Strangely, even Greg had warned her about the danger. Greg the liar. Greg the betrayer. His name was the only one capable of piercing the wrap of numbness around her feelings. She'd believed in him like nobody before. Worshipped from afar, flirted. Opened her soul to him. Confessed the darkest, most shameful secret.

And he'd lied to her.

Just like all the rest. Men must look on her as some kind of victim waiting to be abused. Except for Adrian, a bleak inner voice said, Adrian adored her female side. He was immune to her money. So far. But knowing her luck…

She still couldn't believe she'd been so mistaken about Greg. He'd said she was beautiful. And she couldn't be fooled by smooth talk any more, not after Kendric.

Then why? Why the lie?

Access BlitzCulmination. So called because it brought all aspects of the case together. The homogenised data packages unfolded within her glacial mind, rotating the bedroom and Katerina one hundred and eighty degrees from her cognisance. Her processor nodes marshalled it into precise channels once more, a construct that incorporated hard facts, assumptions, suspicions.

She ran the logic matrix once more, the fifth time today. It produced a single diamond-hard conviction. No matter how many times she ran it, how much slackness and wishful thinking she incorporated into the matrix channels, the answer was always the same.

Liar. Traitor. Thief. Heartbreaker.

Cancel BlitzCulmination. One thing it never told her was why Greg would do such a thing. She didn't understand human nature well enough to guess. And now she'd probably never know.

Katerina had sunk into an innocent dreamless sleep. Julia pulled the frilly snowdrop-pattern duvet up around her shoulders.

Open Channel to NN Core. Load OtherEyes Limiter#Five.

She felt her grandfather snuggle into her mind, welcoming his touch. The last person on the whole planet she still trusted. And what a sad comment on her life that was.

How are we doing? she asked.

Greg hasn't moved for three hours now. I think Wisbech must be their nesting ground. Clever that. So close, yet so far away. I'm not sure how they got across the Fens basin; too slow for a tilt-fan, possibly a hovercraft.

I trusted him, Grandpa. Really trusted him. Everything he did and said was always right. He made me believe in him. I thought I was safe.

I know you did, Juliet. It must hurt. I'm so sorry.

It doesn't hurt. I don't feel anything. I'm not human any more.

Course you are, girl. Don't talk nonsense. You're seeing Adrian again this weekend, aren't you? What you do with him is pretty bloody human. And I approve. He's a nice boy.

If I'm still around by the weekend.

Hey, that's no Evans talking. Wilholm is well protected, and I'm hooked into all the security sensors. Ain't nobody going to sneak up on you, girl.

Suppose it's one of the staff, Walshaw even?

No, Juliet, not Morgan. He's been with me for fifteen years, almost since you were born.

Stake your life on it, huh? She let the irony filter back to him.

That's my girl. Keep shining through. But don't you worry, I'm even watching Morgan. No strain on my capacity.

Julia found herself looking down at the wood-panelled study, initially confused by the unusual perspective, a fly on the ceiling. Walshaw was sitting at the long table databasing with his customised terminal; the bald patch on his crown was larger than she'd realised before. Then the incoming squirt from Event Horizon's datanet bloomed in her mind. Walshaw was reviewing the Cray memories as they were being extracted by the security division programming team. All the memories had been run through search and classification programs as they came out, analysed and indexed. He was running through the categories, accessing every mention of Wolf and Event Horizon, double-checking.

He's been doing that for hours, her grandfather said. Hunting down that clue Greg was talking about. Hardly the act of a turncoat, now is it?

I suppose. It would be nice to believe in him at least, Julia thought. But this was her life she was gambling with now. And the list of her mistakes when it came to dealing with people was a long one.

Suddenly she was inundated with a rapid-motion tour of Wilholm through the security sensors, visual, infrared, magnetic, electromagnetic, UV laser-radar. Millisecond slices of security division hardliners patrolling the corridors; sentinels prowling the grounds; Tobias in his stables; owls snapped in mid-flight, wings motionless; field mice twitching their tiny damp noses in the night air; deserted tracts of landscape, fields and woodland. A kaleidoscope of bright-hued luminous colours, and conflicting geometries.

See, Juliet? All quiet on the western front.

Her heart began to beat faster. Why is Walshaw bothering with the Crays? We know Kendric has plugged in with the PSP, that the card carriers organised the blitz.

You and I know, yes, Juliet. But I don't think Morgan has put it together yet.

But it's obvious! she exclaimed.

To you.

Oh, Grandpa! What if Greg hasn't worked it out, either? What if I was wrong about him? He was so tired, I mean totally run down. He's been through hell; and it was Kendric who had him beaten up.

Relax, girl. First thing I thought of.

What then?

If he's innocent, why are the two of them in Wisbech? And why didn't Gabriel warn us about him? She's in it with him.

Oh.

Sorry, Juliet.

The depression enveloped her again, its return total. She could see the world simply now, black and white, no right, no wrong, there was just survival which mattered. Instinctive self-preservation, primeval, the only complexity lay in method. The acceptance decided her.

When can you hit them? she asked.

Every hundred and eight minutes, starting in seventy-two minutes—mark.

Do it. Her lips synchronised with her thoughts, but no sound emerged.

OK, Juliet. Why don't you take a break? Katerina isn't going anywhere.

No, I'll stay here; it wouldn't be right leaving her, not now.

I'll give you a status check nearer the time.

"Love you, Grandee."

Wipe OtherEyes Limiter#Five. Exit NN Core.

Julia sat down on the barrel-like Copenhagen chair beside the bed, hand automatically sliding down the side of the cushion. Her fingers touched the hard plastic casing, reassuring her. She drew out the weapon. An ash-grey cylinder thirty centimetres long and three wide, a thin grooved handle at one end. It resembled a fat, long-barrelled pistol, weighing about one and a half kilos. The discharge end was solid, with a small circular indentation, gritted with minute carbonised granules. ARMSCOR was printed along the side in black lettering.

She'd stolen it from Greg after he'd brought Kats back to the finance division offices, slipping it off Walshaw's desk and into her bag as soon as the desolating revelation of his betrayal had sunk in. She'd been horribly afraid of him, what he might do.

When she'd got back to Wilholm she'd accessed the manor library's memory core, looking up what she'd got. A stunshot, capable of immobilising an adult at forty-five metres. Four shots would kill.

The power unit was charged to ninety-five per cent capacity, giving her almost two hundred shots. She'd spent the morning familiarising herself with it—safety catch, grip, aiming. Kept at it until she was satisfied she could do it by touch alone. It tended to wobble unless she used both hands. The library said there was no recoil.

And nobody knew she'd got it, not even Morgan Walshaw. Her last line of defence. Its solidity and weight injecting a primitive kind of confidence into a badly demoralised psyche. She wished it would be Kendric himself who came. There'd be no inhibition holding her back then. Sending all ninety-five per cent into his jerking, burning body.