He still did that.

Most of his old Soviet colleagues missed the old days. They missed the power. A few had returned to the old country, but most had stayed. They were bitter men. Sosh hired some of his old colleagues because he trusted them and wanted to help. They had history. And when times were hard and his old KGB friends were feeling particularly sorry for themselves, Sosh knew that they too opened their refrigerators and marveled at how far they'd come.

You don't worry about happiness and fulfillment when you're starving.

It is good to remember that.

You live among this ridiculous wealth and you get lost. You worry about nonsense like spirituality and inner health and satisfaction and relationships. You have no idea how lucky you are. You have no idea what it is like to starve, to watch yourself turn to bones, to sit by hopelessly while someone you love, someone otherwise young and healthy slowly dies, and a part of you, some horrible instinctive part of you, is almost happy because now you will get a bite-and-a-half-size sliver of bread today instead of just a bite size.

Those who believe that we are anything other than animals are blind. All humans are savages. The ones who are well fed are just lazier. They don't need to kill to get their food. So they dress up and find so- called loftier pursuits that make them believe that they are somehow above it all. Such nonsense. Savages are just hungrier. That was all. You do horrible things to survive. Anyone who believes that they are above that is delusional.

The message had come in on his computer.

That was how it worked nowadays. Not by phone, not in person. Computers. E-mails. It was so easy to communicate that way and not be traced. He wondered how the old Soviet regime would have handled the Internet. Controlling information had been such a large part of what they did. But how do you control it with something like the Internet? Or maybe it wasn't that big of a difference. In the end, the way you rounded up your enemies was through leaks. People talked. People sold one another out. People betrayed their neighbors and loved ones. Some times for a hunk of bread. Sometimes for a ticket to freedom. It all de pended on how hungry you were.

Sosh read the message again. It was short and simple and Sosh wasn't sure what to do about it. They had a phone number. They had an ad dress. But it was the first line of the e-mail that he kept coming back to. So simply stated.

He read it again:

WE FOUND HER.

And now he wondered what he should do about it.

I put a call in to Muse. "Can you find Cingle Shaker for me?"

"I guess. Why, what's up?"

"I want to ask her some questions about how MVD works."

"I'm on it."

I hung up and turned back to Lucy. She was still looking out the window.

"You okay?"

"I trusted him."

I was going to say I'm sorry or something equally hackneyed, but I decided to keep it to myself. "You were right," she said. "About?" "Lonnie Berger was probably my closest friend. I trusted him more than anyone. Well, except for Ira, who's got one arm locked in the strait-jacket as it is."

I tried to smile.

"By the way, how’s myself-pity act? Pretty attractive, right?"

"Actually," I said, "it is."

She turned away from the window and looked at me.

"Are we going to try again, Cope? I mean, after this is all done and we figure out what happened to your sister. Are we going back to our lives-or are we going to try to see what could happen here?"

"I love when you beat around the bush."

Lucy wasn’t smiling.

"Yeah," I said. "I want to try."

"Good answer. Very good."

"Thanks."

"I don't always want to be the one risking my heart."

"You're not," I said. "I'm there too."

"So who killed Margot and Doug?" she asked.

"Wow, that was a quick segue."

"Yeah, well, the faster we figure out what happened…" She shrugged. "You know something?" I said. "What?" "It's just so damn easy to remember why I fell for you." Lucy turned away. "I am not going to cry, I am not going to cry, I am not going to cry…" "I don't know who killed them anymore," I said.

"Okay. How about Wayne Steubens? Do you still think he did it?"

"I don't know. We do know that he didn't kill Gil Perez."

"Do you think he told you the truth?"

"He said he hooked up with you."

"Yuck."

"But that he only got to second base."

"If he counts the time he intentionally bumped into me during a softball game and copped a feel, well, then technically he's telling the truth. Did he really say that?"

"He did. He also said he slept with Margot."

"That's probably true. Lots of guys had Margot."

"Not me."

"That's because I snagged you as soon as you arrived."

"That you did. He also said that Gil and Margot had broken up."

"So?"

"Do you think it's true?" I asked.

"I don't know. But you know how camp was. It was like a life cycle in seven weeks. People were always going out and then breaking up and then finding someone new." True. "But?" "But the common theory was that both couples went into the woods to, uh, mess around." "Like we were doing," she said.

"Right. And my sister and Doug were still an item. Not in love or anything, but you know what I mean. My point is, if Gil and Margot were no longer together, why would they have been sneaking into the woods?"

"I see. So if she and Gil were broken up-and we know Gil didn't die in those woods…" I thought about what Raya Singh had suggested – a woman who had clearly known and even been close to Gil Perez, aka Manolo Santiago.

"Maybe Gil killed Margot. Maybe Camille and Doug just stumbled across that."

"So Gil silenced them."

"Right. Now he’s in trouble. Think about it. He's a poor kid. He has a brother with a criminal record. He'd be under suspicion as it was."

"So he faked like he died too," she said.

We both sat there.

"We're missing something," she said.

"I know."

"We might be getting close."

"Or we might be way off."

"One of the two," Lucy agreed.

Man, it felt good to be with her.

"Something else," I said.

"What?"

"Those journals. What were they talking about-you finding me covered with blood and me saying we can't tell anyone?"

"I don't know."

"Let's start with the first part-the part they got right. About how we sneaked away." "Okay." "How would they know that?" "I don't know," she said. "How would they know you led me away?" "Or"-she stopped, swallowed-"how I felt about you?" Silence. Lucy shrugged. "Maybe it was just obvious to anyone who saw the way I looked at you."

"I'm trying hard to focus here and not smile."

"Don't try too hard," she said. "Anyway, we got part one of the journal. Let's move on to part two."

"The stuff about me covered in blood. Where the hell did they come up with that?"

"No idea. But you know what really creeps me out?"

"What?"

"That they knew we got separated. That we did lose sight of each other."

I had wondered about that too.

"Who would know about that?" I asked.

"I never told a soul," she said.

"Neither did I."

"Someone could have guessed," Lucy said. She stopped, looked up at the ceiling. "Or…"

"Or what?"

"You never told anyone about us getting separated, right?"

"Right."

"And I never told anyone about us getting separated."

"So?"

"So then there's only one explanation," Lucy said.

"That being?"

She looked straight at me. "Someone saw us that night."

Silence.

"Gil maybe," I said. "Or Wayne."

"They're our two murder suspects, right?"

"Right."

"Then who murdered Gil?"

I stopped.

"Gil didn't kill himself and move his body," she went on. "And Wayne Steubens is in a maximum security facility in Virginia."