But no, he plopped himself in a chair in direct line of sight through the foyer. No way Jack could slip out unseen.

He weighed his options. He could wait and hope Bolton fell asleep. Or until Dawn came back and they went up to bed—and hope that no one opened the closet door along the way.

Another solution slithered to the fore.

He reached back and touched the grip of his Glock. He could step out of the closet, walk over to him, and tap a couple of nines into his brain.

Why not? Be doing the world a favor. The guy was a loaded gun ready to go off.

But Jack wasn't into doing the world favors.

Certainly would solve Christy's problem, though.

Of course, she'd be the prime suspect. If she didn't have an alibi—if she was home from rehearsal, sitting alone, waiting for her Dawnie to call—she'd be in big trouble.

Even though she'd eventually be cleared, he couldn't put her through that.

And after she was no longer a suspect, the agency behind Creighton might come looking for him. He hadn't been careful here. It had started out as a simple B and E with no one to be the wiser. A murder scene was a whole different animal. Who knew what kind of trace evidence he'd left?

He removed his hand from the Glock and rubbed his face. He used to have patience for this kind of waiting. Lately, though, his patience had gone south. He wanted out of here. And soon.

Had to be a way.

Jack tried a long-distance Vulcan mind meld to make Bolton move his ass toward the kitchen, but it didn't work.

He glanced down at the console table just outside the closet door, bare except for Bolton's keys. Must have tossed them on his way to the bathroom. No help there. Jack wanted out, not in.

Then he spotted the red button on the car remote. The panic button. Might be worth a try.

He dropped to one knee. Then, moving as slowly as possible, he widened the door gap a centimeter at a time until he could slip his hand through. Stay-ing low, he stretched to the table, then to the keys. He pulled them a tad closer. When the remote was in reach, he pressed the panic button.

Outside, Bolton's car alarm started honking and wailing.

He ducked back as Bolton pushed himself out of his seat and stagger-stumbled into the foyer.

"Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch! I'll kill the motherfucker!"

Down the stairs, out the front door, and into the night.

Jack got moving as soon as Bolton was out of sight. Staying in a crouch he ran to the sliding glass door, let himself out onto the deck, and closed it behind him. He righted the fallen chair, slid the table back to where it belonged, then jumped to the ground.

A minute later he was on the far side of the fence and cutting through the woods toward his car.

But the question pursued him: What was so special about Dawn Pickering? Bolton's "Daddy," Jonah Stevens, the wellspring of his son's abnormal DNA, had promised his son something.

What?

12

There. Found it.

Jack sat alone in his apartment's front room, hunched over the Compendium ofSrem at the round oak table with the paw feet. The glow from the hanging lamp lit the table and nothing else. The rest of the apartment lay dark around him.

He'd rather be doing this over at Gia's.

He pulled his copy of Kick over and compared its cover image to the one in the book.

Identical. He could have superimposed one on the other. But below the one in the book were printed five words: The Sign of the Q'qr.

It looked unpronounceable. Que-quer? Was that how you'd say it?

Everything else read as English. Why not that? Unless it was a word that had no translation. Like a name.

The verse below that was even more frustrating:

And then the Seven became One

But the One could not hold

And all with him were vanquished.

Yet though the Q'qr was cast down it endured

The Q 'qr died yet lived on

The Q 'qr is gone yet remains

Absent from sight

But present in deed

Present in spirit

Present in body.

What the hell did that mean? The lines might have rhymed or had some cadence in their original tongue, but now they were simply a clunky progression of contradictory statements about… what? A stick figure?

The author was obviously telling a story, but seemed to assume that the reader knew the details. Jack figured it was like showing a drawing of an egg sitting on a wall and reciting "Humpty Dumpty" below it. If you weren't familiar with the nursery rhyme and didn't know Humpty wasn't real, you'd be left scratching your head. Just as Jack was scratching his.

The bigger question that remained was where Thompson had come up with the figure. He'd said in a dream. If that was true, where had his dream come from?

Shaking his head, Jack copied down the lines and bookmarked the page. Then he began to leaf through the rest of the Compendium, looking for other appearances of the figure. The book was thick, the pages thin. He had a long way to go.

MONDAY

1

Jeremy awoke feeling rank. He'd puked three more times during the night and still had a funky taste in his mouth. But at least his stomach had settled. In fact, he felt hungry.

But not for Work's extra spicy Buffalo wings. He'd never try those again. From now on it'd be strictly sandwiches and burgers when he ate there.

He turned over and found the bed empty. Where was Dawn? She'd come home last night and gone straight into nurse mode. Got him some Pepto and rubbed his back and gave him sips of Gatorade. Nice try, but it all came back up again.

He heard the toilet flush and a few seconds later Dawn came in. She wore a short T-shirt and a thong and nothing else, and the sight might have put a little wood in Mr. Willy if she hadn't looked like hell. She wobbled on her feet and her face was the color of three-day-old grits mixed with some of that lime Gatorade she'd been spooning into him last night.

She groaned as she dropped onto the bed like a hundred-pound sack of corn feed and pulled the blanket up to her neck.

This was her second morning in a row like this.

"You okay?"

Another groan. "Like totally not. Like anything but. I think I caught what you have."

"Had. I'm feeling much better." He gave her arm a squeeze. "All thanks to you."

She pulled her arm away and pouted like a cranky child. "Sharing a bed's okay, but not a virus."

Virus… Jeremy had been under the impression he'd had food poisoning.

But Dawn hadn't eaten anything Jeremy had. Could you catch iood poisoning? He didn't know all that much about medicine, but he didn't think so.

So maybe it was a virus. But if not…

He bolted upright.

"Puh-Zea.se/" Dawn said. "Do not rock the bed!"

"Sorry. You…" Had to be careful here. Didn't want to spook her. "You felt this way yesterday too, didn't you?"

"What do you mean?" She looked at him. "Tell me you're trying to say I gave this to you."

"No-no. Not at all. But you know, these viruses, sometimes they hit you like a ton of bricks and sometimes they sneak up on you for days, and when they finally hit you look back and say, 'Oh, yeah, that's why I was feeling so crummy.' Was it anything like that?"

She closed her eyes. "I didn't feel so hot yesterday morning, but I didn't hurl or anything. Felt like I could have, though. Didn't even want my morning coffee."

Jeremy tried to hide his excitement.

Could it be?

Suddenly she was out of bed and running for the bathroom. He heard her puking. An ugly sound, but if the reason was what he hoped, it was like music.