For an answer, Robby held up the wallet. She looked over her shoulder to see Velvet slap at the pocket, lips parted.

  “You are totally great,” Velvet said, and grinned. “Can you teach me to do that?”

  “In a day? No.” Robby pocketed the wallet, outside pocket, and came back to face her. “Try again.”

  “So how long have you been practicing?” Velvet bit her lip as she reached in the pocket, eased the leather out. Not bad, considering. Robby let it pass.

  “I began when I was six. At fifteen I apprenticed to a magician named Alex the Magnificent; he taught me true sleight of hand. The rest of it came from my father. Try again. This time, do it faster.”

  Velvet had clever fingers—not God-given instinct, perhaps, but she was trainable. Robby stood patiently while she practiced. She’d learned on a threadbare sewing dummy, bought from a second-hand shop, draped with ragged coats and unraveling suits. Da hadn’t tolerated clumsiness, not from someone who so clearly had the gift. Funny, how she could remember the smell of that room, the close musty scent of old clothes, dried sweat, old whisky. Tweed had felt so rough on her young fingers, leather so smooth. He’d watched her while he drank, nodding approval, slamming her against the wall with a casual slap when she faltered.

  For all that, what she most remembered about him was how warm he’d felt when she’d clung to him that last day. Fever-warm, in the chill of the trainyard. As if, somehow, he’d known it was the last time.

  “How’s that?” Velvet crowed, and held up the wallet. Robby blinked.

  “Good. Very good. Now do it left-handed.”

  “Left-handed?” Velvet’s grin collapsed. “What do you mean, left-handed?”

  She was spared by the jingle of the doorbell. Robby checked the peephole.

  Sol, dressed in unseasonable off-white. As she watched, he smoothed his hair back and checked the shine on his fingertips, frowned, and punched the doorbell again.

  “So who is it?” Velvet asked. She clutched the wallet like a life preserver, and her eyes were wide and tragic and ready for betrayal. “That guy? It’s the suit, isn’t it, the one from the warehouse?”

  And for a second, Robby thought about opening the door and pointing to her and saying to Sol, there she is, go on, leave me out of it. Jim would have, without a second thought.

  She could see from Velvet’s eyes that she expected it.

  “It’s Sol. Go in the bedroom, lock the door, stay there. Don’t make a sound.” Velvet fled without argument. Robby waited until she heard the click of the bedroom door, then began unlocking deadbolts.

  Sol’s smile looked worn razor-thin by the time she swung the door open for him. When she stepped aside, he sauntered in and looked around like a landlord.

  “Nice,” he said, and shrugged off his coat to hand it to her. “Hang it up. I don’t like wrinkles.”

  She resisted the urge to throw the damned thing in a heap on the floor, found a hanger and put it in the hall closet. When she returned, he was sitting at ease on the sofa, feet up, flipping channels on her TV. The sound was too loud.

  “Cable,” he said approvingly. “Great. I like those pirate shows on—what’s it?—the Discovery channel. And those mysteries. Good mysteries. And that ‘American Justice’ show.”

  He settled on ESPN, the roar of a hockey match. Robby sat on the edge of the magenta chair, waiting, ready to move if he came at her. Would he be that crude? Was she giving him too much credit for subtlety?

  “Robby,” he sighed, and shook his head. “Here I am, a guest in your house, and you don’t offer me anything to drink? Where’d you grow up, a barn? Some wine, if you have some. Red. And some crackers, pretzels, something like that.”

  She went to the kitchen and opened a bottle, poured two bubble-fragile glasses full. The hockey game continued to rage in the living room. She paused to stare at the wall phone next to the counter. Jim’s number was on speed dial, as if it would do any good, as if he’d ever cross Sol.

  Sol took the glass with evident relish, sniffed the woody scent of the beaujolais, swirled the wine, and sipped. Robby put hers aside untasted.

  “Young,” Sol said with a prissy twist of his thick lips. “A little nosy. Peppery.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about, and suspected he didn’t, either. She waited until he’d drained the glass.

