"Oh, the usual around here," Dawn said cheerfully. "We miss you to pieces, but I'm sure that isn't news. How's sunny So Cal?"

"It's overrated," Gilman said, but he was smiling. "Tell me what's going on at home. I want to hear something normal."

"The cable bill went up this month," Dawn said. "That's normal. I called the company to complain, but they said it's a standard price increase. The crooks!" She laughed, and he laughed with her.

"Oh yeah, that reminds me," Gilman said. "I talked to Bill Richards a few days ago, and he said he had just mailed us an invitation for his daughter's wedding. I forget the date. Did you get it yet?"

"Um, no," she said. "But now that you mention it, I don't think I've picked up the mail today. I'll check it out. But for now, I have to go. If I don't put the little ones to bed soon it's going to be a problematic day tomorrow."

Gilman smiled. "OK, sweetie. I'll call you soon."

"I know," Dawn said. "I love you."

Dawn put the children to bed, and they were excited to hear that Daddy had just called to say he loved them and would be home soon. The older ones knew that "soon" was poorly defined, and they had learned to accept that.

To the youngest, five-year-old old James and three-and-a-half year old Mary, time was a bit more wobbly. When Gilman finally arrived home, they would not really seem to have noticed that he had been gone at all.

After putting the kids to bed, Dawn reminded herself to get the mail before she could make a cup of tea and settle in with the novel that was her current guilty pleasure. She stepped out to the curb and pulled the stack from the mailbox, sorting as she reentered the house. Junk, bills, stuff worth reading.

There was a card, as her husband had thought there would be. Dawn opened the envelope and frowned.

The image on the front of the card was unlike any wedding invitation she had ever seen, but Dawn was not thinking about this as she flipped the card open to read what she thought would be the wedding date.

And then she was just confused. And after a moment, a bit uneasy.

6:39 P.M. PST.

The b.i.t.c.h caught his movement out of the corner of her eye, and when she turned to look, it was obvious to Chuck that she recognized him. For a moment, the two stood immobile, only staring at one another.

She was standing next to a countertop on which stood a computer and a piece of equipment Chuck could not identify. She had a rack full of test tubes and had been feeding them into the machine. Behind her, on ma.s.sive works.p.a.ces that stood detached from each other in the center of the room, several huge machines hummed with activity as their moving arms picked up items and relocated them, while other arms transferred liquids from one plastic container to another.

Slowly, she took a step backward, and then another. And then she ran.

Chuck aimed his pistol toward the fleeing target, but then hesitated. The laboratory was a 360-degree funhouse of unidentifiable equipment, and he knew that the b.i.t.c.h worked with live anthrax. There was no telling what a bullet could set in motion.

Chuck pocketed the pistol and bolted forward. The b.i.t.c.h sprinted behind a central island containing a large machine with moving robotic arms. And then they were at a standoff.

From the opposite side of the island, Chuck instinctively weighed his options. He could not leap over the island without colliding with the machine, and who knew what the machine was handling. Like a basketball player trying to antic.i.p.ate an opponent's next move, he watched for signs of body language that would tell him whether she would duck to the left, back toward the main lab, or to the right, and into another s.p.a.ce. Chuck guessed that the room on the right would lead back into the hallway.

The b.i.t.c.h's eyes were locked on his, her blue-gray stare burning into his coal black one, and Chuck was briefly reminded of the same terrified fire in her eyes upon their first encounter on the hill near the ocean. But this time, there was something else behind them. It was rage.

Chuck glared into that rage and realized that he had used up his one opportunity to benefit from the element of surprise.

The woman's eyes flashed away from his for a moment. When he glanced in the direction they had gone to determine what she could be looking at, he found himself staring at a computer monitor connected to the machine between them. On it scrolled a continuous collection of mathematical and written instructions that Chuck could not decipher. The woman's eyes darted once, and then again a moment later, between Chuck and the computer screen. And he realized that she was waiting for something specific to appear on the screen.

Chuck ducked quickly to the left, as if to circ.u.mvent the island between them and catch her. She followed suit and ducked away as rapidly, and then s.n.a.t.c.hed a final glance at the computer screen. Her breathing escalated and a labored moan escaped her lips as she dropped quickly downward to the floor, and out of Chuck's field of view with the island between them.

Without pausing to consider the machine, he stepped forward to locate her again. And at that moment, the robotic arm swung rapidly around behind him and smashed into the back of Chuck's head. And then locked.

The force of the blow was sufficient to throw dancing spots before Chuck's eyes, and he was distantly aware of blood trickling down the back of his shirt. But even worse, he was now trapped between the metal claw and the bulk of the machine, and the grip was tightening.

The airy, whirring noise characteristic of computer malfunction arose next to him as the robotic arm pushed stubbornly to follow its pre-programmed path, but it was hindered by the presence of Chuck's cranium where an empty s.p.a.ce belonged. He felt his head being squeezed as if in a vice, and wondered what it would feel like when his skull popped open and his brains were squeezed out from the top like a pimple.

