The dog licked her from chin to eyebrow. Her breath was nothing short of awful, but it was familiar to Tess now. She almost liked it.

"Look, if Esskay wants to stick it out with me, I guess I have to take her home. We can walk her after dark, turn the terrace into a dog run, get a bodyguard. We'll figure something out. If Spike wanted me to take care of this dog, there must be a reason."

Smugly now, the dog took her position in the backseat, insisting on standing, just as she had the first night Tess had taken her home. But this time, Esskay was more firmly rooted, holding her stance on the turns. A week ago, a day ago, even five minutes ago, Tess had firmly believed dogs could not smile. Yet this one was practically leering in her delight.

"So much for Plan One," she told Crow. "Still up for Plan Two?"

"Sure," he said, eyes on the road. "It doesn't seem fair, though."

"Plan Two?"

"The fact she loves you more than she loves me. You've hardly done anything for her, while I was reading books and making special meals and pulling bones out of her throat. She should love me best. But I guess that's how it works, sometimes."

"Sometimes," Tess admitted.

At the Point, Crow parked near the delivery door. While he rang the bell, Tess crouched out of sight behind the car. After a few minutes, Tommy came out, blinking in the morning sun. Although he wore what appeared to be sleep clothes-a dingy white T-shirt and Carolina blue sweat-pants with a crotch that bagged to his knees-he had taken the time to put on his ankle boots, the zippered ones that wouldn't slip off his thin ankles.

"We don't start serving for a couple hours, buddy," he told Crow between yawns. Luckily, they had never met, although Spike had checked Crow out when he and Tess had first started seeing each other. "You and your collitch friends can come back at noon."

"But Mr. Orrick, you won the television set in our fraternity raffle," Crow said with sunny sincerity. Tess was impressed. She hadn't known he could lie as well as she could.

"I won a TV?"

"Big-screen," Crow said, gilding the lily. Tommy could be had for a Walkman, or an old transistor radio. "You are Spike Orrick, aren't you? I wasn't here the night you bought the raffle ticket, but my fraternity brother said I would find you here."

"Oh, sure, sure," Tommy said excitedly. "Now I remember."

"We've got it back at the frat house. I thought I'd take you over so you could get it today. Do you have time now?"

Tommy practically ran to the car, settling himself in the front passenger seat. Esskay, who had finally stretched out in back, stuck her head between the bucket seats and licked his neck.

"Hey, where'd ja get this dog-" Before Tommy finished, Tess had slipped into the passenger door and plunked herself in Tommy's lap, fastening the seat belt over both of them. Crow roared out of The Point's parking lot like an experienced getaway driver.

"What the fuck are you doin', Tess? This is kidnapping." Then, as an afterthought, "Damn, you're a big girl, ain'cha?"

"We're taking you down to my Aunt Kitty's place and we're going to keep you there until you tell us what happened to Spike and what Esskay has to do with it." She curled her hands over his, so he couldn't pinch or tickle her. Tommy was not above fighting dirty.

"I don't know anything," he whined, pulling his head to the side so he could breathe. Esskay licked his forehead with increasing interest, perhaps trying to decide if Tommy might be a good substitute for her Teddy bear, left behind at Rock's. Certainly, he was larger, with more surface area to lick.

"This is kidnapping," Tommy repeated. "That's a feral offense."

"Luckily, Kitty isn't dating anyone in law enforcement right now, so who's going to know? And with your only real friend in a coma, who's going to care? You remember, your good friend Spike, whose big-screen TV you were about to take for yourself."

"I just wanted it for the bar, to help business. By the way, I'm adding torture to those charges. This dog stinks."

"As you once said so memorably, Tommy, that's like the pot telling the kettle to get out of the kitchen if it can't stand the heat."

Chapter 17

You couldn't call Tommy tough, but he had a stubborn streak, and that could be almost as good under the right circumstances. For most of the morning, he sat sullenly and silently in Kitty's kitchen. Tess sensed his dignity had been offended by her ploy, which had been predicated on Tommy not being a serious physical threat. To make him feel better, she tied him to his chair with a pair of Kitty's silk scarves, although she doubted he would try to run and knew she could catch him if he did. His zippered ankle boots would slow him down on the cobblestones of Fells Point.

"Would you like something to eat?" Crow, although fortified on doughnuts, had prepared a large breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, hopeful the smell of food would entice Tommy into talking. But food had never interested Tommy. He ate only enough to balance his beer intake.

"No, thank you, I'm maintaining just fine," he said, giving Tess a wounded look. Laurence Olivier couldn't have delivered the line with more gravitas.

"A coma's a serious thing," Crow told Tommy, pushing the plate of eggs a little closer.

"Uh-huh. Serious as a heart attack," said an unmoved Tommy.

"And what if Spike never comes to?" Crow asked. "These guys may not go away. They may hurt Tess, or her parents. They seem to be pretty dangerous guys."

"The dredges of society," Tommy agreed.

Tess leaned over and whispered in Crow's ear, "This is hopeless. We're going to have to pull out our big gun."

Crow left the room and Kitty returned in his place, red curls bouncing, bright red high heels dancing across the wooden floors. Just looking at her, Tommy flushed a shade even darker than her shoes. He had never actually spoken with Kitty-he had always been too tongue-tied to dare. But Tess knew he had noticed her. All men did.

"Good morning, Tommy," Kitty said, as if it were perfectly normal for him to be tied to a chair in her kitchen. "I hear you've been doing a great job running The Point in Spike's absence."

Tommy nodded curtly. Even with his pillow hair and baggy baby blue sweats, he had an odd dignity.

"He'll be so proud of you when he hears." Kitty leaned over Tommy, her mouth deliriously close to his ear, her long skirt brushing against his ankles like a friendly cat. "I really do think he'll wake up, that he'll be with us again. People do come out of comas, you know, sometimes with remarkably few ill effects. There's still so much we don't know about the brain."

"I have read that myself," Tommy said, his thoughtful tone suggesting he gleaned his medical news from the New England Journal of Medicine, instead of the Weekly World News.

"What worries me is how Spike is going to feel if he finds out you refused to tell Tess what she needs to know," Kitty said. "I'm sure you think you're protecting him by not sharing his secrets with Tess, but I can't imagine Spike wanted Tess endangered."

Tommy looked confused and troubled. Suddenly, this conversation was headed somewhere he didn't want it to go.

"But she kidnapped me!" he protested. "She used brute force!"

"Only because you wouldn't talk to her when she visited you at The Point that last time. And now these guys are following her, because they think she has whatever it is they want. Maybe because you told them that." Kitty was at eye level with him now, her mouth so close to his it must have hurt a little. "What if they hurt her as badly as they hurt Spike? Do you want to be the one to explain that to him? Do you want to be the one to tell me something has happened to my niece?"