Get a grip, she told herself. It's not that bad. Vicky will be back soon. In just four days and three hours, to be exact. It seemed like forever.

And when Vicky returned, should she tell her about the baby?

No. Too soon.

All right, but if not now, when? And how? How to tell her daughter that Mommy screwed up big time and got pregnant when she hadn't wanted to.

Who's the daddy? Why, Jack of course.

Which meant that the new baby would have a daddy while Vicky didn't. Vicky's father, Richard Westphalen, was missing and officially presumed dead. Gia knew, unofficially, that Vicky would never see her father again.

No big loss. While alive, Richard had been a nonparticipant in his inconvenient daughter's life. Over the past year and a half, Jack had become Vicky's father figure. He doted on her and she loved him fiercely. Partly, Gia was sure, because Jack was in many ways a big kid himself. But he took time with her, talked to her instead of at her, played catch with her, came along and sat with all the other kids' parents to watch her T-ball games.

He was everything a good father should be, but his real child was now growing inside Gia. Would Vicky see the new baby as a threat, someone who'd come between her and Jack and usurp his love? Gia knew that would never happen, but at eight years of age, could Vicky grasp that? She'd already had one father abandon her. Why not two?

All excellent reasons for Vicky to hate the new baby.

Gia couldn't bear the thought of that. One possible solution was marrying Jack. A hopelessly mundane, pedestrian, bourgeois solution, she knew, cooked up by a terminally mundane, pedestrian, bourgeois person, but as her husband, Jack could officially adopt Vicky as his daughter. That symbolic cementing would give Vicky the security she needed to accept the new baby as a sister or brother rather than a rival.

The marriage was a problem, though. Not a matter of would Jack marry her, but could he? He'd said he'd find a way. She had to trust that he would... if he lived long enough.

Some godawful mess I've made.

She yawned as she finished tucking in the sheets and straightening the spread. Little wonder she wasn't sleeping.

Bad enough to be worrying about Vicky and the new baby, but then Jack comes in last night with a thick bandage on his side. Told her he'd been stabbed by the very man he'd been hired to protect, who'd turned out to be some sort of pedophile.

She'd changed his dressing this morning and gasped at the four-inch gash in his flank. Not deep, just long, he'd told her. Doc Hargus had sewn him up. Gia inspected the neat running suture that had closed the wound. She'd never liked the idea of Jack going to an old defrocked physician, but last summer she'd come to trust Hargus after he guided Jack's recovery from other, worse wounds.

She was angry with Jack for getting hurt. Would he ever learn?

But then, if he did learn, did change, would he still be the same Jack? Or would some fire within him go out and leave her with a hollow man, a wraithlike remnant of the Jack she loved?

Add that to the list of things to keep her awake at night.

And then, last night, when she'd finally fallen asleep... visions of the mysterious little girl she'd seen in the Kenton house drifted through her dreams. Her eyes... Gia had caught only the briefest glimpse of them as the child had glanced back over her shoulder, but their deep blue need haunted Gia, in her dreams, and even here and now in her waking hours.

Who was she? And why such longing in those eyes? It seemed a need Gia might fill if she only knew how.

No question about it, she had to go back to that house.

2

"Got it," Jack said, tapping his finger on a story in the newspaper.

He'd grabbed the Daily News from Abe's counter as soon as he'd walked in and thumbed through it, looking for stories about the little Asian kid and the wounded Bellitto.

He'd found a two-inch column reporting that a Mr. Eli Bellitto of Soho had been stabbed and a companion, Adrian Minkin-so that was Gorilla Arms's name-had been bludgeoned by an unknown assailant last night. Both were admitted to St. Vincent's.

Predators playing victims, Jack thought. Smart.

But the story about the recovery of a kidnapped Vietnamese boy got big play, with a picture of little Due Ngo and another of his mother.

"Nu?" Abe said as he arranged-with surprising delicacy for his pudgy fingers-strips of lox across the inner surface of a sliced bagel. "Got what?"

"A story about the kid those pervs snatched last night. He's okay."

"What kid?"

Abe didn't look up. He was busily smearing the other half of the bagel with cream cheese-the lowfat kind. Although, considering the amount he was slathering on, he wasn't sparing himself any calories or fat.

"Hey, leave some for me," Jack told him.

He'd brought breakfast, as usual, splurging on lox-not Nova, because Abe liked the saltier kind-but trying to help Abe in the calorie department with the lowfat Philly.

"What kid?" Abe repeated, ignoring him. "What pervs?"

Jack gave him a quick rundown of last night's events, then ended by quoting from the News story.

"Listen to his mother: ' "I was so worried," said Ms. Ngo. "Little Due insists on going out every night to buy ice cream. He has gone a hundred times and never had trouble. It is so terrible that children are not safe in this city." ' " Furious, Jack slammed his hand on the paper-and winced as he felt a tug on his wound. "Can you believe that? What a load of crap!"

"What's not to believe?"

"He's seven years old! It was ten o'clock and pouring! Like hell he wanted to go out. The real deal is she and her boyfriend send that little kid out every night so they can get it on while he's down on the street. But she's not going to tell that to the News, is she!"

He hit the paper again, harder this time-resulting in another painful yank on his wound-his fist landing on the picture of the kid's mother. He hoped she felt it, wherever she was.

"You saved him from death, maybe worse." Abe chomped into his freshly constructed bagel-and-lox sandwich and spoke around the bite. "You performed a mitzvah. You should be happy instead of angry."

Jack knew Abe was right but as he stared at the grainy black-and-white photo of little Due-taken at school, most likely-all he could see was his limp body wrapped in a soggy blanket.

"She calls herself a parent? She should be protecting her kid instead of putting him in harm's way. Oughta be an exam you have to take before they let you become a parent. Guy shoots a couple million sperm and one of them hits an egg and bam!-a baby. But are either of the two adults capable of bringing up a child? Who knows? Children are a big responsibility. They should only be entrusted to people who can be responsible parents."

Listen to yourself, he thought. You're ranting. Stop.

He looked up and found Abe staring at him.

"Wu? Is there some part of this story I'm missing? What's all this tumel about parents?"

Jack wondered if he should tell Abe, then instantly decided he had to. How could he not? He knew it would go no further. Abe was as tightlipped as a clam.

"I'm going to be one."

"You? A father?" Abe grinned and wiped his right hand on his shirt before thrusting it across the counter. "Mazel tovl When did you find out?"

Jack gripped the hand, still slightly slick with salmon oil. "Yesterday afternoon."

"And Gia, she's comfortable with the prospect of saddling the world with a child who has half your genes?"

"She's fine with the child part. It's what kind of a father I can be that's causing problems for us."

"You as a good father? There's a question about this? Look at the training you're getting already with Vicky. Like a daughter she is."