But just before it happened, the arm let go.

As if nothing had gone wrong, the robot continued its tireless repet.i.tions. At the moment Chuck realized he was free from its grip, the woman bolted back toward the corridor to the main lab. He tore away from the machine and chased after her.

As she ran, she pa.s.sed a bench containing two bottles of clear liquid. Both were uncapped. With lightning speed, and without slowing the pace of her dash across the lab, her right arm thrust outward and she quickly gripped one of the bottles, which she then carried with her like an intercepted football as she ran.

This is bad, Chuck had time to realize when she whirled mid-stride and threw the contents of the bottle in his direction like a priest exorcising a demon with holy water. And like the proverbial demon under holy water, Chuck began to flail and thrash about as the highly concentrated acid began to devour the flesh on his face.

Chuck began to scream, and his hands flew instinctively toward the source of the torture. He began clawing at his own skin, as if he could wipe off the acid that was searing him. It was the wrong instinct. There had initially been only a minor splash to his left eye, but the sudden hand movement smeared the liquid quickly and indiscriminately. Chuck realized, too late, that he had just blinded himself. Probably for life.

Katrina fought the burning sensation that was growing over her right thumb and the inner part of her first finger while she watched her a.s.sailant flailing before her. When his hands struck his face, and she watched him smear the acid into his eyes, she knew she was safe.

She raced to the sink and began the process of flushing the liquid from her skin. The golden rule was fifteen minutes of uninterrupted flow of cool, clear water to quench an acid burn. Fifteen minutes was not going to happen here today. But Katrina was confident, as her attacker squirmed and writhed on the floor before her, that she at least had time to rinse her hand for a moment.

Since the inception of the Stone lab at San Diego State University, Katrina had been constantly chastising her staff for leaving the caps off of the acids and bases that resided next to the pH meter. Today, she was grateful for her staff's lack of attention to safety. The acid had just saved her life with the help of Octopus, the lab's original liquid handling robot. Like an old friend.

With her right hand still under the running faucet, Katrina pulled the cell phone out of her pocket with her left and dialed 911. After a moment of reconsideration, she hung up and then speed dialed Sean McMullan instead. A final glance at the man writhing on the ground led her to conclude that she probably had time to wait for police a.s.sistance, but she was not interested in risking it. She had struggled with this man once before. He was exceptionally strong.

Katrina turned off the faucet and walked through the corridor toward the main lab s.p.a.ce, still holding the ringing cell phone to her ear with her uninjured hand. At the moment Sean McMullan answered, Katrina's eyes fell onto the floor just inside the main laboratory door. She let out an ear-shattering scream into the phone, and then dropped it.

9:46 P.M. EST.

Dawn Gilman stood in the living room of her Washington, D.C. home and read the greeting card in front of her for a third time. At first merely silly, its tone became increasingly disturbing to Dawn, who was accustomed to being on the alert for suspicious findings as a side effect of her husband's career. This was one of those findings. It read: Mr. Gilman How unfortunate that you do not speak my language.

The Doctor After only a momentary hesitation, Dawn picked up the phone and called her husband back.

"h.e.l.lo, this is Roger Gilman."

"ROGER! Get to the Stone lab! Right now!" a man's voice shouted.

"Huh?" Gilman asked. "McMullan?"

"Yeah, it's me!" McMullan answered. "There's been a murder at Katrina Stone's lab. Someone killed the guard and then went after her. Katrina burned the dude's face off with some kind of acid. She says it's the same guy that attacked her on the beach.

"He's still in the lab, but she doesn't know when he'll pull it together enough to get away. Far as I'm concerned, he won't get away again. I'm on my way and I'm hauling a.s.s, but I'm coming from La Jolla. Where are you?"

While McMullan spoke, Gilman picked up the pants he had just removed a moment earlier and pulled them back on, holding the phone to an ear with his shoulder while he fastened his belt. The pants were still warm.

"I'm at the hotel. I was about to get in the shower-"

Gilman's sentence was broken by the soft beep of his call waiting signal. He paused, mid-sentence, to glance at the caller ID on the phone. It was Dawn. His plans for attending his friend's daughter's wedding would have to wait. "I'll be there as soon as I can," Gilman said, and hung up.

He tossed the cell phone onto the bed while he located the shirt he had worn that day, turned it right side out, and then hastily pulled it on. After double-checking that his wallet and keys were still in the pockets of his pants, Gilman rushed out of the hotel room to his car.

As he started the ignition, the cellular phone still lying on the bed in his hotel room rang again.

The second time he did not answer his phone, Dawn a.s.sumed that her husband was really indisposed, even for an emergency. A wife's emergency didn't usually equal an FBI emergency, and Dawn had been OK with that for a long time. But this time, she was sure her emergency was important enough for her to keep calling.

When he didn't answer again, she left an urgent message and then sat down at the kitchen table, the card still in one hand. She was now shaking with adrenaline.

After a moment of thought, Dawn stood from the table. She pulled a ziplock bag out of a kitchen drawer and locked the card, and its envelope, inside. And then called her husband a third time. And again, he did not pick up.

