"So this burglar," Landry said as they stood in the foyer. "Did you see which way he went?"

"Through the patio and that way through the yards, along the hedge," Lorinda said. "Cricket went after him. My brave little hero. Then I heard a terrible yelp. That awful person must have kicked him."

The dog looked up at Landry and snarled. Landry wanted to kick him too. Filthy, flea-ridden, vicious mutt.

"We'll take a look," he said. "Maybe the guy dropped his wallet on the way out. Sometimes we get lucky."

"You won't find anything," Van Zandt said. "I already have looked."

"Yeah, well, you're not exactly playing on our team," Weiss said. "We'll see for ourselves. Thanks anyway."

Van Zandt went off in a huff.

Weiss and Landry went to the car and got a flashlight. Together, they walked around to the back of the town house, shining the light on the shrubbery, on the gra.s.s. They walked in the direction Lorinda Carlton had pointed until they ran out of real estate, and found not so much as a gum wrapper.

"Pretty strange coincidence Van Zandt's place gets broken into while he's being interviewed," Weiss said as they walked.

"Crime of opportunity."

"Nothing was taken."

"Thievery Interruptus."

"And then we happen to get that tip."

Landry shrugged as they reached their car and he opened the driver's door. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Weiss. They bite."

The call came at 3:12 A.M.

Molly had taken the handset from the portable phone in the living room, snuck it upstairs, and hidden it under a magazine on her nightstand. She wasn't allowed to have her own telephone, even though practically every girl in her cla.s.s did. Bruce believed a girl and her own phone were a recipe for trouble.

He didn't let Chad have a phone either, though Molly knew Chad had a cell phone and a beeper so he and his stupid loser friends could send text messages back and forth, and page each other like they were important or something. Bruce didn't know about that. Molly kept the secret because she disliked Bruce more than she disliked Chad. According to Bruce, everyone in the house-except him-was supposed to make calls from the kitchen, where anybody could hear the conversation.

The phone rang three times. Molly stared at the handset she clutched in one hand, holding her breath, holding her microca.s.sette recorder tight in her other small, sweating hand. She was afraid Bruce was going to sleep through the call. He didn't care what happened to Erin. But just as she decided she would answer, the ringing stopped. She bit her lip and punched the on b.u.t.ton on the phone and the record b.u.t.ton on the tape recorder.

The voice was that terrible, creepy, distorted voice from the video, like something from a horror movie. Every word drawn-out and deliberate, metallic and ominous. Molly's eyes filled with tears.

"You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price."

"What are you talking about?" Bruce asked.

"You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price."

"It wasn't my choice."

"You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price."

"It wasn't my fault. I didn't call the cops. What do you want me to do?" "Bring the money to the place. Sunday. Six P.M. No police. No detective. Only you." "How much?" "Bring the money to the place. Sunday. Six P.M. No police. No detective. Only you. You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price. You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price."

The line went dead.

Molly clicked the phone off, clicked the recorder off. She was shaking so hard, she thought she might get

sick. You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price. The words played over and over, so loud, she wanted to slam her hands over her ears to drown them out, but the sound was inside her head. It was all her fault. She had thought she was doing the right thing, the smart thing. She had thought she was the only one who would do anything to save Erin. She had taken action. She had gone for help. Now Erin could die. And it was her fault.

Her fault and Elena's.

You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price.

In the uncertain hour before the morning Near the ending of the interminable night Strange the things we remember and the reasons we remember them. I remember those lines from a T. S. Eliot poem because at eighteen, as a headstrong freshman at Duke, I had an obsessive crush on my literature professor, Antony Terrell. I remember a pa.s.sionate discussion of Eliot's works over cappuccino at a local coffeehouse, and Terrell's contention that Four Quartets was Eliot's exploration of issues of time and spiritual renewal, and my argument that Eliot was the root cause of the Broadway musical Cats and therefore full of s.h.i.t.

I would have argued the sun was blue just to spend time with Antony Terrell. Debate: my brand of flirtation.

