"Avery? Isit. . .? How. . .?Avery?"

"I'll tell you everything inside."

She took his arm and turned him around because it seemed he had forgotten how to use his feet and legs. A gentle nudge pushed him over the threshold. She closed the door behind them.

The house, she noted sadly, looked as much a wreck as Irish, whose appearance had shocked her. He'd gained weight around his middle, yet his face was gaunt. His cheeks and chin were loose and flabby. There was a telltale tracery of red capillaries in his nose and across his cheekbones. He'd been drinking heavily.

He had never been a fashion plate, dressing with only decency in mind, but now he looked downright seedy. His dishevelment had gone beyond an endearing personality trait. It was evidence of character degeneration. The last time she'd seen him, his hair had been salt-and-pepper. Now it was almost solid white.

She had done this to him.

"Oh, Irish, Irish, forgive me." With a sob, she collapsed against him, wrapping her arms around his solid bulk and holding on tight.

"Your face is different."

"Yes."

"And your voice is hoarse."

"I know."

"I recognized you through your eyes."

"I'm glad. I didn't change on the inside."

"You look good. How are you?" He set her away from him and awkwardly rubbed her arms with his large, rough hands.

"I'm fine. Mended."

"Where have you been? By the Blessed Virgin, I can't believe this."

"Neither can I. God, I'm so glad to see you."

Clinging to each other again, they wept. At least a thousand times in her life, she had run to Irish for comfort. In her father's absence, Irish had kissed scraped elbows,repaired broken toys, reviewed report cards, attended dance recitals, chastised, congratulated, commiserated.

This time, Avery felt like the elder. Their roles had been reversed. He was the one who clung tightly and needed nurturing.

Somehow, they stumbled their way to his sofa, though neither remembered later how they got there. When the crying binge subsided, he wiped his wet face with his hands, briskly and impatiently. He was embarrassed now.

"I thought you might be angry," she said after indelicately Mowing her nose into a Kleenex.

"I amadamn angry. If I weren't so glad to see you, I'd paddle your butt."

"You only paddled me onceathat time I called my mother an ugly name. Afterward, you cried harder and longer than I did." She touched his cheek. "You're a softy, Irish McCabe."

He looked chagrined and irascible. "What happened? Have you had amnesia?"

"No."

"Then, what?" he asked, studying her face. "I'm not used to you looking like that. You look likea"

"Carole Rutledge."

"That's right. Tate Rutledge's wifealate wife." A light bulb went on behind his eyes. "She was on that flight, too."

"Did you identify my body, Irish?"

"Yes. By your locket."

Avery shook her head. "It was her body you identified. She had my locket."

Tears formed in his eyes again. "You were burned, but it was your hair, youra"

"We looked enough alike to be mistaken for sisters just minutes before the attempted takeoff."

"How-a"

"Listen and I'll tell you." Avery folded her hands around his, a silent request that he stop interrupting. "When I regained consciousness in the hospital, several days after the crash, I was bandaged from head to foot. I couldn't move. I could barely see out of one eye. I couldn't speak.

"Everyone was calling me Mrs. Rudedge . At first Ithought maybe I did have amnesia because I couldn't remember being Mrs. Rutledge or Mrs. Anybody. I was confused, in pain, disoriented. Then, whenIremembered who I was, I realized what had happened. We'd switched seats, you see."

She talked him through the agonizing hours she had spent trying to convey to everyone else what only she knew. "The Rutledges retained Dr. Sawyer to redo my faceaCarole's faceausing photographs of her. There was no way I could alert them that they were making a mistake."

He pulled his hands from beneath hers and dragged them down his loose jowls. "I need a drink. Want one?"

He returned to the couch moments later with a tumbler three-quarters full of straight whiskey. Avery said nothing, though she eyed the glass meaningfully. Defiantly, he took a hefty draught.

aOkay, I follow you so far. A gross error was made while you were unable to communicate. Once youwereable to communicate, why didn't you? In other words, why are you still playing Carole Rutledge?"

Avery stood up and began roaming the untidy room, making ineffectual attempts to straighten it while she arranged her thoughts. Convincing Irish that her charade was viable and justified was going to be tricky. His contention had always been that reporters reported the news, they did not make it. Their role was to observe, not participate. That point had been a continual argument between him and Cliff Daniels.

"Somebody plans to kill Tate Rutledge before he becomes a senator."

