“Not just a terrorist,” Di Stefano said. “The terrorist. A guy we’ve been after for years.”

“So you see, Charity,” Nick said heatedly, “there is no way on this earth that you can go to Worontzoff’s house tonight. As a matter of fact, we’re going to take you into protective custody as of right now, until this whole thing is over.” He slanted a hard glance at his partner. “That right, Di Stefano?”

“Yes. It wouldn’t be a good idea for you to be there, Miss Prewitt. Some bad things are going to happen and it’s best you be far away.”

“But—I still don’t understand what Vassily is doing here. In Parker’s Ridge. It’s certainly not a crime center. It’s not a center of anything. It’s a remote little town in northern Vermont. What could he possibly want here?”

“You,” Di Stefano said bluntly.

Charity jolted. “Me?”

Nick tossed something else on the table—a photograph of a woman. “Last item in my Worontzoff kit.”

Charity turned it around and gasped.

The photograph was a color close-up of a woman done by a professional photographer. At the bottom of the photograph were Cyrillic letters, perhaps the photographer’s name. The woman had dangling earrings and was made up in a way that was slightly old-fashioned. She had pale blond hair cut in a bob. Charity scanned the familiar features, heart pounding.

She made a little sound of shock. The woman could have been her twin.

“Yeah,” Nick said. “She’s a dead ringer for you.”

Charity couldn’t take her eyes off the portrait. She picked it up, drinking it in with her eyes. It was like looking at herself in the mirror, wearing a wig. She touched the hair in the photo. A pale blond, several shades lighter than her own.

“He—he wanted me to bleach my hair. Light blond. And cut it. In a bob. Like this.” She ran the tip of her finger along the line of the woman’s hair, cut at the earlobe.

Di Stefano winced. “He’s wanting to turn you into her in every way. To make you exactly like her. Physically at least. Wasn’t there some creepy Hitchcock film about something like that?”

“What was her name?” Charity whispered, without looking away from the portrait. So many things were becoming clear to her. The way Vassily sought her out. The way he looked at her, seeing her but not seeing her. He wasn’t seeing her at all. He was seeing his long-dead love.

“Katya.” Nick’s voice was harsh. “Her name was Katya Artamova. She was a poetess and the love of his life. She was arrested together with him. They were both sent to Kolyma. She lasted about a week.”

“Katya,” Charity murmured, touching the face that could have been her own. Poor Katya. Poor Vassily.

Vassily had not only lost his love in the prison camp. He’d lost his soul.

Charity turned to the table and touched the objects, one by one. She was cursed with a vivid imagination. It took very little to imagine a child dying of leukemia, desperately hoping that the tap water in his IV was going to save him. Or to imagine one of the planes going down. She’d read that the newest generation of planes could carry from four to seven hundred passengers. Thousands of dead, charred bodies. Or—God! — nuclear secrets in the hands of an Iranian minister who hated America.

She looked up. “How are you going to follow the meeting tonight?”

Di Stefano and Nick looked at each other. Finally, Nick gave a what-the-hell shrug. “We’ve got a special device aimed at his study window that lets us listen in on conversations.”

“Is it the same kind of device that let you listen in on my conversation with Vassily just now?” she asked sharply.

Nick looked embarrassed. “Ah, no. Those are just old-fashioned bugs I planted. What we have aimed at Worontzoff’s study window is a laser-driven remote listening device, controlled from a surveillance van about a mile out.”

Charity frowned. “Just the study? What happens if they talk business in the living room, or the conservatory or the winter garden? Vassily’s house is huge. If you’re just listening in on one window in one room, what are you going to do if they hold their talks elsewhere?”

Di Stefano heaved a huge sigh. “Good question. With no good answer. All we have is the one laser device, so we’re just going to have to hope that they meet in the study. And that they meet soon. Because of course there’s the problem that—” He stopped suddenly and looked uncomfortable.

“What?” Charity asked. “The problem what?”

Nick slanted Di Stefano a hard glance, a warning. Di Stefano bit his lip.

“What?” Charity asked, her voice sharp. “What problem?”

“Well, the thing is, we can’t use the laser much after last light. Just like we can’t use it in a heavy snowstorm. The laser beam becomes visible. It’s like a huge neon sign—we’re listening to you.”

“So what happens if they meet after dark? Vassily invited me over for dinner, presumably after the talks or negotiations or whatever are over. Or what happens if it starts snowing, just like the weather forecast says. What’s Plan B?”

Silence. Di Stefano looked embarrassed and Nick looked grim, jaw muscles jumping.

Finally, Di Stefano spoke. “There really isn’t a Plan B. We’ll try to get photographs of who goes in and out. Use thermal imaging to count warm bodies.” He shrugged. “We’ll do our best with what we have.”

“There’s another way,” she said softly. “To get more information.”

“Yeah?” Di Stefano raised his eyebrows. “Which is?”

“Wire me,” she said simply.

Nick exploded. “No!” He jumped up from the sofa and ran a hand through his hair. “Not just no, but fuck no. Are you crazy? Hassan al-Banna and Vassily Worontzoff in the same fucking room and you walk into it? Together with God knows how many of their goons? There’s no way in hell you’re going anywhere near that place.” He whirled. “Goddamn it, Di Stefano, you tell her.”

But Di Stefano was looking at her thoughtfully.

“It could work,” Charity said, ignoring Nick.

“It could,” Di Stefano replied.

“No! Jesus, you can’t send a civilian into that! There’s no precedent, no protocol. We can’t do that!”

Di Stefano swiveled his head to stare at Nick. “Seems to me that you’re the first one here to have thrown precedent and protocol out the window, Nick. We’re just picking up the pieces here.”

“Well, I don’t want to pick up her pieces,” Nick snarled. “Did enough of that in Bosnia. This is not an option, so you can just forget it.”

Charity stood, too. Nick had an unfair advantage with his height. It was bad enough while standing, with her on the sofa and him upright and quivering with indignation. It was positively lopsided with both of them standing, an angry Nick looming over her.

“I’m not too sure that is a decision for you to make, Nick,” she said softly. She was speaking to him, but looking at Di Stefano.

What they’d said about Vassily had sickened her. Was that where he had got all his money? Not from his books but from essentially killing kids and abetting terrorists?

Charity didn’t really think of herself as a brave woman. She didn’t go in for martial arts, she didn’t rock climb or go parachuting. She was a very staid librarian who thought a new Nora Roberts book was a real thrill.

By the same token, though, she had a strong sense of honor and of patriotism. It turned out that the man she admired so much, Vassily Worontzoff, was a dangerous man, a man to be stopped.

In some small portion of her heart, she understood well that it was Kolyma that had changed him. He wasn’t responsible for the horrors that had been inflicted on him, that had cost him his health, his love, and, in a real sense, his sanity. But he was responsible for what he became.

She recognized that she was faced with another one of those moments where you show what you are made of. And she was made of steel. Life had handed her the possibility of stopping something horrendous and she wasn’t going to walk away.