."

Curled up by the base of the sink was her fiance, his face covered with blood. It matted down his blond hair. He'd been shot in the head. Jared's eyes were still open, and a dazed expression had frozen on his handsome face. On the tiles, a dark red pool slowly bloomed beneath his head. For a moment, it was the only thing that moved in the bathroom.

Leah was paralyzed. She couldn't breathe--or scream.

Then something caught her eye--a reflection in the medicine chest mirror. It was the other bathroom door opening, just behind her right shoulder.

Leah saw the man's reflection. He was wearing a lightweight, clear plastic rain jacket and a shower cap--almost like something a surgeon would wear on his head.

She let out a shriek, and then swiveled around. Instinctively, she raised the poker.

But he had a gun.

Later, Jared and Leah's neighbors would say they'd heard the scream, and then the blast. It had been just as loud and close as the shot a few minutes before. But this was July Fourth, so no one gave those deadly sounds much thought.

CHAPTER FOUR

Seattle

Someone had brought a boom box up to the roof, and it was blasting the 1812 Overture. The stirring opus accompanied the dual fireworks displays brilliantly. Seattle had two Independence Day fireworks shows that seemed to compete with each other--one over Elliott Bay, and the other on Lake Union. From the rooftop of Kyle's Capitol Hill town house, they had a sweeping view of the Seattle skyline, the city lights, and both firework displays. Over Lake Union, the dazzling bursts of light--some in Saturn, star, and heart shapes--were closer, but the colorful pyrotechnics over Elliott Bay appeared directly above the Space Needle from this vantage point and somehow seemed statelier. The loud pops and blasts punctuated the glittery display. People had gathered on rooftops all over the neighborhood. Their laughter, screams, and applause competed with the 1812 Overture.

Sydney watched the nine other guests on her brother's roof, their heads turning from one side to another to catch both firework shows. They looked as if they were watching a tennis match. But her twelve-year-old son's head wasn't moving. Dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt, Eli leaned against the rooftop's railing. He seemed to be staring at the gap between the dueling shows.

Sydney approached him, and put her hand on his shoulder. "Well, you don't see anything like this--" she hesitated. She was about to say, You don't see anything like this in Chicago. But he didn't need to hear that right now. He missed Chicago terribly, and she knew it, because she missed Chicago, too. No doubt, he was sick of her trying to sell him on their terrific new life in Seattle. So Sydney just cleared her throat and said, "You don't see anything like this every day."

It was a lame remark. Eli turned and looked at her as if she was an idiot. He'd given her the same look earlier tonight when they'd left for this party. Sydney had her hair swept back in a clip, and she wore a blue sleeveless top, white slacks, and a red belt. "Red, white and blue," Eli had said, deadpan. Then he curled his lip ever so slightly. "Jeeze, Mom, give me a star-spangled break. Did you do that on purpose?"

"Hey, you with the clunky sneakers and the backward baseball cap, don't knock the way I dress," she'd replied. "You live in a glass house."

Eli was a handsome boy with brown eyes, long lashes, and a birthmark on his right cheek. He had beautiful, light brown hair which he'd recently--and quite disastrously--tried to cut himself. Sydney had sent him to the barber to fix it, and the only way to do that was a buzz cut. Actually, he looked good with the new haircut and his summer tan. In fact, it made Eli look very much like his father--so much that Sydney sometimes ached inside when she studied him.

The 1812 Overture was followed by "It's Raining Men," which prompted several people on the rooftop to howl with laughter. "Well, this is my National Anthem!" a flamboyant older man announced, and he started dancing with his hands above his head. Sydney's brother, Kyle, once pointed out to her that no straight man ever danced with his hands above his head. Kyle was gay, and so were most of his friends at the Fourth of July party.

Sydney kept putting herself in her son's shoes--those clunky sneakers. Last year in Chicago, Eli and his dad had spent July Fourth afternoon playing softball with some people in the neighborhood. This was followed by an impromptu water balloon fight in which Sydney got soaked. It didn't matter, because, like everyone else, she was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. For dinner, they'd barbecued hot dogs and hamburgers, served with chips and baked beans and potato salad. The evening had ended with the fireworks display on Lake Michigan.

Tonight, it had been smartly dressed strangers and smart cocktail-party talk with pita bread, hummus, and couscous. Salmon and chicken had been served off the grill with asparagus and risotto. All the adults there were clearly having a wonderful time. But Eli was the only kid. She knew he was miserable. So was she.

"Look at the smiley-face fireworks over Lake Union," Sydney said, nudging him.

"Jeeze, how dorky can you get?" Eli muttered. He sighed and then peered down over the rooftop railing. Kyle's town house was on a hill, and from this side of the roof, it was a four-story drop down to the garden and patio below.

"Listen," she whispered. "If you're having a horrible time, we can go now and beat the post-fireworks rush. Otherwise, we're stuck here for at least another hour, because Uncle Kyle says the traffic is insane in this neighborhood after the fireworks end. So--speak now, or forever hold your peace, kiddo."

"I'm okay," Eli mumbled. "We can stick around."

She mussed what little hair was left on his scalp. "You sure?"

He nodded and looked toward the showering bursts of light over Lake Union.

Kyle came up to her side. "I'm sorry about Howard," he said under his breath. He nodded toward the older, pudgy, balding man who was dancing round the roof, singing along with "It's Raining Men." He knew all the words. Kyle rolled his eyes. "On a scale from one to ten--ten being totally obnoxious, stereotypically gay--Howard's about a seventeen, especially after he's had a couple of drinks. Is he driving you guys crazy?"

Sydney laughed and shook her head. "Of course not, he's fine."

Compared to some of Eli's father's overly macho business associates, she'd take this flamboyantly gay guy any day of the week.

"He's not your boyfriend, is he?" Eli asked warily.

"Oh, God, no," Kyle sighed, and then he rolled his eyes. "Please."

At thirty-four, Kyle was lean and handsome with receding, sand-colored hair and green eyes. Sydney figured her brother was a great catch. Yet in the six weeks since she and Eli had been living in Seattle, Kyle hadn't been on one single date. All the people at this party were friends or in the real estate business with him.

"I had to invite Howard," Kyle explained in a hushed voice. He led Sydney away from Eli, who stayed by the roof's railing. "He's a big client, and he knows everybody. Plus he was dying to meet you."

The party guests had made a fuss over her--and Eli, too--but mostly her. They asked about different Movers & Shakers stories she'd done for On the Edge. One woman asked if she'd hurt her foot recently or something. Sydney gave the woman her standard answer, "Oh. I just have this limp from an accident years ago." A few party guests asked about Sloan Roberts. How well did she know him? Was he dating anyone? Or as Howard bluntly put it: "So--Sydney, fess up. Does Sloan play for my team? Is he gay or what?"

Sydney had to admit she'd met Sloan Roberts only about a dozen times and never had a private audience with him. Sloan certainly hadn't confided in her about his personal life. She hated disappointing Kyle's friends, but despite her bimonthly appearance on a top-rated TV newsmagazine show, she didn't have a lot of celebrity connections.

Still, that hadn't stopped her from being the center of attention most of the evening--at least, until the fireworks.

"Is Eli bored to smithereens?" Kyle asked.

With a sigh, Sydney looked over toward the railing, where Eli had stood just a minute before. But he wasn't there anymore. She started to glance around the rooftop.

Suddenly, one of the women at the party let out a shriek, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

There were screams from people on the roof of the apartment building next door, and they weren't looking at the fireworks display. Some of them pointed to Kyle's building.

Sydney raced toward the banister, where one of the party guests stood, gaping down. Sydney glanced over the railing, and for a moment, her heart stopped.

There, suspended four stories above the stone patio, was her son. Eli clung to a storm drain along the roof's edge. He had nothing beneath him to break his fall. The gutter let out a groan--as if it might give and snap off at any moment. Eli looked terrified. Sydney could see him trembling. He had tears in his eyes. With one hand, he tried to grab at the bottom of the railing, but it was just out of his reach.

"It's okay, honey!" she cried out to him. "Don't try to move!"

Without thinking, Sydney immediately kicked off her shoes, then hoisted herself up over the banister. She scooted along the roof's edge until she was almost directly above Eli.

The other party guests didn't seem to know how to help. Frantic, they gathered toward that side of the roof. "Help me get something down there to break his fall!" one man cried. Then he and another guest ducked inside. Howard kept screaming that they should call the police or the fire department. Kyle had gotten down on his stomach and thrust his arms through the bars in an effort to retrieve him, but Eli was too far away.

The gutter creaked again, and Sydney could see it buckling from Eli's weight.

"Oh, God, Mom, help...please..." he whispered.

"You're going to be all right, honey," she said, crouching down. The heels of her bare feet stuck out over the roof's edge. She gripped a railing bar with one hand, then reached down to her son. Through the bars, her brother grabbed her arm with both hands. Kyle clung to her so tightly, it almost cut off her circulation.

Fireworks lit up the sky, accompanied by loud booms and blasts. But no one was looking up.

"Hold on!" somebody was yelling from a rooftop across the way.

Four stories down, two of Kyle's friends ran out to the patio with sofa cushions and pillows. They made a pile directly below where Eli was dangling. One of them ran inside--obviously for more objects to cushion the impact should Eli fall.

Sydney managed to get ahold of Eli's wrist. The storm drain let out another yawn. She braced herself. "I have you," she said, tightening her grip. "You can let go of the gutter now. I won't drop you, honey, I swear."

Eli bit his lip so hard it started to bleed. He let go of the gutter.

The sudden weight almost pulled her down, but Sydney held on. Wincing, she started to hoist him up, but Eli was heavier than she thought. For a moment, she thought he might yank her arm out of its socket.

Howard got down on his knees, then reached between the bars and grabbed Eli under his arms. That lightened the load incredibly. Two more partygoers reached out to help pull him up to the railing. Eli was able to swing his leg up to the edge of the roof and then he lifted himself. "Thank you...everybody," he gasped, trying to catch his breath. "I--I'm really sorry..."

Sydney heaved a sigh of relief. She suddenly felt so depleted and woozy she thought she might faint. But she clung to the banister.

"Are you all right?" Kyle whispered to her. "How's your back? Did you pull anything?" He was referring to her old injury.

Catching her breath, Sydney nodded. "I think I'm okay," she murmured.

Eli took hold of her arm and helped her climb back onto the other side of the railing. Kyle threw his arms around both of them. Everyone on the rooftop broke into applause--as did people on the roof across the way.

"Okay, next on Fear Factor," Kyle announced. "Sydney and Eli are going to wrestle with killer cheetahs! Stay tuned!"

The guests laughed. Some continued clapping. Howard declared he needed a drink.

Sydney's heart was still pounding furiously. With one arm around Eli, she waved at the people on the roof across the way. They were applauding, too. No one was looking at the fireworks pageant's big finale.

Nor was anyone looking toward the rooftop of another nearby condominium, where a man stood alone with his arms folded. The building's windows were all boarded up, and except for that lone man, the place looked deserted--and ready for demolition.

Unsmiling, the dark stranger watched Sydney wave and blow a kiss to the people on the rooftop next door.

She didn't look over toward him. Obviously, all this time, she hadn't noticed him there.

No one had.

CHAPTER FIVE

"No, really, I'd like to know," Sydney said, her grip tightening on the steering wheel. "Be honest. What the hell were you thinking?"

Slouched in the passenger seat, Eli stared at the dashboard and said nothing. His lower lip was a bit swollen from biting it too hard earlier tonight. Headlights from an oncoming car briefly illuminated his face, and then he was in the shadows again.

Their lane wasn't moving at all, total gridlock. Kyle had been right. The post-fireworks traffic was a nightmare. But Sydney had been so upset at Eli for pulling that stunt, she couldn't stick around the party and make small talk with people. So they'd bid everyone a hasty good-bye about ten minutes after the fireworks show had ended.

Sydney had the car window open, but there wasn't much of a night breeze. Still, whenever some idiot within four blocks let off a firecracker, she heard it--loud and clear. Though that happened about every two minutes, it still startled her and made her flinch every time. Her nerves were so frayed. "Look at me, I'm still shaking, for God's sake," she said, letting go of the wheel for a moment to show him her tremorafflicted hands. "Were you trying to give me a heart attack back there?"

"I said I was sorry," he muttered.

'So what exactly were you trying to do?" Sydney pressed, grabbing hold of the wheel again. Traffic started to move--at a crawl. "And please, don't give me that 'I was leaning over too far and slipped' excuse you gave everyone at the party, because I'm not buying it, kiddo. If you'd really slipped, you'd have yelled. But you didn't. You deliberately climbed over the other side of the railing. Why? And how did you get down to the storm drain?"

Frowning, Eli turned and gazed out his window. He sighed.

Sydney waited for an explanation. She wasn't sure if he'd lowered himself down to that storm drain for some attention or for a dumb thrill. She knew he'd been bored at the party. Perhaps all of Kyle's guests fawning over her had made him feel insignificant--and angry at her. Or maybe he was still upset at her for tearing him away from his home, his father, and his friends in Chicago five weeks ago. He certainly hadn't asked to be relocated to Seattle. And he still had no idea why she'd suddenly decided to leave his dad, a well-respected Chicago cop and all-around terrific guy.

Sydney couldn't tell him why she'd done that, not until Eli was older. If he knew the truth right now, it would wreck him. And the poor kid was already miserable and confused enough.

"Well?" she said, her tone softening. "C'mon, Eli, tell me why you did that, and I'll try to understand. Were you mad at me?"

He shook his head, and then shrugged. "Remember last Friday night, when we went over to Uncle Kyle's and ordered pizza and watched that old movie?"

"North by Northwest?" she asked. Eli had said he'd had a great time that night. She didn't understand why tonight he wanted to act out some hostility toward her--or Kyle--for an evening he seemed to have genuinely enjoyed.

"Yeah," he said, nodding. "Anyway, while we were on the roof, I started wondering what it was like to hang off that cliff on Mount Rushmore. So when nobody was looking, I climbed over the railing and lowered myself down--and I guess it was really stupid of me..."

Sydney took her eyes off the road to squint at him for a moment. "Let me get this straight," she said. "You decided to hang from that storm drain so you could feel like Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest?"

"I guess," he muttered, shrugging.

Sydney resisted all temptation to ask, Are you out of your fucking mind?

She had to remind herself that Eli was an adolescent, and always pushing the envelope. He never walked up or down stairs. He ran--or jumped from one landing to another. It didn't matter how much noise he made or the potential hazards of breaking something--an ankle, leg, or even his neck. If he could leap over something, he leapt over it, and if he could dangle from something, he dangled from it.

His dad knew that about him. It was times like this she really missed her husband. Joe understood Eli. He related to him in a way she never could. She'd foolishly hoped to be both father and mother to Eli here in Seattle, but too often, Sydney realized she was out of her league.

For the rest of the long ride home, she quietly lectured Eli about how he could have gotten himself killed--or gotten her killed. And if someone else at the party had tried to save him, they could have gotten killed. By the time Sydney pulled into the driveway of their apartment complex, Eli was silent and looking miserable.

