Wild Card

FOUR

The waterfront at Alviso was not much more than a drainage slough for the Guadalupe River, but then the Guadalupe itself amounted to little more than a glorified creek as it snailed through downtown SanJo, and then out of the city to deposit its sewage overflow between Alviso’s dirt levees and reeded banks before wearily petering off into San Francisco Bay.

From where Lathrop had parked at the end of Gold Street, Ricci could see nothing in the fog and distance besides some aircraft warning lights on the power transmission towers across the slough. Pale beacons under the best conditions, they gave the illusion of flickering on and off now as the high, slow mist dragging past them over the marshes began to gradually mix with light rain.

Behind the wheel of his Dodge coupe, Lathrop reached into the 7-Eleven bag he’d stuffed into a molded plastic storage compartment on his right side, produced a Styrofoam coffee cup, and handed it across the seat to Ricci. Then he got out a second cup for himself, peeled open the sip hole on the plastic lid, and raised it to his lips.

The two men sat quietly, as they had throughout the entire ride on the freeway to the extreme northern edge of San Jose, their silence uninterrupted even when Lathrop had pulled up to the gas station convenience store for their coffees.

“So here we are,” Lathrop said. “Like a couple of old friends.”

Ricci drank from his cup.

“No,” he said.

Lathrop shrugged.

“Here we are, anyway,” he said.

They sat looking out across the ugly mud flats. Lathrop had driven from the club with his wipers set on intermittent, and now that they’d been turned off, the windshield was smeary with an accumulation of moisture.

“Too bad about what happened to you,” Lathrop said. “Enforced leave… I might have figured.”

Ricci’s remote stare didn’t move from the windshield. “How do you know they’re calling it that?” he said.

Lathrop shrugged again.

“They can call it anything they want, doesn’t matter,” he said. “Somebody phones the switchboard operator at UpLink to ask for you these past few weeks, she connects him or her to your voice mail. Somebody asks the operator why you aren’t returning messages, her answer’s that you’re on leave of absence. Somebody asks how long you’ll be gone, she just says indefinitely.”

Ricci sat watching the inconstant tower lights through the haze. “Could be that’s my own choice,” he said.

Lathrop shook his head.

“There are newspaper stories about an incident at that chemical factory outside Manhattan, and UpLink security being involved, and how the Feds are crying foul because they didn’t get invited to the party,” he said. “Knowing you called the party, it’s easy to dope out the rest.”

Ricci still hadn’t turned from the windshield.

“Tell me what you want,” he said.

“I heard you the first time in that parking lot,” Lathrop said.

“Then get to it,” Ricci said.

Lathrop nodded.

“In a minute,” he said. “First we need to finish up with New York.”

Ricci didn’t say anything.

“I tipped you about the Dragonfly laser,” Lathrop said. “I know what was supposed to go down at the plant. There wouldn’t be an available grave plot in the city today if it was up to the people who want your head on a pole, and they’d have swallowed that a lot easier than you doing what you did. It’s all about control for them, and they hate losing their hold on it to a guy like you.”

“Good that you’re so sure,” Ricci said.

“Don’t let yourself believe anything else,” Lathrop said. “I’d love to hear them talk about it behind closed doors. Seriously, Ricci. I would love it.”

They were both quiet for a while as the mist and drizzle began intensifying to a steadier rainfall against the windshield. Lathrop leaned back in his seat and drank some coffee.

“Quick story about an acquaintance of mine,” he said. “Special agent, counter drugs, deep cover. Doesn’t matter which agency and I probably couldn’t remember it to tell you. But what I do remember is he wasn’t interested in the rule book. Didn’t follow the rule book. Too many other guys did and it got them killed or burned. Because the players on the other side were smarter and meaner and knew how to turn the rules against them.”

He paused, sipped.

Ricci kept staring out toward the glints of distant light on the electrical towers.

“This guy any good?” he said.

“From what I know he got the job done,” Lathrop said, and shrugged. “If he rubbed his bosses wrong, they left him alone. The main thing for them was he delivered for a long time. And that meant they could stay posed for the television cameras behind piles of seized dope and guns.” Lathrop fell silent a moment. “Doesn’t matter who the bosses are, it’s the same. They don’t have to get their hands dirty. They don’t deal with the snarling dogs. They never get bullet holes in their foreheads, or have their dead bodies dumped in weed fields with their privates stuffed down their throats. From where they sit in their pressed suits and white shirts, everything’s risk free, and that’s exactly how they want it to stay. Gives them a chance to act like winners every once in a while without ever taking the hurt when they lose.”

“Tell me the rest about your friend.”

“Acquaintance,” Lathrop said. “Like the two of us.”

Ricci grunted but didn’t comment.

“I hear a federal judge took exception to him giving a Big Willie drug dealer rough treatment, made some noise about looking into how he’d handled some other investigations,” Lathrop said. “His bosses started to worry about what might turn up, wanted the problem taken care of before stories started leaking to the press, and cut him loose. Erased his name from their employee records, wiped out every mention of him in their case files.”

“Just like that?”

Lathrop snapped his fingers.

“Got it,” he said.

Ricci grunted. “Where’d that leave him?” he said.

Lathrop shrugged.

“Far as who or what?” he said. “He didn’t go away, he was going down. There were some things about his tactics that would have gotten the kind of publicity nobody up the line appreciates. Things he did that wouldn’t jibe with what your ordinary citizen hears is right and good at his Sunday morning church sermons.”

“And how about after he went away?” Ricci said. “He keep on playing by his own rules?”

Lathrop shook his head.

“My guess is this guy would tell you that’d be too simple,” he said. “He would have stepped off the board. Made up his own game, shoved its rule book in his back pocket, and left everybody else guessing. Their guesses get too close to suit his interests, I could see how he’d change the game on them. Or maybe even play a bunch of different games on different boards. All at the same time just to keep things jumping.”

Ricci looked around at Lathrop.

“This one of them?” he said.

Lathrop shrugged again and said nothing more for a long while.

“Remember the night we first crossed paths?” he said finally. “The Quiros and Salazar clans mixing it up in Balboa Park. Enrique and Lucio getting popped. You after information I’d got on Enrique Quiros.”

Ricci kept looking into his face. “You’re the person who brought me there,” he said. “Always figured it was the same thing for them, but that maybe they didn’t know it.”

Again Lathrop’s veiled expression showed neither confirmation nor denial.

“Lucio was an old school handler, used muscle and guts to keep his syndicate together,” he said. “When he died, it was over for them. But Enrique’s style was different. He had the personality of a pocket calculator, ran his business like any other corporation. His branch got clipped, the power just shifted over to another office. Juan Quiros, one of Enrique’s cousins, took charge, pretty much oversees operations from out in Modesto these days. Without Salazar’s competition, the Quiros bunch marked their territory all up and down the coast.”

“And?”

“There’s a girl, Marissa Vasquez,” Lathrop said. “She’s twenty years old, a college student. Sort of kid every father would want for a daughter. Her dad happens to be Esteban Vasquez, ever hear of him?”

