" No father was listed on the intake form, but Duncan had never been able to adjust to the noncommittal "Ms " Cindy Green was young, barely into her twenties, probably little more than a baby herself when she'd had Kanesha. The intake form said she worked as a waitress. She was very pretty in a round-faced, full-lipped way. Duncan studied those lips.

Kanesha's mouth would look exactly like her mother's if nOt for the cicatricial deformity.

"About four and a half years ago. When she was seventeen months old.

Happened before I knew it." How many times had he heard that one?

But he kept his voice neutral, "They're a handful at that age, aren't they." ' One minute she was sitting on the floor playing with the pots and pans. I turn to clean the sink and I hear her scream. I turn around and she . . . " Her throat worked and her voice grew thick.

"She was knocked out and her mouth was smoking. I knew she was teething but I never dreamed she'd bite an electrical cord."

"Happens more often than you'd think." Which was true. Obviously it happened more often in neglected kids, but he didn't think Kanesha was neglected. Just one of those tragic accidents.

Near tragic, actually.

Duncan could fix it.

He was mapping out the incisions now . . . debride the scar tissue, restore the mouth to full width, evert some mucosa for the lips . .

This wasn't the first time he'd reconsmlcted an electrical burn on a child's face, and it wouldn't be the last. Kanesha was a lucky one.

She'd survived without brain damage, and she had a mother who cared.

And now she had him.

A shame he couldn't use the beta-3 on her, but a clinic was no place for an experimental protocol. The hospital didn't want the ha.s.sles, and he couldn't blame them. As soon as free-clinic patients heard the word "experimental" they started thinking Frankenstein and feared someone was going to use them as guinea pigs.

"Can you fix her, Dr. Duncan? When I saw what you did for little Kennique" "Who? " "Kennique LeFave . . . you know . . . her cheek was all" "Oh, yes. Of course." The names people came up with these days. But he certainly remembered the three-year-old who'd fallen from a window last year and ripped the right side of her face to the bone.

That had been a real challenge.

"All her mommy does is sing the praises of Dr. Duncan, Dr. Duncan.

So I knew I just had to bring Kanesha to you. Do you think you can .

. . ? " Duncan nodded. "It will take a couple of procedures, but yes, I think we can fix her up good as new." The mother's eyes were intent on Duncan's. "Can you? Can you really? " "Is that a note of doubt I detect? ' "No, it's just" "Smile for me, ' Duncan said.

" What? " '"Go ahead. Smile." The mother smileda lovely smile, even when forced.

Duncan reached out and grasped her chin just as he had Kanesha's.

"I'd like to make your daughter's smile look just like yours.

'"You can do that? ' the mother whispered.

Yes. He could. This was the age of miracles, and he was a miracle worker.

But still . . . never promise too much. Better to give them more than they're expecting.

"A certain amount depends on Kanesha. Not everyone heals the same. So . . . a smile like yours . . . that'll be okay? " The mother smiled softly, hesitantly, but genuinely this TIME "Yes.That will be okay."

"Good! " He pressed a buzzer on the wall. A heavyset black nurse entered. "Marge, see if we can set up Kanesha for a facial reconstructionleft upper and lower l.a.b.i.alf. or late Wednesday, morning.

" "Next week? " the mother said.

"Too soon? " "Well, no, I just . . .

"She's had that scar long enough, don't you think? " The mother looked at him, staring into his eyes, looking for a.s.surance there.

"Yes, " she said finally. "Too long." As Marge led them out, Ca.s.sie Trainor stepped into the room and slipped behind him. She was tall, blond, and well proportioned, her uniforms were tailored to maximize the effect of her ample bust. Midforties, trim, and s.e.xy. She gripped his shoulders and began to knead the muscles at the back of his neck with her thumbs.

"How's Dr. Duncan today? ' Duncan had everyone at the clinic refer to him as "Dr. Duncan." It was a legitimate moniker and it obscured the Lathram name.

He didn't want it getting around that Duncan Lathram was doing charity work. He'd made such a point of refusing to deal with insurance companiesprivate, government, or whateverand about performing no surgery that was necessary, that he didn't want to have to explain why he was fixing up ghetto kids for free.

He had stopped explaining.

"I'm fine, and that feels good."

"So, what're you doing after we finish here? Ready to buy that drink you've been promising? " Duncan tried to keep his shoulders from tightening. He'd been ducking Ca.s.sie for months now. Not long after his divorce they'd had a little fling.

