Or maybe the call was from the surveillance team's controllers in Philadelphia.

Buchanan couldn't just let it keep ringing. That would arouse even more suspicion.

But as he reached to unhook the phone from his belt, he saw motion in the hallway. The killer appeared, and now he, too, had a cellular phone. He must have gotten it from the room where he'd been hiding.

He didn't look happy.

'Funny thing,' the killer said. 'I never heard of Brian MacDonald. I just called Duncan's van to make sure everything about you is on the up and up, and damned if your phone doesn't respond to his number, which tends to suggest that your phone is actually Duncan's phone, which makes me wonder why in hell-'

While the killer talked, keeping his left hand around the cellular phone, he moved his right hand beneath his jeans jacket. As Buchanan had noticed, the jacket was slightly too large, a logical reason for which would be that the killer had a holstered handgun beneath it.

'A coincidence,' Buchanan said. 'You're calling Duncan while somebody else is calling me. I'll show you.' He used his left hand to reach for the phone.

The killer's eyes focused on that gesture.

Simultaneously Buchanan shoved his right hand back beneath his sport coat, drawing his pistol from behind his belt at his spine.

The killer's eyes widened as he yanked his own pistol from beneath his jeans jacket.

Buchanan shot.

The bullet hit the man's chest.

Although the man was jolted backward, he still kept raising his weapon.

Buchanan's second bullet hit the man's throat.

Blood flew.

The man was jolted farther backward.

But his reflexes made his gunhand keep rising.

Buchanan's third bullet hit the man's forehead.

The impact knocked the man over. His gunhand jerked toward the ceiling. His spastic finger pulled the trigger. The pistol discharged, blowing a hole in the hallway ceiling. Plaster fell.

The man struck the hardwood floor in the computer room. He shuddered, wheezed, and stopped moving. Blood pooled around him.

Buchanan hurried toward the fallen man, aimed his pistol toward the man's head, kicked his gun away, and checked for life signs.

The man's eyes were open. The pupils were dilated. They didn't respond when Buchanan shoved his fingers toward them.

Quickly, Buchanan searched the man's clothes. All he found were a comb, coins, a handkerchief, and a wallet. He set the wallet on the table and hurried to get a small rug that he'd seen in the living room. After rolling the body onto the rug, he pulled the rug along the hallway, through the living room, and toward a back door in the kitchen.

The oppressive night concealed him. Shivering, his skin prickling from the river's dampness, Buchanan tugged the body across a screened porch, down three steps, and toward this deserted section of the river. He eased down the bank, found a log, hunched the body over it, shoved the log into the current, and watched as the body slipped off as soon as the current grabbed the log. The two objects drifted away, at once out of sight in the darkness. Buchanan threw the rug as far as he could into the river. He took out the man's gun, which he'd put beneath his belt, and threw it out into the river as well, obeying the rule of never keeping a weapon whose history you don't know. Finally he took out the killer's cellular phone along with the three empty shell casings from Buchanan's semiautomatic - he'd picked them up as he left the house - and threw them toward where the gun had splashed. He stared toward nothing, took several deep breaths to calm himself, and hurried back to the house.

16.

His ears rang from the roar of the gunshots. His nostrils widened from the stench of cordite and blood. Drawing his weapon had pulled the stitches in his side and strained the muscles in his injured shoulder. Tugging the body had further strained his side and shoulder. His head continued to feel as if a spike had been driven through it.

He locked the back door behind him, found another rug, took it into the computer room, and set it over the pool of blood. Then he opened a window to clear the smells of violence. Next, he searched the man's wallet, found close to three hundred dollars in various denominations, a driver's license for Charles Duffy of Philadelphia and a credit card for that name. Charles Duffy might be an alias. It probably was. It didn't matter. If these credentials had been good enough for the killer, they were good enough for Buchanan. He shoved the wallet into his pocket. He now had a new identity. On the unlikely chance that anybody in this remote area had heard the shots and came to investigate, everything looked normal, except for the finger-sized hole in the hallway ceiling, which by itself wouldn't arouse suspicion, although the pieces of plaster on the floor would. Buchanan picked them up and shoved them into a pocket.

With haste, he sat before the computer, glanced at the file directory on the screen, A B C D. moved the flashing cursor from A to D, and pressed RETURN.

The disc drive made a clicking sound. A new list of files appeared on the screen, a subdirectory for all the headings under D.

'tDARNEL 3k

DARNELL.BAK 3k

DAYTON 2k

DAYTON.BAK 2k

DIAZ 4k

DIAZ.BAK 4k

DIEGO 5k

DIEGO.BAK 5k

DOMINGUEZ 4k

DOMINGUEZ.BAK 4k

DRUMMER 5k

DRUMMOND.BAK 5k

DURAN 3k

DURAN.BAK 3k

DURANGO 5k

DURANGO.BAK 5k

Quickly, Buchanan opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet and took out the printed documents for D. The only way he could think of to learn whether someone had removed any of the files was to compare the names on the files with those in the computer's subdirectory. Even so, he didn't have much hope. The man who'd been hiding here to kill Juana had said that he'd erased some files in the computer, presumably to stop an investigator from doing what Buchanan was trying to do. Almost certainly the computer's list would match the names on the printed files. He wouldn't be able to tell which documents were missing.

Each computer file had a companion file marked BAK, the short form for BACKUP, signifying that the computer's memory retained the previous version of a newly updated file. DARNELL. DARNELL.BAK. Comparing, Buchanan found a printed file for that name.

He continued. DAYTON. DAYTON.BAK. Check. DIAZ. DIAZ.BAK. Check. DIEGO. DIEGO.BAK. Check. He was finding printed files for every name on the computer screen. DOMINGUEZ. DOMINGUEZ.BAK. DRUMMER. DRUMMER.BAK. DURAN. DURAN.BAK. DURANGO. DURANGO.BAK. Every name was accounted for.

He leaned back, exhausted. He'd wasted his time. There'd been no point in risking his life to come here. All he'd learned was that someone was determined to kill Juana, which he'd known already.