3

Jack stood between the beds, arms stretched to either side so he could hold their hands. A one-way hold—theirs lay limp in his. He was standing there, staring at the oscillating dials on Gia's respirator, listening to its rhythmic wheeze, when Vicky's hand moved. He turned and gasped.

"Nurse!"

Her back was arching and dropping, her arms thrashing about, her legs kicking in violent spasms.

A heavyset, late-shift nurse bustled over—Jack didn't know her name and didn't give a damn at the moment—took one look and called to the desk.

"Three's seizuring! I need five of diazepam stat!"

Jack stood frozen, horrified, helpless as he watched Vicky convulse. Finally he shook off the paralysis and went to grab her arms so she wouldn't hurt herself.

The nurse put out an arm to block his way.

"Please, sir. You'll have to wait outside."

"But I can—"

"You'll only be in the way. For the sake of your child, please get out of the way and let us do our job."

For the sake of your child…

Jack couldn't argue with that. Feeling useless, he backed toward the doors, watching until they closed in front of him.

4

"What are we going to do with the bodies?" Miller said.

Cal looked up from his checklist. He needed to be sure that anything that could give a clue as to who they were and where they'd gone was removed.

They stood by the security console on the first floor. The air still reeked of blood. All around them the yeniceri combed every crack and crevice for anything that might connect them to this place.

The bodies… he'd been wrestling with what to do about them.

Portman squatted at the rear of the space, moving from corpse to corpse. He'd been assigned the distasteful task of emptying the pockets of the dead. Not of just what might be used for identification—everything, no matter how seemingly inconsequential.

"Got to leave them. I don't see that we have a choice."

Miller shook his head. "Never leave anyone behind. It's the code. You know that."

"Never leave anyone living behind."

"You interpret your way, I'll interpret mine. But either way, the 0 and those guys deserve a decent burial."

Cal felt a spike of anger. The stress of being in charge of this move, making sure every i was dotted, every t crossed, was eating him alive. But Priority number one was moving Diana—the Oculus—to safety ASAP.

"You think I don't know that? Don't you think it's tearing me up as much as anybody to have to walk out on them? But what choice do we have? We can't risk driving up the Connecticut Turnpike with seven mutilated corpses in our cars."

Miller looked down. "Still… it's not right."

Cal slammed his hand on the counter. "Then you come up with a plan! You figure out how we can get them upstate, dig seven graves in frozen ground, and still protect Diana. Go ahead. Tell me. I'm all ears."

Miller sighed and said nothing.

"Here's what I think we can do," Cal said. "What we have to do. They stay here, but only temporarily. We turn off the heat—and turn off the water too, in case the pipes freeze—and leave them. The cold will preserve them. Pretty much like being in a cooler at the morgue. When we get settled at the new place, some of us come back and bury them."

For centuries the MV had owned a hundred acres of wooded land upstate in the Putnam County wilderness. The final resting place of all the New York yenieeri.

"But right now, soon as we're packed up, we're out of here. I want to catch the first ferry out tomorrow morning. That means we've got to be in Hyannis before nine."

"All right, then," Miller said. "But I'm coming back—for them and for him. Some day, some way, he pays."

5

Jack sat in his car and rubbed his burning eyes. The wan dawn light drove knives into his brain. Good thing it was overcast. No telling what direct sunlight would do.

He hadn't been able to sleep since Vicky's seizure episode. It had taken a while for the nurses to calm the convulsions. But she needed so much medication to keep them under control that they had to put her on a respirator as well.

Gia and Vicky were safe until the yeniceri learned Zeklos had failed. So about an hour ago he'd roused himself and headed for Red Hook where he'd parked again along the park, facing the warehouse. His plan was to wait and watch and see who came and went. He wanted to see Miller leave. Wanted to follow him. Wanted to settle a debt.

A drive-by wouldn't do it—for a number of reasons. On the practical end, too many chances for someone to see it go down and report his license plate. On the personal end, it wouldn't satisfy Jack. He needed a face-to-face confrontation. Needed to look in Miller's eyes before he put a bullet between them.

But… something not quite right here.

He rubbed a hand over his chest. The rakosh scars felt cool, numb. None of the itching and burning sparked by proximity to the building in past trips. He'd driven by this morning and felt nothing.

He opened his shirt and checked. The three ridges of scar tissue were their usual pale white instead of the angry red of the last time he'd been here.

Was that because the Oculus was dead? But Zeklos had said they had a new Oculus in the daughter. Had they evacuated the place?

He'd have to sit and wait.

Jack hated to wait.

6

Almost eleven o'clock and Jack hadn't seen one damn person enter or leave.

Between calls to the trauma unit—no change in either of his ladies—he received an incoming call at quarter to eight: Abe. He'd seen the papers and was almost speechless with grief. Anything he could do, any way he could help, just ask. But Jack had known that. He'd said he'd get back to him.

To kill time he scanned the FM and AM bands. Heard a lot of crummy music and learned the weather forecast by heart: Big storm in the south, coming up the coast, scheduled to slam the city with a blizzard late Thursday or early Friday.

Yeah, well, so what? Couldn't come close to the winter in his heart.

During the wait he'd realized that Gia's folks out in Iowa didn't know about any of this. And Jack didn't know how to get in touch with them. He'd have to go back to her place and see if she'd written down their number somewhere. Most likely not. She talked to her mom a couple times a week, so she didn't need it on paper.

Part of him hoped he'd never find it. Calling her folks… telling them what had happened to their daughter and grandchild… and how grim the prognosis…

The prospect made him ill.

Call me a coward, he thought, but I'd rather go mano a mano with Miller than have to relay that kind of news.

And worse, his husband-and-father cover would be blown at the hospital.

He refocused on the warehouse. Still no sign of life. The yeniceri had either taken off, were entering and exiting by a different route, or knew he was out here and were waiting for him to make a move.

The second possibility seemed remote—from what he'd seen they'd focused all their security on the front door. The third seemed equally remote—unless they'd all spent the night there.

All of which left him with no recourse but to make a close reconnoiter on foot.

He grabbed Zeklos's keychain from the passenger seat. He'd found it in the dead man's pockets and had brought it along for the ride not knowing whether or not it would come in handy. If the rats had jumped ship, it would.

He removed the Glock from its SOB holster, chambered a round, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. With the grip in his hand and his finger on the trigger, he stepped out onto the sidewalk. He blinked as his eyes teared in the icy wind. Bundled into anonymity, he kept to the opposite side of the street as he walked past the three-story building. He looked for the same itching, burning sensation across his chest as before. No show.