"Are you okay? " He looked up. "Hmmm? Yes. Fine." '"You seem down." He shrugged. "Just thinking about life, the twists and turns it takes you through. The cruel tricks it plays on you." "Some of the tricks are funny, " she said.

"Sometimes we back ourselves into corners, " he said, as if she hadn't spoken, "and we despise the means necessary to extricate ourselves. ' What was wrong with him tonight?

"Do you want dessert? " he said as the waiter was clearing the dinner plates.

"I don't think I could eat another thing. But I could go for some coffee."

"Leave the coffee to me, " he said. "I don't care if this is one of the best restaurants inside the beltway, their coffee can't hold a candle to mine. We'll have real coffee back at the office." She considered begging off, but realized she couldn't deny Duncan his coffee ritual. Maybe it would pull him out of his funk. Besides, it was only a few miles out of the way.

After Duncan paid the bill, Gin rose and felt a little wobbly. She realized that she'd consumed most of the amarone.

As she stood staring at the languid koi in the rock garden pool beyond Duncan's offwce window, Gin wondered if there was any place on earth she'd feel less comfortable than Duncan's officer. This was where she'd broken into his drawer, where just yesterday she'd been sneaking through his bookshelf. And here he was toiling a dozen feet away making her what he called the best coffee in the world.

She felt like such a rat.

But at least the prospect of some good coffee seemed to have cheered him up. Maybe that had been his problem all along tonight, caffeine withdrawal.

"At last, " he said, turning from his drip equipment with a steaming cup. "The perfect after-dinner coffee." Gin took it from him and sniffed. "Licorice? " "I know, I know. You must promise never to mention to anyone that I adulterated my own coffee. But I figured that after an evening of Italian food, I'd break down and add some sambuca.

' Gin sipped and repressed a grimace. Bitter. She could taste the coffee, and the licorice tang of the sambuca, but there was something else there, something she couldn't identify.

"Mmmm, " she said. "Unusual."

"A special black sambuca, " he told her, sipping his own. "Gives it a unique flavor. Drink up." Gin took another sip. Definitely not to her taste, but she couldn't very well dump it after he'd gone to the trouble of brewing it for her.

Rather than prolong the agony, she drank it quickly.

"Another cup? ' Duncan asked.

"No, thanks, " she said. "Between the manhattan, the wine, and the sambuca, I think I'm already over my limit." That was an understatement. She was definitely woozy now.

"Maybe I'd better take you home, " Duncan said.

"Maybe you'd better, " she said. "I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about. You're not driving, so what difference does it make? " A fine drizzle had begun to fall. In the Mercedes, the swirl of lights from the streets and passing cars refracting through the myriad beads of water on the windows made her stomach begin a slow turn. She- squinted and breathe deeply. She would die before she'd throw up in Duncan's car.

He double-parked on Kalorama, took her keys, and walked her up to her apartment. He let her in, then stepped back onto the landing.

"Are you going to be all right? " "I'll be fine. Thanks for dinner.

And I'm sorry about . . . " "Don't give it another thought. I shouldn't have given you that doctored-up coffee." Something strange in his voice as he said that, but his face was unreadable Or was that because her vision was blurred?

"Good night, Duncan."

"Good night. Go right to bed." '"Don't worry about that."

As soon as he closed the door, Gin headed for the bathroom. But she didn't vomit. The nausea was still there, but now that the world around her was no longer in motion, it seemed to have eased.

She thought about taking a shower, then said to hell with it. What she needed was sleep.

She took off her raincoat and threw it on a chair. She sat on the bed and peeled off her panty hose, then began working on the buttons of her dress. Before she reached the last she flopped back and closed her eyes. Just for a second . . . no more than a minute . . . then she'd finish undressing . . .

THURSDAY MORNING GINA AWOKE WITH GLUE IN HER MOUTH, SAND IN HER eyes, and heavy metal pounding in her ears. She rolled out of bed and stumbled across the floor with her hand stretched toward the snooze button. She always left her clock radio on a hard-core metal station.

Never failed to get her up. No way she could stay in bed with that stuff playing.

Only now she wished she'd spun the dial to something else, anything else, before passing out last night. Noise equaled pain this morning, but speed metal went beyond pain into torture. The throbbing bass and drums were piercing straight through to the center of her brain. One of these groups should name itself Torquemada.

She banged her fist on SNOOZE, then turned around and headed for the bed again. She looked down and noticed she was still in her dress.

Damn!

It looked like hell. So did she, most likely.

Like a failing tree, she collapsed facedown on the mattress.

Why did she feel so rotten? She hadn't had that much to drink last night. The combination, maybe?

. \ Whatever it was, she didn't like it. Her stomach was queasy, and her head . . . God, her head.

She was just dozing off when the howling guitar riffs filled the room again. This time she got up and turned off the radio. She staggered to the bathroom, removing the dress along the way. She looked at herself in the mirror.

Yuck. Awful. Simply awful.

She turned on the shower and stripped. As soon as the water was warm, she stepped in and let it run over her head and down her body.

God, that felt good.

She began lathering herself, starting with her face and working down.

The water and the scrubbing action began to revive her. She was returning from the dead, reentering the world of the, "Ow! " She twisted and looked down at the lateral aspect of her right thigh.

She'd felt a stab of pain while scrubbing the area. Tender there.

She ran a hand over the spot and noticed a small bruise. She must have collided with the corner of a table or her nightstand on her way to bed last night.

But wait . . . this bruise was more toward the rear of her thigh than the front. The only way she could do that was by walking backward.

She braced her foot on the edge of the tub and took a closer look.

More than a bruise. The skin had been broken. A little semicircular cut in the center of the bruise. Almost like the one she'd seen on .

. .

Senator . . . Marsden . . .

Gin's knees buckled and she grabbed the towel rack to steady herself.

No, wait, stop, she told herself as the bathroom wobbled around her and she fought to regain her balance. This is crazy. This is impossible.

But when she looked again the tiny laceration was still there. She probed it. She could feel the fine ridge of the edge. Had to be fresh. She pushed harder. A tiny droplet of blood appeared at its center. She probed deeper around the bruise, palpating the subcutaneous fat, looking for, Her fingers froze. Was it her imagination or was something there?

Something soft like fat but too smooth to be fat. Something oblong, cylindrical. Like an implant.

The bathroom wobbled again. And even with the hot water coursing over her, Gin suddenly felt cold. And sick. She stepped out of the shower and bent dripping over the toilet and retched. Nothing came up.

Her head throbbed even more painfully as she sank to her knees. When the room steadied, she took another, closer look at her thigh. She touched the spot again, but gingerly this time If there really was something under it, and if that something was an implant, she didn't want to disturb it or . . . rupture it.