There were three officers panting and sweating, and one of them stopped right by me and his eyes dropped to my belt. His hand subtly dropped to his semiautomatic pistol and released the thumb snap. I did not move.

"Ma'am," he said in his most official police voice, "you're going to have to come with me."

I was shocked.

"Are those your bags under the seat?"

"Yes." Adrenaline was roaring through me. The other passengers were absolutely still. The officer quickly stooped to pick up my purse and overnight bag, his eyes not leaving me. I got up and they led me out. All I could think was that someone had planted drugs in one of my bags. Denesa Steiner had, and I crazily looked around the tarmac and at the plate glass windows of the terminal. I looked for someone looking at me, a woman who was back in the shadows watching the latest dilemma she had caused me.

A member of the ground crew in a red jumpsuit pointed at me.

"That's her!" he said excitedly.

"It's on her belt!"

I suddenly knew what this was about.

"It's just a phone." I slowly raised my elbows so they could see beneath my suit jacket. Often when I wore slacks, I carried my portable phone on my belt so I didn't have to keep digging it out of my bags.

One of the officers rolled his eyes. The ground crewman looked horrified.

"Oh, no," he said.

"It looked exactly like a nine- millimeter, and I've been around FBI agents before and she looks like one of them."

I just stared at him.

"Ma'am," one of the officers said, "do you have a firearm in either of these bags?"

I shook my head.

"No, I do not."

"We're really sorry, but he thought you were wearing a gun on your belt, and when the pilots checked the passenger list, they didn't see anyone on it who was authorized to carry a gun on the plane."

"Did someone tell you I was wearing a gun?" I demanded of the man in the jumpsuit.

"If so, who?" I glanced around some more.

"No. No one told me. I thought I saw it when you walked past," he lamely went on.

"It's that black case it's in. I'm sure sorry."

"It's all right," I said, my graciousness strained.

"You were just doing your job." An officer said, "You can go back on the plane." By the time I returned to my seat, I was trembling so violently my knees were almost knocking, and I felt eyes on me. I did not look at anyone as I tried to read the paper. The pilot was considerate enough to announce what had happened.

"She was armed with a nine-millimeter portable phone," he continued to explain the delay as everybody laughed. This was one upset I could not blame on her, but I realized with stunning clarity that assuming she had caused it was automatic. Denesa Steiner was controlling my life. People I loved had become her pawns. She had come to dominate what I thought and did, and was always at my heels, and the revelation sickened me. It made me feel half crazy. A soft hand touched my arm and I jumped.

"We really feel bad about this," a flight attendant said quietly. She was pretty, with per med blond hair.

"At least let us buy you a drink."

"No, thank you," I said.

"Would you like a snack? I'm afraid all we've got are peanuts."

I shook my head.

"Don't feel bad. I would hope you would check out anything that might jeopardize the safety of your passengers." I talked on, saying exactly the right words as my mind soared in flight patterns that had nothing to do with where we were.

"It's nice of you to be such a good sport."

We landed in Asheville as the sun went down, and my briefcase quickly came off the one carousel in the small baggage department. I went back into a ladies' room and transferred my handgun to my purse, then I went out on the curb and got a cab. The driver was an old fellow in a knit cap that he had pulled below his ears. His nylon jacket was dingy and frayed around the cuffs, and his big hands looked raw on the wheel as he drove at a prudent speed and made sure I understood it was quite a distance to Black Mountain. He was worried on my behalf about the fare because it could be close to twenty dollars. I closed my eyes as they began to water, and I blamed it on the heat blasting to drive out the cold.

The roar inside the ancient red-and-white Dodge reminded me of the plane as we headed east toward a town that had been shattered without being aware of it. Its citizens could not even begin to understand what really had happened to a little girl walking home with her guitar. They could not comprehend what was happening to those of us who had been called in to help.

We were being destroyed one by one because the enemy had an uncanny ability to sense where we were weak and where we could be hurt. Marino was prisoner and weapons carrier for this woman. My niece, who was like my daughter, was head injured in a treatment center, and it was a miracle she had not died. A simple man who swept floors and sipped moonshine in the mountains was about to be lynched for a hideous crime he had not committed, and Mote would retire on disability, while Ferguson was dead.

The cause and effect of evil spread out like a tree that blocked all light inside my head. It was impossible to know where the wickedness had started and where it would end, and I was afraid to analyze too closely if one of its twisted limbs had caught me up. I did not want to think my feet might no longer be in contact with the ground.

"Ma'am, is there anything else I can do for you?" I was vaguely aware that the driver was speaking to me.

I opened my eyes. We were parked in front of the Travel-Eze, and I wondered how long we had been there.

"I hated to wake you. But it'd be a lot more comfortable to get in your bed instead of sitting out here. Maybe cheaper, too." The same yellow-haired clerk welcomed me back as he checked me in. He asked me which side of the motel I'd like to be on. As I recalled, one side viewed the school where Emily had gone and the other offered a panorama of the interstate. It didn't matter because the mountains were all around, blazing in the day and black against the starry night sky.

"Just put me in nonsmoking, please. Is Pete Marino still here?" I asked.

"He sure is, though he don't come in much. Would you rather be next to him?"

"No, I'd rather not. He's a smoker and I'd like to be as far away from that as I can." This was not my reason, of course.

"Then I'll just put you on a different wing."

"That would be fine. And when Benton Wesley gets in, will you have him ring my room immediately?" Then I asked him to call a car rental company and have something with an air bag delivered to me early in the morning.

I went to my room and locked and chained the door and propped a chair beneath the knob. I kept my revolver on top of the toilet while I took a long, hot bath with several drops of Hermes perfuming the water. The fragrance stroked me like warm, loving hands, moving up my throat and face and lightly through my hair. For the first time in a while I felt soothed, and at intervals I ran more hot water and the perfume's sweet oily splashes swirled like clouds. I had pulled the shower curtain shut, and in this fragrant sauna I dreamed.

The times I had relived loving Benton Wesley could not be counted. I did not want to admit how often the images leaned against my thoughts until I could no longer resist giving myself up to their embrace. They were more powerful than anything I had ever known, and I had stored every detail of our first encounter here, though it had not happened exactly here. I had memorized the number of that room and would know it forever.

In truth, my lovers had been few, but they had all been formidable men who were not without sensitivity and a certain acceptance that I was a woman who was not a woman. I was the body and sensibilities of a woman with the power and drive of a man, and to take away from me was to take away from themselves. So they gave the best they had, even my ex-husband. Tony, who was the least evolved in the lot, and sexuality was a shared erotic competition. Like two creatures of equal strength who had found each other in the jungle, we tumbled and took as much as we gave.