  “Anything I can do for you, Sol?” she asked. He tilted his empty glass suggestively; she fetched the bottle and poured him a second. No shilly-shallying about tasting, this time. He guzzled it. She put the bottle on the coffee table in front of him. “Is something wrong?”

  “Something’s got to be wrong for me to visit you? What if I just like your company, sweetheart?” His eyes looked like black glass, full of pupil. The suspicion came to her too late that he was on something, that she’d lost her chance to call Jim and might never get another. There was a phone in the hall bathroom; she might be able to plead indisposition … “Robby, Robby, I like you. Why do you have to double-cross me?”

  “D-Double-cross?” The stammer betrayed more than she wanted him to know. She saw lazy killing pleasure in his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m talking about the hooker,” he said, and leaned over confidentially. “You fucking her?”

  She jerked as if he’d stabbed her. He sat slowly back upright, watching her face.

  “Good,” he said. “I wouldn’t like to think you were that kind of pervert, know what I mean? So, she’s, what, blackmailing you? Giving you the soft-soap? What?”

  She spread her hands, helpless. He smiled and nursed a mouthful of wine. A drop spilled on the lapel of his off-white suit like a bloody flower.

  “Not that it matters,” he continued. “Couple of object lessons, we don’t have this problem anymore. The hooker, she got hers. Time for yours, Robby.”

  She didn’t have time to move at all before his hand was under his jacket, before the gun was out. The muzzle was a huge black eye, staring. Her brain continued a helpless litany, stupid, this is stupid, how can he do this, it’s all a mistake—

  Sol put the muzzle to her forehead, the circle a cold tattoo. She pressed herself back against the chair and just had time to cry out before she felt the pistol press harder against her head.

  Click.

  She opened her eyes and watched Sol holster the gun through a sudden blurring curtain of tears.

  “No bullets,” he said. “Not this time. Next time we come up short, cara mia, you get one in the knee. If it happens twice, you get one in the brain. Got it?”

  She nodded convulsively, unable to speak past the rage. He finished his glass of wine and stood up.

  “Get my coat.”

  She didn’t mean to obey, but then her hands were full of heavy wool, and he was taking it from her and shrugging it on.

  On his way out, he kissed her hand.

  She locked the door behind him, all the locks, all the alarms, picked up the wine bottle and glasses, and carried them to the kitchen.

  “Robby?” Velvet, behind her, voice trembling. “Are you okay?”

  Robby opened the bottom drawer and took out a hammer, and without any feeling at all, smashed the wine bottle and glasses into tiny glittering fragments.

  “We have to kill him,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Martin

  Martin Grady deplaned with the rest of the cattle, shuffling down a long narrow hall with strange angles and sloping floors. At the end of the hall the crowd dispersed like aerosol spray, all on their separate urgent missions, their strange little lives. He shifted his suitcase from his right to his left hand and looked around, wishing he could have slept on the plane, wishing he’d been able to sleep the night before. Exhaustion had made him odd.

  A uniformed limousine driver was holding up a hand-lettered sign that said MR. GRADY. He headed in that direction and was almost there when a hand slid under his elbow and turned him quickly away. He looked down and saw a plain matronly-looking woman with a pleasant smile clinging to his arm.

  “Don’t cause trouble, Mr. Grady,” she said without breaking her smile. Something pressed into his side under the cover of their linked arms. “Feel that?”

  “Yes—”

  “It’s a gun. Keep walking. Do not make eye contact with the limo driver.”

  He walked with her, sweating. Kidnapped by a grandmother at JFK. He was going to end up a movie of the week, just as he’d feared.

  “Do you have any other bags?” Grandma asked, and patted his arm.

  “No.” He resisted the urge to add, ma’am.

  “Why, very good, that’ll save us quite a lot of time. Might even save your life. Right through here, young man, through that door.”

  The door in question was blank wood except for the knob. Should he try to hit her with the door and run? He’d never expected to be a secret agent, no one had bothered to inform him about the proper procedures for being abducted. Behind the door could be anything—interrogation, a quick bullet, a body bag. He had to do something.

  But it just didn’t seem possible.

  He opened the door and went through, Grandma still clinging tightly to his arm. The lights were much lower inside the room; he blinked as she let go of him with one last fond pat and stepped away.