7:02 P.M. PST.

By the time Sean McMullan arrived, a large pool of blood had flowed out into the hallway from beneath the laboratory door. Students and faculty members stood encircling it, stepping backward periodically to avoid the soaking of their shoes as the puddle continued to grow. One of them had called 911, and two police officers followed McMullan off the elevator and toward the scene. McMullan flashed his badge to let the policemen know he was in charge.

The slain guard's keys were still dangling from the closed door.

"Has anyone gone in or come out of there?" McMullan asked of the crowd that had acc.u.mulated.

"No," said an older man with a mustache. "I haven't let the students enter, and n.o.body has come out since I've been standing here. I've heard noises from inside, however."

McMullan paled. "And how long have you been standing there?"

"About five minutes."

McMullan turned back to the officers. "You're on crowd control," he said firmly and then turned the key to open the door.

When he entered the room, McMullan glanced down at the body on the floor. There was no reason to take a pulse, nor would it have even been possible at the neck. The guard's throat was neatly flayed open from ear to ear, his face a ghastly white and frozen in a contorted expression of fear. The cleanliness with which the carotid artery and jugular vein had been severed indicated to McMullan that the man had never had time to feel pain. He made a mental note to relay this as gently as he could to the guard's family.

There was no way to enter the laboratory without walking through the pool of blood that surrounded the guard. McMullan treaded carefully to avoid slipping on the wet linoleum, stepping through the blood, over the fallen guard, and toward the dry floor inside the room. When he reached the clean s.p.a.ce, he stomped on the linoleum a few times in different places to clear the bottoms of his shoes. As he did, he heard a soft moaning coming from beyond a gap in the wall to his right. McMullan quickly approached the source of the sound.

At first, McMullan was grateful to see Katrina standing upright and apparently unhurt. His relief was quickly replaced with anger as he realized that she had willfully disregarded his instruction to get out of the lab and as far away from the scene as possible.

Katrina stood over a large man, who lay on the floor covering his face with his hands. The flesh on both of the man's hands had corroded to the bone. Beneath, McMullan could somewhat make out the hideous molten ma.s.s that had been his face.

As McMullan stood taking in the scene before him, the man moaned again and wriggled slightly. Katrina kicked him-hard-in the back, and he quieted back down and was still again. When she looked up and saw McMullan, she was not smiling. There was no relief in her eyes.

"OK, McMullan," she said authoritatively. "It's time you fill me in on the details of this story that I haven't been told. And I don't give a f.u.c.k how cla.s.sified your information is."

10:53 P.M. PST.

"Who are you?"

Hours after the attack in the lab, Katrina whispered to the man in the hospital bed beside her. Of course, he could not answer. The patient would remain unconscious for at least the remainder of this night, his face grafted with someone else's skin and encased in cotton gauze, his breathing labored through a tube in his nose and another in his mouth. His hands were also heavily bandaged. They would never produce a viable fingerprint again.

The steady beep of the man's heart monitor clashed with the ticking of the wall clock beside the hospital bed. The two noises synched up for a moment and then staggered again, two reminders that time would not stand still for Katrina to solve the mystery before her. A mystery that clearly held her future, if not her life.

Katrina tore her eyes away from the man who had now attacked her twice, and glanced up at the wall clock. From the first moment she had stared into his dark eyes in the lab, she had known that this was the man from Black's Beach. Confirmation of this, in the thickness of his body and the style of his movements as he chased her through the lab, had been redundant.

The man's DNA had already been fast-tracked at FBI Forensics, but Katrina was not hopeful. She hated the idea that his identification relied on the possibility that he would already be in the database. That he had to have a criminal record. That she had so little control over the situation. In her head, Katrina heard Tom calling her a control freak.

So what? she said to herself. It's my own life I'm trying to control.

Katrina looked up from her thoughts when the door opened, and the two armed guards beside it parted to allow Roger Gilman and Sean McMullan into the room. McMullan held a thick file and an expression of concern. He dismissed the two police officers, and they stepped out and closed the door without asking questions.

"What's that?" Katrina asked.

"It's the information you want," he said. "And you are not about to see this file. Understood?" His eyes locked on hers for a moment, and Katrina could see the struggle within Sean McMullan as he handed her the Manila envelope.

"There's something else that isn't in there yet," Gilman said. "The DNA results have come back."

Katrina was shocked. The PCR a.n.a.lysis had obviously been performed with amazing speed, and for the a.n.a.lysis to already have reached a conclusion, they must have found the man in the database.

"Great!" she said. "So who is he?"

"Well, there's a problem," Gilman continued. "We think we need to do the a.n.a.lysis again. Part of the reason we're here right now is to obtain another blood sample."

"Why?"

"Because according to the DNA evidence, this man is currently incarcerated and has been for the last eight years solid. I don't suppose you want to guess where."

The clock and the heart monitor synched again, and then staggered. Katrina's vision blurred as she stared absently at the rise and fall of the unconscious man's chest.