"What's the matter?" Lisa asked.

"I think Jack's the love-'em-and-leave-'em type."

Lisa laughed, and Maggie joined her.

"How could you make me laugh at a time like this?" Lisa said, grabbing her ribs. "When Amy may be-" Her voice broke, and her eyes filled with tears.

Maggie put an arm around Lisa's waist and kept on walking. "Come on. Take one step at a time. That's the way you get through the tough times. Think you can do it?"

"What other choice do I have?"

"You can give up," Maggie said. "You can stop living. You can hide in a bottle, or the closet, or your job. I've tried them all, and believe me, none of them works worth a damn."

Lisa laughed again, then sobered. "All right, Maggie. I'll take one step at a time. Any other suggestions?"

"Pray."

Maggie walked Lisa all the way to the nurse's desk at the ICU. No one seemed to be on duty. Lisa glanced through the porthole window into the ICU. "I guess Mrs. Wainwright had to leave."

"She was here?" Maggie asked.

Lisa crossed and picked up the copy of Peter Rabbit on the ICU nurses' reception counter and said, "She promised to read to Amy while I went to get something to eat. I guess she forgot her book."

Maggie took the expensively bound copy of Beatrix Potter's Tales of Peter Rabbit from Lisa and felt a chill run down her spine. How had Victoria gotten this book from Shady Oaks? The nurses there had strict instructions not to allow her on the premises.

Maybe it's a duplicate copy.

Maggie opened the book to the flyleaf and read, "To my grandson, Brian. May the angels keep you always."

Something clicked in Maggie's head, like a light switch going on, and she winced in the blinding glare.

"Oh, my God."

The ICU nurse came out of a door down the hall and headed for the desk. "Can I help you?" she said.

Maggie grabbed her by the arm and said, "How is Amy Hollander doing?"

"Vital signs haven't changed," the nurse said.

"When was the last time you checked?" Maggie demanded.

"Two minutes ago, okay?"

Maggie released the nurse and straightened out her uniform where she had wrinkled the sleeve. "Sorry. I was afraid something might have happened to her. Guess I overreacted a little."

"We get a lot of that around here."

"Is it all right for me to sit with my daughter?" Lisa asked.

"Sure," the nurse said, ushering them beyond the swinging ICU doors.

As Maggie watched Lisa settle in the uncomfortable plastic chair beside her daughter, she realized there was something she had to tell Jack. Something she had thought a lot about since he had come into her life, asking questions and digging up the past. Something that had prompted her to make some phone calls to the hospital in Minnesota where Woody and Stanley had died. Something Jack needed to know. A matter of life and death.

But there was someone else she needed to speak with first.

Chapter 18.

Maggie discovered Uncle Porter was out of town on Monday afternoon, so she made an appointment to see him bright and early Tuesday. When Maggie checked with his secretary Tuesday morning, he had rescheduled the meeting for late Tuesday afternoon. Maggie had no choice but to wait.

She checked on Amy's condition several times during the day by phone from her office, but it remained unchanged. She was trusting Jack to watch over Amy and make sure nothing happened to her. Maggie didn't call Jack because she wanted to speak with Uncle Porter before she disclosed her suspicions to him. But she noticed Jack hadn't called her, either.

Maggie told herself it was foolish to wait by the phone, hoping to hear from him. So she carried on as though Jack Kittrick's face was not constantly appearing before her, roguishly smiling, eyes filled with teasing laughter.

She realized she had truly made herself crazy, when she battled her secretary late in the afternoon to answer the phone, hoping it was Jack. She was chagrined when her secretary won and said, "Mr. Porter says he can't see you until tomorrow."

In a day filled with waiting for things that didn't happen, that was the final frustrating straw.

Maggie marched around to the managing partner's office, ignored the protests of Uncle Porter's secretary, and moments later was standing in front of Porter Cobb.

"You've been putting me off," she said.

"I've been busy."

"I'm afraid this can't wait, Porter." For the first time, the familial address she had always accorded him was missing.

"What is it you've come to discuss?"

"Victoria. And what happened in Minneapolis." Maggie was watching for a guilty reaction, but she didn't get one. Porter was one cool customer.

When he reached for a cigar from a box on the desk, Maggie put her forefinger on the humidor. "No cigar. They aren't good for you. And they stink."

Porter harrumphed, but conceded the issue without further protest. Maggie knew he wasn't done posturing when he leaned back and put his booted heels on the antique desk alongside the rowel marks from Sheriff Tommy Cobb's spurs and the seven notches etched in the oak for the seven outlaws brought in by Texas Ranger "Big John" Cobb.

"I'm not intimidated by that desk, Porter," Maggie said firmly.

"What about the man sitting behind it?" he asked.

