"She's already in Baltimore?" Jack asked.

"Her flight was late last night."

Rachel took a deep breath. "What's the plan? We need to be there."

"If we juggle schedules, I think we can cover the full time she is in the hospital."

Every one of them wanted to fly out first. Marcus smiled, for it was the first moment of relief since Jennifer had given him the news. He wasn't carrying this alone. He kept forgetting at times just how powerful this family was when it came to rallying around one of their own. "Get your calendars. Let's figure it out."

Shari woke up late Sunday morning, not certain at first where she was at, vague memories of ugly dreams clouding her thoughts. There was movement in the suite outside her closed door.

It hit her again, the heavy weight of what she had to carry now because of what one man had done. Her eyes were too dry to cry anymore. Dad was dead. So many things pressed against her that had to be done. His funeral arrangements. His law practice.

The door cracked open. She turned her head on the pillow, looked over, expecting her mom, saw it was Marcus.

"Awake?"

"Of sorts." She swung her legs to the side of the bed. The sweats she had worn to the hospital, collapsed in bed wearing, were rumpled but at least warm; her bones were still chilled. "Come on in." The grief was so heavy that she couldn't remember what it had felt like to once smile. "Any news on the shooter?"

She eased to her feet and crossed over to the chair, sat down to take the weight off her aching knee. She wearily looked at the window and the sunlight streaming in. "I slept a lot longer than I intended." "Your mom wanted you to sleep." "Is she here?"

"I just took her back over to the hospital. She's with Joshua."

She should probably join them. She frowned at her shoes, then awkwardly pulled them on. She got to her feet. Her thoughts drifted.

"Are you okay?" He had crossed the room to join her.

She heard the concern in his voice and wanted more than anything to find her composure and not appear like she was going to fall apart on him. "I'm fine." She gave him a polite smile and was totally disconcerted when he lifted his hand to push back the hair on her forehead. Her eyes closed as the pressure of his palm eased her aching headache.

"You've got a slight fever."

An aching headache, a strained voice...she should have known. Add a fever and it was her common pattern for when she got a cold. "Stress reaction. A couple aspirins will knock it down." He looked skeptical but she had weathered this reaction too many times to be worried about it. And at the moment a cold didn't seem like something of much significance.

She ran her hand through her hair. "Let me get my hair brushed. I'll join you in a few minutes."

"I'll find you those aspirins."

"I appreciate it."

In the bathroom she washed her face in cold water, looking in the mirror at eyes that were weary and dull. There was no life left inside. She forced herself to get ready, to brush her teeth, then picked up her hairbrush and ruthlessly tamed the matted hair. She went to join Marcus.

He would have had a great deal less sleep than she had, and yet he looked alert and focused as he stood by the window scanning the street below. Again his stillness struck her. She had met only a few men able to function under stress with that kind of focus.

He turned when she entered the room, and she didn't miss the fact the suit jacket he wore concealed his gun. It was odd, how rarely she thought of him as a cop. It was the memory of their first meeting that prevailed.

He handed her two aspirins. "See if these help." She took them, grateful. He held out a coffee mug. "I promised you coffee. I'm sorry it under these circumstances."

"So am I. I was rather looking forward to that date."

Her words caused his impersonal, assessing look to disappear momentarily, and she was enveloped once again in the warmth of his smile. "So was I."

Marcus. How I would have preferred this weekend to be different. I would have more than just enjoyed sharing coffee with you; I would have been hoping for your phone number I don't want to lose this potential friendship to the crisis this has become.

She returned his smile with a brief one of her own, wishing she had more emotion left she could put behind it. She settled down on the couch. The coffee was strong and hot and it helped give her something to focus on.

"I've got something for you." Marcus reached into his pocket. He handed over what looked like a pager, but it had no LED display. "What is it?"

"A pager with a special frequency. Depress the button and it sounds on our security net. It's a precaution. Get in the habit of wearing it clipped on your jeans. If you get in a situation that makes you uncomfortable for any reason, and I mean any reason, and one of us is not already at your side, press it. Don't think twice about it."

