Before he could knock and with his arm raised to do so, the door opened. Laurie was standing just inside the threshold, with one fist jammed in the crook of her hip. "Am I glad to see you," she said, motioning over her shoulder with her head. "Would you mind talking to King Louis Quatorze over there?"

Lou leaned in and looked into the living room. Jack was sprawled out on the couch, surrounded by all manner of treats, including juices, fruit, and cookies. Lou looked back at Laurie. He had to admit she looked good considering her horrid experience less than a week previously at the hands of vengeful two-bit mafioso types. Her face had her normal color, and her eyes were bright and fully open.

"He thinks he can order in a semirecumbent exercise bike today and just hop on. Can you imagine?"

"That might be rushing it," Lou agreed.

"Now, don't you gang up on me," Jack warned, but with a smile.

"I'm not getting involved," Lou said, raising his hands. "I'm just calling it as I see it. But let me ask the two of you a question: Are you getting a little stir-crazy locked up in here together?" Lou knew that Laurie had been essentially ordered to take sick leave after her abduction and torture.

Laurie and Jack glanced irritably at each other, then simultaneously laughed.

"All right!" Lou ordered. "What's so funny now? Am I the butt of a joke?"

Jacked waved Lou away. "Not at all. I think we both realized at the same instant that you were correct. Is that right, Laurie?"

"I'm afraid so. I think we've been getting on each other's nerves because neither one of us can do what we want to do. We both want to get out."

Clearly happier than they had been five minutes earlier, Jack and Laurie welcomed a visit with Lou, for whom Laurie had quickly made fresh coffee. Laurie was sitting on the couch next to Jack, and Lou in a side chair on the opposite side of the coffee table.

"So, how are both you guys?" Lou asked, balancing his coffee on his knee.

Laurie looked at Jack and motioned for him to go first.

"I'm as good as can be expected," Jack said. "The surgery went fine, and, thanks to Laurie, I didn't get anything I hadn't signed up for, meaning a fulminant MRSA infection. I'm chagrined, to say the least, that I didn't give the threat more credence. But I have to say, if a doctor tells you you're going to have a little discomfort after a surgery, don't believe him or her. Surgeons lie like crazy. But with that proviso, in general I guess I'm doing okay. It's just hard looking out my living-room window at night seeing the guys having a run. I feel like a kid quarantined."

"What about you, Laur?" Louis asked, switching his line of vision. Laur had been the name given to Laurie by Lou's kids back when Lou had first met her fifteen years previously.

Laurie flashed a questioning expression. "I feel a heck of a lot better than people think I should. I'm sure it's a function of the Rohypnol I was given. I mean, I'd heard date-rape pills frequently caused considerable amnesia, but I had no idea how total it would be or that it could involve retrograde events. I remember only sketchily confronting Osgood and then being locked in the storeroom. I'm not sure how I got out, although I do remember being chased by what's his name."

"Adam Williamson," Lou put in. "A tragic figure, I might add. At least in some regards. He's an Iraq veteran who went through hell and has a lot of resultant mental problems."

"Did he pull through?" Jack asked. He noticed that Lou used the present tense.

"He did. He's going to make it. What we're not sure about is whether he's going to be willing to plea bargain with us. Obviously, we have him on attempted murder and conspiracy. You do know he was about to shoot you at point-blank range, don't you, Laurie?"

"That's what I was told. Isn't there a witness to the fact?"

"We have two good witnesses," Lou said. "And the king of all ironies is that Angelo is the one who saved you by shooting Adam before Adam shot you."

"That part I don't remember," Laurie admitted. "In fact, I don't remember anything else until gradually waking up in the hospital."

"It's a good thing," Lou said. "When we got there in the middle of Upper New York Bay, they had you rigged up with what they used to call cement boots."

"So I heard," Laurie said with a shudder.

"That reminds me," Jack said. "First, how did you know she was out there, and once you did, how in tarnation did you find them out there in the middle of New York Bay in the dark?"

"That's the best part," Lou said. "And truthfully, I don't mind taking a little credit. The floater we picked up Monday night scared the bejesus out of us, making me worry about a Mob war breaking out, like I told you. When I found out that the word on the street was that Vinnie Dominick was behind it, I went over to Paul Cerino's old organization to tip them off, thinking the floater might have been in cahoots with them. As it turned out, he wasn't, but the Vaccarros were concerned enough to follow Vinnie's principle enforcers, Angelo and Franco, and discovered Vinnie had squirreled away a sizable yacht, which they were using for nasty purposes. The next part is the cleverest. What they did was to figure out a way to get the city, meaning me, to get rid of the competition Vinnie represented. And how they did it was secretly to put a GPS tracking device on the yacht and then wait until a good opportunity arose. Louie Barbera, Paul Cerino's replacement, called me up Thursday evening right at the point I was despairing and offered me the website and the password and user name for the GPS device. He also told me what he thought was about to happen so we wouldn't waste time, and we didn't. It was just lucky we got there when we did for your benefit. At the same time, the opportunity couldn't have been any better from a law-enforcement angle. We reeled in Vinnie Dominick and all his top guys in one fell swoop, plus another guy by the name of Michael Calabrese. And best of all, we got them all for attempted first-degree murder, hardly a minor charge. Furthermore, while the crime guys have been poring over the boat, trace blood was discovered that belonged to the two floaters, whom we have identified as Paul Yang and Amy Lucas, both from New Jersey, and both worked for Angels Healthcare."

Laurie stiffened. "Angels Healthcare that runs the Angels hospitals?"

"None other. It's a relatively complicated story and the investigation is ongoing, involving the FBI and the SEC. Sadly, it is just another one involving huge amounts of potential money, the kind of corruption we've all heard a bit too much of these days, although in this case there was a generous amount of old-fashioned crime involved, like murder, as well as the newer white-collar variety. As you correctly sensed, Laurie, the MRSA was being purposefully spread, and not just for terrorist purposes. There was a method to the madness. What a group of people was trying to do was sabotage the IPO and, in a sense, the specialty-hospital concept."

"Who was responsible?" Laurie asked.

"Ultimately, the people behind it are lobbyists, mostly former lawyer-politicians who had morphed into becoming lobbyists after either retiring or being voted out of office. Of the particular organization we are speaking of, they had landed the perfect clients: the AHA and the FAH. What they had been hired to do was to make absolutely sure that the Senate moratorium on building specialty hospitals and registering them with CMS, or Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, be changed into law. But they didn't do it. Somehow, they dropped the ball. Wanting to keep the AHA and the FAH as clients, they shouldered the responsibility to make absolutely certain the first IPO after the moratorium was lifted would not be successful. Hence, they conjured up the MRSA initiative, as I've been calling it. Their thinking was that it would be viewed as a natural phenomenon, and that investors would be driven away by the cash crunch the post-op infections would cause."