He lay still, eyes closed, listening to the wind beyond the rolled-up windows. It whirred between the pine needles and hissed through the bare branches of other trees. Rather than being at peace, he felt lonely…and afraid.

  Gabe sensed the sun, the change it forced upon his body, the slowing of his perceptions and thought as conscious control slipped away. This day’s bout of dream torture might be the worst yet. He’d have to get through it somehow; he had to know.

  He shifted to a more comfortable position, arms and shoulders stiff from the recent exercise. It didn’t work. He’d be creaking around like an old man when he woke. He should have ordered up a small panel truck. He could have stretched out in the back…

  Why hadn’t he dropped off yet?

  He should be out by now, not grousing to himself for picking the wrong kind of vehicle. What the hell…?

  He sat up, pushing off the blankets.

  Yes, he was sore and cold and creaked, his muscles cramped from staying in one position for far too long—the whole damned day as it happened. One sniff of the damp air, one glance at the painfully bright sky with its last gilding of sunset, and he understood he’d slept right through the day, no dreams, no memories at all.

  He’d been cheated.

  He needed that internal hell. With the things he’d just learned, he had to dream again to find out what had happened. Awful as they were—

  Damn it. God damn it.

  He pitched from the car, looking around as though to find someone to blame. The woods were as empty as before and silent; the wind had died.

  How was it that, after all this time, he’d finally—

  Gabe looked down. His shoes and pant legs were caked with dried-out mud from his grave, enough to do the job. He knew from his talks with Gordy that Fleming kept packets of his home earth in his sleeping areas. He even carried some in a money belt should he get caught away from those shelters. Until now Gabe had been dubious about the idea of the stuff providing true rest during the day. It struck him as just being another kind of superstition associated with his condition. The sight of a cross and the touch of holy water didn’t bother him, so why should grave dirt have such an effect? What a damned stupid thing that was. It had robbed him of that day’s progress toward what had gotten him killed in the first place.

  He grumbled and stretched out the kinks, which weren’t too bad, considering. He did feel rested, far more energetic than he’d been in weeks. Okay, there was a good side to his mistake.

  Gabe followed his tracks back to the cabin, wanting another, much more thorough search before leaving.

  The dried blood still very much in place, he lit another candle and checked every corner, every stick of furniture, tapped each board, looking for anything resembling an explanation.

  He soon found a six-shot .22 revolver, bullets spent, blood-smeared, rust creeping over its surface. It was behind one of the benches, not hidden, just not in plain sight. Perhaps the shooter had dropped or thrown it there. The numbers were filed away, and it had the kind of checkerboard grip that didn’t hold fingerprints. A feeble weapon for some, but mob soldiers who favored the caliber liked the gun’s small size and low level of noise. Fold a pillow around it or hold it directly against a target and it sounded like a balloon popping, if that much.

  Gabe didn’t know how he knew that, but was not surprised such details lurked in his mind.

  Maybe Nelly had brought the gun, unless a fourth person had crashed the party.

  Complications, he thought. They annoyed the hell out of him, but Gabe had to keep them in mind.

  He left the bed for last. Gingerly, with thumb and forefinger, he pulled the top blanket off and spread it out on the floor. There was no pattern to the bloodstains; it was a mess. Someone had bled there.

  A mildew-eaten gray sheet beneath was also bloody, most of it in the middle. He recalled what Lettie had said about Nelly Cabot’s injuries and fought past a bout of nausea. He lifted the sheet to reveal an ancient stained mattress that also stank of mildew. The stuff was all over, dormant from the cold, but still disgusting. Touching as little as possible, he dragged the mattress away from the bed, which was made from simple planks nailed across a box frame, nothing store-bought about that operation.

  In the spaces between the planks, the floor beneath was visible, and something shiny caught the light.

  He tore a plank away and got it. Got them.

  Should have looked there first.

  He closely examined a small, empty amber vial and a syringe. Whatever had been inside them was long dried and gone.

  Michael.

  The fourth person.

  A complication. A damned big one.

  Maybe he’d hurt the girl.

  And maybe he killed me. Or had Ramsey do it, then killed him to keep him quiet. But when I came back Mike thought the job had been botched and that I didn’t suspect him. No wonder he didn’t want me up here.

  Upon his return to New York, Gabe had been very careful not to let on about his loss of memory. It was easier to do than he’d hoped. He was in a position where no one questioned him. You could get away with a lot using a stern look and not saying much.

  Michael had been out of the country at the time, or so he said. Distracted by his own problems, Gabe hadn’t thought to check.

  He peered through the side window into a very silent night. The woman weeping in his dream-memory—had it been from terror instead of grief? While Ramsey filled in the grave, Mike could have been in the cabin with her, doing God knows what to ensure she would keep quiet.

  Then I get the blame since she was last seen with me.

  He put away the items. They clinked against the rusted revolver. He shifted the gun to a different pocket and found that his hands were shaking.

  Rage. Yeah, he had plenty of that.

  Soon as I see Mike again…

  He pinched out the candle flame.

