He released her finger and stepped back to survey the scene, looking for signs of foul play, a struggle. But no… everything looked neat and in place. She'd filled the tub and made the cuts beneath the surface, preventing the arterial spray from splattering the walls. Perfectly in keeping with Christy's orderly personality.

But he still didn't buy it. It reeked of Bolton.

Okay… if Jack was going to create a scene like this, how would he go about it?

His mind ranged over the possibilities, and came up with only two: Force Christy to kill herself under the threat of death or worse to someone she loved more than life; or drug her into oblivion and fake it.

Jack couldn't see how there had been time enough for the first, so that left the second…

And, remembering the glass downstairs, what was the one thing Christy could be counted on to drink?

He stared at her a moment longer, feeling again the lump in his throat as he fought a sense of failure. He hadn't failed her in a true sense. She hadn't hired him for protection, only to gather information, and he'd gathered that—in spades. Yet still he felt he'd failed her. How could he not? She'd been alive when she'd come to him and now she was dead, by either her own hand or someone else's. In neither case could he be held responsible, so why this sense of guilt?

Because.

Sometimes that was reason enough.

He had to know what happened here. To find out, he needed to learn if Christy had been drugged.

He went downstairs. Using a paper towel to avoid leaving prints, he bagged Christy's Diet Pepsi bottle and almost-empty glass. He wiped off the doorknobs as he left.

Back in his car, he got moving and called the local police to tell them that if they went to a certain address they'd find the owner dead. He closed with, "Be sure to run drug and tox screens."

He didn't know if they could. He didn't know if she had any blood left in her for testing, or if the blood in the bathwater would be of any use. What he did know was that his call would raise the official index of suspicion and have them treat Christy's house as a crime scene.

Maybe they'd turn up something, maybe they wouldn't. Either way, Jack intended to pursue his own course. For that he'd need Levy's help.

And Levy would help—whether he wanted to or not.

21

"Is something wrong, Jack?"

He looked up and found Gia standing at his side, staring down at him. He realized he'd been lost in thoughts about Christy.

"Sorry. I've been lousy company, haven't I."

"If you mean being here in body alone, yes."

He'd returned late after driving to Rathburg and placing Christy's glass and bottle in Levy's hands. Gia had reheated some of the veggie stir-fry she'd made for dinner and filled a couple of tortillas with it. He guessed he hadn't said much then. Vicky had gone off to bed and now they sat in the library with something playing on the tube and Jack staring at the screen without seeing it.

"You know that woman I told you about, who wanted information on her daughter's boyfriend? I found her dead tonight."

"Good God!" Gia stepped closer and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Please don't tell me she was murdered."

"It looked like suicide, but I don't know."

"And if you find out it wasn't?"

He looked up at her. "I don't know."

That was true—at the moment. He'd put off making plans until he heard from Levy.

She settled herself on his lap and clasped her arms around his neck.

"Whatever you do, be careful."

"What makes you think I'd be anything but?"

"You have a look in your eyes… not the look you had when you learned Vicky had been taken to that ship full of monsters—God, I don't ever want to see that look again—but there's something a little scary in your eyes right now."

Vicky… Kusum… the rakoshi… it would be two years this coming summer. Where had the time gone?

Where had his family gone? Bolton was supposedly obsessed with his bloodline. Jack had never given much thought to his own, but now, when he considered it, his had been virtually wiped out. The only one left that he knew of was his uncle Gurney, and he wasn't all that closely related—his mother's uncle.

"I—" He froze as he saw the label on Gia's water bottle: Ramlosa. "Where did you get that?"

"The Gristedes down on fifty-seventh. Why?"

The name… Ramlosa… an anagram of Rasalom. And Rasalom was always playing games with his name. He'd called himself Sal Roma when Jack first met him.

He grabbed the bottle as calmly and gently as he could. "What do you know about it?"

"Well, it's good, and it's sparkling. What else do you need?"

The label said it was established in 1707. But labels could lie. And Rasalom had been around forever.

"I don't know if you should drink this."

She laughed. "I've been drinking it for a month now."

"You have?" He'd never noticed.

"Yes, and I'm fine. Look, I've been thinking… about you coming up from underground."

Jack had known the subject would rear its head again sooner or later.

"Abe and I have discussed—"

"I don't think you should."

Jack paused, wondering if he'd heard correctly.

"Did you just say what I thought you said?"

She nodded. "Yes. Abe's plan—it's too dangerous. You'd be in a country where you didn't speak the language, dealing with hardened international criminals who might find it simpler to kill you and take your money should things start to go wrong."

She had a point. Even though Abe vouched for his contacts, the process of sneaking into the Balkans and reemerging with a dead man's identity was fraught with risks.

"Besides," she added, "it doesn't matter."

Jack stiffened. "What do you mean, it doesn't matter?"

She shrugged. "It just… doesn't."

They'd gone around and around about this before her pregnancy, but the baby had brought matters to a head: Jack could not claim fatherhood without an official existence. And in today's world a man simply could not appear from nowhere, with no Social Security number, no history of 1040s filed, no work history or licenses or documentation to prove his identity, and not wind up in serious trouble with Homeland Security, the IRS, the FBI, INS, and other denizens of officialdom's Acronym City. Thus the elaborate Balkan scheme.

"We might have another baby, Gia."

She hugged him tighter. "We might. But it still won't matter."

"I don't get it."

"I don't either. Before the accident I thought it was so important. Now… it's not. Maybe it was the coma that did it. Maybe it's the dreams I had when I was so near death."

"Dreams? You never mentioned dreams."

"That's because I don't remember them. I remember having dreamed, but not about what. I don't know whether it was the brain trauma or the dreams or the combination of the two, but the world seems different. The future seems… shorter. Does that make any sense?"

The words chilled Jack. He'd heard something like it before. Someone who supposedly could see the future revealed that he could not see next summer, or anything past it—next spring ended in a wall of darkness.

Gia had been pushed to the threshold of death. While she'd teetered on the edge, had she looked across and seen what was coming? And had that vision mercifully been blotted out, leaving her with only a vague sense of impending doom?

What was going to happen next spring? It sounded like the end of the world.

And if indeed it turned out to be the end of the world, then Jack's becoming a citizen…

… wouldn't matter.

He squeezed her close.

"You, me, and Vicky—we matter, Gi. We matter."