3

Jeremy's brain blazed as he spun the Miata's tires on the way out of the Creighton front gate and headed back to the city. He checked his rearview mirror to see if anyone pulled into the lane behind him, and scanned the road ahead for cars parked on the shoulders.

Someone had been following him around, picking up little souvenirs here and there and using them to test his DNA.

Shit!

Worst part was he hadn't had a clue.

He checked around again. He had the road to himself. But what did that mean? This Robertson guy could be waiting down near the Thruway, knowing he'd have to come that way to get back to Queens. The guy could pull in a few cars behind him as he got on and Jeremy would never know.

That hunted feeling…

Reminded him of his last free days in Atlanta. He'd thought he was in the clear, thought he'd covered his tracks. Everyone was looking for a religious nut, a wild-eyed right-to-lifer, and Jeremy was anything but. But…

Yeah. Always the but.

But someone had seen someone near the second shooting and gave a description that shared certain features with someone else seen in a photo taken on the street shortly before the first shooting, and a sketch was circulated in a door-to-door canvas and finally a newsstand guy thought it looked like someone who came by regularly to buy cigarettes.

Like a jerk, he'd held on to the gun. Yeah, it was stupid, but with the feds all over the place he'd have no way to get his hands on another piece on the outside chance Moonglow decided to try yet another abortionist. One thing led to another and, when he felt the circle tightening, he decided he had to get rid of it. He was nabbed before he could.

And now someone else was trying to tighten a noose around him.

Maybe he shouldn't go back to Queens—at least not yet. He needed to talk to fuckhead Hank about this gene-testing shit, and the sooner the better. Why not head for the city?

He pulled onto the shoulder and grabbed the map from the glove compartment. He'd learned his way around the Forest Hills area, but up here was still pretty much a mystery. He located Rathburg and noticed that if he headed east from here he could get on the Saw Mill Parkway. Going south on that would take him to 9A which led right down the west side of Manhattan.

Perfect.

He got rolling again and pulled out his cell phone. Time to call big brother. He'd try to find some excuse not to meet, but he wasn't weaseling out today. This was too important.

4

Aaron pulled into the lot of the Argonaut, found a space, and parked. Instead of heading inside he sat with the motor idling. To tempt himself out of the car and into the diner, he conjured images of Belgian waffles dripping with syrup and topped with powdered sugar and strawberries and maybe even some whipped cream, but he felt too queasy to eat. So he sat and wrestled with the question that had been plaguing him all through the hours since the meeting in Julia's office.

Should he tell Jack that Julia had given that pervert Bolton his description?

On one hand, he felt he owed it to him; after all, they'd been working together on putting Bolton back behind bars, but beyond that, he liked the man. He seemed a decent sort, as well as clever and resourceful.

On the other hand, they weren't getting anywhere against Bolton. If Bolton pegged Jack as the detective who'd been causing him so much trouble, he might try to do him serious harm. Enough harm to get himself locked up, thereby aborting this whole outpatient fiasco.

Might try to do Jack harm… that was where the struggle came: the try. Bolton had a couple of inches and maybe twenty pounds on Jack, but Aaron had a feeling the man could take care of himself.

For all he knew, Jack might put Bolton in a hospital. Might pound the living shit out of that deviant, amoral bastard. God, wouldn't that be wonderful? For not only would Bolton be suffering some well-deserved pain, but physical incapacitation might also prove enough to end the outpatient trial.

On the other hand, if Aaron warned Jack, he might back off on his surveillance, reducing or perhaps even eliminating the chance of a confrontation. Aaron dearly wanted to see Bolton hurt.

He jumped and squealed like a girl at the sound of a rap on the passenger window. He shrank against his door as he looked.

jack.

Relief Hooded him. 11 it had been Bolton, God knew what he would have done.

He hit the unlock switch and Jack slid into the passenger seat.

"Jumpy?"

Aaron nodded. "You could say that."

"Thought I'd find you inside. Actually it's better here. I don't feel like eating."

"Neither do I. Especially after seeing the DNA comparison between Dawn and Bolton."

"You mean the father-daughter thing."

Aaron gasped and stared at him. He'd said it so matter-of-factly.

"You know?"

A nod. "Since last night."

"But how could you? And how can this be? How does something like this happen? How could her mother not know?"

He realized he was babbling, but the questions had been pounding against the inside of his skull since he'd seen the printout.

Ninety-nine point nine nine percent probability of paternity.

Aaron listened in horrified fascination as Jack told about how Moonglow Garber had been abducted and repeatedly raped for weeks until she was pregnant, then released. And then he saw it all.

"The abortionist assassinations! They finally make sense!"

Jack nodded. "Finally."

"But that doesn't explain how you know Bolton is Dawn's father. Hank Thompson could have been the rapist."

"That's what I thought. Then I sketched out a timeline last night and realized that Hank was locked up in Creighton during the weeks Moonglow was missing."

Aaron leaned back. "Dear God."

He thought of Moonglow. That poor girl. Kidnapped, raped daily, probably in terror for her life. And then Bolton, father of her child… he thought of his own daughter and wanted to be sick. This only confirmed what he'd known all along: Bolton was a monster.

Jack's fingers were knotted into fists. "The sick, sick, subhuman son of a bitch. How does anyone do that?"

For no good reason, Aaron said, "Do you have a daughter?"

Jack looked up at him and Aaron recoiled at what he saw in his eyes. He didn't know what it was—pain, certainly, but nestled in a terrible seething darkness that urged him to flee and never look back.

"I almost did," he said in a low, barely audible tone. "I sort of do." He closed those terrifying eyes, took a breath, then opened them again. The darkness was gone. "You have a printout of the comparison with you?"

The abrupt change caught Aaron off guard. "Uh, um, yes. Why?"

"1 want to see it."

He pulled it out of his pocket and watched as Jack unfolded it, studied it. then looked up.

"Ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent probability. Not much wiggle room there."

Aaron shook his head. "Not a bit. But I don't get it. If Moonglow's child was to be later impregnated by one of her uncles, why not have Thompson do it? With a half uncle as the father, the chance of autosomal recessive traits coming to the fore are increased, but nowhere near what could happen to a baby whose father is not only its grandfather, but an uncle as well. It's not only sick, it's… counterproductive."

"Refresh me on 'autosomal recessive traits.'"

"An autosomal recessive gene is a genetic defect you inherit from one of your parents. For want of a better term, it's half of a genetically mediated disease. Let's say for example that you inherited a cystic fibrosis mutation from your mother. You don't show signs of cystic fibrosis because your mutation is paired with a normal gene from your father that overrules the mutation. This makes you a carrier. Should you impregnate a woman without a similar mutation, there's a fifty-fifty chance of the child being a carrier too, but zero chance it will wind up with cystic fibrosis. You following?"