But he couldn't allow himself to back off, couldn't give in to his fear. If he did, he knew it would be the first of many times when he would give in to it. The surf took him under, lifted him, dropped him. With a mighty exhale, he blew water from his snorkel and stared through his water-beaded face mask. Judging the surf, he worked his legs and his arms, straining to avoid rocks projecting from the ocean. A wave slammed him against the cliff.

If not for the buffer of his wet suit, the granite would have flayed his shoulder. Wincing from the impact, he grabbed for an outcrop, was swept away, then was caught by another wave and again slammed against the cliff; but this time, as he groaned, his gloved hand caught a fissure in the rock. He gripped harder and pawed with his other glove. Finding a higher fissure, he pulled himself up before the next wave struck his legs and almost tugged him off the cliff.

As he dangled above the thunderous water, Cavanaugh released one hand from the cliff and pulled off his face mask and snorkel. Breathing greedily, he dropped the mask into the waves, then kicked off his flippers and dropped them also. He crammed his rubber-protected feet into a niche, hung for a moment, sucked more air into his lungs, then slowly began his ascent through the darkness. Spray flew around him. He'd cut off the tips of his rubber gloves so that his fingers would be better able to grip outcrops, but the remainder of the gloves interfered with his mobility. He soon had to release his hands, one at a time, use his teeth to pull off each glove, then drop them to the waves beneath him. Instantly, his palms were cold, but not enough to immobilize his grip, his fingers continuing to grab and hold.

He pulled himself higher. The cord looped around his left wrist was attached to a spool that had a release switch. He'd pressed the switch just before he reached the rocks, allowing the cord to unwind as the waterproof bag floated in the crashing surf. Thus, he could climb without the weight of the bag dragging him back. Higher. He had the sense that his fingers were bleeding. They didn't matter. Only not giving up mattered. He reached for a handhold, shoved his feet into another fissure, reached again, and touched the rock wall at the top, gaining energy from knowing that this part of the ordeal was almost over.

The miniature TV cameras hidden under each corner of the eaves were aimed toward each other. They could show someone creeping around either corner, but the limited field of vision afforded through holes in the birdhouses made it impossible for them to provide a view of the waist-high wall above the cliff. Ca-vanaugh raised himself, balanced on the wall's foot-wide rim, and pulled the cord looped around his wrist, hoisting his equipment bag. Water dripped from the bag as he set it down. Throughout, he studied the back of Prescott's house. Harsh lights illuminated the corners and the French doors across from him. Like the shattered windows, the doors were covered with sheets of plywood. A padlock secured the doors. Yellow crime-scene tape was stretched across them. A police department sign nailed to the plywood warned that trespassers would be prosecuted.

Cavanaugh unzipped the waterproof bag and pulled out the sawed-off shotgun, along with a nylon bag of shells that he hitched over his right shoulder. He removed the Emerson knife and clipped it to the neck of his wet suit. He took out a pouch of his lock-pick tools. Finally, he threw off the wet suit's hood and reached into the bag for night-vision goggles that he'd found at the military-surplus store while buying the Zodiac boat. He draped the goggles around his neck.

Ready, he dropped to the terrace, sank to the flagstones, and squirmed across them toward the French doors, the bottom of which was another area that the angle of the TV cameras couldn't reach. When he came to a crouch, he at last risked being seen as he hurriedly picked the lock. He opened the doors, rushed into the dark house, shut the doors, put on his night-vision goggles, and aimed the shotgun.

^His goggles gave the dark interior a faint green illumination as he checked the wreckage of the living room and then shifted left into the media room, then the guest bedroom and bathroom. These areas weren't his main interest, but he had to make sure they weren't a threat. Satisfied, he crept toward the opposite side of the house, broken glass scraping under his rubber-protected feet. The vague smell of cordite still lingered in the air. At once, Cavanaugh knew that the TV cameras had at the last moment revealed him crouching to pick the padlock and enter the house- because the smell of cordite was overpowered by the sudden pungent stench of the hormone.

Until now, Cavanaugh's wet suit had been comfortably warm. Now the sweat that squirted from his body raised his temperature so much that he felt as if he were in a sauna. Almost dizzy from the heat under his wet suit, he risked taking his right hand off the shotgun for the few seconds he needed to pull down the wet suit's zipper, exposing his chest. The effort made no difference.

In Karen's basement, he had thought he'd endured the full force of the hormone, but now, as the smell became almost unbearable, he understood that he had no idea how powerful Prescott's weapon could be. His legs threatened not to support him. His stomach felt simultaneously scaldingly hot and polar-cold. His pulse was so fast, he came close to fainting.

Part of him wanted to roll into a ball and pray for this nightmare to end. Another part compelled him to pivot in an increasingly rapid circle, pointing his shotgun anywhere and everywhere. His body heat misted the faint green images of his night-vision goggles. Surrounded by every imaginable threat, seeing through fear-narrowed vision, he spotted a man with a pistol aiming at him from the corridor that led to the master bedroom. He came within a millisecond of pulling the trigger, then realized that the man with a pistol was merely a shadow, that this was how the Rangers and the SWAT team had reacted.

Cavanaugh's only advantage was that he'd suffered the hormone's effects and knew what to expect. Even so, as the pungent smell became strong enough to make him taste bile, he heard unnerving noises that he realized were pathetic whimpers forcing their way from his throat. The heaving bellows of his lungs made the whimpers come and go, come and go, each time stronger, building to a scream that he repressed by racing along the corridor to the master bedroom.

Charging inside, he didn't dare think, didn't dare hesitate or second-guess himself. The huge bedroom had an arcade video game next to a luxurious reading chair. A large flat-screen plasma TV was mounted to the wall at the foot of the bed, a cabinet of electronics next to it. To the right of the TV, a sliding door led into a closet. That afternoon, Cavanaugh had looked into the closet and seen Prescott's designer jackets hanging on a rod, cedar shelves of expensive tank tops, T-shirts, and sweaters behind them.

Now he shoved a bureau from the side of the room and rammed it into the closet so hard that he broke off the pole that supported the jackets. He yanked down the electronics cabinet and the plasma TV, shattering its screen. With the closet blocked and the wall at the foot of the bed fully exposed, he pulled earplugs from his bag of shotgun shells and put them on. His shaky fingers could barely do the job. The pungent smell was so overpowering that he came close to bending forward and retching. Cursing, he stepped back, raised the shotgun, and fired at a spot three feet from the ceiling. Nearly knocked back by the recoil, which his shuddering body could barely support, he was gratified that the almost-severed plastic shell separated from its base when the gunpowder detonated. Like a miniature rocket, the main part of the shell and the buckshot within it roared toward the top of the wall, blasting apart on impact, creating a fist-sized hole, through which the buckshot burst like shrapnel. An eerie pale light was visible through the hole.