I didn't think of Antony as I sat curled in the corner of the sofa, chewing on my thumbnail, staring out the window at the darkness before dawn. I thought about uncertainty and what would come at the end of the unending night. I didn't allow myself to contemplate issues of spiritual renewal. Probably because I thought I may have blown my chance to h.e.l.l.

A tremor went through me and I shivered violently. I didn't know how I would live with myself if my getting caught at Van Zandt's caused the loss of evidence that could prove him to be a murderer. If he was somehow tied to Erin Seabright's disappearance, and I had blown the chance for him to be charged with something, and in charging him pressure him to give up Erin . . .

Funny. Before I had ever heard of Erin Seabright, I hadn't known how I would live with myself because Hector Ramirez had died as a consequence of my actions. The difference was that now it mattered to me.

Somewhere in all this, hope had snuck in the back door. If it had come knocking, I would have turned it away as quickly as I would turn away a door-to-door missionary. No, thanks. I don't want what you'

re selling.

"Hope" is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings without the words And never stops-at all Emily d.i.c.kinson I didn't want to have hope for myself. I wanted to simply exist.

Existence is uncomplicated. One foot in front of the other. Eat, sleep, function. Living, truly living, with all the emotion and risk that entails, is hard work. Every risk presents the possibility of both success and failure. Every emotion has a counterbalance. Fear cannot exist without hope, nor hope without fear. I wanted neither. I had both.

The horizon turned pink as I stared out the window, and a white egret flew along that pink strip between the darkness and the earth. Before I could take it for a sign of something, I went to my bedroom and changed into riding clothes.

No deputies had come knocking on my door in the dead of night to question me about my jacket and the break-in at Lorinda Carlton's/Tomas Van Zandt's town house. My question was: if the deputies didn't have my jacket, who did? Had the dog dragged it back to Lorinda Carlton? His trophy for his efforts. Had Carlton or Van Zandt followed my trail and found it? If ultimately Van Zandt had possession of the prescription with my name on it, what would happen?

Uncertainty is always the h.e.l.l of undercover work. I had built a house of cards, presenting myself as one thing to one group of people and something else to another group. I didn't regret the decision to do that. I knew the risks. The trick was getting the payoff before I was found out and the cards came tumbling down. But I felt no nearer to getting Erin Seabright back, and if I lost my cover with the horse people, then I was well and truly out of it, and I would have failed Molly.

I fed the horses and wondered if I should call Landry or wait to see if he would come to me. I wanted to know how Van Zandt's interview had gone, and whether or not the autopsy had been performed on Jill Morone. What made me think he would tell me any of that after what he had done the night before, I didn't know.

I stood in front of Feliki's stall as she finished her breakfast. The mare was small in stature and had a rather large, unfeminine head, but she had a heart and an ego as big as an elephant's, and att.i.tude to spare. She regularly trounced fancier horses in the showring, and if she had been able to, I had no doubt she would have given her rivals the finger as she came out of the ring.

She pinned her ears and glared at me and shook her head as if to say, what are you looking at?

A chuckle bubbled out of me, a pleasant surprise in the midst of too much unpleasantness. I dug a peppermint out of my pocket. Her ears went up at the crackling of the wrapper and she put her head over the door, wearing her prettiest expression.

"Some tough cookie, you are," I said. She picked the treat delicately from my palm and crunched on it. I scratched her under her jaw and she melted.

"Yeah," I murmured, as she nuzzled, looking for another treat. "You remind me of me. Only I don't have anybody giving me anything but grief." The sound of tires on the driveway drew my attention out the door. A silver Grand Am pulled in at the end of the barn.

"Case in point," I said to the mare. She looked at Landry's car, ears p.r.i.c.ked. Like all alpha mares, Feliki

was ever on the alert for intruders and danger. She spun around in her stall, squealed and kicked the wall.

I didn't go out to meet Landry. He could d.a.m.n well come to me. Instead, I went to D'Artagnon, took

him out of his stall, and led him to a grooming bay. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Landry approach. He was dressed for work. The morning breeze flipped his red tie over his shoulder.