“No.”

“He’s Enrique and Lucio rolled into one… the badges would call him an up-and-comer and they’d be wrong. Been on the scene for years giving cash subs to pot growers across the Rio Grande, uses his construction companies in Frisco as laundering fronts for his return on investments. Until lately, Vasquez kept his trade away from his own neighborhood, but that’s changed, maybe because he saw some openings after Balboa Park. Ecstasy, meth, smack — Vasquez has couriers moving stuff right through Quiros turf.” Lathrop flicked his eyes up to Ricci’s. “Quiros had Marissa kidnapped to get him to back off.”

Ricci held his gaze.

“Haven’t heard anything about that, either,” he said.

Lathrop nodded.

“You wouldn’t have,” he said. “Guys like Esteban try to avoid bringing their troubles to the cops.”

“So he came to you,” Ricci said.

“Right.”

“And you came to me.”

“Right.”

“Why?”

Their eyes remained locked. Lathrop raised his coffee cup and drank from it very slowly.

“Esteban Vasquez wants me to find his daughter,” he said. “I want your help.”

Ricci sat there, his face very still.

“I don’t do favors for drug dealers,” he said.

“We’d be in it for ourselves,” Lathrop said. “Working freelance.”

“Whatever word you use, my answer won’t change,” Ricci said. “It was my kid, I’d find a different place to run my business.”

Lathrop shook his head. “You aren’t Vasquez. If he gives in to the competition, it’ll make him look weak. They’ll devour him wherever he tries to migrate.”

“Then he’d get what he deserves.”

“And how about the girl?” Lathrop said. “The way these flesh eaters work there’s no guarantee Vazquez gets her back alive no matter what he does.”

Ricci was quiet a second.

“Might be true,” he said. “Still doesn’t make it my problem.”

Lathrop shifted around to look out the rain-streaked windshield, rested back in his seat.

“You ever been to the Sierra Nevada? Out there in the canyons along the mountains between Fresno and Yosemite?”

Ricci shook his head.

“Marissa Vasquez was baited by a slick operator name of Manuel Aguilera,” Lathrop said. “Didn’t know he was connected. He romanced her and set her up to be taken and now she’s somewhere in all that nothing with about eight to ten cholos in guerrilla outfits imported from down around Ciudad Juárez.”

A long silence spent itself between them. It was pouring outside now, raindrops dashing against the windows, beating erratically on the roof of the car.

“How do you know?” Ricci said.

“Where they brought her?”

“Where they brought her, how they did it, everything.”

Lathrop made a low sound in his throat.

“Got it from another Quiros relative. I crashed his party down in Baja three, four nights ago,” he said. “He’s tight with Juan and Aguilera and hooked them up. Pretty much told me everything.”

Ricci flashed a glance at him. “He give you any details about the abduction besides what you told me?”

Lathrop shrugged.

“Some,” he said. And paused. “Won’t be doing any more talking, though.”

Ricci watched the raindrops splash the windshield, slither down over it to further distort the red warning lights on the high towers across the slough. The coffee had succeeded in sharpening his thoughts, but while he was mostly sober now the feeling of inner grayness had persisted.

“I could find Marissa Vasquez on my own,” Lathrop said. “But the banditos would be a problem at ten-to-one odds.”

“Ten-to-two doesn’t sound much better,” Ricci said.

“It does if we’re the two and have each other’s back,” Lathrop said.

Ricci was silent staring out the windshield. The cup had cooled in his hand.

“We pull this thing off, Esteban’s reward would be hefty,” Lathrop said. “Three mil split right down the middle.”

Ricci was silent.

“And,” Lathrop went on, “we’d be saving a damsel in distress.”

Ricci held his silence, his eyes peering into the rainswept night. Then he turned to Lathrop.

“Play your games with me, you won’t have to worry about those mercs,” he said.

Lathrop smiled a little, put his cup into the holder beside him, reached for the key in his ignition.

“Anything else I need to be warned about?” he said.

Ricci shook his head.

“Then I’ll bring you back to your car before its spark plugs get soaked,” Lathrop said, and cranked up the Dodge’s engine.

Roger Gordian seemed pleased with himself as he pulled the Rover to a halt in front of his daughter’s garage. He also seemed braced for what was coming from her, and would be very determined to head it off.

“Mission accomplished,” he said, and shifted into Park. “The paintings have been hung. You’re back home safe and sound. And we managed to beat the rain.”

Julia sat quietly in the passenger seat watching him tick off his successes on his fingertips.

“But not the drizzle and fog,” she said.

Gordian poked a finger at the control panel on his dashboard.

“That’s why I’ve got fog lamps,” he said.

On motion sensors, Julia’s exterior garage and porch lights had instantly begun shining down over her lawn as they turned in from the road. She regarded her father in their brightness now, impressed by how well he’d learned to use the warm and cuddly senior routine to his charming advantage since retirement. But the look of dead-set resolution in his steel gray eyes was no different than ever. It didn’t matter if he was laying the foundation for a backyard dog pen, talking about the Dream of global freedom through communications on which he had built UpLink International, or anticipating an invitation he’d already made up his mind to decline.

Gordian’s problem tonight was that he and Julia were two of a kind when it came to persistence — and he knew it.

She waited beside him for a moment, parked there with the mist draping over the Rover’s windshield, and isolated droplets of moisture splatting onto its hood and roof from the branches of an old sequoia overhanging her driveway.

“You really shouldn’t drive in weather like this, Dad,” she said, getting it over with. “It’s already after eleven. The smart thing would be for you to stay overnight.”

Gordian went from poking at his dash console to tapping his steering wheel column.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Thanks, anyway.”

She looked at him.

“You can fix us hot chocolates,” she said. “I’ve got about four kinds of Ghirardelli’s. And a fresh quart of milk and some whipped cream in the fridge.”

He smiled.

“I can fix them?”

“Nobody does it better.”

“I’m proud to see my daughter’s as kind and generous as she is talented,” he replied, still smiling. “Seriously, hon, I appreciate the offer. But I’ll be home inside an hour.”

Which meant his return trip might total almost two hours, assuming the rain didn’t intensify to the extent that it slowed up road conditions, she thought. It had taken them about forty five minutes to get back here to Pescadero from the gallery in Boulder Creek, and a lot of it had been country driving on some of the darkest stretches of Highway 9. Tack on their ride out to the gallery, and it would mean some four hours behind the wheel for him tonight if he headed off into the Palo Alto hills.

“Okay, here’s where the deal really gets sweet,” she said. “I’ll let my adorable canines sleep in the guest room with you. Jack, Jill, Viv, too. So what do you say?”

Gordian suddenly burst out laughing. Julia took that as a good sign considering she’d been braced for his I-flew-fighter-jets-through-enemy-flack-and-canhandle-a-drive-on-the-freeway argument.