Wordlessly, he reached up to the sun visor on his side and pressed the automatic opener device.

Sydney stopped the car and waited for the wrought-iron gate to slide open. They lived in Seattle's Madison Park in a charming two-story Tudor town house on Lake Washington. It was part of a group of town houses called Tudor Court. Narrow stone pathways separated all the units. Practically everyone had flower boxes outside their windows, and the blossoms were at their peak this time of year. The pathways--like the driveway--were gated "to keep out the riff-raff," as Kyle had once remarked, tongue in cheek. The public beach was only half a block away, and there was a lot of foot traffic in the area, especially in the summertime.

While the gate took its sweet time opening, Sydney glanced at her woeful son again. "Well, anyway, you're okay, and everyone survived," she sighed. "It's not the end of the world. Just don't do it again, honey. Okay?"

"Okay, Mom," he muttered. "I--I'll call Uncle Kyle in the morning and tell him I'm sorry."

Smiling, she reached over and gently patted his shoulder for a moment. Then she straightened up behind the wheel and steered the car into their parking spot--a sheltered alcove without a door. There were four more individual parking stalls on this side of the driveway and five more on the other side.

They climbed out of the car, then started down the stone pathway to their town house. It was a balmy, star-filled night. They could hear people screaming and laughing on the beach down the block. There was an occasional pop from a firecracker. "Oh, swell," Sydney muttered, the keys in her hand. "I'm really looking forward to listening to that all night long."

She stopped dead at the front door. It was open a crack.

"Eli, did you lock the door when we left for Uncle Kyle's?" she whispered, hesitating on the front stoop. When they'd gotten into the car earlier tonight, he'd suddenly remembered a DVD he'd wanted to return to his uncle, so Eli had run back inside at the last minute.

"Of course, I locked it." He was staring at the door, too. "God, you think somebody broke in?"

Sydney took a deep breath, then slowly pushed open the door. It yawned and creaked. The front hallway was dark. She couldn't see anything yet--just shadows.

"I'm almost positive I locked it," Eli said. "And I know I left the light on--"

Sydney shushed her son, then wedged herself in front of him. Stepping inside, she nervously felt around for the light switch on the wall. She was shaking again. Someone on the street nearby let off a firecracker, and for a second, her heart seemed to stop. At last, she found the light switch and turned on the hall light.

No one was in the living room. Sydney carefully studied the built-in bookcases and the fireplace mantel. When she'd left Joe, she'd taken some old family knickknacks with her. It was the kind of stuff that would go for a small fortune at an antique store. Everything was still there. Nothing had been disturbed.

Still standing in the foyer, she gazed up the stairs, but could only see as far as the landing. Sydney reached over to the wall near the bottom of the stairs and flicked the switch to the upstairs hallway. She didn't see any shadows moving. There were no footsteps, no floorboards creaking above them. Straight ahead was the coved entrance to the kitchen. The light was off in there. Sydney could hear the refrigerator humming.

She moved into the living room. Behind her, Eli opened the coat closet. He pulled out an umbrella and held it as if it were a club. He headed toward the kitchen.

"Honey, wait," Sydney whispered. She turned on a lamp in the living room, then peeked past the alcove entry to the dining room. She flicked the switch to the small chandelier over the dinner table. There was an old, built-in, dark wood breakfront with more family antiques--with several sterling-silver items among them. Nothing had been touched.

One the other side of the room, the louvered door to the kitchen was closed. They always kept that door open. Through the slats, she saw the light go on.

"Oh, Jeez," she heard Eli murmur. "Mom? Mom, you--ah--you better come in here..."

Scurrying around the table, she pushed open the louvered door.

With the umbrella still clutched in his hands, Eli stood near the kitchen counter. He gaped at her, then looked down at the shards of porcelain on the slate-pattern linoleum floor. Sydney recognized the floral design on the bits of porcelain. It was her teapot, a wedding gift from her favorite aunt. The thing had been chipped and, on the inside, tea-stained despite lots of scrubbings. Still, Sydney had used it every day for the last fourteen years. She'd left it on the dry rack by the sink this morning. Now it was shattered. Some of the porcelain shards had scattered to the far corner of the kitchen, where Sydney had a tall, glass-top cafe table and a pair of stools. Beside it was a framed poster from the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, signed by the entire U.S. figure-skating team. It was probably worth a pretty penny to some collector. But it hadn't been touched.

Sydney stared down at the broken teapot. "Did you--" she started to ask her son.

As if reading her mind, he shook his head. "No, Mom. I didn't touch it, I swear."

Behind him, a cupboard door was open. A box from the shelf lay on its side, and its contents had spilt onto the counter below. Sydney could see it was a box of Minute Rice. A few grains still trickled from the box's side spout onto the pile of rice that had formed on the green Formica counter. "What in God's name..." she murmured.

Sydney turned and gazed down the hallway at the back door. It was closed, and the chain-lock set. She poked her head into the powder room, to the left of the back entrance. "Eli, honey, you forgot to flush--and you left the seat up. That's not like you."

"What?" he called.

"Never mind," she said, flushing the toilet and lowering the seat.

Across the hall was a kitchen pantry, which she'd converted into her office. Though the quarters were cramped and a bit claustrophobic, the office had a window with a beautiful view of the lake. If there was anything worth stealing in the house, it was in this room: cameras--both video and still, some sound equipment, a laptop, a fax machine, an iPod station, and a computer with a wide-screen monitor. All of it was still there.

It didn't make sense that only two things--both in the kitchen--had been disturbed.

"Think he's hiding upstairs?" Eli whispered. He still had the umbrella--ready to clobber someone.

They crept up the stairs together and checked her bedroom, Eli's bedroom, and the bathroom. They even peeked in the closets and under the beds.

"Are you sure you didn't leave the door open?" Sydney asked Eli. She kept thinking a squirrel must have gotten in and made that mess in the kitchen.

"I'm positive," Eli said. "I remember jiggling the knob to make sure it was locked."

Sydney called 9-1-1 from the phone in her bedroom. She counted four ring tones, and no answer. All the while, Eli stared at her. He still had the umbrella ready.

She had a spectacular view of the lake from here. She could hear people still laughing and screaming on the beach. A few firecrackers went off. It suddenly occurred to Sydney why it was taking so long to get an answer from the police. It was July Fourth, probably one of their busiest nights of the year. She remembered how much Joe hated having to work on the Fourth of July.

"Seattle Police, 9-1-1," the operator finally answered.

"Yes, hello," Sydney said to the woman on the phone. "Um, I think someone tried to break into my house tonight. My son and I came home and found the front door open. A couple of items in the kitchen were disturbed, but nothing else. I don't think anything was stolen."

"Is the intruder in the house right now?" the 9-1-1 operator asked.

"No. We've checked every room and every closet. I'm fairly certain my son and I are alone." Sydney glanced at Eli again.

Standing by her bed, he still had that stupid umbrella clutched in his hands as if it were a saber. Sydney covered the phone's mouthpiece for a second. "Honey, you can put that down now, okay? You don't need it."

"Are you reporting a robbery?" the operator asked briskly.

"It's more like an attempted break-in," Sydney said. "I'm not sure if--"

"Was there any property damage?"

"Um, just a teapot that got broken in the kitchen," Sydney explained, feeling silly. "And a box of food was tipped over--"

"Was there any damage to the property?" the woman cut in, sounding impatient.

"You mean like the lock on the front door? No. No, they didn't do any damage to the house, at least nothing we've noticed so far. We've only--"

"Name please?" the operator interrupted.

"Sydney Jordan." She kept thinking--on this busy 9-1-1 night, she was probably wasting their time with her call about this botched burglary attempt--if that was even what it had been. Despite Eli's insistence that he'd shut and locked the front door earlier, she couldn't totally trust him tonight--not after what he'd pulled at Kyle's place. In all likelihood, he'd accidentally left the door open, and something had gotten in the house.

"Could you verify your address for me?" she heard the operator ask.

"One minute, please," Sydney said. Then she covered the mouthpiece again. "Eli, could you switch off the lights in your bedroom and in your closet? Our electric bill's going to be enormous." She didn't want him hearing what she'd decided to tell the operator. As soon as he left the room, Sydney got back on the phone. "Sorry. Listen, I--I don't want to report anything. But if you could send a patrol car to check for any suspicious activity around the Tudor Court Apartments on Forty-first Street, I'd appreciate it."

She figured if someone had actually broken into their house and he was still around, a police presence might discourage him from trying again tonight.

"We'll check it out," said the woman on the phone.

"Thanks very--" Sydney fell silent at the sound of a click on the other end of the line. She realized she was talking to no one. Sighing, she hung up the phone.

She worked up a smile for Eli, who now stood in her doorway. At least he'd stopped brandishing the umbrella as if it were a weapon. Now he held it as if it were a walking stick. "They're sending a patrol car to check out the general area," Sydney said, moving to her dresser. "If someone did try to break in, I doubt he'll be back. I think we're okay, honey."

"It's weird nothing got stolen," Eli said, squinting at her. "Do you think it was our ghost?"

From the dresser drawer, Sydney pulled out a pair of long pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. She rolled her eyes. "You blame that ghost for everything."

"Well, something was screwing around in the kitchen," Eli said. "Think we got rats? I mean, after all, we're right on the water. They say rats like the water."

"I'd rather it be the ghost. Let's go back to that one." Her nightclothes slung over her shoulder, Sydney paused in front of him. "Move it, buddy."

Eli stopped playing with the umbrella and stepped aside. Sydney patted his shoulder as she brushed past him, then she ducked into the bathroom. She heard the floorboards squeak outside the door. He was retreating toward his bedroom. Sydney shed her sleeveless top and started washing her face.

Their ghost. For Eli, she always tried to shrug it off as an amusing little curiosity.

In truth, there was some kind of other presence in this place. It was why she'd been able to get a six-month lease so cheap. Even with her respectable salary from the network, Sydney couldn't have afforded any of the other apartments in Tudor Court. But this unit was different. Under Washington state law, the property management company was required to tell potential renters about the suicide here in Apartment 9. Sydney didn't get any details, just that a woman had killed herself in the unit about thirty years ago. Sydney used to wonder exactly how the woman had ended her life--and in which room.

Kyle had had misgivings about her moving in there. But Sydney had considered this beautiful, charming place--ready for immediate occupancy--a godsend. She and Eli had been living with Kyle for two very rough, emotional weeks after leaving Chicago. Sydney was eager to get on with their lives and settle in somewhere. And as much as her brother had insisted they were no imposition, Sydney knew they were. Kyle was used to living alone. She slept in his guest room, and Eli had the sofa in the TV room. Half their stuff cluttered up Kyle's immaculate apartment, and the other half was in storage. Sydney figured her brother would urge them to take the first place she didn't hate--just to get his life back to normal. Instead, Kyle was cautious.

He used his real estate connections and did a little digging around about Tudor Court's Apartment 9. He didn't uncover anything about the suicide, but he learned that in the last twenty-plus years, that apartment had had the highest turnover rate of all ten units in Tudor Court--and the longest vacancy stretches.

"Some rich doctor from Denver had it as his second home for several years," Kyle told her while barbecuing on his patio one warm night in mid-May. Eli was in the TV room, out of earshot. Sydney didn't want him to know someone had died in their prospective new home. "The Denver doctor wasn't actually there much," Kyle explained, flipping the hamburgers on his gas grill. "But the place is bad news. The guy I talked to on the QT at Tudor Court's property management company said the last renter endured it for only four months. And--get this--the renters before her, some incense-burning Birkenstock couple, they even hired a certified shaman to do a house blessing and exorcise whatever's in there. But I guess it didn't take, because Mr. and Mrs. Birkenstock got the hell out a few weeks before their six-month lease was up."

"So you're saying this place is haunted?" Sydney asked, setting place mats, napkins, and utensils around the umbrella-covered glass-top table near the grill.

"I'm just telling you what the property management guy told me, Syd."

She shrugged. "Well, maybe we can hire that short, little lady with the funny voice from Poltergeist. We'll have her throw some tennis balls in a closet, or whatever they did to fix their ghost problem. Listen, Kyle, I really like this place. Plus we can move in right away. If the place is truly haunted, I could always--"

"Pack up again and go back to Joe?" he said, finishing for her.

She frowned, and set down the utensils. They clattered against the glass tabletop. "I wasn't going to say that."

"Yeah, but you were thinking it," Kyle replied soberly. "Let's face it, you're miserable, Syd. All this time, you've been hoping for some excuse to make up with Joe. And hell, maybe you'd have one--if the son of a bitch ever bothered to call you. I really don't think he gives a damn. He probably wouldn't even be talking to his own son if Eli didn't call him every day. That's another thing. I used to think Joe was such a great dad. I can't believe he didn't put up more of a fight to keep Eli with him."

"You don't know the whole story," Sydney muttered.

"I know he hit you. That's enough for me. That makes him an asshole in my book."

"Can we switch the subject, please?" she said, gazing down at the tabletop.

Kyle was silent for a moment. He flipped the burgers again. "So nothing I've told you about this freaky Blair Witch apartment in Tudor Court has changed your mind," he said, finally. "You're still moving in anyway, aren't you, Syd?"

She sighed. "I signed the lease this afternoon."

Sydney didn't know what to expect their first few days and nights in the apartment. She wondered if she'd hear strange voices--faraway moaning, laughing, or crying. Maybe the walls would start bleeding or something. Perhaps the lights would flicker for no reason.

If some kind of spirit resided there, it allowed her and Eli to move in their stuff without making its presence known. None of the new pieces from Macy's, Ikea, or Georgetown Furniture Liquidators suddenly toppled over in the night. Doors didn't open or shut by themselves. There was no unexplainable tapping from inside the walls.

The only disturbances were from outside--the occasional late-night drunken swimmers, screaming and laughing on the beach. Sydney would crawl out of bed and glance out her window. Often the clandestine swimmers were naked or in their underwear though it was too far away for her to really see anything. No cheap thrills. Still, it made her heart ache for Joe when one night, she spied a young, amorous couple skinny-dipping in the moonlight.

She also understood why Eli--who shared pretty much the same view of the beach she had--suddenly wanted binoculars for his birthday.

They had been in the apartment a little over a week and had unpacked the last of the boxes when it happened. Sydney had just switched off her bedside light to go to sleep one Tuesday night. Down the hallway, Eli had already gone to bed. His door had been closed--and the light off--for at least an hour.

"Mom?" His voice was muffled.

She sat up, uncertain whether or not he was talking in his sleep.

"Mom, is that you? Mom?" he repeated, louder and more panicked than before. Then there was a loud crash.

Sydney switched on the light and jumped out of bed.

"Oh, God, Mom!" he yelled. Dressed in his T-shirt and undershorts, Eli threw open his bedroom door. He almost tripped bolting out of there. "Were you just in my room, Mom?" he asked, catching his balance--and his breath. He braced himself against the corridor wall. "Were you just in there?"

Bewildered, Sydney shook her head.

