"Come on, come on. It's what men do, isn't it. A sign of peace, right? I want peace between you."

Jeremy too looked reluctant, but finally he stepped forward and thrust out his hand.

"Sorry for the misunderstandin, doc."

Aaron hesitated briefly, then grasped it and shook. But before he released Bolton's hand he raised it for a closer look.

"What's that? A tattoo?"

Jeremy pulled his hand free and held it up. "Yep. Got 'er done a couple weeks ago."

Julia stared at the odd little stick figure in the web between his thumb and index finger. It had a diamond-shaped head and—

"It looks like it has four arms."

Jeremy grinned. "It does. That's the Kicker Man."

"Why the extra arms?"

The smile faltered. "Don't rightly know. Never thought to ask. It is what it is, I guess."

Tattoos. Julia had never understood them. Permanent drawings on your skin… what for? But then, she didn't understand jewelry either. Who could be bothered?

"Well, whatever. Now that we're all friends again we can get back to business and refocus on the project as—"

"Aren't we forgetting something?" Aaron said. "Like a body tied facedown in a tub in Brooklyn?"

Jeremy put on a sheepish look. "I think I sorta kinda got carried away."

Julia stared at him. "Why did you do it, Jeremy?"

"You told me he was tryin to split me and Dawn. I know it was her mothers idea, so one of them had to be stopped. I couldn't take out her momma without gettin Dawn all messed up, so he had to go."

Julia had known deadly violence might result from telling Jeremy about

Gerhard and what he knew. But she couldn't resist. Call it an experiment within an experiment. Jeremy seemed to be doing well on the D-287 therapy, but without something to provoke him, how would they know if it wras having any real effect? Gerhard had provided an opportunity to inject an external stimulus. She'd hoped Jeremy would find a rational course—thus confirming the success of the therapy—but if he resorted to violence, that too would provide them with valuable data. She was glad he'd chosen Gerhard as the target for his rage. The man had known too much.

Jeremy gave another shrug. "Don't see how I had a choice."

"Of course you had a choice!" Aaron cried. "You could have stopped seeing the girl!"

Jeremy's eyes narrowed as his forehead darkened. "That ain't in the cards, doc. Nobody comes between me and Dawn."

"Oh, come on! There must be dozens, hundreds of women—"

"No! Only Dawn. She's my one and only."

"Your one and only what?" Aaron said.

Julia raised a hand. "We're getting sidetracked here. What's done is done. What I don't understand is why you did something so reckless."

"I wanted the answers to certain questions."

"You didn't have to kill him."

"Did too. Told you: He was gonna come between me and Dawn, and I wanted to know what he'd found out and what he'd told her momma."

"And then you compounded it by leaving the body where it could be found. Why?"

Aaron said, "You wanted to show off your elaborate torture handiwork, didn't you."

Jeremy said nothing at first, but his expression told Julia that Aaron had hit this particular nail square on the head. Then Jeremy took a step toward him.

"Where'd you hear about—?"

"Stop this right now!" Julia said, jumping in before things escalated out of control. "It was a foolish thing to do but we'll have it taken care of."

Jeremy turned toward her. " 'We'?"

"Our people. The ones you want to stay on the right side of. They're experts in crime-scene cleanup." She'd call them as soon as Jeremy left. "Meanwhile, you will report to my office tomorrow for a booster dose."

Jeremy's eyes narrowed. "What's that gonna do to me?"

"Nothing you'll notice."

"Better not. I been feelin pretty good lately and I want to stay that way. Don't want nothin comin between me and Dawn. That's my numero-uno priority."

Aaron said, "Your 'numero-uno priority' is the therapy."

Jeremy shook his head. "You got that wrong, doc. I'm goin along with the therapy just so's me and Dawn can be together. Me and Dawn—that's all that matters. Anybody who gets between us goes down. 'Cause me and Dawn…" He grinned like a man who knew the world's greatest secret. "… we're gonna change everything.""

9

"What on Earth is so interesting?"

Jack looked up from his copy of Hank Thompson's Kick. He was propped up in bed by two pillows, reading in a pool of light from a goosenecked lamp attached to the headboard. The rest of the bedroom lay dark around him.

He glanced at Gia where she lay beside him. She'd turned over to face him. Her eyelids were at half mast. She looked ready to drop off any minute.

"Is the light keeping you up?"

"Nothing keeps me up when I get tired, you know that. But what've you got there? You never read in bed."

Jack didn't know how to explain it. He'd returned from Rathburg feeling restless and uneasy. He sensed he was being drawn into something he should avoid, dragged into a place he didn't want to go. Christy Pickering seemed to be at the heart of it. Since talking to her he'd had a priceless book stolen from a stroked-out old man, found a dead body, and witnessed—and foiled—an abduction.

Or was it all coincidence?

Yeah, he'd been told no more coincidences for him, but surely that didn't apply to everything in his life. Coincidences did happen in the normal course of events. He couldn't buy that something was preventing everyday coincidences.

He couldn't see how the loss of the Compendium could be connected to the Pickering problem. But he most certainly saw a connection between the Compendium and the book in his hands: the four-armed stick figure.

Jack had a pretty good idea of how the theft had gone down: the Kicker janitor—they still hadn't found him—had seen the prof at the Xerox machine copying the drawing of the Kicker man. He'd recognized it and decided he wanted it.

Why?

Then again, why not? Judging from today's experience at the bookstore, "mine" and "not-mine" appeared to be concepts either unappreciated or not easily grasped by Kickers—especially when it came to books.

The janitor had been around the museum. One look at the Compendium and he had to know or at least guess it was worth a fortune. Which was why he'd disappeared. Probably trying to fence it now.

The idea of the Compendium in the wrong hands bothered Jack. He didn't know to what uses it could be put, but he had a feeling they weren't all good.

Tomorrow he'd see if he could get the guy's name and do a little tracking on his own. He doubted the cops would tell him—too bad he wasn't Jake Fixx with all those law enforcement contacts. He'd have to look elsewhere. Maybe the museum staff…

But right now he wanted to see if Hank Thompson gave any clue as to how an ancient symbol—of what, he wished he knew—from an equally ancient one-of-a-kind tome had ended up on the cover of his book.

He held it up for Gia.

"I was intending just to skim through it, but the first part of the book is a memoir and I sort of got caught up in this guy's personal story."

Hank Thompson hadn't had it easy growing up. Far from it. Born in Arkansas in poverty to a single mother who died young, his unnamed absentee father would visit him now and again, but never helped him off the foster-home merry-go-round he rode into his teens. Yet Thompson didn't seem to bear him any animus. Seemed to revere him instead.

"How far along are you?"

"He's just coming out of his teens and surprisingly up front about the petty crimes he committed."

Gia yawned. "You think he really committed them or is just looking for street cred?"