“A man’s got to beware of having all his wishes come true at once,” he said. “Any other attempts to buy influence before we say good night?”

Julia gave him a level glance.

“There’s something serious I’ve meant to discuss with you,” she said. “And if that’s not persuasive enough, I might threaten to call Mom and ask her to decide the issue.”

Gordian looked at her and cleared his throat. It was over and they both knew it.

“Do you mean it about wanting to talk?” he said.

Julia nodded sincerely. There were some thoughts that had been bearing heavily on her since she’d gotten together with Megan that afternoon, although she’d wondered whether to keep them to herself. But so much for that.

“I’ll phone Ashley and get those hot chocolates on the burner,” Gordian said, and reached for his door handle.

Thirty minutes later, they were sitting over their cocoa mugs in Julia’s kitchen breakfast nook, cornered by three relentlessly staring greyhounds. The rain was falling in sheets outside.

Gordian looked from Jack, a brindle male, to the two females — Jill, a teal blue, and Vivian the blond bombshell. All of them were stretched out on the floor, their heads cranked toward the table, ears perked, penny-colored eyes fixed on his steaming drink.

“Don’t they know dogs can be deathly allergic to chocolate… or are your constant reminders just for my benefit?”

Julia shrugged. “Ex-racers don’t know anything besides being starved for food and attention,” she said. “They’d crunch their insatiable jaws down on our cups if I gave them half a chance.”

Gordian sipped from his mug and listened to the rain pounding against the windows.

“It’s coming down in buckets,” he said.

Julia nodded.

“Lucky thing I didn’t give you a tough time about staying the night,” he said.

She smiled at him. “Not too.”

Gordian was quiet awhile, his face turning serious.

“That talk you mentioned…”

Julia noticed his hesitation, reached out to pat the back of his hand.

“Don’t look so concerned,” she said. “I’m fine.”

He kept his eyes on her, visibly relieved.

“Oh,” he said. “I was… well, you know…”

“You worry sometimes.”

Gordian nodded.

“I never doubt that you can take care of yourself,” he said. “But since the divorce… and then after what happened last year…”

“I know, Dad,” she said. “And I appreciate it.”

He looked at her.

“And you honestly are okay?”

“Aside from being pregnant by an axe murderer named Jason, yes.”

Gordian’s eyes widened for the briefest of moments. Then he raised his cup to his lips.

“As long as this Jason respects his elders and earns a decent wage, you two have my blessing,” he said.

Julia smiled, spooned some whipped cream into her mouth off the top of her hot chocolate.

“What I wanted to ask isn’t about me,” she said after a bit. “It’s about Tom Ricci.”

Gordian looked surprised.

“Oh,” he said.

“You all right with that or should it be none of my business?”

“Why not?” Gordian shrugged. “You just caught me unprepared.” Another shrug. “I don’t know exactly what I expected, but guess it was something else.”

Julia lowered the spoon to the table and sat with her hands wrapped around her cup.

“I met Megan Breen for lunch today and his name sort of came up in conversation,” she said, unsure why she’d elected to omit the fact that she was the one who brought it up. “I knew he’d been suspended, and was wondering if anything was ever made final.” She paused. “Meg told me there hadn’t been a decision.”

Gordian nodded.

“That’s my understanding,” he said. “It will be her call when it’s made. And Pete Nimec’s, I’d imagine.”

“You don’t have any part in it?”

Gordian shook his head.

“One of the biggest things I decided the day I stepped down as UpLink’s CEO was to place my unqualified trust in Megan. She’s too competent to be a figurehead and shouldn’t have to contend with a meddling old know-it-all getting into her abundant red hair.” He scratched under his chin. “Besides, that would defeat the whole aim of retirement, don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” Julia said. And hesitated briefly again. “Nine times out of ten.”

Gordian crooked an eyebrow at her. “You think the Ricci situation ought to be an exception to the rule?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “It’s hard to be objective considering I owe the man my life.”

Gordian didn’t answer. He sipped his hot chocolate and seemed to listen awhile to the whisk of rain on the windows.

“I understand how you feel,” he said at last. “I’d have to be cold and ungrateful not to feel that way myself. But we need to put personal feelings aside here. No doubt, Tom Ricci has proven he’s capable of being the best at what he does. On the other hand he’s shown a contempt of authority that makes him a serious wild card. From an organizational perspective, his… I don’t know what to call it except insubordination… has brought on a world of trouble.”

Julia inhaled, held the breath a moment, then blew it out to disperse the thin filaments of steam curling from her drink.

“I’ve been thinking about when you, Megan, and Pete cooked up a name for UpLink security all those years ago,” she said. “Sword, you decided to call it. And I felt that sounded so hokey and pompous, remember?”

Gordian nodded, smiling a little.

“I remember,” he said. “You’ve never been shy about your opinions.”

Julia gave him smile of her own.

“Or you about your opinion of my opinions,” she said. “I can still see the annoyed look on your face. And hear you explaining that the name was a sort of play on words. That it referred to the legend of the Gordian knot, and how Alexander the Great was supposed to have solved the problem of untwisting it with one swift hack of his sword, and how that perfectly described the approach your people would take to solving problems. Realistic, direct, practical, determined… those were the exact words you used.”

Gordian looked straight into her eyes.

“We don’t forget much,” he said.

“No,” Julia said. “We hardly forget anything.”

Gordian nodded, and for a while the only sound was the rattling of rain on the windows.

“If your point is that the actions Ricci took are somehow in keeping with the premise behind Sword’s formation, I don’t think I’m able to bite,” he said then. “It’s based on taking that premise to a reckless extreme. And it’s judging those actions by results that could very well have been calamitously different.”

“That’s what I keep hearing, but where’s the proof?” Julia said. “Think about it a minute, Dad. Somebody infects you with a germ hatched in a lab, almost kills you. A year later this head case has me kidnapped. And then another psychopath with a mission tries to wipe out New York. What situations could be more extreme? How do you deal with any of them without taking risks? Tom Ricci’s always been ready and he’s come up a major stud every time.”

Gordian looked at her again. “A major stud?”

“Blame them.” Julia nodded at the dogs. “You live in a house full of animals, you start thinking in animalistic terms.”

Gordian’s brow had crinkled with amusement.

“If you say so,” he said.

They spent a few minutes quietly drinking their hot chocolates. Then, his cup emptied, Gordian pushed it slightly to the side, leaned forward, and massaged the back of his neck.

“You make a better case for Ricci than I could,” he said. “Unfortunately his attitude doesn’t help. Because of him UpLink’s under pressure from all sides, and from what I hear he’s dropped out of contact. If he wants trust, he’s got to show some. In somebody. How can Megan and Pete go to the mat for him, buy him a chance, when he won’t give himself one?”

Julia considered that and realized she didn’t have an answer. She sighed, finished her own drink, and glanced at the clock on the wall.

“It’s after midnight,” she said, and stretched. “Suppose the dogs ought to be getting in their Z’s.”

Gordian nodded.

