Jacob was connected to Jason only through coincidence: Jason's dealer hadn't sold to Jacob Harper, and was apparently hostile to the people who had. So what did that leave?

The white-haired man? The white-haired man who'd run from them at the hospital was out of keeping with last night's attack, and the attack on Creekso much so that she nearly dismissed him as part of the problem: she didn't know what was going on there, but the white-haired man simply did not fit.

Last night's attacker had been young and strong. Younger than she was, she thought. He liked cologne, and though he was stronger than she was, he wasn't nearly as strong Jake. What else? He'd been coming to court her? Could that be right? He'd tried to talk to her.

She finished showering, tiptoed around the bedroom getting dressed, found her running shoes and a pair of socks and carried them downstairs. She wouldn't be running, but the shoes were quiet. She went to the front door and saw that Harper had piled Coke cans next to it. She unstacked them quietly, unlocked the door, looked out, spotted the paper, reached out and grabbed it. Relocked the door, feeling virtuous.

She ate cold cereal with milk, read comics, pulled on a pair of socks, got a yellow legal pad and a No.2 pencil from her office, sat at the kitchen table and tried to untangle the maze.

White-haired guy. Dead end.

Courting her. He must've met her; he expected her to know himbut maybe not by name or face; maybe he expected only a kind of cosmic connection. Something he said hinted at that; that they were fated together.

And that fit with the killings, and the attack on Creek: if Anna was at the center of a sex triangle, a three-way, or even four-way, maybe he'd conclude that he had to eliminate his competitors.

He must've heard the storywhich meant that anyone who knew all of themJason, Sean, Creek and herselfwas a possibility. And that was not many people. On the other hand, anyone who knew them at all knew that she wasn't sleeping with either Jason or Sean: the idea was ludicrous. They might suspect Creek, because they worked so closely together. but Creek was the last one attacked. Why? Because he was the most dangerous? The hardest to get at?

Huh. They really needed to get to BJ's.

She was still struggling with the list when Harper bumbled out of the guest room, unshaven, wearing last night's pants and a T-shirt.

'How are you?' he asked.

'Creaky,' she said.

'I'm gonna get cleaned up, then we gotta run up to my place so I can get some clothes.'

'All right, and I want to get up in the hills and try out the gun. It's been a while.'

He looked at her for a moment, then said, 'Best thing you could do is go back to your dad's place for a visit. This guy is freaking out: he'll be dead meat in two weeks, whether you're here or not.'

'If I believed that, I might go, but I'm looking at the cops and I'm not seeing much. So. I'm gonna stay.'

He sighed, scratched his prickly face: 'All right. You can shoot out back of my place.'

'Really?' Didn't sound like the valley.

And it wasn't. He lived on a dirt road off Mulholland Highway, halfway down a hill a few miles west of Topanga. Anna laughed when she saw the place, a rambling collection of white-stucco blocks with deep green eaves and red-tiled roof, something that a skilled hippie might have put together in the sixties.

'What?' he asked, when she laughed. His eyes crinkled, amused, at the sound of her.

'It's great,' she said. 'How much land?'

'Twenty acres.'

She was amazed: 'How can you afford it?'

'Bought it fifteen years ago,' he said. 'Built a few pieces at a time.'

'You built it?' Amazed again.

'Yup. Took some classes at the vo-tech on block-work; made friends with a guy who had some heavy equipment, helped him build his place.'

He stopped in a gravel patch in front of the garage. As they got out, a car passed on the road at the bottom of the hill, honked twice, and Harper waved. 'Widow-lady neighbor,' he said.

'Hmm,' Anna said. 'Attractive, rich.'

'Blonde, and got the big, you know.'

'Ears.'

'Exactly the word I was groping for.'

'Yeah, grope,' she said.

The house was cool inside, and a little dim after the glare of the sun on the semi-desert; it was bachelor-neat, the neatness of a man who'd lived alone for a long time, and learned to take care of a house; not precise, not tidy, but most things in their own places, less a couple of socks next to the couch, a couple of beer cans on a table next to a couch that faced an oversized television.

'Gotta get some clothes.' He fished a half-dozen golf shirts out of a drier, plugged in an iron. 'There's a gully out back, if you want to take a look,' he said. 'Take some beer cans out. watch out for snakes.'

She'd brought a box of cartridges with her; and with the pistol in her jacket pocket, and a half-dozen empty beer cans in a sack, crunched through the short dry weeds behind the house, fifty yards out to the mouth of the gully. She found a spot where she could prop the cans against the dirt gully-wall, put them down, and backed off about eight paces.

'All right,' she said. She had the gun out, barrel down, and she said, 'One,' and the gun was up, the heel of her right hand cupped in her left, and she fired a single shot.

The gun bucked, and the muzzle blast was like a slap on the side of the head; her ears rang like a distant phone. Damn; forgot her earmuffs. But the slug had bitten into the dirt four inches from the target can. Not too bad.

She looked around, finally walked back to the house and got some Kleenex, ripped off enough to make marble-sized wads, and pushed them into her ears as she walked back out.

The Kleenex helped, and now she started running through the routine she'd been taught in her gun classes: two shots, one-two. Then three, one-two-three. At twenty feet, she'd hit the target can with one shot out of every four or five. That was fine, the cans were just aiming points: hearts. While she missed with the other shots, she was always closeinside a man's chest. She moved closer, and the number of hits went up. Eventually, she was shooting from six feet, hitting the cans almost every time.

She didn't see Harper coming, but she felt him, turned, took one of the Kleenex wads out of her ears and said, 'Bout done.'

'You're not bad,' he said. He was wearing a fresh blue golf shirt and faded jeans.

'Always had guns around,' she said. 'Out in the country. Want to try?'

'Nope. But let me see a quick two-tap.'

She nodded, put the wad of paper back in her ear, and did a quick two, one of the cans spinning away up the gully.

'But it's much easier when you're shooting at a target, nothing's moving, you're not frightened, you've got no handicaps.'

'Yeah, yeah, they told us all thatand they also said, you gotta do what you can.'

'Go ahead and do another double-tap,' he said, moving up behind her. He put his hand flat against her shoulder blade.

'Don't push, I might shoot myself in the foot,' she said. 'And I've only got one round left.'

'So shoot the one round, and don't worryI'm a highly trained veteran of police combat,' he said. 'I know what I'm doing.'

'All right,' she said, doubtfully. 'Say when.'

'Take it slow, make an aimed shot. whenever you're ready.'

'Okay.' She squared herself to the target. 'Ready?'

'Yeah.'

She focused on the cans, then lifted the gun. As she did, she tightened her legs, expecting a push, or a pull. Instead, he slipped both hands around her, catching her with a lifting motion just under her breasts, and at the same time, kissed her on the neck.

Anna felt like she was coming out of her shoesliked itand at the same time, focused on the target and squeezed off the shot.

'Jesus,' Harper groaned, reeling back, hands over his ears. 'I think you blew my eardrums out.'