Very hot. Too hot not to cool down, as the song went. She was an excellent nurse and uninhibited under the covers. He remembered one night when . . . no, now was not the time to relive that, not with her fingers kneading his shoulders. Eventually, they'd gone their own ways, but every now and again Ca.s.sie seemed to like to fan the embers of old blazes. Duncan knew there were plenty of old blazes in Ca.s.sie's past.

Too many for comfort nowadays when casual s.e.x had stopped being a recreational sport and metamorphosed into serious business, grimbusiness, requiring research and background checks, especially with someone with such a busy and enthusiastically varied history as Ca.s.sie Trainor.

He hated that something so basic and so wonderful as s.e.x had become a source of paranoia and anxiety, a new religious sect with purification rites and latex Eucharists.

What a world. What a G.o.dd.a.m.n screwed-up world.

Casual s.e.x was all he had the heart for these days, and casual s.e.x was like Russian roulette. No time or heart to invest in a lasting relationship, and no desire to pursue one, not after what had happened to his marriage.

What had happened to him since the divorce? Where had his pa.s.sion for life gone? He'd withdrawn from all his old friends. Not consciously.

He hadn't even realized what was happening until it was done. He spent a lot of time alone now, but that didn't seem to bother him. He didn't know this preoccupied, isolated man he had become.

Maybe Lisa hadn't been an aberration. Maybe it ran in the family.

Whatever the reason, he realized he'd become a man who feared intimacy more than solitude.

But at least today he could tell Ca.s.sie the truth.

"I'd love to, Ca.s.sie, but I'm meeting my son for dinner." '"Too bad.

How old is he now? ' "Twenty-one last month." Lisa would have been 23 last spring, already graduated a year. "Starting his senior year in college. We're trying that new Italian restaurant in Georgetown. "

"Giardia? " Duncan laughed. "Not funny." Giardinello. I'd ask you along but we're going to talk about the flare."

"I getcha. Okay.

Maybe next TIME"

"Definitely." She glided away and he watched the white fabric of her uniform slide back and forth over her b.u.t.tocks, an urge rose within and he almost changed his mind, almost called her back. Instead he looked at his watch. He'd have to pick Brad up soon at the house.

The house . . .

Used to be his house too. Now it was just Diana's. He wondered howshe could live there, walk through that foyer where . . .

Duncan rubbed his eyes and rose from the chair. When things finally fell apart, he didn't contest the divorce action. So while it wasn't exactly an amicable dichotomy, it never got vicious. He let Diana have what she wanted, agreed to generous alimony payments, and, of course, he'd seen to it that Brad had whatever he needed. He loved his son, wanted to stay close to him, and most of all, wanted to spare him the spectacle of his parents hissing and clawing at each other.

And Duncan got . . . what?

What did I get besides out?

He and Diana still were on speaking terms, but only on neutral, practical matters, never anything personal. And he would never set foot in that house again.

He tended to heal slowly, sometimes not at all. He had no implant full of beta-3 for the soul.

Which was why he had been on the west portico of the Capitol yesterday morning. Trying to heal himself by balancing the scales, by closing the circle, by imposing a symmetry on the chaos his life had become.

Only then would this cancerous rage cease its relentless metastasis and allow him to get on with his life.

He barked a laugh in the empty room. His life? What life?

Marge poked her head in. "Dr. Duncan . . . you all right? " "Fine, Marge. Just fine." That's a laugh, he thought, waving her off.

Nothing at all is fine.

Yesterday morning . . . another failure. Why wasn't anything ever simple? Why couldn't things go the way he planned?

Neither of the other two had gone the way he'd intended either.

Lane and Schulz, both dead, one in a car, the other in a twenty-story swan dive.

And yesterday . . . Allard was supposed to crack up in front of the cameras, not crack his skull on the Capitol steps. Duncan hadn't wanted him physically hurt. h.e.l.l, any hired thug could do that. He'd come prepared to see Allard mortally embarra.s.sed, terminally humiliated, politically ruined, he'd wanted his credibility bloodied, not his head.d.a.m.n! All the planning, the exquisite timing, wasted. Now Allard was just a victim of a bad fall, pitied, pathetic, an object of sympathy instead of ridicule.

Duncan wondered at his own coldheartedness, but only briefly. He had plenty of warm emotions left, but they were already spoken for. No leftovers for the likes of Congressman Allard.

Allard, at least, was still alive.

Next time . . . next time he'd get it right.