"You're up bright and early for someone who was out prowling last night," he said. "I don't know what you're talking about." I chose a brush from the cabinet and started a cursorygrooming job that would have made Irina scowl at me and mutter in Russian if it had not been her dayoff.

Landry leaned sideways against a pillar, his hands in his pockets. "You don't know anything about aB&E at the town house of Lorinda Carlton-the town house where Tomas Van Zandt is living?"

"Nope. What about it?"

"We got a nine-one-one call last night claiming there was a piece of evidence there that would lock Van Zandt into the murder of Jill Morone."

"Terrific. Did you find it?"

"No."

My heart sank. There was only one piece of news that would have been worse, and that would have

been that they had found Erin's body. I hoped to G.o.d that wasn't the next thing coming. "You weren't there," Landry said. "I told you I was going to bed with a book." "You told me you were getting in the tub with a book," he corrected me. "That's not an answer." "You didn't ask a question. You made a statement." "Were you at that town house last night?" "Do you have reason to believe I was? Do you have my fingerprints? Something that fell out of my pocket? Video surveillance tapes? A witness?" I held my breath, not sure which answer I feared most.

"Breaking and entering is against the law."

"You know, I kind of remember that from when I was on the job. And there was evidence of forcible

entry at this town house?"

He didn't look amused by the clever repartee. "Van Zandt made it back to his place before I could get the warrant. If that shirt was there, he got rid of it."

"What shirt is that?"

"G.o.ddammit, Estes."

He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me around, startling D'Artagnon. The big gelding scrambled and pulled back against the cross-ties, jumped ahead, then sat back and reared.

I hit Landry hard in the chest with the heel of my hand. It was like punching a cinder block. "Watch what

you're doing, for Christ's sake!" I hissed at him.

He let me go and backed away, more leery of the horse than of me. I went to the horse to calm him. D'

Artagnon looked at Landry, uncertain that calming down was the wisest choice. He would have sooner run away.

"I've had zero sleep," Landry said in lieu of an apology. "I'm not in the mood for word games. Youhaven't been properly Mirandized. Nothing you say can be used against you. Neither Van Zandt or thatgoofy woman wants to pursue the matter anyway, because, as I'm sure you know, nothing was stolen. Iwant to know what you saw."

"If he got rid of it, it doesn't matter. Anyway, I have to think you had an accurate description of whateverit was or you wouldn't have gotten the warrant. Or did he give you grounds during your interview? Inwhich case you should have been smart enough to hold him while you got the warrant and executed thesearch."

"There was no interview. He called a lawyer."

"Who?"

"Bert Shapiro."

Amazing. Bert Shapiro was on a par with my father in terms of high-profile clients. I wondered which of

Van Zandt's grateful pigeons was footing that bill. "That's unfortunate," I said. And doubly so for me. Shapiro had known me all my life. If Van Zandt showed him that prescription slip, I was cooked. "Too bad you didn't wait until the autopsy was done topull him in. You might have had something to rattle his cage with before he used the L word." I struck a nerve with that. I could see it in the way his jaw muscles flexed. "Was there anything in the autopsy?" I asked. "If there was, I wouldn't be standing here. I'd be in the box busting that a.s.shole's chops, lawyer or no lawyer." "It's hard to imagine he's clever enough to get away with murder." "Unless he's had practice." "He hasn't been caught at it," I said. I chose a white saddle pad with the Avadonis logo embroidered on the corner and tossed it on D'

Artagnon's back, lifted his saddle off the rack, and settled it in place. I thought I could feel Landry's inner

tension as he watched me. Or maybe the tension was my own. I moved around the horse, adjusting the girth-a job that had to be done gradually and in ridiculouslysmall increments with D'Ar because he was, as Irina called him, a delicate flower. I tightened the girth one hole, then knelt to strap on his protective leg boots. I watched Landry shuffle his feet as he shifted positions restlessly.