'I'm going to quit,' she finally said when we passed through Fredericksburg. 'This is it for me. I'll find something somewhere. Maybe in computers.'

'Bullshit,' Marino answered, his eyes on her in the rearview mirror. 'That's just what the bitch wants you to do. Quit law enforcement. Be a loser and a big fuck-up.'

'I am a loser and a fuck-up.'

'Bull fucking shit,' he said.

'She killed him because of me,' she went on in the same heartless monotone.

'She killed him because she wanted to. And we can sit here and have a pity party, or we can figure out what we're gonna do before she whacks the next one of us.'

But my niece was not to be consoled. Indirectly, she had exposed all of us to Carrie a long time ago.

'Carrie wants you to blame yourself for this,' I said to her.

Lucy did not respond, and I turned around to look at her. She was dressed in dirty BDUs and boots, her hair a mess. She still smelled of fire, because she had not bathed. She had not eaten or slept, as best I knew. Her eyes were flat and hard. They glinted coldly of the decision she had made, and I had seen the look before, when hopelessness and hostility made her self-destructive. A part of her wanted to die, or maybe a part of her already had.

We reached my house at half past five, and the slanted rays of the sun were hot and bright, the sky hazy blue but cloudless. I carried in newspapers from the front steps and was sickened again by this morning's front-page headline about Benton's death. Although identification was tentative, it was believed he had died in a fire under very suspicious circumstances while assisting the FBI in the nationwide hunt for the escaped killer Carrie Grethen. Investigators would not say why Benton had been inside the small grocery store that had burned, or if he might have been lured there.

'What do you want to do with this?' Marino asked.

He had opened the car trunk, where three large brown paper bags contained the personal effects collected from Benton's hotel room. I could not decide.

'Want me to just put them in your office?' he asked. 'Or I can go through them if you want, Doc.'

'No, no, just leave them,' I said.

Stiff paper crackled as he carried the bags into the house and down the hall. His footsteps were burdened and slow, and when he returned to the front of the house, I was still standing by the open door.

'I'll talk to you later,' he said. 'And don't go leaving this door open, you hear me? The alarm stays on and you and Lucy shouldn't go out anywhere.'

'I don't think you have a worry.'

Lucy had dropped her luggage in her bedroom near the kitchen and was staring out the window at Marino driving away. I came behind her and gently put my hands on her shoulders.

'Don't quit,' I said, and I leaned my forehead against the back of her neck.

She did not turn around, and I felt grief shudder through her.

'We're in this together, Lucy,' I went on quietly. 'We're all that's left, really. Just you and me. Benton would want us united in this. He wouldn't want you giving up. Then what will I do, huh? If you give up, you'll be giving up on me, too.'

She began to sob.

'I need you.' I could barely talk. 'More than ever.'

She turned around and clung to me the way she used to when she was a frightened child starved for someone who cared. Her tears wet my neck, and for a while we stood in the middle of a room still packed with computer equipment and school books, and plastered with posters of her adolescent heroes.

'It's my fault, Aunt Kay. It's all my fault. I killed him!' she cried out.

'No,' I said, holding her tight as my own tears flowed.

'How can you ever forgive me? I took him away from you!'

'That's not the way it is. You did nothing, Lucy.'

'I can't live with this.'

'You can and you will. We need to help each other live with this.'

'I loved him, too. Everything he did for me. Getting me started with the Bureau, giving me a chance. Being supportive. About everything.'

'It's going to be all right,' I said.

She pulled away from me and collapsed on the edge of the bed, wiping her face with the tail of her sooty blue shirt. She rested her elbows on her knees and hung her head, staring at her own tears falling like rain on the hardwood floor.

'I'm telling you, and you've got to listen,' she said in a low, hard voice. 'I'm not sure I can go on, Aunt Kay. Everybody has a point. Where it begins and ends.' Her breath shook. 'Where they can't go on. I wish she had killed me instead. Maybe she would have done me a favor.'

I watched her with gathering resolve as she willed herself to die before my eyes.

'If I don't go on, Aunt Kay, you've got to understand and not blame yourself or anything,' she muttered, wiping her face with her sleeve.

I went over to her and lifted her chin. She was hot and smoky, her breath and body odor bad.

'You listen to me,' I said with an intensity that would have frightened her in the past. 'You get this goddamn notion out of your head right now. You are glad you didn't die, and you aren't committing suicide, if that's what you're implying, and I believe it is. You know what suicide is all about, Lucy? It's about anger, about payback. It's the final fuck-you. You will do that to Benton? You will do that to Marino? You will do that to me?'

I held her face in my hands until she looked at me.

'You're going to let that no-good piece of trash Carrie do that to you?' I demanded. 'Where's that fierce spirit I know?'

'I don't know,' she whispered with a sigh.

'Yes you do,' I said. 'Don't you dare ruin my life, Lucy. It's been damaged enough. Don't you dare make me spend the rest of my days with the echo of a gunshot sounding on and on in my mind. I didn't think you were a coward.'

'I'm not.'

Her eyes focused on mine.

'Tomorrow we fight back,' I said.

She nodded, swallowing hard.

'Go take a shower,' I said.

I waited until I heard the water in her bathroom running, and then went into the kitchen. We needed to eat, although I doubted either of us felt like it. I thawed chicken breasts and cooked them in stock with whatever fresh vegetables I could find. I was liberal with rosemary, bay leaves, and sherry, but nothing stronger, not even pepper, for we needed to be soothed. Marino called twice while we were eating, to make certain we were all right.

'You can come over,' I said to him. 'I've made soup, although it might be kind of thin by your standards.'

'I'm okay,' he said, and I knew he did not mean it.

'I've got plenty of room, if you'd like to stay the night. I should have thought to ask you earlier.'

'No, Doc. I got things to do.'

'I'm going to the office first thing in the morning,' I said.

'I don't know how you can,' he replied in a judgmental way, as if my thinking about work meant I wasn't showing what I should be showing right now.

'I have a plan. And come hell or high water, I'm going to carry it out,' I said.

'I hate it when you start planning things.'

I hung up and collected empty soup bowls from the kitchen table, and the more I thought about what I was going to do, the more manic I got.

'How hard would it be for you to get a helicopter?' I said to my niece.

'What?' She looked amazed.

'You heard me.'

'Do you mind if I ask what for? You know, I can't just order one like a cab.'

'Call Teun,' I said. 'Tell her I'm taking care of business and need all of the cooperation I can get. Tell her if all goes as I'm hoping, I'm going to need her and a team to meet us in Wilmington, North Carolina. I don't know when yet. Maybe right away. But I need free rein. They're going to have to trust me.'

Lucy got up and went to the sink to fill her glass with more water.

'This is nuts,' she said.