“A little sleep wouldn’t hurt us, either,” he said.

A moment later Julia rose, pushed in her chair, and gathered their cups and spoons onto a tray. She was carrying it between three wet, sniffing black noses toward the sink when she turned back to face her father.

“Do we do anything for him?” she said.

Gordian looked at her from the table, smiled gently.

“We’re thinking about it,” he said.

Pete Nimec hadn’t been able to fall asleep and that puzzled him. It should have been easy, he thought. Certainly easier than staying awake. He ought to be dead tired after everything he’d done in the past forty-eight hours or thereabouts, starting with having to pick up his mother-in-law at the airport, then practically turning right back around in the car with Annie to catch their flight to the Caribbean, followed by the trip itself, and the dinner invite by Henri Beauchart that had barely given them time to settle into their villa before drawing them out again. And all that rushing only accounted for last night, the first they’d spent here at Los Rayos. Up with the sun today, Nimec and Annie had climbed onto a pair of silver Vespas they’d discovered along with a Mustang soft-top in their villa’s attached garage — the transportation provided without fanfare by their hosts — and then zipped off to see about getting him signed up for kiteboarding instruction at a beachfront water sports shop Annie had highlighted in her resort guide.

The shop owner was a jaunty bronze-skinned titan from Australia named Blake. As advertised, he offered a beginner’s course and a full assortment of gear rentals. Prominent on the wall behind his counter was a certificate that declared him an “official skyriding instructor” but failed to particularly impress or encourage Nimec. How, he’d wondered, did somebody become an official skyrider, instructor or otherwise? What standards were applied to earning a cert? And by whom?

Nimec hadn’t had the foggiest notion. On the other hand, Blake was enthusiastic enough and seemed to know his stuff. And Annie was determined to get Nimec airborne. Urged on by her along their way to the beach, he’d acquiesced to possibly scheduling a session toward the middle of the week, but as it developed Blake was booked solid — except for a slot which had opened that morning due to a sudden cancellation.

Not quite feeling ready, Nimec had started to decline.

Before he could, Annie accepted on his behalf.

Minutes later, Nimec had been rushed into a dressing room and suited up in a board shirt and shorts, water booties, a buoyancy vest, and an impact helmet with a molded foam liner that made it hard for him to hear his own grumbled complaints. A couple of hours and several dry runs over the sand after that, he was floating on his back in the warm ocean shallows with a harness around him, his feet in the straps of a plane board, and his hands on the control bar of the rig that connected him to a bright red-and-white foil hovering in the air overhead. And then the kite had scooped wind, and Nimec had been pulled to his feet by the tautened lines, and the next thing he’d known he was airborne, swept into an updraft, looking some fifteen or twenty feet down at Blake the Bronze astride the jet ski they’d ridden from shore.

Blake had shouted a few words from below and behind him that sounded like: “You’re blowing away!”

Asked about it when their session was over, however, he had only recalled praising Nimec for “doing great.”

Whatever he’d said, it had proven to be a lasting thrill for Nimec. Between the six or seven dunks he took — each of which had brought Blake to his rescue on the fleet little jet ski — he had spent about half an hour soaring above the flat blue water in defiance of gravity. Nimec would remember his periods of flight seeming longer, and the heights he’d reached feeling higher, than they actually were. He would remember having an incredible, dizzying sense of mental and physical lightness. Perhaps most of all, he would remember looking back toward Annie on the beach, where she had stood watching him ride the wind, repeatedly raising her arms high above her head to wave from the edge of the lapping surf. Though he hadn’t been able to see her face from his distance, Nimec had known she was smiling at him, felt her smiling at him, and taken an undeclarably boyish pride in having evoked that smile.

Back at the villa that afternoon they’d decided to scrub up, change their clothes, and then grab some lunch at a restaurant. As Annie prepared to run her shower, Nimec had found himself looking quietly out a large bay window at the exotic flowers planted one story down in the courtyard, cruising along in a carefree and contented mood that had seemed almost foreign to him.

“You know,” she’d said, poking her head through the half-open bathroom door, “that seat in the shower stall makes kind of a handy perch.”

Nimec had turned to look at her, noticed the swimsuit she’d worn to the beach dangling from a hook on the door. Then he’d noticed that faint sort of blush she would get above her cheekbones.

“Handy,” he’d repeated.

Annie nodded.

“Bet it would be sturdy enough for two,” she’d said. “The shower seat, I mean.”

Nimec had looked at her.

“I know what you mean, Annie,” he’d said. “And I’m getting lots of ideas.”

The color on her cheeks had spread and deepened.

“Me too,” she’d said. “Want to try some of them out together?”

Nimec had nodded that he did, and pulled shut the louvers, and they had spent a long, leisurely while trying out quite a few of their ideas, and coming up with some new ones besides, before finally driving off for a much heartier meal than either had anticipated.

Now, at half past eleven that night, Nimec was in the chair by the bedroom window again, his robe belted around him, wondering what had happened to the blissful guy with his face who’d sat in that spot not too many hours earlier. He’d tried referencing the various thoughts and events that had brought about his calmly untroubled state of mind, but they hadn’t helped him settle back into it. And, most irritatingly, he just couldn’t get any shut-eye.

Filled with tension, Nimec had briefly considered a stroll through the villa’s sculpted gardens, then decided against it — walking without a clear sense of purpose and destination never relaxed him. He thought about taking a swim in the big tiled pool across the grounds, but bumped the notion for similar reasons. The reality was he felt derelict. A splash under the full moon would only compound that feeling and frustrate him with more self-disapproval.

Nimec shifted restlessly, thinking he could use something to help him unwind. Roaming about downstairs yesterday on a minor expedition of discovery, he’d stumbled upon what he supposed was called an entertainment room, with a high-def flat-screen television and a wet bar. The bar had a refrigerator that he’d found stocked with beer, wine, and soft drinks. A beer would go down nicely, he concluded. If all the amenities went to type, there might be satellite TV feeds from the States. The difference in time zones between Trinidad and California made catching a West Coast baseball game a distinct possibility… some late innings, at least. Maybe the Mariners were pounding Oakland tonight. Or better yet, Anaheim. Though, given the injuries they always got from plowing into bases, walls, and opposing players like fools, Nimec figured it might be best leaving the Angels alone to pound on themselves.

He stood in the darknened room, turned from the window, and carried his chair over to the little table nook from which he’d taken it. Then, as he was starting toward the door, he saw Annie sitting up in bed.

Nimec looked at her with mild surprise in the moonlight coming through the parted blinds.

“Didn’t know you were awake,” he said.

She shrugged, leaning against a mound of pillows, her shoulders bare, the covers pulled just above her breasts.

“I haven’t been for very long,” she said in a quiet voice. “You?”

“Awhile,” he said.

Annie was watching him.

“I kind of guessed,” she said. “Can you tell me why?”

Nimec hesitated, produced a breath.

“You know,” he said.

“Work,” she said.

He nodded.