"Someone came in there--like thirty seconds ago--"

"Honey, it was probably just a dream--"

"I wasn't asleep!" he insisted. "Somebody's in the house! He came in my room and sat down on the end of my bed. I felt it, Mom! He brushed against my foot. I felt the weight on my bed..."

They searched the apartment, both upstairs and downstairs, including the closets. There was no sign of a break-in.

Eli kept insisting that he'd been awake. He'd heard her using the bathroom about ten minutes before this person came in his room. He'd thought it had been her at first. He hadn't seen anything, because it had been too dark, but he'd felt someone hovering. Then the person had sat down on the end of his bed. In his panic, Eli had knocked over the Homer Simpson lamp on his night table while trying to turn on the light.

Homer had survived the fall, but the bulb had gotten smashed. Eli slipped into his jeans and shoes and helped her clean up the glass. It took him another hour to settle down for bed again. But after that night, he wanted the hallway light on and kept his bedroom door open. The last time Eli had needed a light on so he could go to sleep, he'd been eight years old.

Sydney didn't tell him the place had a vague history of weird occurrences. She didn't have to. He figured it out on his own a week later, after a second, similar late-night episode in his bedroom. He claimed he also heard voices this time--a soft, undecipherable muttering and a woman crying. Eli bought himself a night-light. Sydney thought about doing the same thing. She had her own night visitor. She didn't hear voices, but otherwise it was just as Eli had described it--an inexplicable sensation that someone was hovering over her as she lay in bed. It had happened enough times that Sydney tried to discern a pattern in the erratic visits. Was it a certain day of the week--or a particular time of night? Not really. Was the bedroom window open or closed that last time she'd been spooked out? She couldn't be sure. She became very superstitious, a slave to certain illogical bedtime rituals to ward off whatever was haunting her and Eli--until another unnerving night visit proved those rituals meaningless.

She went online and researched how to deal with a ghost. Apparently in some haunted houses, a happy cohabitation of the living and the spirit residents was quite possible. The Web sites recommended acknowledging the ghost, talking to it, and asking it to leave--even shouting at it if necessary.

"Okay, dude, I'm going to bed now," Eli had taken to announcing some nights--right after brushing his teeth. "I gotta have my sleep. You need to leave me the hell alone for the next eight hours." From her study downstairs, Sydney would hear him some nights going through his bedtime monologue. They tried to make jokes and shrug it off as a minor annoyance--just one of those things that came with living there.

But it was still unnerving.

The bathroom seemed to be the center of this paranormal activity. Sydney had a framed Georgia O'Keefe print on the bathroom wall. For no logical reason, it fell to the floor on three different occasions--the glass shattering twice. She finally put the print away and left the wall blank. Twice, water started gushing out of the bathtub faucet on its own--both times late at night. She'd had to crawl out of bed and switch off the valve under the sink. Eli called the occurrences water raids.

Sydney suspected her son might have exaggerated some of his own brushes with the supernatural, and maybe--out of boredom or resentment toward her--he'd been triggering the water raids himself.

But one night last week, Sydney had felt that otherworldly presence while in the bathroom. Washing her face, she half-expected to catch a glimpse of something in the medicine chest mirror--a dark figure lurking behind her or a strange light. By the time she'd dried off her face and switched off the bathroom light, Sydney had managed to give herself a thorough case of the creeps. She was just down the hall, about to step into her bedroom, when she heard the water start in the tub. A chill raced through her. That made three times. She waited in the corridor and listened. The gushing only lasted a few moments, and then there was a steady drip. She crept back to the bathroom, and switched on the light. "Oh, God," she whispered. One of the towel racks was bare; the two bath towels that had been draped over it were strewn across the floor.

The door to Eli's room had remained shut the entire time.

Sydney often thought the woman who killed herself in this apartment years and years ago must have done it in this bathroom.

Drying off her face, Sydney glanced down at the old, chipped powder blue and white tiled floor and wondered if the body had been discovered here, curled up by the toilet. She knew when people overdosed they sometimes died on or near the toilet. Or perhaps the woman had cut her wrists in the sink or in the bathtub.

Was that why their night visitor kept coming back to this bathroom?

A sudden, loud pounding on the door startled her.

"Mom?"

"What? What is it, honey?" she called back, a hand over her heart.

"The phone light's blinking," Eli said. "You got a message. I checked caller ID. I thought it might be Dad, but it looks like someone in New York."

"You have one new message," the computerized recording told her ten minutes later. Sydney had taken the cordless phone out of the kitchen and now sat at her office desk. Nearly all the wall space was taken up by shelves and cabinets full of books, files, and equipment. But there was a small space beneath her window that had framed family photos--and Joe was in some of them. There wasn't one of just him alone.

Eli had the TV on in the living room. Sydney could hear him channel surfing with the remote control. She'd already checked the caller ID. Eli had been right; the call had been from New York. Someone from the network had phoned--probably about an assignment. She was supposed to be on a summer vacation, but that had never stopped them before.

"Friday, July Fourth, ten-twelve P.M.," the recording continued. Then there was a beep tone. "Hi, Sydney, this is Judy Cavalliri in the news office. Sorry to call so late. I have some pretty awful news. I thought you should know, since we recently reran the story you did about that Portland couple, Leah Dvorak and Jared McGinty. It just came over the AP. They were killed tonight, shot in their apartment. It looks like a burglary gone from bad to worse. A bunch of their stuff was missing. A neighbor found both bodies in the bathroom. There's a chance we'll show part of your Movers & Shakers piece tomorrow on the network news. They might want a comment from you, too. Anyway, Sydney, I thought I'd give you a heads-up. I'm terribly sorry. They seemed like such a nice couple."

Dazed, Sydney listened to the beep, then she slowly put down the phone.

She'd gotten to know Leah and Jared pretty well when she did the story on them last Christmas. She and Leah had sent Christmas cards to each other and there had been a few e-mails back and forth in January, but they hadn't had any further correspondence. That was typical of her work. She became close to nearly all of her Movers & Shakers subjects while working on their segments. Then a week later, she was already involved in her next story and her next subject. She was in and out of these people's lives so quickly. Way too often, she didn't hear about any of them again--not until something awful happened.

She just couldn't believe Leah and Jared were dead.

Slumped in her desk chair, Sydney remembered something. She told herself there was no connection, and yet she still thought about that cryptic e-mail from a few days ago.

"You can't save them," it had read.

CHAPTER SIX

"Hang on, Eli! Hang on!" she called to him.

Four stories above her, Eli clung to the storm drain on Kyle's roof. Screaming, he helplessly dangled in the air. Kyle's town house was on fire. Flames shot out the windows of the top floor, licking at Eli's feet.

"I'll catch you!" she called to her son. "I'll break your fall!"

Eli's clothes started to catch on fire. His screams turned to agonizing shrieks. He let go of the gutter, and his body plummeted down toward her.

Sydney suddenly sat up in bed.

Her heart was racing. She started to reach for the light on her nightstand, but hesitated. Sometimes it was easier just to sit there in the dark and face her fear. She knew she was alone right now, no ghostly visitor. If she turned on the lights, then switched them off later, she'd just have to get used to the dark again.

Sydney settled back down and rested her head on the pillow. She glanced at the digital clock at her bedside: 2:11. She heard some firecrackers popping in the distance. The Fourth of July celebration was still going on for some people.

She rubbed her eyes. That dream had everything screwed around, of course. It wasn't Eli who had fallen from a burning building. It had been another boy.

The incident had been a pivotal chapter in her bestselling autobiography from fourteen years ago. But the paperback original had been out of print for years. Not many people remembered it or the hokey TV movie based on the book. The people who only knew her as the pretty correspondent for On the Edge, the ones who asked if her slight limp was from a recent injury, those people didn't know Sydney was once an awkward, homely girl whose legs worked beautifully. In fact, they worked wonders.

Ever since she was seven--with her Dorothy Hamill wedge-style haircut--Sydney had dreamed of skating in the Olympics someday. From the Jordan's home in Seattle's Queen Anne district, her mother drove Sydney to the Highland Ice Arena in Shoreline three times a week so she could practice. If Sydney did enough household chores, her mother rewarded her with an extra trip to the ice arena. Once she was old enough, Sydney took the bus there: a seventy-minute trek both ways with a transfer--six days a week.

She had a long, awkward puberty: bad skin, frizzy hair, and braces. In family photos, Kyle was always the cute one, damn him. She was shy, and hopeless around guys. But on the ice, she felt beautiful and confident--for a while at least.

Sydney's high school physical education teacher recommended a private coach for figure skating, and Mr. Jordan hired her. Donna Loftus coached several girls who competed nationally. Two of her former pupils had ended up on the U.S. Olympic teams--in 1984 and 1988. She was a thin, homely woman with rank body odor that reminded Sydney of bad vegetable soup. Sydney never saw her crack a smile. She practiced and practiced until her ankles were ready to snap. She felt lucky to be working with such an accomplished coach, but nothing she did seemed to please Ms. Loftus. Sydney finally asked her what she was doing wrong. Was it her spirals? Her landings?

Leaning against a post at the rink's sideline, Ms. Loftus folded her arms and heaved a sigh. "I don't think you're right for figure skating," she frowned. "I probably shouldn't have taken this job. You've got a lot of talent, and you're not afraid of hard work. You're very graceful on the ice, but your looks are awkward. I don't mean to be cruel, but most people expect figure skaters to be pretty."

Sydney was devastated. But she didn't give up. She was going to dazzle Ms. Loftus if it killed her. But before she had a chance to prove herself to her, Ms. Loftus quit. She told Mr. Jordan, "Sydney just doesn't have the right look for a figure skater. There's no nice way to put it. She's rather plain and awkward."

Sydney's father was furious. "That woman--who looks and smells like the backside of a horse--she said you weren't pretty enough?" He immediately hired another coach, and Sydney worked even harder--just to prove Dog-Face Donna wrong.

Her Olympic dream took over and dominated the whole family. Sydney's mother found temp work to help pay for Sydney's trainers. When he wasn't working overtime, her father worked closely with her trainers on weekends. They entered Sydney in local and statewide competitions. The family scheduled their lives around her practice sessions and those competitions.

"You wanted to skate like Dorothy Hamill, and I wanted to skip down the yellow brick road like Dorothy Gale," Kyle once pointed out. "I mean, how many eleven-year-old boys save up their allowance to buy their own copy of Judy at Carnegie Hall? But Mom and Dad didn't even notice that I was different. They were too busy planning for your big Olympic moment. God, sometimes I thought I'd barf if I had to sit through one more dinner-table conversation exclusively devoted to the subject of you and your double axels."

By the time Sydney was nineteen, people compared her to her idols, Dorothy Hamill and Peggy Fleming. She'd also turned into an attractive young woman, and not just on the ice. The braces came off, her complexion cleared up, and she had developed a toned, taut body. No one would ever call her awkward-looking again. She moved up from junior to senior level and shined in the U.S. Nationals. She didn't make the Olympic team for the 1992 games in Albertville, but she came in at thirteenth place and was written up in several newspapers and magazines.

She graduated from the University of Minnesota, where she'd majored in broadcasting. Sydney's respect for good reporters came through whenever she was interviewed or profiled, and those reporters loved her. They predicted she'd come home from the 1994 Lillehammer Games with a medal.

There was a lot of pressure on her. The dreams of that driven homely little kid with the Dorothy Hamill haircut had touched so many people--the reporters, her trainers, and her family. She started receiving fan letters and e-mail from total strangers. All these people had gotten caught up in her dream, too, and she didn't want to disappoint them. Sydney trained harder and harder. She kept thinking about how much her family had sacrificed and what she'd given up, too.

Sydney was profiled in Sports Illustrated and had a page and a half in People during the fall of 1993. The Seattle Times wanted to do an interview. They planned to put her on the cover of their Sunday magazine section. Hoping to look decent for her first magazine cover, Sydney made an appointment at a chic beauty salon downtown. She kept thinking Donna Loftus might see that magazine cover--and be sorry as hell.

It was a beautiful, crisp, sunny autumn afternoon, and she'd decided to walk to the beauty salon from a friend's apartment on First Hill. Tall trees lined the residential area's parkways, and as she strolled along, Sydney gazed up at the leaves--so vibrant with their autumn colors.

That was when she saw the smoke.

It came from a slightly dilapidated, beige brick apartment building a half-block away, close to a busy intersection. Yet she was the only one on the street who seemed to notice something wrong.

Black clouds billowed out of an open window on the fourth floor. Sydney thought she heard screams.

She ran across the street--almost smack into a moving car. The car's brakes screeched and its horn blared. The driver continued down the street, screaming out at her, "Stupid idiot! Want to end up in the hospital?"

But Sydney was gazing up at the building. Smoke continued to belch from the open window. In one of the windows next to it she saw the curtains on fire and flames licking at the glass.

Sydney tried to wave down another car for help, but the driver sped past her. Panic-stricken, she raced back across the street to the building's entrance. She pressed random buttons on the intercom. "Hello?" she said loudly. "Is someone there?" Finally, two or three people answered at once. "There's a fire on the fourth floor!" Sydney said, the words rushing out.

"What?" one person said.

"Who the hell is this?" another tenant replied.

"There's a fire on your fourth floor!" Sydney repeated. "Call 9-1-1!"

They all seemed to reply at once: "Is this a joke?"

"What?"

"Hello--"

But someone buzzed her in. Sydney pushed open the door. The tiny lobby was a bit seedy and neglected. She could smell the smoke even down here. She saw the fire alarm by the old-fashioned mailboxes. There was no glass to break; it was just a lever in a red box with the words, FIRE--PULL, on it. Sydney tugged down on the switch, and suddenly a shrill alarm rang out.

For a second, she wasn't sure she'd done the right thing. She'd never in her life pulled a fire alarm. Would she somehow get into trouble for this?

Past the alarm, she could hear doors opening in the first-floor hallway and people lumbering down the stairs. She found a rubber door-stopper on the floor near the front entrance and used it to prop the door open. Then Sydney hurried outside. She kept wondering if she'd overreacted. Maybe the smoke had subsided. She ran across the street for another look.

By now, two other pedestrians had stopped to see what was happening. A car had pulled over, too.

The smoke continued to pour out of that fourth-floor window. Sydney noticed a phone booth by a small parking lot on her side of the street. She frantically dug into her purse for some change. Did she have to deposit money to call 9-1-1? She didn't know. Her hands shaking, she pushed thirty-five cents into the slots and punched 9-1-1.

Across the street, people started to wander out of the old building. They appeared annoyed and confused. One of them, an old woman swaddled in a bathrobe, gazed up and then her mouth dropped open. She pointed to the smoke for one of her neighbors.

On the phone, the 9-1-1 operator answered on the second ring: "Police Emergency."

"Yes, hello," Sydney said, trying to keep calm. She glanced up at that same window again. "I need to report a fire on the--on the fourth floor of an apartment building on First Hill. I just went into their lobby and rang their alarm. It's--um, on the corner of Terry and--and--" Sydney fell silent as she noticed another window open up beside the one emitting smoke. A young boy started to climb out to the ledge.