  Grabbing the white fedora, he let the latch fall on the door and walked to the pump. Its works were frozen for the winter. The bucket next to it meant to hold priming water was topped with snow. He went down to the riverbank, loaded the inside of the hat with a few rocks, using a handkerchief to tie the brim tightly over them to keep them in place. He flung the hat far out over the water. It splashed once and vanished in the black flow.

  Next he scooped sand and icy water and scrubbed his hands until the mildew smell went away, all the time regarding the dark cabin and what was inside.

  He wanted to burn it.

  Tempting, but a bad idea. However secluded, flames and smoke could draw the wrong kind of attention to this place. Someone might feel bound to track down the property owner…Gabe realized he could be the owner. He just didn’t know.

  Better to leave it for now. He could always return with a few gallons of kerosene.

  That would cleanse the place…every square inch of it.

  THE miles back to Chicago seemed to have stretched themselves. He had too much to think about and wished for company. Even Fleming, with his endless questions, would have been welcome. Gabe turned on the car’s radio, and the noise of a comedy show helped.

  Michael would not be in a good mood tonight; he was probably making Derner’s life miserable. Half of the muscle at the Nightcrawler was probably out looking for the green Hudson and its missing driver. Fine. Let ’em earn their keep.

  Gabe took a wrong turn, tried correcting at the next street, got lost, and pulled over to study the map. He wondered if getting lost was part of his lack of memory or if he’d always been like that.

  His clearest postdeath recollection was waking in a cold barn loft where he’d hidden from the sun behind stacks of hay bales. From there he’d gone groggily down, washed off blood and grave dirt in an ice-crusted water trough, and taken his first feeding from one of the milk cows. That had awakened him fully, though the agony in his head kept him from indulging much in the way of thinking. He seemed well able to look after basics like getting food, to know how to deal with his change if not the how or why of it.

  The circumstances—his blood-drinking, the bad dreams during his daylight sleep, lack of memory of how he’d gotten into such a spot, and all that came before—didn’t really bother him. It seemed normal to be different. Not knowing himself was just how the world ran, and his instincts told him he’d be fine, just fine. He had a wallet with a driving license that provided a name to use, an address to go to, and more than enough money to get there.

  A few nights later, first hitchhiking on country roads, then taking a train, then a taxi, he used a key from that wallet to get into a hotel flat in New York. Though he couldn’t remember it, he assumed it to be his. Old mail scattered over a desk bore the name on the license. The flat was nice, and the clothes there fit. He moved into a stranger’s life.

  Pretty soon friends turned up.

  Well, acquaintances.

  They showed him respect and something he later came to recognize as fear. A very few asked about the white streak in his hair. He found a smirk and a shake of the head to be sufficient reply.

  Mike had walked into the flat as though he’d been there many times before, looking uncomfortable and on guard. In retrospect could it have been guilt? He was the only one who met Gabe’s eye and stood up to him like an equal, though.

  They had a business meeting, which required going to a bar and sitting in a booth across from a tough-looking man. Michael talked a lot of business that didn’t make sense. The man challenged him on a point. Mike looked at Gabe. At a loss for what to do, Gabe looked at the man, who abruptly backed down, agreed to something, then left, sweating. Mike said thanks in a flat voice and departed as well.

  From that point Gabriel decided he’d better learn what the hell kind of job he had.

  It didn’t take long. He killed people. He was good at the work.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Not then. Later, he decided that cold murder wasn’t something he wanted to do to anyone.

  The roughhouse when he and Fleming had taken on Mitchell didn’t really count. Heat-of-the-moment shooting was one thing, but to walk up and coolly put a bullet into a stranger…that was just wrong.

  There had been a couple of times when he’d felt angry enough to do violence, such as when he’d thought Fleming responsible for blowing up the car. But Gabe had wanted to punch him in the nose more than anything else. The gun had been a tool, little more than window dressing to get attention.

  On the other hand, Fleming had been pretty clear about what had happened after the car crash last night. Gabe couldn’t remember anything after their car left the road, but something had upset the kid. The lapse was disturbing, but there was damn all to be done about it.

  In that first month in New York, Gabe worked out how to hypnotize people. They told him a lot he didn’t like and much he didn’t believe. He decided the whole crowd, including Michael, were considerably crazier than he and far more dangerous. The only way to keep from being consumed by them was to maintain the long-established outward front.

  Strangely, no one noticed anything different about him. They all had certain expectations as to how he should behave, and, when he drifted outside those expectations, the mugs simply stretched their limits to accommodate. It was their fear of him. They put on their own fronts, acted friendly, shook his hand, laughed at his jokes, but were still pissing-in-their-pants terrified of him.

  Yeah, crazy.

  Gabe observed carefully and from them learned how to impersonate the man he’d been. It wasn’t perfect; he’d sometimes surprise an odd look from Mike, but the guy never said anything.

  Down deep he had to be terrified of Whitey Kroun, too.

  That covered who he had been, next came the what he had become.

  He eventually went to the big library with the lions out front and looked up stuff about vampires. It was crazy as well, but since some of it seemed to apply to him, he shrugged, accepted, and moved on, keeping his lip shut.

  Gabe had yet to find out exactly how he’d come by the condition.