“I’ve been having a great time here, enjoying every minute of it,” he said. And paused. “I love you, Annie.”

She watched him another moment and suddenly chuckled.

“Something funny?” he said.

“Remembering our shower this afternoon,” she said, “I was left with the distinct impression that you might like me some.”

Nimec massaged his chin, feeling a little stupid.

“Is it still Ricci?” Annie said.

“No,” he said. “I promised myself I’d put that away for a while, and I did.”

“So it’s about Megan’s tipster.”

He nodded.

“I’m supposed to be finding out about it,” he said. “And I feel I’m losing time.”

Annie was silent.

“What is it you want to do?” she said.

Nimec rubbed his chin thoughtfully again.

“I want to head over to that main shipping harbor we passed on the way in from the airport,” he said. “And I want to have a look around.”

Annie was silent again, her eyes steady on him. “Go,” she said. “Do what you have to.”

Nimec stood there near the foot of the bed for perhaps a full minute.

“You sure you’re okay with me leaving?” he said at last.

Annie looked at him from where she sat against the headboard, then gave him the slowest of nods.

“As long as you always make sure to come back,” she said.

Out in the garage, Nimec opened the front door of his Mustang loaner, but stopped himself before climbing inside. He’d recalled something Beauchart had told him over their dishes of curry duck and roti at the previous night’s dinner reception.

A thin, hatchet-faced man with a broad expanse of forehead and smoothly combed gray hair, the onetime GIGN chief had, as advance-billed, matched Nimec’s fondness for vintage cars and shown a keen interest in discussing them. He’d also been quick to talk shop about how the expensive vehicles in his fleet were adapted for extreme high security usage.

“The Jankel Rolls you sent to pick us up almost had me fooled,” Nimec had said. “I wouldn’t have known it was armored except for the weight of its door. Then I noticed the flashers, and the extra buttons on the rear consoles, and those speaker covers for the P.A. And I guessed it had a full package.”

Beauchart had nodded.

“For me, retrofitting the older model passenger cars is an enjoyable challenge,” he’d said. “As an enthusiast I don’t want to compromise their luxury and style. Even so, I insist they meet or surpass NATO Level Seven standards of protection.”

“Hard to improve on armor that can stop AP rounds and take the brunt of a mine or grenade blast.”

Again Beauchart had nodded.

“I admit to being a compulsive tinkerer,” he’d said.

“All the work is done at our own armoring plant on the mainland. And with an open-ended budget, which is far too great a temptation.” Beauchart had smiled. “The first question I’ll ask myself about a vehicle is,

‘Would I be at ease having a Forbes Top Ten business leader ride in it?’ Then I ask, ‘What about the American president?’ Last, I ask, ‘What about the bloody pope?’ ” Beauchart’s smile had grown wider. “If there’s any hedging in my mind, I’ll order added upgrades that cost a small fortune… and will be unnoticeable to the casual eye.”

He had eagerly compared notes about specific shielding materials, and Nimec had found his preferences not unlike UpLink’s standard high-sec configuration, a multilayered system of ballistic laminate inserts and flexible nylon floor armor, coupled with steel panels and anti-explosive engine, radiator, and fuel tank wraps. Beauchart had also gone on to mention loading his VIP sedans with options such as automatic fire controls, run-flat tires, hidden ram bumpers… and real-time satellite tracking units with remote door lock and ignition disconnects.

Now Nimec couldn’t help but look at the Mustang and wonder. A sports convertible was too light to be armored without having its balance thrown dangerously out of whack. But there wasn’t much of a trick to putting in GPS acquisition hardware its driver couldn’t see. Assuming for a moment that was somebody’s goal. Even if it was just hidden for aesthetic reasons.

Was he too suspicious? Could be, he decided. But what was the harm in playing it safe?

Nimec turned to the Vespa. Less likely that it would have a built-in tracking device. The object of installing one on this island would not be to locate a stolen vehicle, which couldn’t go further than the island’s shores without being loaded onto a boat, but to get a bead on a person who’d been snatched when driving or getting into or out of it. In the case of a grab taking place while somebody was out with the little scooter, the abductor would want to ditch it as fast as he could and then make a getaway with his victim, eliminating any use in having a tracker aboard.

Or so Nimec figured his good hosts would figure. Unless, of course, their goal was to keep tabs specifically on him, which would leave his feet as his only safe mode of transportation. Except that the harbor was miles away… twenty or thirty miles, he guessed.

A bit much for that midnight stroll of his.

Nimec sighed. In the absence of any other ideas, it looked like the scooter was his best bet.

He got on, pressed its electric starter, and sped from the villa’s grounds into the tropical night.

Just under two hours later Nimec was looking out at the harbor with a pair of high-magnification Gen 4 night vision binocs, the Vespa leaning on its kickstand where he’d stopped it in the roadside darkness. He had been wishing that nothing out of the ordinary would turn up. When you saw a single unusual sighting or occurrence, it was often a strong hint that other oddball things were happening out of sight — once these affairs got going, there hardly ever seemed to be a simple explanation. The further you went beneath the surface, the more you seemed to find that begged closer inspection. And like bugs and rodents lurking under the floorboards, they tended to be the sort of discoveries you would rather not have made.

Right now Nimec wasn’t optimistic about tonight’s foray being an exception to that unhappy rule. When he thought about it, though, it had really started with those e-mail messages to Megan. He’d viewed Rayos del Sol with a probing eye from the moment of his arrival yesterday, already one layer deep into a mystery. What he was doing here at the waterfront was just following through. Burrowing down to the next level, you might say.

From the little he’d seen thus far, Nimec got the sense he might be in for some nasty business.

He stood in the shadows amid a grove of tall royal palms and gazed steadily through the lenses of his binoculars. They represented five thousand dollars’ worth of sophisticated viewing power, their filmless, auto-gated electron plates channeling and amplifying the ambient light through thousands of fiberoptic tubes to give their image greater clarity than any previous generation of night vision device had afforded… and there was plenty of light available, between what was emanating from the harbor’s terminals and berthing areas and the full moon and stars shimmering in the sky.

Maybe, Nimec thought, they would show him something in the next few minutes that would justify their expense and put his peculiar observations into an explainable context. Something out on the quays across the road, or in the open water beyond the inlet channel and lighthouse, where he’d seen the feeder barges and immense box boat converge. At any rate he hoped some sort of evidence would reveal itself to him, in complete defiance of all his presuppositions. Then his suspicions might quiet down for a time, and he could return to the villa, and slip into bed with Annie. Possibly they could even pick up where they had left off that afternoon, get back to the pleasureful exertions of trying to make the baby they’d decided to have. It could happen — why not? But instinct and prior experience told him that babymaking would have to wait.