"Oh, God, there's a kid...I think he's going to jump!" Sydney told the operator. "Th-th-the building is two blocks north of Madison--on Terry. Please, hurry!"

"Your name?"

"Sydney Jordan," she said. She meant to hang up the phone, but the receiver fell off the hook and just dangled there. Sydney didn't notice. She was already racing across the street.

More tenants had drifted out of the building, but they just milled around by the front entrance. A few wandered across the street to look at the fire. But no one seemed to know what to do about the poor boy trapped on the ledge.

Sydney ran up to a gaunt young woman who had a pierced nostril and short, spiked green hair. She stood near the front door, gnawing at her fingernail and looking up at the boy.

"Do you know what apartment he's in?" Sydney asked her, shouting over the fire alarm.

She shrugged. "He's Aidan Somebody on the fourth floor someplace. I don't know for sure."

Sydney started to brush past her toward the door.

"Shit, don't try to go up there," the girl said. "Are you nuts?"

Sydney hesitated, then looked up at the boy. Flames shot out of the window beside him. He recoiled in terror and almost fell off the ledge.

Pushing past the dazed tenants, Sydney made her way along the narrow lawn in front of the building until she was directly under the boy. He was thin with dark hair and a handsome, almost angelic face. He wore jeans and a long-sleeve denim shirt that looked too big for him. Soot covered the shirt, and smudge marks marred his forehead and cheek. Sydney guessed he was about ten years old. He precariously stood on the tiny ledge, his back pressed against the beige brick edifice. Sydney could only imagine how hot those bricks were. Just a foot away from him, flames lashed out of the window, along with thick, black clouds of smoke. Trembling, he stared down at her.

"Aidan?" she called to him, over the incessant alarm. She thought she heard a siren in the distance. "Aidan, is there anyone else in the apartment with you?"

Frozen on the ledge, he just gazed down at her. He opened his mouth to speak, but it seemed he couldn't get any words out.

"Honey, hang on!" she called. "I think the fire department's on the way! Do you have any brothers or sisters? Is anyone else in there?"

Finally, he shook his head.

The smoke started to obscure her view of him. But she heard him coughing--and then the shrieks.

"Aidan! Can you hear me, honey?" Sydney glanced over her shoulder. She didn't see the fire trucks yet. The building alarm nearly drowned out the sirens--still too far away.

The smoke cleared for a moment, and she saw him up there. His shirt was on fire. Choking and screaming, he tried to pat down the flames. He went to grab on to the side of the open window to keep his balance. But his hand went right into the flames.

"Let go!" Sydney called to him. She automatically put her arms out in front of her. "I'll catch you, honey! I'll break your fall! Aidan, let go!"

His shirt was still on fire. He pushed himself from the ledge--away from her.

But Sydney ran under him, her arms outstretched. She didn't know what she was thinking--or doing. She acted on sheer gut instinct. She just needed to break his fall.

Sydney saw the boy's thin body as it plunged toward her.

Someone screamed. Sydney didn't see who it was. She was already blinded.

All of his weight came crashing down on her. Something snapped in her neck--or her spine--she wasn't sure which. But she heard it--a loud, horrible crack.

Then there was nothing.

For a very long time, there was nothing.

Later, they told Sydney that when she'd briefly regained consciousness in the hospital that night, the first thing she'd asked had been: "Is the boy alive? Is he okay?" Sydney didn't remember; she'd been doped up on painkillers and medication that first week. For a while, she was on a respirator, and the doctors thought the injury to her spinal cord might leave her paralyzed. Emergency surgery helped save her punctured lung, and they inserted a rod and some screws for her shattered femur. The other leg was fractured. She'd also broken her left arm, sprained the right one, and dislocated her shoulder. It seemed no organ or appendage escaped injury--from spleen trauma to a sprained ankle.

The doctors still weren't sure she'd ever walk again. One thing for certain, her skating days were over. Sydney's dream of competing in the Olympics and all those years of sacrifice and hard work had been snuffed out in just a few moments. It was all gone.

Sydney kept telling herself the boy would have died if she hadn't broken his fall.

Eleven-year-old Aidan Cosgrove had it even worse than she did. In addition to his crippling back injuries, he suffered second- and third-degree burns on his arms, torso, and neck. After two days, they moved him from Swedish Hospital to the University of Washington Burn Center at Harborview.

It turned out that Aidan's mother had also been in that fourth-floor apartment. Sydney remembered calling to him and asking if anyone else was in there; but he'd shaken his head. She figured the poor kid was probably confused--and terrified. He probably hadn't even heard what she'd been saying to him.

According to The Seattle Times and the local TV news, the fire had started in the mother's bedroom. Miraculously, Rikki Cosgrove survived, and her burns were minor. But she'd sustained respiratory damage from smoke inhalation. An unemployed single mom on government assistance, Mrs. Cosgrove admitted to the press that she might have fallen asleep with a cigarette going.

Only two other apartments in the building were damaged by the inferno, and no one else was injured. Yet the fire made national news. One passerby had a video camera with him. He'd caught Sydney's valiant rescue on tape. It was just the kind of harrowing, dramatic stuff the public ate up.

"Mom and Dad cry every time that home video is played on TV," Kyle told her during a visit. "So that means they've cried like--seventy-eight times just this week. It's a regular waterworks at home. Don't you feel sorry for me, having to put up with it? You can't possibly know my anguish. I'm really suffering."

"Huh, I'll pray for you." Sydney murmured. Lying in the hospital bed, she cracked a smile. "Don't make me laugh, you dip-shit. It hurts too much."

Kyle had visited her every day, but this was the first time she was lucid for more than just a few minutes. "Seriously, when are you getting out of here?" he asked. "The phone hasn't stopped ringing. You're all over the newspapers and TV. I taped the programs for you and saved the clippings. Anyway, you're famous, Syd. About a zillion people want to interview you. In fact, someone from Oprah even called us this morning. They want you on the show. So I repeat, when are you busting out of this joint?"

The doctors told her it would be at least six weeks. Sydney surprised them all by getting around in her "touch-control" wheelchair by the second week. She'd made up her mind not to feel sorry for herself. There were so many people in this hospital who were worse off than her. The fifteen-year-old girl in the room next door had fallen off her bicycle and landed headfirst in a ditch. Her name was Carol, and she would spend the rest of her life a paraplegic. Next to her, Sydney's shattered dreams seemed like pretty small potatoes--at least, she told herself that. She spent a lot of time visiting Carol and others in the intensive care unit.

Updates on her remarkable recovery made the news. Someone on the hospital staff leaked that she spent time boosting the morale of other patients, and the press ate it up. All the attention embarrassed Sydney. The reports made out like she was Mother Teresa or something. The truth was, she visited her fellow patients to forget her own pain and agony and to help boost her own morale. It must have worked, because she was healing a lot faster than the doctors had expected.

Sydney's story became an inspiration for others. While still in the hospital, she had three different publishers wanting to handle her autobiography--with the help of a ghostwriter, of course. If one more agent described her tale as a "lemonade from lemons" saga, Sydney thought she'd throttle them with her crutches. At first, she turned down all the offers.

But her parents had gone into debt paying her trainers, and her medical bills were already staggering. So Sydney finally accepted one of the publishers' deals. They wanted a rush job, because a quickie, unauthorized biography was already in stores, selling quite well: Picking Up the Pieces: The Sydney Jordan Story.

Her advance was $125,000, and Sydney donated $25,000 of it to Aidan Cosgrove and his mother. After a while, Rikki Cosgrove became a real pain. She seemed to be a strong believer in the old Chinese proverb that once you save someone's life, you're responsible for them. She was forever asking Sydney for favors and hitting her up for money. And Rikki wasn't exactly Mother of the Year either--as the ghostwriter for Sydney's autobiography discovered while doing her research. But none of it was included in the book.

Sydney discovered that publishing a book meant making a lot of compromises and concessions. She loathed the title the marketing people came up with: Making Miracles: My Own Story. But the book spent three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. A made-for-TV movie was quickly thrown together.

By the time Making Miracles: The Sydney Jordan Story aired on Lifetime, Sydney was out of the hospital and walking with a cane. Hired to do color commentary for a televised figure-skating event, she made such a great impression that the network put her in their broadcast booth for other women's sports tournaments. Sydney ended up going to the Olympic Games in Lillehammer after all.

She won raves from viewers and critics for the short films she put together and narrated about certain athletes, coaches, and even the people working at the event (a woman who ran a concessions stand in the main auditorium, a maid at a nearby hotel, and the man who operated one of the scoreboards). Pretty soon, the network assigned her to make her video shorts about interesting people for their nighttime news magazines. That was how Movers & Shakers got started.

One of her Movers & Shakers pieces was about a handsome young, Chicago cop named Joe McCloud. While off duty and on his way to a Cubs game, he'd restrained a man who had gone berserk on the El. The man had shot his girlfriend in front of dozens of horrified commuters on the train. He had then taken a child hostage and threatened to execute her--as well as everyone in the car. "I thought we were all going to die," one middle-aged woman commuter testified in Sydney's video short. "People were crying and getting sick. And then this--this good-looking guy stepped up and started talking to the gunman, and he distracted him..."

Joe McCloud managed to overpower the deranged man. He even gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the man's wounded girlfriend, saving her life.

Joe was six feet, three inches tall, with straight blond hair and soulful green eyes, and Sydney was smitten. On top of everything else, he was a hero. During the interview, he confessed something to Sydney: "When the network said they wanted to interview me, I told them okay--as long as they sent you to do it."

"Why me?" she asked.

With a crooked little grin, he shrugged. "Well, ever since I first saw you on TV about a year ago, I've had a little crush on you."

Her parents weren't crazy about her marrying a cop, and it meant her moving away to Chicago. But they ended up falling in love with him, too. It was just the kind of story they would have had her cover for Movers & Shakers: the handsome hero cop and the semicelebrity correspondent who profiled him were now getting married. Photos of their wedding ran in People magazine.

The doctors had warned her that the spinal injuries might cause some fertility problems. So finding herself pregnant five months after they were married took Sydney by surprise. Oddly, she had trouble conceiving after Eli. Joe helped her get through the huge disappointment when the doctors said her chances for another child were less than five percent. Sydney really leaned on Joe again when her father died in 2002, and then again when her mom passed away three years later.

Sometimes Joe caught flack at work from certain fellow cops, because his wife was on TV. "Mr. Sydney Jordan," they called him.

"Oh, they're just jerks," Joe said. "They don't bother me." At least, that was what he told her.

Eli openly hated it when Sydney's Movers & Shakers stories took her on the road for days at a time, and so did she. Joe didn't hold it over her head that he often had to be mom and dad to Eli while she was away. Sydney kept busy on these trips, running herself and her crew ragged during the day. Yet she'd still have a tough time falling asleep alone in her bed at the Hyatt, Marriott, or Red Lion. She missed having Joe beside her, spooning her. She was always worried something might happen to him while she was on the road. As a policeman's wife, Sydney knew she had to prepare herself for the possibility that she could lose him at any time and without any warning.

But she didn't lose him that way. It didn't happen that way at all.

As she lay alone under the covers, Sydney figured she might as well have been in a strange bed at the Hyatt, Red Lion, or Marriott. She felt lonely and homesick. She missed Joe. Down the hallway, her son was sleeping--with his night-light on.

She heard another pop in the distance. People were still setting off firecrackers.

With a sigh, Sydney threw back the covers and then switched on her light. She padded down the hall to use the bathroom. This was one of those nights when the extra presence in the apartment scared her. Sitting on the toilet, she warily glanced over toward the tub. The closed shower curtain fluttered a little. She told herself that it had moved when she'd shut the bathroom door earlier. There was nothing on the other side of that plastic, map-of-the-world curtain. She was alone in here.

Staring down at the tiled floor, Sydney thought about Leah and Jared. A grisly image crept into her head of two corpses lying there on the tiles, a pool of blood beneath them.

"A neighbor found both bodies in the bathroom," her friend in the newsroom had said.

Sydney closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. What had happened to poor Leah and Jared was just too bizarre, sad, and senseless. It still hadn't quite sunk in that they were dead--and how they'd died. It baffled her.

She flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and retreated to her bedroom. Crawling back into bed, she switched off the light.

Sydney lay there in the dark for a few moments. Then instinctively she knew she wasn't alone. Even with the windows open and a breeze wafting in from the lake, the bedroom suddenly felt warm. She could hear breathing. The room seemed to get darker. This was how it always happened. Yet Sydney didn't think she'd ever get used to it.

She clutched the bedsheets up to her neck. A shadow passed over her. Something brushed against the side of her face--by her ear. It felt like a kiss. For a brief moment, she thought of Joe and wished he were there. Then maybe she wouldn't be so scared.

But it wasn't Joe.

It was only a ghost.

The picture quality was poor, and the sound fuzzy. On the TV screen, Amanda Beck, the perky brunette actress best known for her popular late-eighties sitcom Get Out of Here!, was taking a dramatic turn in this old Lifetime Movie. She didn't look very perky--or pretty--as she lay unconscious in a hospital bed, hooked up to a respirator. A tube tugged down one corner of her mouth, a nasty bruise marred her forehead, and her hair looked greasy. The respirator made a constant whoosh-whoosh-whoosh sound. The eleven-year-old boy she'd saved from the fire before the last commercial now maneuvered himself in his wheelchair to her bedside. It was night, and no one else occupied the hospital room with them. With dogged determination and all the strength he could muster, the poor, pathetic, bandaged boy pulled himself out of the wheelchair just long enough to kiss her cheek and whisper in her ear. "Thank you for saving my life. Sydney Jordan, you're my hero."

"That scene with the boy late at night in the hospital never happened," Sydney told TV Guide when the TV movie first aired in 1994. The maudlin segment wasn't in her autobiography either. They'd invented it for the film.

Another commercial came on. The clock on his DVD/VCR player read: 3:45 A.M. He could hear a series of pops outside. People were still lighting off firecrackers. He poured a shot of Courvoisier, sat back in his chair, and watched the rest of Making Miracles: The Sydney Jordan Story.

It was on a medium-quality videotape he'd bought on eBay. Intermittent static nearly ruined the final scene with Sydney's color commentary of the Olympic Games in Lillehammer. The music swelled while they showed all the people whose lives Sydney had touched in the hospital now watching her on TV, including young Aidan Cosgrove. It was a real tearjerker.

But he was dry-eyed.

He had to finish packing for his trip tomorrow afternoon. But instead he watched once again some Movers & Shakers segments he'd recorded over the past several months. For closure, he viewed the Jared and Leah piece one more time. A set of silver candlesticks from their dining room now sat on the same shelf as his TV. And a fancy sterling-silver plate on display in their living room was serving as a coaster for his glass of Courvoisier. He'd also taken forty-seven dollars out of Jared's wallet and another sixty-two dollars from Leah's purse--along with their credit cards. He'd already cut up the credit cards. He didn't really need the money. He just needed the scene at Leah and Jared's place to look like a robbery gone bad. Still, the silver items and the cash were a sweet little bonus.

