"Man, I'm real sorry about what happened."

"Sorry?"

"After your wife fainted, her two friends told me she's got some kind of low blood pressure problem."

Cavanaugh's hands and feet felt numb.

"I wanted to call an ambulance," the instructor said, "but they said she'd had fainting spells a couple of times before. Nothing life-threatening. Something about her electrolytes being low."

Cavanaugh's stomach turned to ice.

"So I got them a bottle of Gatorade from the machine over there," the instructor said. "They gave her a couple of sips and helped her stand. She was woozy, but she could walk, sort of, if somebody put an arm around her."

"Friends?" Cavanaugh could barely speak.

"Two women who came in behind her. A good thing there were two of them. The one with the crutches couldn't have handled your wife all by herself."

"Crutches?" The lobby seemed to waver.

"Because of a cast on one leg. She said she knew you'd be worried, so she left a message for you." The instructor reached under the counter and set down an envelope.

Cavanaugh's fingers didn't want to work as he fumbled to open it. The neatly hand-printed note inside made him want to scream.

Tor House. Eight tomorrow morning.

10

Grace, Cavanaugh thought. He struggled to keep control. Despite the weakness in his legs and arms, he drove at random through the area, going around blocks, making U-turns and heading back in the direction from which he'd just come. He timed traffic lights so he got through them just before they turned red, using every technique he could think of to make sure he wasn't followed. Cursing, he realized that Grace had made the connection between A Summer Place and Carmel. With no other direction in which to go, she was searching the area as he and Jamie had been doing. Sometime during the day, their paths had crossed. Perhaps at Tor House. Grace didn't know about Prescott's fascination with Robinson Jeffers, but that didn't matter. Tor House was one of the local attractions and had to be investigated. Perhaps Grace had been approaching it when she'd seen Cavanaugh and Jamie get in their car and drive away. That would explain Grace's choice for a meeting place tomorrow. Or had it been on 17-Mile Drive or at Pebble Beach's lodge, or had Grace seen Cavanaugh through binoculars while she scanned Carmel's beach?

This much was certain: Grace had followed him, had taken her chance to grab Jamie, and was probably following Cavanaugh now. Inhaling sharply, he realized that while he'd been away from the Taurus, Grace might have planted a location transmitter in the car, making it easy for her to follow at a distance. Cavanaugh immediately stopped at a gas station and checked the obvious hiding places in and under the car. He used a pay phone to call information and get the numbers for Radio Shack stores in the area. One-to the north, in Monterey-was open until nine o'clock, he discovered. After asking directions about how to get there, he drove the seven miles along Highway 1 as fast as he could without breaking the speed limit. Using an FM receiver that he purchased at the store, he walked around the Taurus several times, slowly changing stations, waiting to hear the beep… beep… beep of the location transmitter. It would be set to one of the unused FM bands in the area. On Grace's end, the loudness or softness of the signal would tell her if Cavanaugh was near or far. But if Grace had managed to get something more sophisticated, something that used ultrasonic transmissions, Cavanaugh couldn't hope to find a comparably sophisticated device at Radio Shack to detect it.

After an hour in which he failed to discover a transmitter, he got back in the Taurus and resumed his evasive driving, frequently checking his rearview mirror to see if any headlights took the same direction he did. At last, fatigue and frustration wore him down. He returned to the motel room that he and Jamie had rented. Grace might use chemicals to make Jamie tell her the name of the place, but as much as Cavanaugh was tempted to spend the night somewhere else, he couldn't let himself. If Jamie escaped, she would phone the room or return to it, looking for him. He kept the lights out, wedged the bureau against the door, and sat on the floor in the corner next to the front window, his knees drawn to his chest, his pistol in his hand, not daring to sleep, ready to shoot if anybody crashed through.

11

Fog made the morning like twilight. Arriving at 7:00 a.m., an hour early, he parked a block away from Tor House. He shut off the headlights, the windshield wipers, and the engine, then stepped out into the fog. The car's heater had done little to warm him. Now the chill dampness made him tremble. Wanting to button his sport coat against the cold but needing to keep it open so he could draw his pistol, he forced himself to move. The fog thickened, shadows deepening. The echo of his footsteps made him shift to the side of the road, where fallen pine needles provided a cushion.

As he approached the street on which Tor House was located, he wasn't sure what he hoped to accomplish by arriving early. The fog prevented him from identifying any ambush sites. What am I supposed to do when Grace shows up? he wondered. Shoot? Hope to wound her? Try to force her to tell me where Jamie is? Grace won't let it be that easy, and if this is an ambush, she could just as easily shoot me.

Pausing, trying to assess the shadows of trees, shrubs, and houses before him, Cavanaugh realized that he should have listened to Jamie and not gone after Prescott. Then she wouldn't be missing and he wouldn't be standing here in the fog, as afraid as he'd ever been in his life.

No longer afraid for himself. Afraid for Jamie.

He had difficulty making his legs work. If, in the past weeks, anger had helped him to offset fear, the need to protect Jamie now proved to be an even greater force. During the night, he'd considered doing what Jamie had wanted and asking the FBI for help, but with no time to coordinate a plan, with the risk of a hastily assembled hostage-rescue team giving itself away, there was every chance that Grace would have sensed the danger and not shown up, destroying Cavanaugh's potentially single chance to save Jamie.

As he passed murky trees and spectral homes, shifting closer to where he estimated Tor House was, the fog chilled him to the core, a sensation he would not have thought possible, given the searing heat in his stomach. Because no one lived in Tor House, he was tempted to hide somewhere on the grounds, possibly in Hawk Tower, and hope that the fog would thin in an hour, allowing him to watch Grace's approach.

For all I know, Grace is already hiding on the grounds, he thought. Maybe she's in the tower.

Bup-bup.

The sound made Cavanaugh's heart lurch. He stopped halfway through the fog-shrouded intersection.

Bup-bup.

The sound came closer.

Bup-bup.

Seeing motion in the fog, Cavanaugh drew his pistol.

Bup-bup.

A silhouette appeared at the edge of the fog. The noises stopped.

In the distance, the surf pounded.

"You got here an hour early, huh?" a voice asked. Grace's. "Trying for an advantage. How come I'm not surprised?"

Cavanaugh couldn't speak.

"I'm stepping closer," Grace said. "I'd appreciate it if you don't shoot me again."

Bup-bup.

Grace's tall, trim silhouette emerged from the fog. Again, she had a pseudomilitary look: khaki pants, a matching tuck-in sweater, and a photographer's jacket, the kind with numerous loops and pockets, good for concealing a weapon.

But what Cavanaugh noticed most were the crutches she held under her armpits. The rubber pads on the bottom accounted for the noise he'd heard on the pavement. A cast covered her lower left leg.