Maggie settled herself on the corner of the desk bearing the personally carved initials of Colonel William Travis, who had died at the Alamo. "I want to be sure I can hear you, and you can see me."

"This sounds important."

"It's a matter of life and death."

He cocked a brow. "That sounds a bit beyond my legal expertise."

"Don't play dumb with me," Maggie said. "I've seen you argue before the Texas Supreme Court. And in this case, you're the per-son with all the answers."

"Very well. Get on with it, girl."

Maggie ignored the diminutive address. Or rather, let it slide. It was impossible to ignore the way Porter Cobb was looking down his nose at her. She recognized the gesture because she had seen Victoria do it. She realized suddenly that they had both probably learned it from one of their parents.

She countered his condescending glance with an equally withering one of her own.

"Very well done, my dear," Porter said with a chuckle. "You're learning, I see."

"I picked up everything I know about trial tactics from you," she said.

"Who's on trial, if I may ask?"

"You are."

Maggie saw the slightest lift in the heels of Porter's ostrich cowboy boots before he relaxed back into the swivel chair.

"Very well," he said. "Ask your questions, counselor."

Maggie opened her mouth, and her throat suddenly closed. She wanted to know the truth, but she was also afraid to know it. She managed to say three words.

"Victoria killed Woody."

It hadn't been phrased as a question, yet only the flicker of an eye gave away Porter's discomfort and dismay. Anyone who didn't know him as well as Maggie did would never have seen it. She swallowed over the thickness in her throat and said, "Well?"

"That is a deep, dark subject, my dear."

"Don't you think you've buried the truth long enough?"

Porter's sigh eddied in the room before it settled in the silence between them. "How did you figure it out?"

"The clues were always there."

"I could never have proved she killed Woody. Or Richard, either."

Maggie gasped. "She killed her own husband?"

The expression of pain on Porter's face was answer enough for Maggie. She had come here with questions and suppositions. She hadn't realized Porter would provide such honest-and monstrous-answers.

"I didn't think any purpose would be served by telling anyone the truth," he said. "Or as much of it as I could figure out from hints Victoria gave me. I've kept a close watch on her to make sure it never happened again."

"But it has happened again," Maggie said. "More than once."

Porter's boots came off the desk and landed with two distinctive thumps on the Persian carpet. "The hell you say."

Maggie stood, laid both palms on the infamous desk, and stared Porter in the eye. "Six children are dead. And I believe Victoria killed them."

"Children?"

"Every one under ten years old," Maggie said, her voice strident with anger. "Some of them babies. Six children dead. And if Victoria isn't stopped, it will be seven, or eight, or God knows how many!"

Porter was on his feet, taking back the position of authority. Maggie straightened up, matching him move for move, her legs spread wide, her fisted hands on her hips.

He shook his head. "Damn it, girl. I suppose it's that Texas Ranger making accusations against her."

"They're not just accusations. The Texas Rangers have proof from autopsies done on victims who were murdered by an overdose of potassium chloride."

"There's no proof Victoria committed the murders," Porter blustered, "or she would have been arrested by now."

"Kittrick said there were only three people with a common bond to all the victims-Roman Hollander, his nurse, and me. We know there was one more, don't we? Victoria inevitably found a reason to visit me-to persecute me-on the anniversary of Woody's death every year. She came to Dallas, and she came to Houston. And she's been working as a volunteer in pediatrics at San Antonio General for as long as I've been counsel there."

"I swear I never had an inkling of what you're accusing her of doing."

"You believed she had killed twice. You were careful to keep Brian safe. Yet you never suspected she would kill again?" Maggie asked incredulously.

An eyelash flickered again, and Maggie saw the truth.

He knew! He knew-or had at least suspected-all along.

"How could you stand by and do nothing to stop her?" Maggie said bitterly.

"She's my sister."

"Nine years ago I blessed your soul every night before I went to sleep for coming to rescue me from the depths of despair. But you never did it for me, did you? You did it for her. To give her someone to hate besides herself."

"She couldn't bear being near Brian the way he was. That's why I came to find you."

"Because you knew she would kill him," Maggie spat. "Like she killed all those other kids!"

"There's no proof!" Porter said, pounding the desk with his fist. "Kittrick can't do a thing to her without proof!"

"You could," Maggie said.

"What?"

"You could have Victoria committed. You could get her the care she needs."

He sank into the swivel chair, his fingers rubbing at his temples. "Victoria would never stand for it."

"You have the power to arrange it. Before she kills again."

Sweat beaded the old man's forehead and gathered above his upper lip. Almost the instant the signs of nervousness appeared, he withdrew a pristine handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his age-mottled skin dry. "I'm sorry, Margaret. I can't help you."

"You mean you won't."

"You don't seem to understand-"