Glancing over at his open suitcase on the living room floor, he decided to get back to his packing. He ignored the TV for a few minutes. The segment now showing he'd watched so many times recently, he knew it word for word and shot for shot. Sydney was interviewing Ned Haggerty, a rail-riding transient, who had seen a Burlington Northern yardman trip and fall on the tracks. Ned had emerged from his makeshift temporary home in a boxcar to save the unconscious yardman from being sliced in two by an oncoming freight train. Ned was quite a colorful character, but after the umpteenth viewing, his pontificating on what was wrong with people and the current administration no longer amused.

Throwing an extra T-shirt and pair of socks into the suitcase, he shoved a pair of work shoes into a plastic bag, and placed it on top of the clothes. He already had the new work uniform in there. He wouldn't need his skeleton keys or his burglar tools this time. There would be no break-ins.

He had two jobs on this trip. If he carried them out as planned, he wouldn't need his rain slicker and shower cap. It was ironic, too, because he anticipated both kills would be extremely messy.

There would be a great deal of blood, but not a drop of it would touch him.

It would be on Sydney Jordan's head.

If anyone had noticed a stranger coming or going last night, it would have been Sally Considine, the fifty-something divorcee in Apartment 8. Despite the fact that the chateau-style town houses looked alike and often had the same kind of flowers in the window boxes, Tudor Court's occupants usually kept to themselves. Sydney knew Sally Considine well enough to chat politely in passing, and Sally had twice praised her Movers & Shakers reruns when they'd aired recently. She'd also asked Sydney if she knew how to get tickets for Oprah.

This was the first time Sydney had rung Sally's doorbell. She knew Sally was home. Her windows were open, and she could hear the radio going.

It was a hot morning, the mid-eighties. Sydney wore khaki shorts and a pink blouse. She'd tried to look halfway presentable for her neighbor. She'd been on TV long enough to know that one bad hair day out among the public could start a chain reaction of gossip about what an utter slob she was. It had been particularly hard trying to look pretty this morning. She hadn't gotten much sleep at all last night.

The phone had started ringing at 6:35 this morning. The network--along with a few news services--had wanted a quote from her about the deaths of Leah and Jared.

She'd had three cups of coffee while checking the Internet this morning. There had been several articles on Leah and Jared, but no new developments except for the rather lame quote she'd given them two hours before:

"It's all so senseless and tragic," said On the Edge correspondent Sydney Jordan, whose Movers & Shakers profile on McGinty and Dvorak brought them national attention. "They were a very sweet, selfless couple, genuine heroes. Jared and Leah should have had many happy years together ahead of them. It's very sad indeed."

The Portland police still didn't have any leads.

Sydney kept thinking about that strange e-mail she'd received a few days before. "You can't save them," it had said. She wondered if the person was talking about Leah and Jared, or had it been just some crank, screwing around with her head?

She clicked RECENTLY DELETED EMAIL in her mail file. It took her a few moments to find it among the seven days' worth of deleted messages. There was no subject header, but Sydney recognized the sender's address. She remembered duet had been in the e-mail moniker: secondduet4U@dwosinco.com.

She clicked RESTORE, and stared at that cryptic message again. Sydney hesitated before clicking the REPLY icon. Did she really want to respond to the nutcase who had written this message and addressed her as Bitch-Sydney? She took a deep breath, then her fingers worked over the keyboard: "Who are you?" was all she wrote. Sydney didn't even include her name. As she clicked SEND, Sydney felt as if she were opening up a can of worms.

Just a moment later, she heard a click, signifying incoming mail. She opened up the mailbox:

MAILER-DAEMON...Returned Mail

User Unknown: secondduet4U@dwosinco.com

"Just as well," Sydney muttered to herself, sipping from that third cup of coffee. She hadn't received any follow-up e-mail from that duet person and figured maybe it was best to just leave it that way.

All that coffee had done a number on Sydney's stomach. Plus her arms and back ached horribly from hauling Eli from that storm drain last night. She was limping pretty badly this morning, too. She hoped Sally Considine wasn't averse to the smell of Bengay--if she ever answered her door.

Sydney pressed the doorbell again.

"Coming, coming!" she heard Sally call.

A moment later, the door flung open. Sally was a large, buxom woman with a pretty, oval-shaped face and close-cropped auburn hair. She wore a white sleeveless blouse, plaid shorts, and sandals. A smile lit up her face. "Well, hi, Sydney!" Then she immediately seemed to regret it, and covered her mouth. "Oh, I just read online about that nice couple from Portland you interviewed. I'm so sorry. How awful! Would you like to come in for some coffee?" She opened the door wider.

"No thanks," Sydney replied, a hand on her queasy stomach. "That's sweet of you, Sally. I don't want to take too much of your time. I was just wondering. Were you home last night?"

Sally stepped outside. "Well, yes, as a matter of fact. I was a regular couch potato. I stayed in and watched the fireworks on TV."

"You didn't happen to see anyone--any strangers--out here in the courtyard, did you?"

"Last night? No, I didn't notice anybody. Why?"

"Well, it might be nothing. But when my son and I got back from my brother's last night, we found the front door open--"

"Oh, my goodness," Sally murmured. "Was anything missing?"

Sydney shook her head. "Not a thing. There was a small mess in the kitchen, a broken teapot, and some food from the cupboard was spilled onto the counter--nothing else."

Sally blinked at her. "Maybe you accidentally left the door open and a squirrel got in or something."

"That's what I thought. But my son swears he closed and locked the door when we left." Sydney felt like an idiot for double-checking with her neighbor, but she wanted to give Eli the benefit of the doubt. She sighed. "Sorry to take up your time, Sally. Maybe it was a ghost or something." She started to walk away.

"Funny you should mention that," Sally said. "How are you folks getting along in the apartment?"

Sydney turned and half-smiled at her. "Are you asking if we've had some things go bump in the night?"

Her neighbor hesitated. "Um, maybe..."

"Then you know about it," Sydney said.

"I wanted to say something sooner. But the property manager would have killed me if I'd blabbed. They've had a hard time trying to rent out that place..."

In a hushed tone, his mother started to describe some of their night visits. From his open bedroom window, Eli could only hear snippets of what she was saying. He peeked past the edge of his curtain down to the cobblestone courtyard, where his mother and Sally stood by Sally's front door. He couldn't see their faces, just the tops of their heads.

"My brother's in real estate and he told me about some of the previous tenants and the high turnover rate," his mother said. "I gather they had experiences similar to ours."

"Well, I've lived here three years," Sally said. "And the people in number nine have usually moved in and out so fast I've never gotten to know many of them. But I became chums with this gal, Nancy Abbe, who lived here a while back. She was very cute, very fun. Anyway, Nancy told me that in the upstairs hallway, she once spotted a woman in a long robe. Only she could see through the woman. She said the woman was there for only a few seconds. At the time, I thought Nancy might have been pulling my leg. But since then, I've heard other stories about things going on in that apartment, and now I don't think she was kidding. You know, Sydney, if what happened to you last night is because of this ghost or whatever you want to call it, then it's a real first."

"What do you mean?" Eli heard his mother ask.

"Well, from what I've heard, all the disturbances have occurred on the second floor," Sally explained. "But you said the mess was in your kitchen."

Eli bit his lip. Their neighbor was right. Until last night, there hadn't been any night visits on the first floor.

Sally scratched her head and shrugged. "I always figured the disturbances happened upstairs, because that's where they found the bodies."

"Bodies?" his mother repeated.

Eli leaned closer to the window opening. He saw Sally take a step back. She put a hand over her heart. "Oh, dear, the woman who showed you the apartment told you, didn't she? She's required by law to tell you--"

"Yes, she said a woman committed suicide in there. It was supposed to have happened back around the mid-seventies."

"That's right, but--"

"Listen, Sally," his mother said, lowering her voice again. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention anything about this suicide to Eli. He doesn't know. He's already well aware that the place is haunted. I don't want to pour gasoline on that fire."

Frowning, Eli watched Sally just nod. She didn't say anything.

"You know, for a minute there," his mother continued. "I thought you said bodies."

"I did say bodies, Sydney," their neighbor whispered.

Eli felt a chill race through him.

"The woman who committed suicide in your apartment had a son," Sally explained. "Before killing herself, she murdered him--in his sleep."

CHAPTER SEVEN

Chicago--Three nights later

She'd managed to slip out of Houlihan's without him noticing. Angela Gannon hurried across East Michigan toward the eighteen-story office building where she worked as a paralegal. It was 9:45 on a sultry Tuesday night. Angela still had on her work clothes: a black skirt and a mint-green blouse that complemented her tan and her shoulder-length ash-blond hair. She was thirty-one, and what she lacked in natural beauty--Angela always thought her nose was too long and her chin too weak--she compensated for with a toned, trim body and lots of panache. Still, Angela was always surprised when a guy told her she was beautiful. And sometimes, she fell for that guy, even though he was a mega-jerk.

Kent, the man she'd stealthily abandoned at a table for two in Houlihan's, was the most recent example of that "whatever did I see in this asshole?" phenomenon. He worked in the same building, but on sixteen, two floors above her. They had started out flirting in the elevator, then had a few brushes in the lobby, and finally a date for lunch. Her friends at the law firm warned her that he was a shallow pig--and married to boot. And if she took a good look at his gorgeous wavy brown hair, she'd notice early signs of male pattern baldness. Angela convinced herself she just wanted to be friends with this cute, married guy who thought she was beautiful. He was a total sweetheart and very much a gentleman all through their lunch date.

Too bad he wasn't the same way at Houlihan's. She'd been wary about having drinks with him after work anyway. A harmless lunch was one thing, but this was different. After two Tanqueray and tonics, he turned into an utter creep. He was rude to their waiter. He made two calls on his cell phone while she just sat there, bored to smithereens: one to a buddy to schedule a racquetball game and the other to someone about scoring tickets to a White Sox game. The White Sox? It would have been bad enough if her Cubs-crazy family ever found out she was seeing a married guy--but a White Sox fan? They'd have disowned her.

The last straw had been when Kent--with a smarmy grin--had made an innuendo about checking out the view from one of the upper-floor suites in the Hyatt down the street. After that, Angela had tried to leave, but he'd insisted she stay for just one more drink. She'd waited ten more minutes before saying she had to hit the ladies' room, excusing herself, and then slipping out of the restaurant.

Hurrying into the lobby of her office building, Angela figured she had about five more minutes before Kent caught on that she'd ditched him. She didn't see the night guard on duty as she hurried through the lobby to the garage elevator. She jabbed the button, and the door opened immediately. The building was older--with only three underground parking levels. Angela pressed C, leaned against the elevator wall, and caught her breath. The elevator let out a groan as it made its descent.

She'd get the "I told you so" look from her friends when she let them know about tonight with Kent. Well, she had it coming. After all, the guy was married. What was she thinking? His poor wife...

The overhead light in the elevator flickered for a second, and a little panic swept through her. She could feel the elevator still moving. It was just the light, and it was okay now. Still, that flickering unnerved her for a moment. She was grateful when the elevator stopped and the door whooshed open on Parking Level C. She stepped out of the elevator and started to hunt through her purse for her keys.

Whenever Angela went for drinks with friends after work, she always volunteered to drive people home--partly out of kindness, but also because she hated venturing down to this creepy garage alone late at night. It wasn't so bad in the morning and at quitting time, because there were other people around. But at this hour, she was the only one down here--at least she hoped she was the only one down here. There was no garage attendant on duty, just an emergency phone and a keypad device near the exit for a code that opened the garage door.

Angela found the car keys, and had them out and ready--even though she was still quite a ways from her car.

She'd never been in a submarine, but Angela was pretty certain it would be a lot like this gloomy, old parking garage--the low ceilings with so many exposed pipes, the gray walls and floor, little wire cages around the lights overhead--and yet it was still dark with shadowy nooks everywhere. A click, click, click from her high heels on the concrete floor echoed as she made her way to her Toyota Camry. She saw only two other cars on this level, and they looked as if they'd been there for weeks.

Angela quickened her pace as she approached her car. While unlocking the door, she glanced through the window into the backseat. No one. It was okay.

Climbing inside the car, she shut the door, locked it, and started up the ignition. She sighed. She wasn't usually this nervous, but that flickering light in the elevator had disturbed her--and then she couldn't shake the feeling something was wrong. That jerk, Kent, certainly wasn't worth all this angst. It was what she got for succumbing to his "you're so beautiful" line.

Angela shifted to Drive and pressed on the accelerator.

The car started to move, but then it lurched forward. All at once, the left rear side slammed down on the garage floor with a loud bang. Angela gasped at the sudden jolt. The car's left underside scraped across the concrete, and a severe grating noise reverberated through the garage.

Panic-stricken, she stomped on the brake. The car skidded for a second, then stopped.

Angela's heart pounded furiously, and she tried to catch her breath. She heard a tinny clattering sound. Out her window, she saw her hubcap rolling across the garage floor--five spaces over. She glanced in her side mirror. "Jesus Mary Joseph," she gasped.

The back tire had fallen off. A thin haze of smoke crept up from beneath the car. Angela quickly switched off the ignition.

"Okay, Angie, calm down," she murmured to herself. Unlocking the door, she stepped out of the Camry. She was a little shaky on her feet. She stared at her crippled, lopsided car--at all the mangled steel and structural damage around where the tire used to be. "What the hell?" she said under her breath.

She pulled her wallet from her purse, and found her AAA card. Then she took out her cell phone and dialed. No answer. She couldn't get through, and realized there wasn't any reception down here on the garage's bottom level.

She remembered the emergency phone by the garage door. But that was three floors up, and she wanted to get out of this creepy garage. Angela decided to try AAA again from the lobby. She was still shaking. She took a deep breath and started toward the elevator bay.

But she heard something, and stopped. The elevator let out a ding, and the door whooshed open.

Angela couldn't quite see the elevator from where she stood--only part of the annex. She waited for someone to emerge from that alcove. She listened for footsteps. But there was nothing.

"Hello?" she called. "Is anyone there? I could use some help. Hello?"

No reply.

Angela was afraid to take another step. Paralyzed, she gazed at the alcove and saw a shadow moving.

"Who's there?" she called.

The shadow swept across the gray wall by the elevator area, then disappeared.

"Who's there?" she repeated, louder this time. But her voice quivered.

Again, no response.

Unnerved, Angela retreated back to her disabled car. She ducked inside and quickly locked the door. She couldn't quite see the elevator bay from the front seat of her car, but she kept her gaze fixed in that direction. She was still trembling as she pulled out her cell phone again and dialed Triple-A. No luck. She gave her brother's number a shot. Nothing. She even tried Kent's cell, figuring at least he was close. But her phone just wasn't working.

All of the sudden, she caught sight of someone out of the corner of her eye--just as he tapped on her window. Angela let out a startled yelp. A hand over her heart, she gaped at the handsome janitor standing on the other side of her window. He gave her a sheepish smile. "Looks like you could use some help!" he said loudly--so she could hear him inside the car.

Angela immediately felt embarrassed for gasping. Still, she didn't roll her window down more than a few inches to talk to him. "Ah, yeah. I was trying to call Triple-A, but my cell phone doesn't work down here."