Nimec drew his focus in from the vessels he’d been tracking to the nearby waterfront. He hadn’t had a whole lot to notice there since the last of the three feeders had been pulled away by tugs, and that continued to be the case. The crane operators and other shipyard workers who had lowered numerous forty-foot containers onto the barges had come down from the loading bridge. The heavy-load forklifts and straddle carriers that had hauled the containers to the bridge had mostly rolled back to a storage terminal across the yard, and then parked among the stacks of forty-footers still awaiting transport to off-island or interior destinations. A handful of longshoreman had remained on the quay to supervise the movement of trucks toward the terminal, but the occasional directions they were giving through their bullhorns had a perfunctory sound now that the shipment had departed.

Though Nimec’s knowledge of dockside transport practices was limited at best, he believed what he’d seen in the yard to this point was probably S.O.P. Had that been all he’d seen, in fact, he very well might have shot away on his scooter over an hour ago.

It was the deepwater rendezvous that had gotten him wondering. Or what happened during the rendezvous, to be entirely accurate.

Nimec decided it might be time to check on the freighters again, and was shifting his glasses with that in mind when he heard the unmistakable whap of helicopter blades slicing the air. The noise was coming from a moderate distance to his right, and seemed generated by more than a single chopper.

Eager for a look, he angled his binocs up at the sky just as a pair of birds appeared above the dark wall of trees marking the northern edge of the island’s wilderness area. They were clipping along in tandem at an altitude of less than five hundred feet, heading northward almost perpendicular to the shoreline. As they reached the harbor, their flight path took a sharp westerly turn away from shore, coincidentally or not toward the anchored box boat and its feeders.

Nimec studied them through his eyepieces moments before they angled seaward. Like the helicopter he had seen the day before, they were Aug 109’s… and now, staring at their magnified images in shades of green, he could definitively tell they were examples of the Stingray patrol variant he’d mentioned to Murthy, conforming to specs that had become thoroughly familiar to him when UpLink had outfitted an entire fleet for U.S. Coast Guard antiterrorism and drug interdiction units. Both had multiple-tube rocket pods under their flared “wings,” FLIR housings for heat-seeking search equipment above their noses, and open port and starboard gunner posts behind the pilot cabin. The pintle guns themselves, he noted, appeared to be Ma Deuces or some lighter weight.50-calibers. Formidable weaponry for safeguarding paradise.

Nimec sighed thoughtfully. What had Murthy said while driving from the airport? The goal at Los Rayos is to make our guests feel secure without their being conscious of security, if my meaning is clear.

It couldn’t have been clearer, Nimec reflected. But he didn’t have to reach further back in his memory than that afternoon and evening for instances on which the security net around the island had been evident to his trained eye. This was his third helicopter sighting, his last one having occurred as he’d piggybacked to shore on Blake the Bronze’s jet ski after his kiteboarding lesson. And later on, when he and Annie were at the beachfront café where they’d gone out for Creole food, he had paid close attention to a Land Rover with black-tinted glass windows that had gone cruising past the parking area, and discerned that it was not only armored but armed… or ready for armaments. There were well-camouflaged firing ports on its side, and the rooftop hatch had been set above its rear seat rather than in front, indicating to him that it was likely equipped with interior machine gun mounts.

Nimec grunted to himself, lowered his binoculars. The Stingrays having tailed off over the water, he wanted to resume monitoring the cargo vessels. They were, he’d estimated, somewhere between a quarter and a third of a mile from his position, almost at the limit of his viewing range. The box boat’s enormous bulk was visible in silhouette to his naked eye — probably a thousand feet from stem to stern, with four towering jib booms lined along one side of the deck. It had dwarfed the three- or four-hundred-foot-long feeders as they’d approached it soon after leaving the quay.

Nimec had watched them begin the process of transferring their containers, a feeder barge pulling up under each boom, the larger vessel dropping its cables, the barge crews securing the containers to their lifting slings, the crane teams hoisting them from the feeders onto the box boat’s sizable payload areas. There again, he’d considered none of it exceptional. Even the late hour at which the job got started had seemed normal to him, since commercial harbors commonly operated round-the-clock and had longshoremen working in rotations.

It had been the running of what might have been fuel supply lines from the huge container vessel to the barges midway through their freight transfer that had perplexed Nimec. Hardly anything to make him cry out from the hilltops about demons and goblins spreading wickedness under the full moon, true, but it still struck him as a little conspicuous. Once the hoses were reeled out from hatches in the hull of the box boat and connected to their opposite numbers on the sides of the feeders, he’d heard a sort of dim, mechanical pumping sound echo over the water in the post-midnight silence. And though he couldn’t claim to know what it sounded like when boats fueled up, Nimec had been around enough airports and landing strips to immediately compare it to the rhythmic pulsations of a jet having its tanks refilled.

His problem with this was that feeder ships didn’t need fuel. Or shouldn’t need it. They didn’t have any means of onboard propulsion. Meaning no engines. Granted he was far from a maritime expert, but to his understanding it was why they were attached to tugboats. And say for argument’s sake he was mistaken… Nimec had never heard of a container vessel that could double as a tanker and carry fuel for ship-to-ship resupply.

He’d been anything but done pondering that apparent anomaly when a couple of closely related ones had started to crop up in a hurry minutes ago. As the unladen feeders disengaged from the box boat, they proceeded to move on past it rather than make a return trip to the harbor. And watching the water, carefully following their progress, Nimec had seen them go outside the effective range of his G4 lenses and disappear into the dark horizon.

But the tugboats hadn’t. To Nimec’s utter bafflement. On the contrary, they were growing larger in his binoculars at that very moment, plying through the channel, returning to port without the barges.

Try as he might, he couldn’t make sense of that. And the more he thought about it, the more it threw him.

Plain and simple, it defied logic.

Nimec frowned. Speaking of returning to port, he was sure Annie would be worried about him by now. He’d seen things here that had added all kinds of questions to those he’d had before, and knew it would absolutely pay to get some of them answered before he went ahead with his snooping.

Reluctant as he was to do so — or part of him was, anyway — he needed to call it a night.

Still frowning slightly, Nimec brought the binocs down from his eyes and climbed onto the Vespa, suspecting he’d have a great deal to occupy his thoughts on his way back to the villa.

Its bark-colored housing placed just below the crown of fanning leaves at treetop level, the thermal imaging camera that had picked up Nimec where he’d stood was one of a great many like it carefully hidden at outdoor and indoor locations throughout Rayos del Sol — under four ounces in weight and small enough to sit on a man’s palm, with a lens that could be covered by the fleshy part of his thumb. Its chip-based microbolometer sensor technology operated coolly, efficiently, and unnoticeably on an internal low-voltage power supply that required infrequent recharges and allowed it to transmit a continuous gray-scale digital feed across the island using a network of compact microwave amplifiers. From the central observation post where the video feed was initially received and processed, it could be relayed to both fixed and mobile secondary monitoring stations via secure wireless internet at a speed almost indistinguishable from real time — blink twice and it would measure the difference between a captured event and its detection by human observers.

