"A professional," said Shradick.

The word was enough to make M. J. blanch. Adam saw her chin jerk up, saw the tightening of her lips. She was frightened, all right. She should be. In silence she moved to the table and sat down across from him. The bathrobe gapped open a little; only then did he realize she was naked beneath that terrycloth. How defenseless she looked, he thought. Stripped of everything. Even her clothes.

And at that moment, defenseless was exactly how M. J. felt.

She sat hugging the robe to her breasts, her gaze fixed on the tabletop. She heard Beamis and Shradick rise to leave; dimly she registered their goodbyes, their departing footsteps. Then there came the thud of the front door closing behind them. Closed doors. That's what she saw when she tried to look into the future. Closed doors, hidden dangers.

Once, life had seemed comfortably predictable. Drive to work every morning, drive home every night. A vacation twice a year, a date once in a blue moon. A steady move up the ranks until she'd assume Davis Wheelock's title of Chief ME. A sure thing, he'd told her once.

Now she was reminded that there were no sure things. Not her future. Not even her life.

"You're not alone, M. J.," said Adam.

She looked up and met his gaze across the tabletop.

"Anything you need," he said. "Anything at all-"

"Thanks," she said with a smile. "But I'm not big on accepting charity."

"That's not what I meant. I don't think of you as some charity case."

"But that's exactly what I am at the moment." She rose and began to pace. "Some sort of-of homeless person! Camping out in your guest bedroom."

To her surprise, he suddenly laughed. "To be perfectly honest," he admitted, "you do look a trifle threadbare this morning. Where did you find that awful bathrobe, by the way?"

She glanced down at the frayed terrycloth and suddenly she had to laugh as well. "Your linen closet. I had to wear something, and I figured it was either this or a towel. Where are my clothes, by the way?"

"A lost cause. Thomas had to throw them out."

"He threw out my clothes?"

"Some new things are being delivered."

"In the meantime, I walk around like this?"

"Oh, I don't mind, really. A towel would be fine, too."

She caught his amused downward glance, and realized the robe had sagged open again. Irritably she yanked the edges back together. "Is this how you treat all your lady houseguests? Toss out their clothes and expect them to make do?"

"No, you're privileged. The others only get towels. Hand towels."

Now he had her laughing again. She sat down and noticed the stack of papers on the table. "What's all this?"

"Lieutenant Beamis dropped it off. They're police files. Or, rather, photocopies of files."

"He gave them to you? That's highly irregular."

"It's also just between us. He and I have what you might call a mutual back-scratching arrangement."

"Oh. So what's in the files?"

Adam picked up the top folder. "I have here Nicos Biagi. And Xenia Vargas. And Jane Doe." He looked up at her, almost apologetically. "I'll be honest with you, M. J. I didn't ask for these files on your behalf, but on mine. For Cygnus. I can't argue away the facts. That is my drug out there, killing people. I want to know how they got it."

She focused on the top file. "Let's see what's in there."

He opened Nicos Biagi's folder. "Names and addresses. His family might know where he bought the drug."

"They won't talk. Even Beamis couldn't get it out of them."

"Does that surprise you? They probably smelled cop a mile away. So I'm going to ask them."

"I wonder what odor they'll pin on you."

"The smell of fresh greenbacks? It's very persuasive."

"Adam, you can't walk into the Projects with a bulging wallet!"

"Can you think of a better incentive?"

"You go in there without protection, and they'll have you for an appetizer."

"Then how am I supposed to reach these-people?" he asked, pointing to the folders. "I went through a half-dozen private detectives, trying to trace Maeve. So I don't have a lot of confidence in so-called professionals. I know that some friend of Nicos, or of Xenia Vargas, has to know the answers. You're the one who said it, M. J. If we can't pinpoint how the drug's getting out of Cygnus, perhaps we can figure out whom it's going to. And how he's getting it."

She looked at him in wonder. She used to think he was just a pretty boy in cashmere. He always managed to surprise her.

"Are you sure you really want to find out?" she asked. "What if the answer turns out to be a nasty surprise?"

"You're referring to Maeve?"

"Her name did cross my mind."

He sighed. "It's something I'll… have to face."

"That's why you're doing this yourself, isn't it? Why you don't just hire a PI to do the legwork. You're afraid of what some outsider will find out about your daughter."

He looked away. "You know, I used to think I could protect her. Pull her off the streets and put her in some sort of program. But it's not going to happen. She refuses to be helped. And in the meantime, people are dying, and I don't know if she's the one responsible…"

"You can't protect her, Adam. One of these days, she'll have to face the music."

"Don't you think I know that?" He shook his head in frustration. "All these years, that's exactly what I've been doing! Protecting her, bailing her out. Paying her bills when she bounced her checks. Booking her appointments with therapists. I kept thinking, if she just had enough attention, if I could just do the right thing-whatever that was-that somehow she'd pull out of it. She wouldn't end up like Georgina."

Georgina . She thought of the name she'd seen, inscribed on the plaque in Hancock General. The Georgina Quantrell Wing.

She asked, gently, "How did your wife die?"

He was silent for so long, she thought perhaps he hadn't heard the question. "She died of a lot of things," he said at last. "The official diagnosis was liver cirrhosis. But the illness really went back, to her childhood. A father addicted to martinis and work. A mother addicted to pills and cigarettes. Georgina looked for comfort wherever she could find it. By the time we met, she'd already been through two husbands and Lord knows how many bottles of gin. I was twenty-four at the time. All I saw was this-this absolutely stunning woman with an adorable daughter. Georgina was adept at covering up. If she had to, she could go off the bottle for weeks at a time, and that's what she did before the wedding. But after we got back from the honeymoon, I noticed she was having a few too many highballs, a few too many glasses of wine. Then Thomas found the stash of bottles in the closet. And that's when I realized how far it had gone…" He shook his head and sighed.

"Fourteen years later, she was dead. And I'm still trying to deal with the aftermath. Namely, Maeve."

"You stayed married to her through all that?"

"I felt I didn't have a choice. But then, neither did she. Self-destruction was in her genes, and she didn't have the will to fight. She just wasn't strong enough." He paused, and added quietly, "Unlike you."

He looked at her then, and she found her gaze trapped in the blue-gray spell of his eyes. They reached out to each other across the table and their fingers touched, twined together. That joining of warmth was enough to make her heart sing. They held on, even through the ringing of the doorbell and the sound of Thomas's footsteps crossing the foyer to answer it.

Only the polite clearing of a throat made them finally look up. Thomas was standing in the doorway. "Mr. Q.?" he said. "The wardrobe consultant is here from Neiman-Marcus. I thought perhaps Dr. Novak would like to look over the selections."