"Cindy?" she asked, hanging on to that phone as if it would help her hang on to Cindy herself. "I'm sorry about what I said. I've just been so upset lately. Can we talk about it?"

"No," Cindy said quietly. "We can't. I'm tired of trying to be your friend. After everything I've done for you, you turn on me like that. I don't deserve that kind of treatment."

"You're right. You don't—"

"Listen to me. Listen to me. You think you're so smart. You think you know everything. Well, figure this out, forensic nurse. Who do you save first?"

"What?"

"No, that's a triage question, isn't it? Well, you're so sure you know better than anybody else which patient deserves all your attention. I collected a puzzle for you tonight. I was just going to stop and get any able-bodied person to make it fair, but I got a bonus. I got your friend the reporter. And I got your father. Now, who do you save first?"

God, she couldn't breathe. She needed to let Micklind know. She needed to alert somebody here.

Nobody here was paying attention. They were hovering over Alex, or ricocheting around the trauma room like racquetballs. There was nothing she could do but hold on and wait for the rest.

"Here's the clue," Cindy said, as if asked. "What are some of the other uses for fabric softener sheets? You have five minutes to answer, Timmie. After that it'll be too late."

Click.

Fabric softener. Fabric...

Timmie punched the hold button. "Micklind, are you there?"

"Yeah, what the hell...?"

"My house! They're at my house, and she's going to set it on fire!"

Timmie didn't even wait to hear him yell "Shit!" and hang up. She just ran.

* * *

There was a car in her driveway. A nondescript Japanese sedan she'd never seen before tucked back in the shadows by the garage. Lights were on all across the first floor. The second floor remained dark. Timmie knew the police would be coming soon. She also knew she couldn't wait. Cindy was going to start dropping lighted sheets of fabric softener all over the piles and mountains of flammables in those rooms until her house, her grandfather's and great-grandfather's house, was a conflagration of old memories.

If that was all Cindy intended to do, Timmie could live with it. But Timmie knew with dead certainty that she fully intended to take her father and Murphy along for the ride.

Who do you save first?

No, Daddy. No.

Timmie knew it was probably pointless, but she walked around the back of her house to get in. No creaky step for her. She pulled open the creaky screen door to the kitchen instead, counting on the fact that Cindy had unlocked the way in.

She had.

Timmie could hear the refrigerator humming. She could hear the clock ticking in the living room. Overhead the fluorescent light flickered, and the window that lit her sun catchers had disappeared into a rectangle of night. The house seemed so still, as if it were just lying dormant. Timmie knew better. Carefully avoiding the spots that would groan, she tiptoed across the floor, all the while conscious of how much time she was using up. Measuring her breathing, her movements, by the ticking of that clock. Keeping perfectly quiet, she leaned around the doorway to see into the dining room.

Nothing.

No bodies, no Cindy, no fire.

No, not quite nothing. Standing there in the stale air of an empty house, Timmie caught the first whiff of a familiar odor. Not much. But then, not much was needed. All Cindy had to do was drop a couple of fabric softener sheets into a pool of brand-new bourbon, and this place would go up like bananas Foster.

Where was her father? Where was Murphy? How long did Timmie have before Cindy started flicking her Bic?

And most important, what could she do to stop her?

Timmie had no gun. They'd taken that away with Jason. She had no pepper spray or dogs. She did, however, have a lifetime batting average of .310. Timmie turned toward the front door for her weapon and suffered her latest shock. It was gone. Her best Louisville slugger, autographed by Stan "the Man" Musial himself. And damn it if Timmie wasn't sure she knew exactly who'd walked off with it.

Somehow, that settled her. If there was one thing a trauma nurse was, it was resourceful. And Traumawoman was resource itself. Holding her breath against discovery, Timmie crept back into her father's room and raided his memory closet. Well, if she couldn't have Stan the Man, she could at least have Marty Marion.

"You might as well come on down," she said into the echoing rooms. "The police will be here in a minute."

Cindy's voice floated, disembodied, down the stairs. "I know."

Timmie thought she could hear distant sirens already, but that might have just been wishful thinking.

"Where are they?" she asked.

Cindy laughed, and the sound bounced down the stairs. "That's for you to find out. You're so damn smart."

Timmie rubbed the back of her neck and choked up again. "All right, then, how about this. Why?"

There was a long pause upstairs. A breathy sound that might have been a sigh. "I just wanted to help," she said.

"By killing gomers?"

"That was Landry's fault," she insisted, suddenly petulant. "That son of a bitch. I loved him!"

"He wasn't even here when you started killing those old people, Cindy."

"Well, all right, that was Alex."

"Alex asked you to kill his patients for him?"

"He couldn't do that. But he told me how much they were going to cost the unit. How tough it was going to be to make ends meet for a third time. How worried he was about it."

"He told you that?"

"Yes! I was there for him a long time before you were."

By now, Timmie knew better. But now wasn't the time to argue.

"And you called Murphy so that Landry would get into trouble? Or did you just kill Alice to cost him all that money?"

Silence. "I told you. He was using me."

"What about your father, Cindy? Who asked you to kill him?"

There was a shuffling sound. A familiar clicking that sent ice skittering through Timmie's veins. "You could have at least thanked me," Cindy said, her voice small and sad. And then she tossed the first of the softener sheets straight down the stairwell.

Timmie screamed and ran, but it was too late. Cindy had dripped the bourbon down the side of the staircase, and it caught like a gas trail. As Timmie grabbed a bolt of fabric to beat it out, Cindy dropped another. And another. She walked right down the steps, floating sheets over the side of the railing like flash paper flowers.

Timmie gave up on the fabric. Paper had started to catch. The curtains were no more than a few feet away, and they were old. The pool of bourbon seemed to reach back under the hall closet door, where all her father's business papers had been kept. It was already too late. And Cindy, dropping sheets, was smiling.

Timmie leaped for her. Cindy clambered away, dropping another sheet she'd lit from the shiny silver Zippo in her hand. The paper caught fast, the smell acrid and thick, the flames licking upward toward old wood.

"It's too late," Cindy chanted, pulling another sheet free. "Which one do you save? You really gonna let Mister Murphy die just because you can't say good-bye to your father?"

"Cindy, stop it now," Timmie begged, crowding her back toward the stairs. "Help me get them out."

Cindy lifted the sheet high, flicked the lighter so that the flame shuddered in the depths of her dark eyes. "You still don't get it," she said. "I just wanted to be your friend."