"Really? Remember Coop? They blew him up."

She threw up her hands. "Look, I'm through talking about it. Stop someplace where I can get a cab."

Jack sighed. He knew an immovable object when he saw one—Gia could be just as intransigent. His instincts urged him to head straight for the on-ramp to the Queensboro Bridge and cross the East River. He wanted to find a motel room and lock her in it until she saw the light.

But he couldn't do that. He'd fight tooth and nail if someone tried to lock him up, so how could he do that to her? It went against everything he believed in.

And yet… how could he let her put her life on the line just to be first to file a story?

Let her… listen to me… like I own her.

He didn't. Jamie owned Jamie, and so Jamie had to be allowed to do what she felt she had to, even if Jack thought it was insanely risky. Because in the end all that mattered was what Jamie thought. It was her life. And so what mattered most was what mattered to Jamie.

Jack turned downtown, away from the bridge.

"Shit! This is idiotic, Jamie! You're going to get yourself killed. And me with you."

"How's that?"

"Well, you don't think I'm going to let you go alone."

She placed a hand on his arm. "I appreciate that, but you don't need to come along. Just cover my back till I'm inside. After that I'm home free: locked doors, an armed guard."

"I do not like this."

"I'm not crazy about it either, but a gal's gotta do what a gal's gotta do."

"Not funny."

"Wasn't meant to be," she said.

3

Jamie waited in the rear of the cab until she spotted Henry through the glass doors of The Light's front entrance. There he was, sitting behind his kiosk, just where he was supposed to be. Time to move. Heart pounding, she hopped from the cab and raced across the sidewalk.

As she jammed the ringer button, her head snapped left and right—would have rotated full circle had her neck allowed—looking for Demente-dist goons. She knew Jack was somewhere nearby, hiding in the shadows. Still, if a couple of TPs suddenly jumped out and pulled her into a van, was he close enough to help?

She heard a noise and jumped. About a hundred feet to her left two men in raincoats were gliding from a parked sedan.

Oh, God!

She started hammering on the glass and at just that moment the door swung open. She leaped inside and elbowed Henry out of the way to pull it closed behind her. As it latched she peered through the glass and saw the two men standing on the sidewalk, halfway to the door, staring at her. She resisted the urge to give them the finger.

Henry laughed. "What's the hurry, Ms. Grant?"

Jamie figured if she told him that people were after her because of a story she was about to write, he'd call the cops.

She turned and smiled. "Got a big story to write, Henry."

"Must be a whopper to bring you in at this hour. I mean, this is early even for you." He leaned closer and looked at her. "Or is it late?"

She glanced up. The lobby clock showed ten after two.

"Late, Henry," she said as she started for the elevators. "Very late."

She hadn't slept well Wednesday, finally giving up on the possibility around four A.M. Thursday. She'd hauled herself out of bed and headed for the office. Here it was, Friday morning, which meant she'd been going full speed for over twenty-two hours. Yet she didn't feel the slightest hint of fatigue. She was jazzed. Adrenaline strummed heavy-metal power chords along her axons.

Good thing too, otherwise the horrors of the night—cutting through Coop's skin… his body blowing to pieces—would have reduced her to a trembling basket case by now.

But she couldn't dwell on that.

On the third floor she turned on all the overhead lights and wound through the deserted cubicle farm to her office. She paused on the threshold and looked at the comforting confusion of strewn-about books, newspapers, printouts, and scribbled-up yellow notepads.

Bless this mess, she thought. I'm home.

She dropped into her desk chair, lit a ciggie, and turned on her terminal. She'd rewound the tape during the trip back, so all she had to do now was pull the recorder from her shoulder bag and hit PLAY.

She had a bad moment when she first heard the murdered man's voice begin to speak to her from the tiny speaker…

'"You mean why Vm not in suspended animation, and how I came to be a shell of my former self? Know what? If you hold me up to your ear you can hear the ocean roar."

… but she held herself together and began to transcribe.

4

Jensen eyed the front entrance of The Light from the rear seat of the Town Car.

"That's the only way in?"

Hutch the hulk was still behind the wheel. Davis, a twitchy sort who'd been watching The Lighfs granite office building since Jensen had called in an alert, sat in the front passenger seat.

"The only way worth mentioning," Davis said. "The side entrance is a steel door. Unless you want to get into some acetylene action, this is it."

Jensen's head throbbed, especially around the scalp cut. They'd never caught up to Grant and Mr. Whoever, so when they got back to the city Jensen called a Dormentalist doctor who did work for the Church on the QT—anything for the cause and all that. The doc had said bring him to his office where he'd see what he could do. One look at Lewis's ass—he'd been shot in the thigh too, but the ass wound was really messy—and he said he needed a hospital. He'd try to admit him as a car accident to avoid a gunshot wound report to the police, but couldn't guarantee he'd be successful.

He'd wanted to stitch up Jensen's scalp but Jensen couldn't spare the time. He let the doc butterfly it closed and then he was on his way.

He leaned over between the seats for another quick look at his forehead in the rearview mirror. The three beveled strips of tape gleamed like white neon against his black skin. Didn't anyone make black butterflies? Or at least dark brown?

Why am I thinking about this shit when everything's poised to slide into the crapper?

He needed a way out and needed it bad. If the Blascoe story got out, he'd have to hit the road. The cops—maybe even the feds—would be grilling everybody in the Church, and sure as shit one of them would crack and start pointing a finger at him as the guy responsible for Blascoe's death. Another murder rap would put him away for good. No way he was going back to the joint. Not even for a minute.

Hutch said, "How about just going up to the door and ringing the bell? Get him to open up and speak to you and then you're in."

Davis shook his head. "At two-thirty in the morning? Wouldn't catch me opening that door for anybody I don't know."

Davis had a point. Then Jensen remembered a couple of props he had left over from an investigation they did into a state assemblyman who was making trouble for the Church a few years back.

"What if you two showed up at the door flashing metal?"

"You mean guns?" Hutch said.

Jesus! How thick was this guy?

"No. I'm talking police detective shields."

"That'll get us in. Yeah, that'll do it."

Jensen lowered his voice. "Thing is, you'll have to take out the guard."

Davis turned in his seat. "Take out… as in permanently? Why?"

"Because we can't risk even the tiniest chance of this leading back to the Church. And you know the rules: Grant has been officially declared IS, and that means anyone protecting her is IS too."

"In Season." Hutch shook his head. "We haven't had one of those in a while."

"Well, any IS you've dealt with in the past is nothing compared to this one. Grant and her pal are the biggest threat the Church has ever faced. A lot's riding on you guys tonight. Question is, are you up for it?"