He walked over toward the back of her car and collected some articles from the garage floor. "Lug nuts," he said, studying them in his hand. "They couldn't have all gotten loose at the same time. I don't mean to scare you, but it looks like someone sabotaged your car."

Angela sighed. "Well, I'm pretty scared enough already. That's why I'm sitting in here with the door locked."

He nodded. "Smart. The kook who did this could still be hanging around here." He stepped back and took another look at the left rear side of her Camry. Then he returned to her window. "If you have a jack in the trunk, I'll raise her up and put the tire back on for you. But I think you're better off getting a tow. Looks like a lot of damage back there."

Angela just nodded. She still kept the door locked and the window up most of the way. She'd never seen this janitor before, and it was strange how he'd shown up just when he had. Still, he was friendly enough--and quite attractive. And there was no one else offering to help her.

"We can go up to the lobby, and I'll keep you company until the tow arrives," he offered. "I don't know the night watchman very well. I'm new here. But he strikes me as kind of squirrelly. I wouldn't trust him if I were you."

She hesitated. "Well, if it's not too much trouble..."

"Trouble?" he said. "Are you kidding me? I know this is a nightmare for you, but it's a lonely night janitor's dream come true. I get to help a beautiful woman out of a jam."

Smiling up at him, Angela felt herself blushing. She unlocked the door.

He opened it for her. Angela grabbed her purse and stepped out of the car. He closed the door after her. "You're going to think this is a line," he said. "But you look really, really familiar."

She shrugged. "You've probably seen me around in the building."

"No, that's not it," the custodian said. "I just started working here a few nights ago."

They headed toward the elevator alcove. Angela glanced back at her disabled Camry. "Will it be okay there?"

He nodded. "I don't think anyone's coming down here any time soon--except for the tow, God willing." He took a few more steps, and then stopped abruptly. "Wait a minute. I know where I've seen you before. Weren't you on TV a while back? That Movers & Shakers story from On the Edge? I remember now..."

Angela let out a little laugh. "So--you saw that, huh?"

"God, yes." The handsome janitor snapped his fingers. "Y'know, I didn't make the connection. But now I realize--it happened in this building. When I first hired on here, the woman in personnel told me an employee here tried to commit suicide a while back. He climbed out to the ledge on the fourteenth floor, or something. But I didn't connect it to you--and that Movers & Shakers story. I can't believe it's you. This is amazing! You're the one who talked him back inside. You saved that guy's life."

Angela felt embarrassed--and yet also excited that he'd recognized her from her one and only TV appearance, nine months ago.

"It's no big deal," Angela told him. "I really didn't do much."

Most of what had happened was a blur when she tried to remember it now.

But she remembered Archie. He'd been the nervous, nerdy, high-strung office clerk. Archie's biggest responsibility was running the copy machine, and he routinely screwed that up. He was in his mid thirties with pale skin, greasy brown hair, and a slight paunch. Angela used to think he could have been good-looking with a makeover, some crunches, and a new wardrobe that didn't include clip-on ties and short-sleeve shirts. Angela's friends at the firm used to tease her because Archie had a crush on her.

That Friday nine months ago, she'd heard during lunch that Archie was being fired--after only six weeks on the job. Angela felt sorry for him. He was such a loser, the poor guy.

She was emerging from the restroom when a fellow paralegal ran up to her. "My God, Archie's on the ledge! He climbed out the window in Weymiller's office. He's gonna jump!"

One of the younger lawyers was racing down the hallway. "I called 9-1-1!" he yelled. "Jesus, I don't know how he got out there..."

Mr. Weymiller came around the corner, and he motioned at her. "Angie, thank God! Listen, we need you to talk to Archie until the police get here. He likes you--"

"But wait a minute!" she cried, confused. "What do you expect me to say to him?"

That was when the whole thing became a blur--all these people talking and screaming at her at once--someone pulling her toward Weymiller's office; and then leaning out that window while Mr. Weymiller held her around the waist so she wouldn't fall. She remembered the chilly November wind whipping through her hair, and Archie, tears streaming down his face as he clung to the side of the building. His ugly fake tie flapped in the breeze. The whole time, Angie tried not to look down--fourteen stories to the traffic below on Michigan Avenue. Car horns were honking and a siren wailed in the distance. But mostly she just heard the wind and her own voice as she tried to talk to Archie.

She didn't even remember what she said exactly. She fought her vertigo and just kept talking. All the while she was terrified that at any minute Archie might leap off the ledge.

Angela found out later from her coworkers what she'd said. Sydney Jordan had interviewed them for Movers & Shakers. Apparently, she'd told Archie about the times when she felt lost, lonely--and even suicidal--only to feel better days later. She'd claimed that she would really miss him, and had been hoping to stay in touch with him after he stopped working there at the law firm. She'd asked him several times to come in off the ledge and admitted to him that she was very, very scared.

Angela didn't remember any of it.

She had no idea how long she'd been half-hanging out of that fourteenth-floor window. She hadn't realized when the police arrived--or when the traffic below stopped on Michigan Avenue. She hadn't noticed the man in the building across the way, recording the whole thing on his cell phone's video camera.

That dramatic footage was later shown on the news and in the Movers & Shakers segment.

"What I do remember," Angela told Sydney Jordan for the piece, "is never losing eye contact with Archie. I just held my breath when he finally started to make his way toward me. I prayed and prayed he wouldn't slip. Then I finally grabbed his hand. I nearly collapsed when we pulled him back inside. I was just so relieved."

She didn't tell Sydney how the cops on the scene had pounced on Archie once he'd climbed back through that window. They'd grabbed him and started frisking him. And someone else had whisked her away.

On the Movers & Shakers segment, she'd wished Archie well. But she hadn't seen him since that Friday afternoon in November, nine months ago.

"So--what was Sydney Jordan like?" the janitor asked. "I've always figured her as kind of a phony."

Having been lost in thought, Angela blinked at him and smiled. "Actually, she's just the opposite--very nice, very genuine."

They started toward the elevator annex again. The janitor didn't say anything, and for a few moments, there was just the click, click, click of her high heels. They turned into the alcove, and she noticed him pull out his janitor keys. He stepped up to the service elevator and inserted a key into some mechanism and then pressed the button.

Angela wondered why they didn't just ring for the regular elevator, but figured he was probably accustomed to using this one. She didn't say anything.

He nodded to the service elevator door. "This will take us all the way to the roof if we want. The other one just goes as far as the lobby."

"But we only need to go as far as the lobby," she pointed out.

"I know," he nodded. "Tell me something. Do you know whatever happened to that guy you saved?"

Angela gave an uneasy shrug. "Last I heard he was still in the hospital with all sorts of mental problems. It's really very sad."

The handsome janitor frowned. "Kind of makes you wonder if he'd have been better off jumping." He turned toward her. "Ever stop to think maybe you shouldn't have interfered?"

Bewildered, Angela stared at him.

A ding sounded, and the elevator door opened. "Here we are," the janitor announced.

Angela hesitated for a moment, but then he took hold of her arm and guided her into the cubicle, which was lined with heavy, quilted, dark gray blankets--the kind movers used to wrap up antiques.

She watched him press the button for the fourteenth floor, then he pulled out the key again and switched on the Express lock.

"Wait..." Angela said, just as the door shut. She turned toward him. "I thought we were going to the lobby."

The elevator made a humming noise as it started its ascent.

The janitor stared at her, his eyes narrowed. "No, we're going to fourteen," he said coolly. "I didn't fuck up your car so we'd go only as far as the lobby."

Angela shook her head. "Oh, God no--" she cried, recoiling.

But he still had ahold of her arm. He suddenly twisted it around her back.

Angela let out a shriek.

He slapped his hand over her mouth. She struggled, but he was too strong for her. It felt as if he were about to snap off her arm.

Helplessly, she watched the illuminated numbers above the elevator door as they climbed higher and higher.

"You're going up to fourteen, Angela," he whispered, his lips brushing against her ear. "You're going back to that same ledge. But you won't be there very long."

She frantically dug into her purse for her cell phone. Twenty-six-year-old Dominique Chandler walked at a brisk clip down Michigan Avenue. Attractive, with close-cropped hair and a flawless cocoa-colored complexion, she was accustomed to guys coming on to her and making passes. But this was too much.

She'd just left the Hyatt bar, her favorite after-work watering hole. She wore a sexy red wraparound dress. A couple of guys had hit on her in the Hyatt's bar, but she wasn't interested. She'd had her fill of happy hour hors d'oeuvres and cocktails, and said good night to her coworkers at 10:15. She'd wanted to catch the 10:24 CTA.

She'd walked only a block in the direction of her bus stop when she'd heard someone call to her: "Hey, wait up, pretty baby!"

Dominique had furtively glanced back at the pest but hadn't gotten a good look. If the police asked later about the man who had attacked her, she could only say that he was a tall, skinny white guy with black hair.

"Hey, baby, don't you tease me!" he yelled, following her. "I know you want it, bitch!"

Dominique had the cell phone in her hand now. She was walking even faster. She hoped there would be people at her bus stop--but that was three more blocks.

"Leave me alone!" she screamed--as loud as she could. She pressed the button to activate her cell phone.

"Dominique?" he called. "Dominique, wait up!"

She wondered how the hell he knew her name. But she didn't slow down. Her thumb was already pressing 9-1-1 on the cell phone's keypad. She broke into a sprint and was about to cross the street.

"Dominique, it's me, Zack!" she heard him yell. "I'm just messing with you, for God's sake!"

She glanced over her shoulder and suddenly realized her tormentor was actually a pal from work, Zack, the cute young guy in the mailroom. Dominique stopped near the curb in front of an older, eighteen-story building on Michigan Avenue. She swiveled around. "Oh, my God, Zack!" she screamed, laughing. "I was about to call the cops on your ass. You scared the shit out of me, you son of a--"

Before she could finish, Dominique heard a piercing scream from above.

She looked up to see something descending on her. She almost stumbled into the street as she backed up to avoid it. Dominique dropped her cell phone.

With a loud, hollow thump, the body hit the pavement a few feet in front of her. Dominique was splattered with the woman's blood.

She shrieked.

Fourteen stories up, the man dressed as a janitor didn't have a drop of blood on him.

He had kept his word to Angela Gannon. She hadn't been on the ledge for very long.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sydney had no desire whatsoever to drive twenty-five miles to the grand opening of a ValuCo store in Auburn, but she was one of four local celebrities scheduled to appear at the event. That Saturday afternoon, they were throwing a fun fair in the store's parking lot, and there would be a food court, too. All the profits were going to charity.

She'd practically browbeaten Eli into going with her. It was ironic, too, because she was always feeling guilty for not spending enough time with him--and here she was, forcing him to spend time with her. She was dressed--"fun/casual" the publicist's memo recommended--in a dark blue sleeveless top and white capri pants, and ready to go. But Eli was still up in his room, getting ready.

While waiting, Sydney retrieved their mail and sat down at the dining room table. A bill, two credit card offers, Entertainment Weekly, a personal letter/card from someone with a Portland, Oregon, address, and a letter from Joe.

Sydney felt a little pang in her stomach as she recognized his handwriting. It was addressed to her, not Eli.

Some slightly masochistic part of her decided not to open Joe's note first. Or maybe she was just too proud to admit to herself how much she still cared. Whatever the motive, she tore open the envelope with the Portland address first. Inside was a white card with silver embossed fancy script that said "Thank You" on the cover. Sydney opened the card. The penmanship was somewhat sloppy, but decipherable:

Dear Sydney,

Thank you so much for your kind note about Leah & Jared. It brought comfort to all of us at this very difficult time. Leah was so very fond of you. The video short you made about our daughter & Jared is a beautiful tribute to them that we will cherish always. Thank you also for the lovely flower arrangement. Your thoughts & prayers are very much appreciated.

With Kindest Regards,

Peggy & Robert Dvorak

Sydney was touched by the note and surprised at how quickly Leah's parents wrote back to her. But she was confused, too. She'd mailed them a card on July 5th, but hadn't sent any flowers. She figured someone at the network must have sent the flowers in her name.

For the last seven nights, she'd checked the Internet for any possible new developments in the police investigation into Leah and Jared's deaths. But there was nothing.

Sydney now wished she'd opened Joe's letter first, because it still mattered--too much--what he had to say, even after reading this heartbreaking note from a woman whose daughter was just murdered a week ago. She was still thinking about Joe.

She had no idea why he was writing to her. Was he begging her to come back? She didn't dare hope for that. If he truly missed her, he would have let her know by now.

Sydney opened the envelope and pulled out a folded piece of paper. It was his stationery from work--with Chicago Police Department printed along the top, beside the star-badge logo. The first thing she thought was, it looks so damn official. Sydney started reading:

Dear Sydney,

While these past six weeks have been very hard for me, I realize you were right to take Eli and move to Seattle. You & I are better off apart for a while. This separation is the best thing for us right now.

We haven't discussed divorce yet, and I hope we can keep the situation status quo for a few more weeks. I need this break from you & Eli. Thank you for not trying to contact me. I don't know if you even wanted to, but you've made the right choice with your silence.

I hope you & Eli are doing well.

Joe

P.S. Your dentist's office called. You & Eli are both scheduled for teeth cleaning on 7/14. I went ahead & canceled.

"Asshole," she murmured, her eyes filling with tears. Could he have been any colder and passionless? He never even mentioned missing her or Eli. She felt as if he'd just sucker-punched her in the gut. The son of a bitch wanted to keep the situation status quo?

She started to cry, and crumpled the letter in her fist. But then she heard Eli--jumping from the top step to the first landing, and then again from the first landing to the second landing.

Sydney quickly wiped her eyes.

"Can I at least check out some of the rides while you're giving your speech?" he asked, stepping into the dining room. "I don't have to be up on some stage with you, do I?"

Sydney stashed the crumpled letter back in its envelope. But she was too late; he'd already seen the envelope and no doubt recognized his father's handwriting.

"Hey, is that a letter from Dad?" he asked eagerly.

Sydney pressed the envelope to her chest. "It's for me, okay? It doesn't concern you." She glanced at Eli and frowned. "That's the same shirt you wore yesterday, and it has a stain on it. Go upstairs and put on a clean shirt. Okay, honey? Please?"

Eli rolled his eyes at her, shook his head, and then retreated toward the stairs. "Jeez, fine," he muttered.

"And could you hurry it up a little?" she called after him. "We're going to be late."

Sydney wiped her eyes again, then turned in her chair, opened the bottom drawer of the built-in breakfront, and stashed Joe's note under some papers. It was already becoming a junk drawer--with their lease, some stuff from her new bank, and insurance. There were also receipts from the furniture stores and appliance shops. Sydney figured he wouldn't go looking for his father's letter in there. She didn't want him to find it--and read it.

She didn't want Eli to know that his dad was an uncaring son of a bitch.

Eli had paused on the stairway at the first landing. There was a mirror on the living room wall that allowed him to see around the corner into the dining room. Frowning, he watched his mother hide the letter from his dad in the built-in breakfront's bottom drawer.