Irish hadn't expected anything like that. His hand was arrested midway between the coffee table and his mouth as he was raising the glass of whiskey. The liquor sloshed over the rim of the tumbler onto his hand. Absently, he wiped it dry on his trousers leg.

"What?"

"Somebody plansa"

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"How?"

"I don't know, Irish," she said, raising her voice defensively. "AndIdon't know where or when, either, so save your breath and don't ask. Just hear me out."

He shook his finger at her."Imay give you that spanking yet for sassing me. Don't test my patience. You've already put me through hell. Pure hell."

"It hasn't exactly been a picnic for me, either," she snapped.

"Which is the only reason I've restrained myself this long," he shouted.

"But stop bullshitting me."

"I'm not!"

"Then, what's this crap about somebody wanting to kill Rutledge? How the bloody hell do you know?"

His mounting temper was reassuring. This Irish she could deal with much more easily than the woebegone shell he'd been minutes earlier. She'd had years of practice sparring with him. "Somebody told me he was going to kill Tate before he took office."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"Shit," he cursed viciously. "Don't start that again."

"If you'll give me a chance, I'll explain."

He took another drink, ground his fist into his other palm, and finally relaxed against the back of the sofa, relaying that he was ready to sit still and listen.

"Believing me to be Carole, somebody came to me while I was still in the ICU.Idon't know who it was. I couldn't see because my eye was bandaged and he was standing beyond my shoulder." She recounted the incident, repeating the threat verbatim.

"Iwas terrified. Once I was able to communicate who I really was,Iwas afraid to.Icouldn't tip my hand without placing my life, and Tate's, in jeopardy."

Irish was silent until she had finished. She returned to the sofa and sat down beside him. When he did speak, his voice was skeptical.

"What you're telling me, then, is that you took Mrs. Rutledge's place so you could prevent Tate Rutledge from being assassinated."

"Right."

"But you don't know who plans to kill him."

"Not yet, but Carole did. She was part of it, although I don't know her relationship with this other person."

"Hmm." Irish tugged thoughtfully on the flaccid skin beneath his chin. "This visitor you hada"

"Has to be a member of the family. No one else would have been admitted into the ICU."

"Someone could have sneaked in."

"Possibly, but I don't think so. If Carole had hired an assassin, he would simply have vanished when she became incapacitated. He wouldn't have come to warn her to keep quiet. Would he?"

"He's your assassin. You tell me."

She shot to her feet again. "You don't believe me?"

"I believe you believe it."

"But you think it was my imagination."

"You were drugged and disoriented, Avery," he said reasonably. "You said so yourself. You were half blind in one eye andaforgive the bad jokeacouldn't see out of the other. You think the person was a man, but itcouldhave been a woman. You think it was a member of the Rutledge family, but itcouldhave been somebody else."

"What are you getting at, Irish?"

"You probably had a nightmare."

"I was beginning to think so myself until several days ago." She took the sheet of paper she'd found in her pillowcase from her purse and handed it to him. He read the typed message.

When his troubled eyes connected with hers, she said, "I found that in my pillowcase. He's real, all right. He still thinks I'm Carole, his coconspirator. And he still intends to do what they originally planned."

The note had drastically altered Irish's opinion. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "This is the first contact he's had with you since that night in the hospital?"

"Yes."

He reread the message, then remarked, "It doesn't say he's going to kill Tate Rutledge."

Avery gave him a retiring look. "This has been a well-thought-out assassination attempt. The plans were long-range. He'd hardly risk spelling it out. Naturally, he made the note obscure, just in case it was intercepted. The seemingly innocent words would mean something entirely different to Carole."

"Who has access to a typewriter?"

"Everybody. There's one at a desk in the family den. That was the one used. I checked."

"What does heaor sheamean by 'whatever you're doing'?"

Avery looked away guiltily. "I'm not sure."

"Avery?"

Her head snapped around. She had never been able to fudge the truth with Irish. He saw through it every time. "I've been trying to get along better with Tate than his wife did."

"Any particular reason why?"

"It was obvious to me from the beginning that there was trouble between them."

"How'd you figure that?"

"By the way he treats her. Me. He's polite, but that's all."

"Hmm. Do you know why?"

"Carole either had, or was planning to have, an abortion. I only found out about that last week. I'd already discovered that she was a selfish, self-centered woman. She cheated on Tate and was a disaster of a parent to her daughter. Without raising too much suspicion, I've been trying to bridge the gap that had come between him and his wife."

Again Irish asked, "Why?"