Gabe glanced around to ensure there was no one he knew or who seemed to be paying undue attention to them. The place was filling up, but none of the faces were familiar.

"So, at this point, what's your guess?"

Blackthorn leaned forward.

"Toxicity," he said in a gravelly whisper.

"Drugs?"

"Some kind, yes."

"But-?"

"Don't ask, Gabe, because I don't have the answers. Right now, though, that's the only thing that makes any sense to me. The man is taking something that's causing this, or someone is finding a way to get something into his body."

Gabe sighed and exhaled slowly. The implications of what the psychologist was suggesting were staggering.

"I don't even begin to know what to do with that."

"Those blood samples you drew would be a good place to start. I would find the best forensic chemist you can find and have the specimens tested for anything that's not normally found in the human body-anything and everything."

Gabe felt sick about having allowed the samples to vanish. He should have had the presence of mind to take them back to his apartment.

"Will do," he said, wondering if there was anything to be gained by drawing blood from Drew in between the attacks. Certainly, a negative report would prove nothing.

"There's more," Blackthorn said, smoothing a few errant wisps of long gray and black hairs from his forehead.

"Go on."

"I don't quite know how to say this, Gabe, so I'm going to start by telling you that you can accept what I'm going to share or reject it. And other than to say that I believe my lack of eyesight since birth has everything to do with what I'm going to tell you, I have no real explanation. But I have had enough experience with my unusual ability to believe with certainty that it exists."

"Unusual ability?"

The psychologist hesitated, perhaps to emphasize that what he was about to disclose was personal and private.

"Most but not all the time," he said finally, "I can tell with some consistency when someone is lying. Call it a sixth sense if you wish, although in my case it would be the fifth. But I get a strange, almost indescribable feeling deep in my thoughts when a person isn't telling the truth, or even when they are withholding information and telling a half-truth. There's a word that I believe is from Zen-shingan. It means 'mind's eye' and refers to the ability to sense a person's thoughts or feelings. I believe that I am in touch with my shingan."

Over the years, Gabe had encountered enough examples of the power of the mind-body connection not to be surprised by anything in that regard. But that was the mind-body connection within a person. The notion that there were individuals who could read the auras or minds of others still had not taken root for him. Now a man he respected to the point of reverence was claiming to be something of a living polygraph-a psychic of sorts.

Shingan.

"What does this ability have to do with the person in question here?" Gabe managed, finally.

"Well," Blackthorn said, "I am not sure I can completely answer your question. But I can tell you that the subject is lying about something, or withholding information."

"Lying about what?"

"I don't know. But whatever it is, is powerful. I felt it almost every time he spoke, regardless of the subject. There is more to your man than we know or he lets on. Perhaps much more."

"But-"

"It may be that in decoding and interpreting the tests I administered something will become clearer. For the moment, what I have told you is all there is."

"And you feel pretty strongly about this shingan… this ability of yours?"

Kyle Blackthorn lifted his head so that he was facing Gabe directly. The lights behind Gabe reflected eerily off Blackthorn's dark glasses.

"I feel as strongly about my ability," he said, "as I do about the fact that you have chosen not to tell me that the blood samples you drew on our patient have disappeared."

CHAPTER 29

The attractive woman and her striking young companion wandered down Beechtree Road in no particular hurry, speaking nonstop and animatedly, often punctuating their conversation with laughter. Alison had grown up around both Spanish and Creole French and was competent, if not fluent, in both. From a distance, unable to hear distinctly even through the open car window, she sensed that they were speaking Spanish.

At the fourth or fifth cross street, Foster, the pair turned right. Alison cruised past them for two blocks, checking their progress through the rearview mirror, then turned onto a side street, drove half a block down, and waited. If she had blundered by assuming the pair were going to stay on Foster, she would have to decide whether it was worth driving around to find them again. Perhaps she should call off the stakeout for the time being, determine the owner of the Porsche and of the elegant Victorian home on Beechtree, and try again another time. Two tense minutes later, the women crossed the side street where Alison was parked and continued down Foster. She left her notes and field glasses on the floor of her Camry and headed after them.

Foster was a busy commercial street, though still with a small-neighborhood feel. The facades of the bistros, specialty stores, and other merchants had been refurbished for a number of blocks, giving the area a surprisingly quaint charm. Walking briskly, Alison followed the pair from across the street until they turned into A Place for Nails, a small salon, one door from the corner of Foster and Coulter.

Half an hour for the manicure and polish, Alison figured, followed by fifteen or twenty minutes in the drying chair or whatever they used. Fifty minutes-an eternity for someone like her, cursed with the patience of a gnat. It was doubtful the two would go anyplace that would shed light on who they were and how they were connected to the president's number-one protector. The only option seemed to be to speak to them directly.

WALK-INS WELCOME, a sign in the window encouraged. Alison examined her nails, which she kept in decent shape for work but did not feel comfortable covering with any color.

As she approached the girl at the counter-Southeast Asian, as were all the manicurists in the salon Alison had gone to shortly after her arrival in D.C.-she realized that she had caught a huge break. There were four manicurists in A Place for Nails. Two were starting work on the woman and the girl, and one was chattering in badly broken English with a blue-haired woman in her eighties. The fourth was at the counter, welcoming Alison with a cheery smile.

"You have time for me?" Alison asked, holding out her nails.

"Oh, bad, very bad," the woman said, her speech nearly identical to that of the girls at the salon in D.C. "What you do? Wash dishes? Build houses?"

From her spot in the first chair, the girl from Beechtree Road peered up to check out the newcomer. Clearly Hispanic, she was even more stunning than Alison had appreciated through the binoculars. It was difficult to tell if she wore any makeup, but there was certainly no need. Her light mocha face was smooth and stress free, with dark, doelike eyes, long lashes, and full, sensual lips. Beneath her ochre tank top, her breasts were already diverting, though not, Alison guessed, nearly as exciting to men as they would be in another year or so.

The girl's older companion was seated with her back to the counter and so missed the brief connection that was taking place. Her charge, if, in fact, that was their relation, smiled somewhat demurely, then lowered her wonderful eyes and turned her attention back to the manicure.

"Actually," Alison said to the manicurist, still totally uncertain as to what was going to follow the word, "I run a day care. Children."