While considerably more than a single pair of eyes had been watching Nimec watch the harbor, the key witness as he mounted his scooter now was seated over two miles north of him in the rear lounge of a Daimler stretch limousine parked outside the flamboyantly decorated and lighted Bonne Chance Casino. Here at the heart of the resort’s entertainment complex, this long-bodied vehicle was not ostentation but camouflage. The Bonne Chance’s wealthy amusement seekers could afford to toy with luck and saw no crime in putting their status and success on display. The Daimler, then, shone only like a diamond in cluster, blending into rather than standing out from the sparkling field of luxury cars in the valet lot.

Skilled at blending in under any and all conditions required of him, Tolland Eckers much preferred the comfortable back of a limo to hiding with his belly down in South American mud and weeds, or with his throat and eyes burned by the freezing cold in rocky Tora Bora, or with the Rhub’ al-Khali’s hot desert grit caking his nostrils. He had roughed it around the globe for almost two decades in service to the Agency; service to Jean Luc Morpaign was a less taxing and dangerous way to earn a living. And, really, it hadn’t compromised his patriotism. Eckers more or less accurately reported his income on his federal returns, paid state taxes on his two hundred-acre property in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, and voted Republican by absentee ballot in every election. To say he’d committed acts that were in betrayal of American interests would be to make naive assumptions about how business worked at the highest levels — Jean Luc was only pissing in a pond where other, bigger fish had already taken their turns.

“Alpha One, this is Gray Base,” a voice said in Eckers’s headset. “Do you want us to stay tight on our man?”

Eckers considered that a moment, studying the picture on his screen as the guest from San Jose mounted his Vespa.

“Let’s not ease up too much,” he said. “I want him covered till he’s returned to the nest.”

“Yes, sir. That’s the standing order.”

“I know the order, Gray Base.”

“Yes, sir…”

“I said make sure. Don’t get lazy about this or I’ll have your ass.”

“I’ll oversee the check myself, sir.”

“You do that,” Eckers said. “And report in to me afterward.”

“Yes, s—”

Eckers reached for his headset’s belt control and lowered the volume, needing to think without distraction. When Jean Luc had told him of Nimec’s impending visit weeks ago, he’d known he had a potentially serious problem on his hands. But he could strike the word “potentially” tonight. The situation had heated up sooner than expected — although so far as he was concerned, putting out flash fires was simply part of his job. The question for him was whether to contact Jean Luc right away or wait for the morning. Probably he’d hold off on a decision till it was confirmed that their Mr. Nimec had gone back to the villa and was finished poking around for now. Whatever he settled upon, however, Eckers knew it was six of one, half dozen of the other. Jean Luc’s options were narrow. Nimec was a top professional and would have access to a limitless variety of resources at UpLink. There was no telling how much he’d already added up, or who he could contact to help him figure it out. He wouldn’t waste time, though. He certainly hadn’t this far. And he’d seen enough of significance so Jean Luc would understand it was no use to just wait around hoping for the best.

Eckers sat there in silent contemplation, his face bathed in the IR monitor’s bluish-gray radiance, his eyes staring at the now-static image of the roadside opposite the harbor. He could call Jean Luc tonight, he could call him tomorrow morning, but either way was already planning beyond that. He’d dealt with fires before, doused every sort imaginable, and could tell this latest one would need to have water poured on it quickly if he was to keep it from spreading out of hand…

And if every last trace of it was going to be washed away, which was precisely what Eckers intended.

Jarvis Lenard cowered at the rear of the shallow cave, his head bent under the irregular furrows of its ceiling, his knees pulled up to his chest, his back flush against cold, damp stone. He scarcely dared move a muscle. The search team was close by; he could hear them through the screen of brush with which he’d covered his hideout’s entrance, their passage making a flurry of unaccustomed sounds in the forest. And minutes earlier, he had done more than hear them. Having left the cave to empty his bladder, Jarvis had caught a glimpse of them within a half dozen yards of where he’d stood watering the ground. It had cut off his flow midstream, but a small discomfort that had been compared to the unpitying hurts Jarvis was firmly convinced his hunters would dole out if he was captured. He’d been far more willing to tolerate the pressing fullness inside him — and if he couldn’t manage that, to foul himself from top to bottom, or suffer any other indignity his mind could conceive — than to have been cost dear by one extra moment out there.

It was the hack of machetes that had alerted him to their approach — and none too soon. Barefoot over the meager puddle he’d created, Jarvis had peered toward the noise and distinguished their outlines in the soft film of moonlight that had sifted its way down through the jungle’s leafy roof. He’d counted five of them in single file, black-clad, rifles at their hips, their curved blades slicing a path through the tangled, twisted masses of vines and branches hindering their progress. They wore goggles Jarvis knew would allow their eyes to see in pitch darkness, and the lead man had been holding what almost looked like a video camera in front of him — but camcorder Jarvis didn’t believe it was, oh no, at least not the type that someone would bring on a vacation to capture the smiling faces of his wife and children. Its handle was like the grip of a pistol, and its enormous lens about equaled the size of its entire body, and there was a wide viewing screen in back that cast a strange bluish-gray light upon the features of the spotter who carried it, giving him the look of a ghostly apparition. Jarvis had noticed these things — the glow especially — and come to realize that the device was a heat-reader akin to those aboard the helicopters scouring the island for him. The friend who had told him of the nightbirds, an aircraft cleaner he’d linked up with at Los Rayos’s employee compound, had described this machinery one night when rum had turned his mouth to chattering, and Jarvis hadn’t forgotten his words: Their picture’s all gray an’ not green, an’ the lenses can do more’n pierce the black’a night. They can see the natural aura’a heat that come off the skin’a everyt’ing alive, see the vapor that leave yah mout’ when ya breath, even see the shape’a yer ass on a chair yah been warmin’ a full quarter hour after yah ’ave lifted yerself off it.

Jarvis Lenard had stood with his heart pounding against his ribs as the spotter paused ahead of the others in line behind him, and swept the heat-reader first from side to side, and then up toward the treetops. Last, he’d bent and aimed its lens toward the ground… and that was when Jarvis had taken the opportunity to flee, scampering back to the cave entrance before the man could straighten, or resume moving forward with his team. Still hanging out of his pants, he’d dropped onto his stomach, wriggled in under his brush cover, hurried to replace whatever foliage he’d disturbed, and scampered through the claustrophobic, rough-walled tube of rock, which narrowed like a periwinkle shell toward the back to end in a tight, angling notch where he’d finally hunkered down in dread.

Squatted on his heels in that little sideways cut now, Jarvis took a deep breath, another, and then a third, making an effort to slow his racing heartbeat. But his throat had tightened with fear, and only thin snatches of air seemed to reach his lungs, and the hard throbbing in his rib cage did not ease up. He continued to pull in breath after breath, regardless, understanding he must try to be calm… must try mightily to remain still and silent if he was to have any chance of avoiding capture, however easier it might be said than done. From what he could hear, his stalkers had gotten to within a few paces of the cave entrance and stopped again. To its left, as it seemed to him. Had they come this far into the woods because they had picked up his trail? Or was it plain, fickle chance that had brought them here?