  Somewhere out there a woman—he was sure it was a woman, Fleming’s reckless dig notwithstanding—had done something quite out of the ordinary to Gabe. The details were lost, taken away when the bullet had ripped into his brain.

  Very damned annoying, that.

  Once the dust was settled on his current problem, he might have to try finding her.

  GABRIEL navigated the gradually thinning traffic, pulling up in front of Fleming’s brick house a little after midnight. No lights showed, just like the cabin. He pushed the thought away, strode up the walk, and used his picklocks to get in.

  That was also a skill he could not recall learning. Useful, though.

  He listened before shutting the door, noticing that the broken window at the far end of the hall had been replaced. Hand it to Gordy, he ran a tight ship.

  The place was empty, but Gabriel checked through it before turning on any lights. He didn’t need them, but they’d let Fleming know company was present should he return. If the kid had any sense, he’d be cheering up that sweet blond girlfriend of his. Bobbi. Funny name for a dame, but it suited her.

  Gabe got both suitcases and went up to the third-floor guest room. The rumpled bed was as he’d left it, and it almost looked like the one in the cabin, but without the blood.

  I gotta stop that kind of thinking.

  He straightened the top spread, opened the cases, found a crisp new shirt and the second suit he’d bought. It was identical to the one he had on, black with a charcoal pinstripe, very sharp. He didn’t like to fuss over clothes, just pick good quality and forget about it.

  Stripping and taking a shower-bath was a little piece of heaven. He stayed in until the hot water ran out, but emerged clean, shaved…and still feeling well rested. That grave dirt…well, clearly it worked. He’d have to start sleeping with a bag of it in the bed. What a luxury to be dream-free once this was over.

  He thought he should save the residue on his discarded clothes and bundled them into a pillowcase and put it in the small wardrobe. Was it too close to the bed?

  Only if he slept here for the day. He would use that abandoned store again. Broder and Michael didn’t know about it.

  Gabe dressed slowly, liking the feel of new clothes. Fresh and ready for anything, he went downstairs to phone the Nightcrawler.

  Derner sounded harried. “Mike’s on the warpath and wants to talk to y—”

  “Give him a Bromo-Seltzer and a blonde.”

  “I would, I really would, but he’s in Cicero.”

  “Well, that’s his hard luck. What’s he doing in—no, forget it.” It would be business. With Mike it was always business. He could do half a dozen things at once and give each his full attention. Smart guy. Very smart. “Where’s Broder?”

  “With Mike.”

  Interesting. Broder must have spun one hell of a story to get himself off the hook for the grenade job—unless Mike had lied and faked his surprised reaction. If Broder’s task had been to kill Gabe, then it made sense for Mike to keep him around.

  But why does Mike want to kill me? Was it on general principles or for a specific reason? Why wait two months for another try?

  “When will they be back?”

  “Didn’t say, but I’ve got a number you’re to call.”

  Gabe wrote it down on a notepad by the phone. Cicero wasn’t that far. He was reasonably sure he could find it, but a local guide would be better to have along. “Has Fleming turned up tonight?”

  “Huh? Uh—no. Probably at his club. He usually calls in before now. You gonna talk to Mike?” Derner seemed worried. More so than usual, that is.

  “In about two minutes.” He pressed the hook long enough for the connection to break, then tried the new number. It turned out to belong to a hotel. He asked for Mike and got put right through.

  He picked up on the first ring.

  “Hello, Michael.” Gabe used a friendly, cheerful tone, intending to be as irritating as hell. “Problem?”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Are you going to tell me to go back to New York again? Because the answer’s no. Now that that’s settled, how long will you be in Cicero?”

  Mike made some strange choking noises. “A couple of days.”

  What the hell…? Gabe continued the good cheer. “Fine. I’ll keep busy. The old bastard wanted to get some air. I thought I’d take him fishing in the morning. It’d do him good to get out, have a little fun.”

  Dead silence. Lots of it.

  Well, I wanted to stir things up.

  “Whitey…please.”

  Pleading? That was a surprise, though Gabe wanted him off-balance and scared. “I’ve been to the cabin. The place looks great. You should see it.”

  “What have you done?”

  “Nothing yet. You think I should do something?”

  “No games…let’s talk first.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “When can you get here?”

  “I’ve had enough driving. We’ll meet at Gordy’s club.” Mike would think twice about getting frisky in front of witnesses and be more likely to keep Broder in line as well.

  “Okay. I’ll get there soon as I—a couple hours.”

  “Why so long?”

  “Business.”

  Gabe snorted and hung up. Must be some business. From keeping company with a girl to calling in extra muscle. Or arranging an exit.

  For himself or for me?

  Mike had agreed too readily. That could mean a lot of things. Gabe started to list the possibilities and how to counter them, then abruptly let it go. He’d find out soon enough and deal with it then.

  Broder would be along, somewhere in the background, watching. Gabe knew how to keep his back to a wall, but Broder was nearly a ghost himself. He moved fast, quiet, and was a dead shot. If Fleming could be talked into helping out…but did he really need to know all this?

  Yes. Better to have him as a friend than not. He’d want an explanation for the sickening things Sonny had said.