  “Where are we?” he asked. The room was furnished with comfortable couches and chairs, reading lamps, shelves of books and magazines. A TV played quietly in the corner. Only the muffled rattle of aircraft and the lack of windows made it clear it wasn’t a normal living room.

  “VIP lounge,” Grandma said, and opened her purse to slip a round gold tube of lipstick inside. He stared at it.

  “Where’s your gun?”

  “Oh, sonny, we’re in an airport. I don’t have a gun.” She gave him a wink and ducked back out into the airport again. He stood helpless, bag dragging at his hand, and flinched when another hand fell on his shoulder.

  Adrian Carling. He looked down into her deep blue green eyes and had a sudden longing to kiss her, but her expression was all business.

  “You almost went with the limo, didn’t you?” she accused. He shrugged. “Damn it, Marty, we’d be picking your body parts out of the Potomac if you’d made that mistake. Be a little more careful, would you?”

  “You said you’d meet me.”

  “I am meeting you.” She shook her head in disgust. “Martin Grady, meet Special Agents Jennings and Mendoza. You just met Mrs. Womack, who’s on loan to us from another agency.”

  “CIA?”

  “AARP,” Carling said. Nobody else laughed. His chuckle trailed off into strained silence.

  The two men who got up to shake hands might have been twins, except that Jennings was big and black-skinned, and Mendoza big and bronze-skinned. They both had football builds and chilly eyes, and wore earpieces like Secret Service men.

  On the whole, he liked Mrs. Womack better.

  “Martin is our data specialist,” Carling explained. “Mendoza, take his bag. I assume the disks and files are in there? Good. All precautions, Mendoza. If you’re ready, gentlemen?”

  Carling, like a good defense attorney, always knew the answers before she asked the questions. They exited another door. This one led to a hallway that looked administrative. At the end of a long T-square hall loomed a guard station with metal detectors; Carling reached in her pocket and showed her FBI badge, beeped through without a pause. Jennings and Mendoza followed like the Crimson Tide in plainclothes. Martin was content to hold up the rear; alone in the parade, he didn’t set off the detector.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, darting around the linebackers to get to Carling as they went out on the sidewalk. Carling had no time for him. Like the other two agents, she scanned the streets, eyes alert and paranoid, as a dark gray sedan slid to the curb in front of them. She jerked open the door, gave the driver a glance, and jerked her head at Jennings and Mendoza, who crammed into the backseat. She slid in the front and beckoned for Martin to follow.

  The driver was Mrs. Womack, she of the deadly lipstick. She swung the sedan out into the traffic circle, watching the rearview mirror.

  “Limo?” Carling asked.

  Mrs. Womack smiled. “Mechanical problems. I don’t think there’s anybody on our trail, ma’am.” Mrs. Womack’s eyes wandered over toward Martin. “He seems like a very nice young man. Interesting. You know, I think he actually considered whacking me over the head and running for it.”

  “My god,” Carling said, and laughed. “Bowling over a granny. Marty, you surprise me.”

  “Where are we going?” he asked again, plaintively. Mrs. Womack made a right turn and drove at a sensible law-abiding speed.

  “We’re going to take the suitcase to the office, where it’ll be secure. Jennings and Mrs. Womack will spend the evening digging up information about the cleaner with the limousine.”

  “Cleaner?” he repeated.

  Her smile faded. “Assassin, Marty. They were going to kill you.”

  He’d been right about her office; thick burgundy carpet, Persian throw rugs, mahogany desks. The air smelled faintly of oranges and fresh roses. Martin sank into a red leather chair and closed his sand-coated eyelids. Carling gave whispered instructions to Jennings and Mendoza. When he woke up again, Mrs. Womack was in front of him, holding out a thin china cup full of coffee. He took a burning sip and swallowed. It tasted like burnt motor oil, but that must have been his exhaustion, because Carling would have had Jamaican Blue Mountain in her private stock, brewed with pure spring water. Brand name filters.

  “How do you feel?”

  While he’d been staring at the translucent white cup, Womack had vanished and Carling now perched on the edge of a desk, legs crossed. She had a penchant for above-the-knee skirts that cast interesting shadows. Good thighs. He was too tired to wonder how calculated the display was.