Jarvis Lenard could not know. Yet he did know that the side of the cave where they had now made their second halt was the same side he’d chosen for taking care of his business, and that the spot of a puddle he’d left there could madly enough do him in. For it had struck him that a device able to read a man’s lingering body heat on a seat cushion would also detect the warmth of his freshly released urine. And if it were to meet the notice of those who sought him, acting like to a beacon, glowing on the face of that viewscreen as though the pecker that had peed it had been flooded with radioactivity…

Jarvis had a moment when he was gripped by a suicidal urge to laugh aloud at that thought — or rather cough out an anxiety-fraught mockery of laughter. But he managed to suppress it, refusing to yield to crazed hysteria. The Sunglasses might take him, yes, they might. He was determined not to serve himself up to them on a platter, though.

Two or three minutes went by with the slowness of as many hours. Jarvis could still hear shuffling footsteps outside. And the chop of machete blades. He had no way to see past the vegetation he’d piled in front of the cave entrance to keep it from sight, but sadly the opposite wouldn’t be true of the instrument in the spotter’s hand. Its lens did not see objects for what they were, not really. Instead it would sense only the heat that escaped them. Leaves and branches would give off no warmth, or very little compared to what was coming from Jarvis, and would be a poor excuse for a barrier. To his understanding, incomplete as it might be, a man’s body heat would appear to burn a white-hot hole through the fold of brush on that evil device’s monitor.

Same as my piss would seem to be burnin’ like an atomic spill, Jarvis thought with a humor that was far more subdued — but no less grim — than the spasm of crazed mirth that had just come so close to pushing him around the corner into lunacy.

If there was anything that might work to his favor and protect him from the searching electronic eye, he supposed it was his having scurried away to hide in the notch, with its wall of thick, solid rock separating it from the forward length of the cave. The question then would be whether the eye was keen enough to penetrate that wall should it be turned in its direction, although Jarvis would be glad never to learn the answer… as if what he wanted mattered at all.

He lowered his head between his knees and took another series of breaths to quiet his nerves. For the present he could only wait like a hunted animal in its burrow, hoping it was only a fluke that had brought these bloodhounds close, and that they would pass as suddenly as they’d appeared without sniffing out any trace of him.

Waiting. Hoping. Words for the desperate, true, Jarvis thought.

He would gladly take them on himself.

A scared, desperate man, he would take them on without argument, and take as well the uncertainty that was their constant companion, if it meant he could elude his pursuers yet another night, and stay free to worry about the next day when it came.

Julia Gordian broke out of her nightmare with a start, her eyes snapping open in the darkness, her mouth gasping in air, her right hand going to her throat. Her other arm jerked up at her side with a stiff, violent movement that tossed her blanket partway off the bed.

She’d been awakened by the trailing end of a moan that she instantly realized had come from her own lips.

Shaking hard, Julia drew herself to a sitting position. Then she let her fingers slide from her neck, covered her face with both hands, and stayed like that for several minutes. When she at last raised her head from her palms, they were left wet with perspiration and tears.

She took a while longer to collect herself and then reached down for her blanket, thinking the sounds that had torn out of her must have been pretty awful, wondering if they’d been loud enough for her father to hear them. Probably not, she decided; the guest room was on the other side of the house. And though he wouldn’t have admitted it, Dad seemed tired from standing on a ladder with those heavy abstracts. And then the drive, and her laying the rest of that stuff on him. With even a shred of luck he’d still be sound asleep.

Julia wiped her stinging eyes. That other stuff, she thought. Just something incidental she’d wanted to mention. Uh-huh, sure.

Let her go. Let her go now. Let her go, it’s finished…

She took in another breath. The words from her dream clung to her. Those words, and the fearful sensation of the combat knife against her throat, held to her throat in the Killer’s grip. And then the images returned: Tom Ricci standing in the entrance to that room in Big Sur, the door he’d kicked open flung back from the splintered jamb.

Let her go, it’s finished… You do her, I do you, what’s the point?

Ricci again. His eyes on the Killer over the outthrust gun in his hands, the gun targeted on the Killer’s heart.

In Julia’s nightmare, the Killer had been as faceless as he’d been nameless. Wait, maybe not exactly. His features had been constantly changing. One moment they’d been average, even bland. Then atrociously cruel and monstrous. Like in her actual recollections of those black days, she couldn’t quite fix on them.

A year now of trying to remember the Killer’s face, and she couldn’t do it.

But Tom Ricci’s—

His face, eyes, voice — they would return with absolute clarity in her memory and dreams.

You can make it on your own now. Go. It’ll be all right.

Those words… he’d spoken those words to her after persuading the Killer to lower his knife from her throat and slice the ropes that had bound her wrists and ankles to her chair, a straight-backed wooden chair on which she’d been forced to sit until she lost most of her circulation. When Julia lifted her arms, they’d been cramped and stiff as boards. Her legs were worse, so numb at first she had been unable to feel them. And then the painful tingles as she stood up and blood began flowing to them. Trying to take her first step toward Ricci, she had almost toppled over.

And Ricci had steadied her with one hand. Keeping his gun on the Killer with the other, or so she assumed. That was one of the blanks her mind had filled in for her, not because she’d had any awareness of it at the time, but because it had to have happened that way.

At the time there was only Ricci for her.

His face, his eyes, his voice…

His firm, steadying hand. He’d slipped it around her back, held her erect, kept her from falling as the strength returned to her legs, helping her toward the door.

Guiding her toward freedom with his hand.

You can make it on your own now. Go. It’ll be all right.

Julia had hesitated before she stepped out into the hallway. Looking into his eyes, meeting them with hers, wanting to say something. Groping in her mind for something to say, and not quite knowing what in the moment she had available.

A hurried thank-you had seemed woefully, ridiculously inadequate, but it was all that had occurred to her…

And only then had it registered with Julia that there was still a gag around her mouth. The scarf, or strip of cloth, or whatever it was, taut between her lips, its knot uncut.

It had left Julia with no chance to say anything, no chance, and she had simply nodded mutely and gone through the opening, the door shutting behind her with a slam, Ricci’s team of Sword operatives rushing around her, sweeping her down a flight of stairs — a spiral staircase — and outside into the sunlight, and then finally through the door of a car and away, all of it happening in a blur from the point at which she’d heard the loud slam of that door at her back.

Now, over twelve months later in her darkened bedroom, Julia sat up thinking for a time, letting her dream’s intensity fade, as it did for even the worst of dreams, before she gradually let her head sink down to her pillow.

Turning onto her side, she reached across to the empty half of the bed where her husband had once slept, briefly spread her fingers over the cool, unruffled sheet, and then pulled back her hand to gather the covers against her breast.

The tears came on and off before she slept, but Julia had learned to get by with that sort of minor nuisance.

At the herbal boutique today, in fact, she’d picked up a fresh bottle of eyedrops that would wash away the redness before she again had to face the world.