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The Latin tempo was climbing the walls and thrumming in the floorboards.

Forced down to her knees again, she clawed her way up his legs, and he allowed it. Long fingernails raked his breast, buttons went flying, and a small spot of blood appeared on his white shirt. All around the room, breath was sucked in and moans expelled. The two dancers tangoed on. The music reached a crescendo as Isabelle slapped his face-and he loved it.

The song ended like sudden death.

The dancers turned their backs on one another. Oren walked toward the terrace, and Isabelle walked toward the caterer's bar. Applause rose up like thunder.

"Well, that was different," said the judge, raising his voice to be heard above the clapping hands, the stomps and whistles. "I don't think I've ever seen blood drawn on a dance floor."

Hannah looked upon the bloodletting as progress in a somewhat stalled relationship. "I bet those two get married."

The judge doubted this, offering recent evidence that Isabelle would rather kill Oren than wed him. And Evelyn Straub ventured that Isabelle could do both. "I don't see a conflict."

"Ma'am?" One of the caterer's people stood by the table, looking down at a saucer that had been used as an ashtray.

When asked to put out her cigarette, the grande dame of hoteliers looked up at the waitress, a young girl who could be easily killed with a word or two. Yet Evelyn did nothing to harm her. Instead, she took her smoking cigarette outside in search of some small dog that she might kick.

Approaching her golden years, she found pleasure in small things.

The couple on the terrace stood close together, sheltered by the low-hanging branch of a tree and the privacy of darkness. They never noticed Isabelle Winston in the open doorway. She held two wineglasses, one of them a peace offering for Oren Hobbs, but he had found other company.

Eleven years old again, shy again, dying of it, Isabelle left them a gift of two champagne flutes abandoned on the terrace wall.

Oren bowed to his companion and gently took the lady's hand to lead her out of the shadows. He pulled her to him, and they moved to the strains of slow music wafting out from the ballroom. The dancing partners closed their eyes. Oren Hobbs held a slender woman with long brown hair the color of lions, and Evelyn Straub danced with the boy from the moon.

Sally Polk was never far behind the sheriff as he made his way through the crowd, shaking hands and flashing his politician's smile. He had yet to notice her, but she was a patient woman.

Ah, now Cable Babitt was turning her way. He saw her, and the effect was electric-a bit like a cattle prod to the private parts.

Apparently, her new party frock made quite an impression on him, though it was nothing stylish, just something grabbed off a rack in haste, and chosen only for its color. Maybe her bright green dress reminded him of some errand left undone, for now he was moving toward the door. She walked after him, taking her own sweet time, yet relentless in the click of high heels dogging him.

Can you hear me coming, Cable?

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A suitcase lay open on the bed, and two more stood by the door. Isabelle slammed a bureau drawer and opened another. "This is because of him, isn't it?" Her hands balled into fists as she turned to her mother. "It always ends like this!"

The hired car would be here any moment-so little time left. Sarah Winston stood by the window, dividing attention between her child and the driveway below. "Belle, you can't stay here and watch over me every minute. I want you to have a life of your own."

Isabelle held a blouse in her hands, absently twisting it into a rope. She dropped it into the open suitcase. Eyes full of tears-finally-for these tantrums always ended with tears, she crossed the room, reaching out to her mother.

Sarah opened her arms to an embrace and kissed her daughter's hair. Turning her eyes to the window, she saw the approaching headlights of the limousine. "The car is here. I'll tell the driver you're almost ready. You'll be back in London soon."

Isabelle would not release her hold. "Don't make me leave. Please, Mom. I won't fight with him anymore. I'll be good."

Sarah held her daughter tightly. So little time-this moment only. Better to be stabbed with a knife, better that than to hear this old refrain from the first time she had sent Isabelle away-and the second time-and the tenth. Both mother and child knew all the words to this ritual parting and how it must end.

"I love you," said Sarah. "It's time for you to go."

The caterer's staff had been sent away and told to return in the morning. The lodge was still dressed in its gala finery. The debris of a thousand guests, their glassware and dishes and even their rented chairs, remained. Only the ice sculptures had been removed, taken outside to melt on the grass.

Addison Winston stood before a glass wall in the tower room. No need for a telescope tonight. He watched the headlights turn into the driveway down on Paulson Lane. The twin beams vanished under the boughs of trees and reappeared at William Swahn's front door. Time was allowed for the man to limp into his house, more time for a slow elevator ride upstairs to the study. There a lamp was switched on in keeping with habits of the past few nights. Addison counted off the usual ten seconds, long enough for Swahn to fetch a pair of binoculars from a desk drawer. And now that distant light was extinguished. Sarah's devoted sentry preferred to keep watch on the tower from a darkened room.

Addison never heard the barefoot steps behind him; he heard the clink of ice cubes in Sarah's glass as she entered the circular room.

The lawyer's smile was in place.

Showtime.

He turned around to face his wife, who seemed startled to find him in her sanctuary at this time of night. "So Belle is gone?"

"Yes." She closed her robe and belted it in an act of modesty, as if they had never been married, never shared a bed. Sarah tilted her head to one side, regarding him as a stranger here in Birdland, this other country at the top of the house. She took a long draught of her whiskey glass, draining it as she sank down in a chair.

"I'm not surprised that Belle left in such a rush." Addison uncapped a bottle he had discovered tucked behind the journals on the bookshelf. He leaned down to pour more whiskey into her glass. "You'll need this. Someone we know has been digging behind the stable." He picked up his wife's hand and kissed it. "Belle found Josh's camera." He stared down at his wife's shattered eyes, and he caressed her face with one hand. "Don't worry. She put it back in the hole and covered it up again. What a good girl. She'd never have done that to protect me."

Sarah shook her head, unable to make sense of this. And then she closed her eyes. She understood.

"That's right," said Addison. "Belle knows you're the one who buried that camera. I can only imagine what's going through her mind right now. Maybe she's thinking that I'm not the only monster in Birdland."

William Swahn held the binoculars to his eyes and watched Addison feed more booze to his wife. This could be construed as the slow poisoning of an alcoholic, nothing as graphic as battering, but just as deadly. Sarah was clearly pained by something her husband was saying.

William did not underestimate the killing power of words.

The telephone rang, and he knew who the caller would be before he picked up the receiver. "Hello, Belle… Are you crying?… Yes, I'm watching her now."