"That was a letter from Dad, wasn't it?" Eli asked.

"Yes, it was," Sydney admitted. She looked over her shoulder as she backed the car out of the shelter. "But like I told you before, it doesn't concern you, honey."

"Well, I don't get it. Why don't you want me to see the letter?"

Shifting into drive, she heaved an exasperated sigh. "Eli, what part of it doesn't concern you is failing to register here? Could you hit the button for the gate, please?"

Frowning, he poked at the automatic gate-opening device, which was clipped onto the passenger sun visor.

"Thanks," Sydney said, slowing down while the driveway gate slowly opened. "Honey, it's a personal letter--addressed to me. When your dad writes to you, I don't ask to read it, do I?"

"I figured that's because you don't care," he said, folding his arms.

"I do care," she said emphatically. The gate was finally open, and she pulled forward. "But I also respect your privacy. What's between you and your father is none of my--"

A man walked out in front of them. Sydney slammed on her brake, and the car's tires let out a screech. At the same time, her arm shot out to brace Eli. The gate-opening device fell off the sun visor and landed in Eli's lap.

Catching her breath, Sydney gaped at the stranger. He was in his late twenties with black hair, a swarthy complexion, and a lean build. He wore a navy blue T-shirt with a silver 59 stenciled across the front of it. As he glared at her, Sydney noticed something was wrong with one of his eyes--a broken blood vessel or something. The white part was all red.

"I'm sorry!" Sydney called.

But he shook his head and kept moving.

"Well, if looks could kill, I'd be six feet under right now," she mumbled.

"I didn't see him," Eli said, clipping the gate-opening device back onto the sun visor.

"This trip's off to a great start," she muttered, turning onto the street. "Anyway, thanks for coming along, Eli. I really didn't want to do this thing alone."

"Who are the other celebrities there?" he asked, slouching in the passenger seat.

"They've got David Beckham, J-Lo, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and me."

Eli stared at her. "Yeah, right."

"Okay, it's Gil Sessions from PM Magazine, Terri Tatum from What's Cooking, Seattle?, that obnoxious guy who does the weather for channel 6, and moi." Sydney watched the road ahead. "Tell you what. When we get there, I'll give you twenty-five bucks, and you can go on as many rides as you want. Just don't throw up. Is it a deal?"

He didn't say anything. Eli's short hair fluttered in the wind as he pensively gazed out the window. He looked so sad.

"What's going on?" she asked. "What are you thinking?"

"Don't you miss Dad?" he asked quietly.

"Of course I miss him."

"Then why can't we go home?

She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and watched the traffic ahead on Madison Street. "We've been through this before, Eli. It's not as easy as that. There are a lot of reasons why your dad and I are apart right now. None of it has to do with you. We both love you very much. That hasn't changed at all. You continue to drive us crazy, and we continue to love you."

Sydney glanced over at him. He didn't even crack a smile.

She reached over and patted his shoulder. "I'm kidding," she said. "Eli, honey, for the umpteenth time, the problem is between your dad and me. It's the kind of stuff we might discuss with a marriage counselor, but not with our son. So--please, quit asking. Even if your dad and I resolve things, and we move back to Chicago, I'm still not telling you what's private between your dad and me."

"If we go home to Dad, I won't ask anymore."

But he doesn't want us back, she thought. Joe had told her so in his letter, "I need this break from you and Eli." But she couldn't repeat that to their son.

What was she supposed to tell him?

It had started four months ago with a phone call from Polly. Usually, she and Joe screened their calls. But that Tuesday night back in March, Joe had gone out on a special assignment, which could have been anything from what he called "desk-jockey duty" to busting a narcotics ring. Whenever he was out on a special assignment she worried about him and always answered the phone--even when the Caller ID read UNKNOWN. She ended up having to talk with a lot of telemarketers on those dreaded nights. So when the call came in UNKNOWN at 9:20 that evening, Sydney snatched up the receiver. "Yes, hello?" she said.

"Joe McCloud?" the man said, sounding haggard and edgy. "Is Joe McCloud there?"

"I'm sorry. He can't come to the phone right now," Sydney said. "Who's calling?"

"This is a friend of his. If he's there, tell him Polly's on the phone. I really need to talk to him."

"Well, as I said, he can't come to the phone, but if you'll leave me your number--"

"Is this Mrs. McCloud?"

"Yes--"

"Listen, Mrs. McCloud, I gotta talk to him now. He's not picking up on his cell. So you know how I can reach him?"

She didn't like hearing that Joe wasn't answering his cell right now. "Um, no. Do you want to leave a number?"

"Jesus," he muttered. "I'm in a phone booth. I lost my cell, and can't go home. It isn't safe. They're probably..." he trailed off. "Um, listen, have Joe call me at home and leave a number where I can reach him, okay? It's urgent. I'll keep checking my voice mail. This is Polly. He knows my home number, but--but let me give it to you anyway. Got a piece of paper?"

Sydney copied it down: Call Polly--773-555-4159. "I'll give him the message," she told the man.

"Thanks, Mrs. McCloud," he said. "You're a nice lady." Then he hung up.

She tried Joe on his cell, but Polly was right. He wasn't picking up. She left Joe a message about Polly's call. "And after you phone this Polly guy," she said, "buzz me and let me know you're all right."

Then Sydney hung up and waited.

Two excruciating hours later, Joe phoned to say he was on his way home. He'd been on some kind of surveillance project. "Same old, same old, a waste of time," he reported.

"Did you call that Polly person?" she asked him on the phone.

"That's a waste of time, too," he replied. "Honey, don't you know the score by now? How many times have I told you to hang up on calls like that?"

"He sounded like he was in trouble," Sydney said.

"These jokers are in trouble all the time. He was probably stoned. Did he sound like he was high?"

"He sounded scared," she replied.

"A lot of them are paranoid. If he ever calls again, just hang up on him."

He called again--two nights later. Joe was home, watching My Name Is Earl with Eli. Sydney was washing the dinner dishes when the phone rang. She checked the caller ID: 773-555-4159--ARTHUR POLLARD.

Though she didn't recognize the name or remember the number, Sydney picked up. "Yes, hello?"

"Mrs. McCloud?" said the man on the other end of the line. "It's Polly--from the other night? Remember me? Is Joe home tonight? I really gotta talk to him."

She hesitated. "Um, I--I'll see if he can come to the phone. Hold on for a second." Sydney put down the receiver, and hurried into the family room, where they'd switched off most of the lights. Joe, in sweatpants and a Chicago Bulls T-shirt, was in his recliner. Eli was stretched out on the floor in front of the TV. They were both laughing.

"Honey, there's a call for you," Sydney said. "It's that Polly character who called on Tuesday night."

Joe glanced at her, and the smile ran away from his face. Getting to his feet, he brushed past her on his way out of the room. "I'll take it in my office," he muttered. "Can you hang it up for me, babe?"

Sydney listened to him lumbering up to the second floor. His office was a small room at the top of the stairs. She went back to the kitchen, picked up the receiver, and listened. "Okay, I got it, thanks," Joe said on the other extension.

Sydney hung up, and then wandered over to the bottom of the stairs. She could hear Joe talking quietly, but the words were undecipherable. Only once did he raise his voice. "Polly, I'm sorry!" he said loudly. "Goddamn it, I'm in no position...."

She didn't feel right eavesdropping. Retreating to the darkened family room, she stood in the doorway and watched TV with Eli. A minute later, she heard Joe come down the steps. Sydney glanced over her shoulder at him. "So--was he a crank?" she asked, under her breath.

"He has no business calling here," Joe growled. "If he calls again, hang up on him."

He settled back down in his lounge chair. Something happened on the show that sent Eli into fits of laughter. Sydney glanced over at her husband--the light from the TV flickered across his handsome face. He didn't even smile.

Polly didn't call again.

The following Saturday morning--two days later--a headline on page three of The Chicago Tribune caught her eye. Sydney read the newspaper every morning for any human interest stories that might make for a good Movers & Shakers segment. She didn't know why she decided to read the article. It wasn't exactly the kind of subject matter she covered in her Movers & Shakers reports:

SHOOTING VICTIM FOUND IN WOODLAWN DUMPSTER

Murder Could Be Drug-Related, Say Police

CHICAGO : Rochelle Johnson, 23, a clerk at E-Zee

Mart Liquor on Martin Luther King Drive, made a grisly discovery Friday afternoon while emptying the garbage in a Dumpster behind the store. "I saw this hand sticking out of a big garbage bag," said Johnson, who immediately called the police.

Arriving at the scene at 3:20 P . M ., Chicago police found the body of a Cicero man, Arthur Pollard, 30. He had been shot three times. Early reports from the Cook County Coroner's Office estimate that Pollard had been killed sometime between midnight and 7 A . M . Friday.

Pollard, a part-time bartender at Anthony's Cha-Cha Lounge in Cicero, was well known to Chicago Police. Since 2001, he had been arrested nine times and convicted twice...

The article went on to list Arthur Pollard's criminal record, which included a stint in Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet for breaking and entering, and another at Stateville Correctional Center for possession of narcotics with intent to sell. The narcotic in this case was heroin. Most of Arthur Pollard's arrests were drug-related.

According to the article, the police were following several leads.

Sydney wondered if Joe was involved in the investigation. If so, why didn't he say anything to her? She couldn't get over the fact that Polly had phoned their home Thursday night at eight o'clock, and a few hours later, he was dead--with three bullets in him.

Joe was cleaning out their garage that Saturday morning. He was always in there; they probably had the cleanest garage on North Spaulding Avenue.

Sydney threw on a sweater and took the newspaper outside with her. She found Joe on a ladder, rearranging boxes of Christmas decorations on the top shelf of a storage area he'd built in the garage. "Honey, did you know about this?" she asked.

"Know about what, babe?" he replied, climbing down the step ladder.

She gave him the folded Tribune, and pointed to the article at the bottom of page three. "Isn't that the guy who called here the other night?"

He glanced at the article for a few moments. Then he sighed, and handed the newspaper back to her. "Yeah, I heard about it yesterday afternoon. I knew sooner or later that sorry son of a bitch would get himself killed." He glanced at his wristwatch. "It's a quarter to eleven. When does Eli need to be picked up at school?"

"Basketball practice goes until 11:30," she answered numbly. "You've got plenty of time."

Joe folded up the ladder and leaned it against the wall. "Think I'll grab a shower."

Sydney looked at the newspaper again. "So why did he call here the other night?"

"Who?" Joe asked, wiping his hands on his pants.

"Arthur Pollard...Polly," she said. "I keep thinking about how scared he sounded. When he called the first time, he was afraid to go home."

Joe kissed her cheek as he walked past her. "Honey, I deal with this kind of stuff all the time at work. The guy was thirty-one flavors of trouble, and most of it he'd brought on himself. You shouldn't let it concern you."

"But he called here, Joe. It sounded like he wanted your help. Did he--"

"Can we just drop it?" Joe said, cutting her off. He shook his head. "Christ on a crutch, it's the weekend. I don't want to think about this shit right now. And it doesn't even concern you."

Her mouth open, she watched him turn away and stomp into the house.

Sydney remembered thinking at the time that Joe was hiding something from her, something horrible.

"It doesn't concern you."

She used that same line whenever Eli asked why she and his father were apart now. Funny, she hadn't been satisfied with that answer. She'd gone behind Joe's back, and started digging up what she could about Arthur "Polly" Pollard. And what she'd found wrecked their lives.

What in the world made her think "It doesn't concern you" would work on Eli?

She glanced at her son in the passenger seat. He'd put in his earphones and was listening to his iPod, completely tuning her out.

Sydney saw the temporary sign posted along Auburn's Highway 167. Balloons tied to the sign fluttered in the summer breeze:

VALUCO GRAND OPENING!

Fun Fair, Refreshments + Rides!

Celebrity Guests!

NEXT RIGHT

Sydney switched on her turn signal. "Shit," she muttered, knowing Eli couldn't hear.

"I'm really thrilled to be here today," his mother announced. Thanks to the mike, her voice carried across ValuCo's vast parking area to the fun fair in the neighboring lot--over all the music, the people laughing and screaming, and the incessant honking of several car horns. Parking was a nightmare. His mom stood on a platform near the store's front entrance. Behind her sat the other local celebrities drafted into this shindig. They had some television news cameras aimed at her. Eli guessed about two thousand people were there, and among those, at least three hundred were listening to his mother. He wasn't one of them.

He clicked his iPod back on, and wandered across the lot to the fun fair. His mom had given him twenty-five bucks to go on as many rides as he wanted. He'd already tried their Crack the Whip roller-coaster ride, and it had been kind of scary at times--but not very fun alone, and certainly not worth five bucks. Plus he'd felt kind of pathetic, standing in line for ten minutes with no one to talk to, so he'd decided not to waste his money on any more rides.

The smell of hot dogs and ice cream waffle cones wafted through the air. The hot sun beat down on Eli as he wandered among all the strangers and listened to the Rolling Stones (his dad's favorite rock group) on his iPod. He roamed past toss-and-win booths, refreshment stands, and even a video game arcade tent. But none of it appealed to him. It just wasn't any fun doing that kind of stuff alone. He missed his friends--and he missed his dad terribly. It had been nearly seven weeks, and he still hadn't gotten over this homesickness. He still cried in bed some nights, but he buried his face in his pillow so his mom wouldn't hear. Weird, he didn't hesitate to convey his anger at her half the time, but he'd be damned if he let her know how sad he was. He didn't want her trying to comfort him. He knew he was acting like a jerk and didn't like himself very much for it. Still, Eli figured if he made his mom miserable enough, she'd finally give in and they'd go back home to Chicago. Then he'd get to sleep in his own bed again.

He stopped in front of a booth, where a gaunt woman sat at a card table, with a mangy-looking German shepherd curled up at her feet. Eli guessed she was about fifty years old. She had black hair and a pale, ruddy complexion. She wore sunglasses and puffed on a cigarette. There was something witchlike about her appearance. Eli wondered if she was blind--what with the dark glasses and the dog; plus one of the lower buttons of her purple blouse wasn't fastened in the right hole. The sign along the top of the booth read:

PSYCHIC READER

Love? Career? Happiness?

Answers about Your Past, Present & Future

Ask MARCELLA-$5.00 a sitting

Eli switched off his iPod and took out his earpieces. His mother wasn't talking anymore. Now he heard some man's voice booming from the ValuCo parking lot.

He stared up at the psychic woman's sign. He certainly had some questions about his future. But the lady's name was kind of weird. Wasn't Marcella a certain breed of chicken or something? And five bucks? It sounded like a ripoff. Still, he felt sorry for the lady, because she was blind.

"For five dollars, I'll tell your future!" the woman called to him.

Startled that the lady could actually see--and she was addressing him--Eli quickly shook his head and started to move on.

"I'll give you a discount!" the woman persisted. "I'll read your fortune for only three dollars. I can see you have many questions!"

"I'm sorry, thanks anyway!" Eli replied. But he paused for a moment.