Duncan rubbed his eyes. He'd started this for a payback in kind, not to kill or maim. Merely devastate their careers, their marriages, their reputations, and let them live among the ruins. A living death.

Li/ee 7nine.

Although not his intent, the fatalities didn't particularly bother him.

After all, Lisa was dead because of them, and she was worth ten, twenty, a hundred of them.

Gin's presence yesterday had been another complication, one of those perverse coincidences that might one day trip him up and expose what he'd been doing.

Slim as it was, the possibility of exposure knotted his gut.

Indictment for murder, a circus of a trial, then jail. The scandal .

. . what would it do to Brad? His son was one of the few things left in his life that mattered to him.

He'd do anything to avoid that. Anything.

But where W'dS the risk, really? He had a virtually untraceable toxin, and an all-but-invisible means of delivery. The only one who might put it together would be Oliver, but his preoccupied brother tended to take little notice of events outside his lab. The only other real risk was someone like Gin. Someone who knew the patients, knew about the implants, and was bright enough to put all the pieces together.

Remote as it was, he grimaced at the possibility. What a frightful quandary that would be. What would he do if Gin stumbled onto him?

He'd have to find a way to neutralize her. He couldn't allow her to .

He shook off the grim train of thought. It wouldn't happen. Vincent would be the next to last. One more after him and then Duncan would close this chapter of his life.

But the last one would be the big one. The biggest.

MARTHA GINA DELAYED HER RETURN TO THE APARTMENT. SHE didn't want to hear any bad news. And no news was bad news as far as the Hill was concerned. The capper would be a message from Gerry telling her he had to call off their dinner plans, or worse yet, no call from Gerry at all.

Gimme a break, she thought. Something's got to go right this week.

So she got off the Metro at the zoo and did a slow walk along Calvert Street across the Duke Ellington Bridge into her neighborhood.

Adams Morgan was sometimes described as funky, sometimes eclectic, but most times just plain weird. Gin loved the area. A big triangle on the hill sloping down toward Dupont Circle, roughly bordered by Calvert Street and Florida and Connecticut avenues, where you could find ethnic jewelry, folk art, and cutting-edge music while breathing the exotic aromas of an array of cuisines that could rival the entire United Nations for diversity. Where else in the District could you find an Argentine cafe flanked by a top-notch French restaurant and a Caribbean bistro? Even Ethiopian restaurants. Who'd ever heard of an Ethiopian restaurant? Yet there were three in her neighborhood.

Gin browsed an African bookstore, did touchy-feely with some Guatemalan fabric, tried on some Turkish shoes, then decided she'd delayed the inevitable long enough. She walked to her building, an old brick row house on Kalorama between Columbia and Eighteenth, it had a tower on its downhill side and was painted sky blue. She let herself into her third-floor apartment.

The rental agency had listed it as "furnished." Gin thought "not unfurnished'' would have been more in line with most truth-in-advertising laws. The rickety furniture had been varnished so many times that the type of wood underlying all those coats was a mystery. - Sometimes she suspected the varnish was the only thing holding some of the pieces together. But it was clean, and she loved her front bay window high over the street. She'd had a new mattress delivered and added a few of her own touchesa bright yellow throw rug and her three posters of Monet's Le J Nyrntheas. She kept meaning to brighten up the place, maybe with some new curtains. As soon as she had the TIMEShe went straight to her bedroom where the answering machine crouched on the nightstand. The message light was blinking. A good start.

The first call was from her mother, wanting to know when Gin would be able to come over for a family dinner.

"Soon, Mama, " she said aloud. "Soon." Her schedule didn't leave her much free time, but she made a point of getting back to the old homestead in Arlington at least twice a month.

The next voice was Gerry's.

"Hi, Gin. It's Gerry. Look, uh, things aren't working out quite the way I'd hoped for dinner." Oh, great. What's the excse?

"But I'd like to try to get together with you tonight. It's just that we'll have to eat a bit more down market than I'd planned. Can we meet at a, uh, Taco Bell? There's one up your way on Connecticut, near Veazey, I think. It's a long story and I'll explain it all when you get there. 6 you get there. Which I hope you do. But if you can't make it I'll understand. Just let me know if you're not gonna show, otherwise, see you there at six. Hasta la vista." Gin pressed the repeat b.u.t.ton. Yes, she'd heard it right, Taco Bell.

Truth was, she liked Taco Bell, but it didn't quite make her short list of restaurants for a rendezvous with an old high school crush.

On the bright side, at least he hadn't stood her up.