  “Okay,” he lied. “You didn’t tell me people were trying to kill me.”

  “I told you to be careful.” She stretched her legs lazily, smooth as velvet. “I was worried about you. Who’d you talk to?”

  “Nobody.” She stared at him until he gave up. “Dr. Westfield. I had to explain why I wanted the raw data. She caught me copying the files.”

  Carling nodded without breaking the stare.

  “Dr. Westfield,” she repeated. “Jill Westfield. She’s been on your staff for—five years. Right?”

  He nodded, mesmerized by the slow circles of her foot, the sensuous rasp in her voice.

  “Well, I think we’ll have to assume that Dr. West-field is a bad risk. Anybody else you talked to? The cleaning lady? The nurses at the hospital?”

  It was no use wondering how she’d known. He was already convinced that she’d bugged his underwear.

  “I told the head nurse that I’d be going to Washington for an extended period of time, and told her I’d call with the number. Look, they had to know. Sally’s condition …”

  She let him run out of words, pulled a pad of paper across the desk and wrote, handed it to him. He looked at the number uncomprehendingly.

  “That’s a secured beeper. You have them call if there’s an emergency.” Carling held his gaze, and even though her expression hadn’t changed, he felt some connection again, sparking back to life. “How is she?”

  “The same,” he said, cleared his throat and corrected himself. “Worse, really. They’re worried about renal failure.”

  “How’s her brain function?”

  Her eyes were so calm, so remorseless.

  “She doesn’t have any. She hasn’t for nearly a year.”

  Mrs. Womack rounded the corner and cheerfully held out a silver platter of sandwiches with the edges trimmed away. He chose something that looked like tuna and ate it quickly without much noticing how it tasted. Carling ate, too. Neatly.

  “Mrs. Womack,” she said as she swallowed her last bite of sandwich, “take Mr. Grady to the phone room and get him a clear line. He has to make a phone call.”

  She hadn’t asked him why he’d kept his daughter alive for so long on the machines; he was grateful for that. Other people asked. People who thought they understood what it was like. She’d been so tanned when it had happened—a long hot Texas summer, hours in the pool. He hardly recognized her now, white and thin, with eyes that sometimes opened but never focused. Her skin felt clammy and cool.

  Carling hadn’t asked, How can you force her to live that way? Maybe Carling understood. Maybe.

  He had a brief conversation with Nurse Varnas—no, her condition hadn’t changed—yes, they’d beep him immediately if it did. Nurse Varnas had a cool judgemental voice. When he was finished, he sat staring blankly at the squat black phone until Mrs. Womack put a warm hand on his shoulder and reminded him that his presence was needed in the office.

  Carling had moved to sit behind her desk. She had on a pair of reading glasses that magnified her eyes. She looked at him over the top of the frames and tossed a red folder across to him. Papers skated over mahogany wood.

  “Got another one,” she said. “Pastor at a church in Louisiana. No connection to the other cases, except that the majority of them seemed to be centered in the south and southwest. I’m sending Mrs. Womack and Mendoza down to do data collection.”

  Grady pulled the papers closer and skimmed through the report, settled on the pictures. The upper half of the face was almost normal, except for the boiled-egg eyes. Whoever had tried to save him had gotten to him quickly. Even so, the tissue damage was incredible. It was impossible to tell what in the red and black mess was clothing, what was skin, what was muscle.

  “I want to go,” he said. When she didn’t answer, he looked up at her. “I need to go.”

  “My people can handle things.”

  “I’m not disputing that, but—”

  “Mrs. Womack?” Carling interrupted. He’d forgotten all about the older woman, who still sat in the back of the room, hands neatly folded on her lap. Mrs. Womack fussed with her floral skirt, picking invisible lint from it. “Your opinion?”

  “Ma’am, I’m just an employee.” Mrs. Womack shot him a look that was nakedly ungrandmotherly. “However, if this nice young man insists on acting like a Junior G-man, I’ll cheerfully shoot him in the back. I don’t need your help, son. Tust do your job, and I’ll do mine.”