"C'mon in, and I'll give you a free reading," she called, waving him into the booth. "It's slow anyway." As she raised her voice, the old German shepherd slowly got up on its feet to see what the hubbub was about. "Sit!" Marcella said.

Eli wasn't sure if she was talking to him or the dog, but he stepped around the front counter and sat down in the folding chair across from her. It was hot in the tent booth, and smelled like cigarettes. Sitting this close to Marcella, he could see she was sweating. "When were you born?" she asked.

"August 29th, 1995," he answered.

"Virgo," she said, stubbing out her cigarette and reaching for his hand. "Your planet is Mercury. I should have known you were Virgo the minute you said, 'No thanks,' to me. You didn't want the strange lady to read your fortune. You're cautious, a classic Virgo trait. You're also intelligent, but a bit too critical of other people." She studied his hand--both sides, as if it were a piece of fish in the marketplace. "Relax," she said, focusing on his palm now. "You have a long life line, but there are several breaks--many different lives. You'll be doing some traveling in the near future..."

Eli wondered if that meant they'd be moving back to Chicago soon. Or was that just some standard line she gave everyone?

"You're going through a lot of changes right now, difficult times, but you should be okay."

Once again, he wondered if she was really seeing something, or if she was giving him the same reading she'd use on any teenager. Lots of changes, difficult times, well, sure, duh.

She looked up from his palm and into his eyes.

It made Eli nervous to be scrutinized like this. He was aware every time he blinked. The German shepherd, curled up on the floor, wagged his tail and it slapped against Eli's feet.

This close, he could see Marcella's eyes narrowing behind the dark glasses. "You're an only child, aren't you?"

He nodded.

She kept staring at him. "You have three letters in your first name," she said finally.

Eli felt the hair stand on the back of his neck. "Yes. My name's Eli."

She just nodded, very matter-of-fact. Then she held her hand directly over his head for a few moments. "You're in touch with the spirit world, aren't you?" she asked.

Eli hesitated before he said anything. He thought about the ghost--or maybe ghosts--in their apartment; the former occupant who killed her teenage son and then herself.

"Yes--yes, you are...very spiritual," she said, answering for him. She suddenly pulled her hand back, as if she'd touched something extremely hot. The German shepherd lifted his head from the ground for a moment.

"What is it?" Eli asked. "Do you see something that's going to happen to me in the future?"

"It's been happening to you for a while now. But you've been very secretive about it."

Eli shifted a bit in the folding chair. What was he being secretive about? He wondered if she was talking about all the time he spent whacking off lately. Maybe she could see that he was a major pervert or something. He broke eye contact with her to glance at the people passing by Marcella's booth. He saw these two older teenage girls pass by. They glanced at him, whispered something to each other, and then laughed. Eli felt embarrassed. He turned his attention back to Marcella.

He figured she was just jerking him around, waiting for him to reveal something about himself so she could claim she'd seen his aura or something. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said finally. "What do you think has been happening to me?"

"You already know, Eli," Marcella said, staring at him from behind those dark glasses. She took hold of his hand again. "Someone dead is communicating with you."

"I have one last question here--and it's for Sydney Jordan!" Gil Sessions announced, checking an index card. Gil, the host of PM Magazine, was the MC at this event. After everyone had their brief "it's great to be here" speech, they had to answer questions certain audience members had written down ahead of time. As he read off the queries, Gil asked the questioner to raise his or her hand. But only about half of those people were still in the area. The rest had obviously lost interest in the celebrity appearances and wandered into the store or to the fun fair in the neighboring lot. It made the interview session pretty pointless, but Sydney, Terri Tatum of What's Cooking, Seattle?, and the obnoxious weatherman from Channel 6 had bravely gone through the motions. Sydney had kept her responses humorous and brief.

"This question's from Tammy Milsap of Federal Way," Gil announced. "Tammy, are you out there? Tammy?"

From the audience, a pretty blond woman waved.

"Hi, Tammy, looking good!" Gil said into his handheld microphone. Then he turned to Sydney and glanced at the index card. "Sydney, Tammy would like to know: 'Are you and your family making the Seattle area your new home?'" He glanced up from the card. "Your husband is a Chicago police detective, isn't that right?"

Seated between the Channel 6 weatherman and Miss What's Cooking, Seattle? Sydney kept a smile plastered on her face and got to her feet. She moved to the standing mike at the front of the platform. She'd already developed a standard answer to questions about her recent move to Seattle sans her handsome, hero-cop husband. The topic had already come up a few times--in interviews with Seattle Magazine, The Seattle Times, and some online articles. "That's right, Gil," Sydney said into the mike. "Joe's a Chicago cop, and obviously, he doesn't work undercover."

This got a few chuckles from the crowd. Sydney scanned the sea of faces for Eli, but she didn't see him. "I'm originally from Seattle, so I've always thought of this area as my home. My son and I are here for the summer, not a bad time to escape the sweltering Chicago heat..." Sydney hated lying to all these people in front of her son. She kept expecting to see Eli's scowling face among the crowd. Instead, she saw someone else. "Um, Joe, my husband, he might be joining us next month--if he can get away from his--um, police work...."

She couldn't take her eyes off the lean, swarthy man with sunglasses and a baseball hat. He stood a few yards away. A woman directly in front of him stepped aside for a moment. Now Sydney could see his blue T-shirt--with a silver 59 on the front of it.

She froze at the microphone.

An hour ago--and thirty some-odd miles back in Seattle--she'd almost plowed into that man in her driveway. And now he was here, watching her. At least, she was almost certain it was the same man. The T-shirt was definitely the same. Had he followed them all this way from their apartment complex?

"Sydney?" Gil said into his mike. He chuckled. "Did we lose you for a second, Sydney?"

She suddenly remembered to smile. "Um, I was just thinking, Gil--how great it is to be back in the Seattle area. There's no doubt about it, the Puget Sound area is one of the most beautiful places in this great country of ours. I've really missed it. Tammy, thanks for that question."

The crowd applauded. Sydney slinked back toward her chair. She'd sounded like an idiot. This great country of ours? What, was she running for office or something?

As she sat down, Sydney looked at the man again. Was he stalking her? Up until now, her being married to a cop had discouraged the stalker types. Then again, maybe her minor-celebrity status just hadn't warranted stalkers--until this Number 59 guy. She couldn't get over the fact that he'd followed her and Eli in their car for thirty miles. Why? She remembered his scowl as he'd passed in front of her car in the driveway. "If looks could kill..."

Sydney shifted in her chair. This guy obviously knew where they lived. He was hanging around there today. Had he been there on the night of July Fourth as well? Maybe he's the one who got inside their place. She had to remind herself to sit straight and keep smiling.

One small solace, as long as she could see the man, she knew he wasn't preying on Eli. But right now, Sydney wished she could see her son out there somewhere.

"Do you know who this dead person is?" Eli asked the psychic woman.

Gazing at him from behind her sunglasses, she held onto his hand and said nothing for a few moments.

Though the booth was open in front, no breeze came in--just heat. Eli began to sweat. Curled up under the table, her mangy dog's tail still slapped at his feet occasionally. Eli waited for Marcella to say something.

"Your father isn't--he isn't dead, is he?" she asked finally.

Eli shook his head. "No, my dad's fine."

"But he isn't with you. You're separated from him."

"Yeah," Eli replied, leaning forward in his chair. "But it's just temporary, and my dad isn't dead." He glanced at his own hand, trying to figure out what she was picking up from it. "Um, do you know who this dead person is I'm communicating with?"

Marcella touched his forehead, and her hand lingered there for a few moments. Her fingers smelled like an ashtray. Eli tried to sit still. He had a pretty good idea about this dead person. He just needed Marcella to confirm it for him.

Someone dead is communicating with you.

Eli had heard the muffled voices at night. They had seemed to come from within his bedroom walls. He'd felt the weight of some other presence sitting on his bed--or touching his cheek as he tried to fall asleep. Eli didn't need to overhear the neighbor woman talking the other day about the murder/suicide in their unit. He already knew a teenage boy had once lived in their unit--and met a violent death there.

Not long after a second night visit--during which, for a few minutes, Eli had been utterly certain someone had crept into his room--he'd finally gotten a night-light. He'd also gotten his mom to acknowledge that their apartment was indeed haunted. Not long after that, he'd bought a Frisbee and a Ouija board at a neighborhood yard sale. Real smart. In order to use either one, he needed another person. Except for his mom and his Uncle Kyle, he didn't even know anyone in Seattle. And he'd have rather been shot than be seen playing Frisbee with his mother.

His uncle wasn't a big Frisbee fan. "Eli, I'll give you ten dollars not to play Frisbee catch with you," his Uncle Kyle had told him. "That thing is a bent-back finger or a Marcia Brady broken nose just waiting to happen. I hate Frisbee."

That left the Ouija board. There wasn't much public humiliation in trying out the Ouija with his mother--in the privacy of their kitchen on a rainy afternoon a few weeks back. She asked lame questions like, "Should we go out for dinner tonight?" and "Will Eli have a girlfriend a year from now?" Both times, the Ouija's movable indicator (his mother said it was called a "planchette") gradually moved over to YES.

Then it was Eli's turn. They both had their hands on the planchette. Eli closed his eyes. "Are we going to move back to Chicago and be with Dad by August?"

The indicator didn't move. Eli opened his eyes to see his mom frowning. "Honey, I don't think it's such a good idea to ask that. I don't want you getting your hopes up."

"But I let you ask what you wanted!" he argued. "God, you're so unfair--"

"All right, all right," she sighed and rolled her eyes. "Ask it again."

Eli repeated the question, and he felt the indicator under his fingertips as it slowly inched over the board. "You're moving it," his mother said.

"I'm not, I swear!"

When the indicator ended up on YES, Eli shoved his fist in the air. "All right! We're gonna go back to Chicago and be with Dad!"

His mother winced, and shook her head again. "Eli, I told you, don't get your hopes up. This is just a game. It doesn't mean anything. Back when I was in junior high, my best friend Rachel Porter had an Ouija board. If what it told me turned out to be true, right now I'd be a millionaire, have an Olympic Gold Medal in figure-skating, and be happily married to Michael Schoeffling. This is just a game, honey."

"Who's Michael Schoeffling?" he asked, squinting.

"He played Jake in 16 Candles, and I was in love with him." She set the disc back on START again. "Go ahead, and ask another question."

Eli rested his fingertips on the planchette again, then closed his eyes. "Who is the ghost in this house? What is his or her name?"

"Nope, no way," his mother said, shaking her head and pulling her chair away from the table. "We have enough otherworldly excitement around here. I think we should just leave it alone. I'm not up for a seance right now. Let's ask it something else. Ask for the name of this girlfriend you'll have."

"What? Are you scared?" he asked, laughing.

"Yes. I don't want to stir things up with whatever's going on around here," she admitted. "Bringing a Ouija board into the equation is taking too much of a chance. I don't want to push our luck. Some people believe Ouija boards can be dangerous. That's why I think you shouldn't ask it anything too serious. Call me a chicken, I don't care."

"A minute ago you were telling me it's just a game and it doesn't mean anything."

She got up from the table. "I'm sorry. I just don't feel like summoning the dead right now. Besides, we should wrap this up anyway. If we're going out to eat, you should wash up and change your clothes."

Eli stayed up late that night. He waited until his mother had gone to bed, then he pulled out the Ouija board. He felt so sneaky, almost like he was digging out the one Playboy he owned (bestowed on him by his best friend in Chicago, Brad Reece, who had inherited it from his college-age brother) from its hiding place in his desk's bottom drawer. His mother hadn't discovered the Playboy yet. And he didn't want her discovering him summoning the dead with the Ouija. He locked his bedroom door and then set the Ouija board on the spare bed.

Eli had two twin beds in his room. He didn't think he'd be living there long enough to make any friends--at least, no one he'd know well enough to invite overnight. He wondered why his mom had wasted her money on the extra bed. There was a lava lamp on his desk, and his Homer Simpson lamp on the nightstand. From his old bedroom he had a lighted Dad's Root Beer clock, two Chicago Bears posters, and another one from the Will Farrell movie Anchorman.

Eli also had a ghost, and he wanted to know more about it.

He sat on top of the spare bed, placed the movable indicator on the board's starting point, then gently rested his fingertips on it. "Does the undead person dwelling in this house have a name?" he whispered.

Eli listened for the muffled voices. He waited for the room to get warmer--always a sign he was about to have a visit. But he didn't hear or feel anything. All he heard were the waves rolling onto the shore at the nearby beach. He must have waited at least two or three minutes before the indicator started to move. He felt a chill race through him. He wasn't moving it. He expected it to gradually move over to the YES sign. Instead it started spelling something: C-A-R-L. Then the planchette moved to GOOD BYE at the bottom of the board.

"Carl?" Eli whispered. "Your name is Carl? Are you here right now?"

He closed his eyes this time, because he didn't want to cheat. When he felt the indicator move, Eli kept his eyes shut tight--until it stopped. He glanced at the board. He thought the indicator would be on YES, but it was on the letter I. Eli's hands started to shake, but he kept his fingertips on the indicator. The planchette inched over the board again--to the letter, M, and then to the word GOOD BYE.

"I-M?" Eli murmured. "Oh, my God, 'I am.' You're here right now. Your name is Carl, and you're here with me now. Did you die in this house?"

Eli wasn't sure if it was his imagination, but it felt as if the room was getting warmer. The planchette seemed to move on its own now. He was barely touching it. Eli watched the indicator move to YES.

Eli didn't even wait for GOOD BYE. "Did you die in this room?" he asked.

The indicator moved to YES again.

"How old were you when you died?" Eli whispered.

Then the planchette seemed to stall on him. Finally Eli gave it a nudge toward the row of numbers. He knew he was cheating, so he closed his eyes. The first number the indicator stopped on was 1. Then it moved to 4, and then GOOD BYE.

A fourteen-year-old named Carl had died in this bedroom. "How?" Eli asked. "How did you die?"

The planchette slowly skimmed across the board to the letter L, and then A. It seemed to take forever for it to move from letter to letter. After eight letters, Eli wondered if it was ever going to make sense: L-A-C-E-R-A-T-I. But the disc kept moving until it spelled out the word: L-A-C-E-R-A-T-IO-N. Then it said GOOD BYE.

Eli climbed off the bed and went to his desk. He grabbed his Webster paperback dictionary, and looked up the word. He found something under lacerate. "To tear roughly," it said.

He glanced up at his Dad's Root Beer clock and realized it was 3:40 in the morning. The bedroom didn't feel so warm anymore. Eli figured that last GOOD BYE from Carl would be for a while.

His mother was wrong about the Ouija. Instead of stirring up their ghost, that long session with the Ouija board seemed to have made Carl more docile. The next few nights went by without any otherworldly incident, though Eli felt more scared than ever--sleeping in that room where someone was murdered. He tried to get more information from the Ouija about fourteen-year-old Carl and exactly how he'd died. But it was frustrating, nothing at all like that first night. When he didn't come up with letters that spelled gibberish, Eli knew he was controlling the planchette himself. So he wasn't sure about Carl's last name, who had lacerated him, and how long ago it had happened.