She turned it over in her hand and nodded. It was an indication of what might happen. She was a witness. It was settling in what that meant. It wasn'tjust testifying one day in the future; it was getting her safely from now to the time the shooter was caught and she could testify.

Just looking at the device strengthened her resolve. "How can I help with the case? This guy killed my father. I need something concrete I can do. I hate feeling this helpless." She could see from his expression that he didn't want to pursue it right now. "Please."

He settled into the chair he had sat in last night, his expression guarded. "You knew Carl well."

She knew how he liked his eggs for breakfast, what his favorite comic strip was, what musicals he enjoyed, what authors he favored... Somehow she doubted that was what Marcus needed to know. "He and Dad went to law school together. I've known him all my life," she replied softly. "Then help me figure out motive."

I've been thinking about nothing else and I don't know. He was a good man. "What can I answer?"

"Tell me about Carl's family."

"His only family is an aunt on his mother's side. She's eighty-nine, has Alzheimer's, and doesn't recognize anyone. Carl has been her legal guardian for years."

"No one else?"

"Carl was an only child and he never married."

"His estate is large?"

"He was conservative with his money. He didn't travel. Other than upkeep on his estate, books were probably his largest expense. Maybe 8 million?"

Marcus's eyes narrowed at that estimate. "Who benefits?"

"Charities. The house is slated to be sold with the proceeds going into trust to care for his aunt."

"Any business ventures? Active investments that might be having problems?"

She shook her head. "Stock index funds, bond funds, and cash. He didn't want to have to worry about it."

"Anyone in his life? Was he seeing someone?"

"The law was his life. He had a lot of friends, but no one in particular he was seeing."

"That leaves his work."

"The obvious connection, given where he was killed."

"Tell me about his career."

"Going back to the beginning-he was a district attorney, a state judge, a federal judge, then Court of Appeals for his last seven years. In one word, his record is conservative."

"Your brief listed several cases. Which do you think merit attention?" "Last year on the appeals court, there was a bank fraud case that cost a lot of people their retirement savings. Carl wrote the opinion that upheld the lower courts' finding dismissing the central charge. It was the right legal decision, but not necessarily the right moral one if you wanted justice." "A judge and jury can't convict if the evidence isn't there." "I know, but that didn't stop the hate."

"What about your family, Shari? Any enemies?"

His question threw her, and then what he was asking settled in. She felt cold suddenly, very cold. "You think it relates to us? I surprised the shooter."

"Yes. But why didn't he lock the door? I can't dismiss that you might have somehow been a target as well."

"Dad has been in corporate law and estatesl there has been no personal threats that I know of. Joshua-he works for the DA, some of his cases are intense." Shari thought about that in detail. "But no, I don't think so. I've been in politics for years. Behind the scenes but definitely in the center of things. I'd be the one with enemies. But they would be political enemies. No one likes to lose, and these races and policy issues can consume a lot of cash."

"Any names keep you up at night?"

"Think about it."

"You're just trying to scare me."

"Trying to open your eyes," Marcus said soberly.

Connor dropped the newspaper on the park bench, the sketch on the front page below the fold. "We've got a problem."

His cousin Frank didn't look up from the crossword puzzle he was working. "So I saw."

"It's got to be dealt with before Titus gets back from Europe."

"It's going to take some planning. I already checked. She's under tight security."

"And we're only going to get one chance. Contract it out?"

"I can handle it," Frank replied. He turned over the newspaper and tapped the article. "That's where we act."

Eight.

L.

isa, what do we have?"

Marcus found his sister seated at the round work table in her office, one hand wrapped around a carryout Chinese carton showin two protrudin chopsticks, the other around a small cassette recorder bein used to record observations as she studied eight-by-ten photos from the crime scene. I-Iow she was manain to eat was a myste The lab he had walked through was pristine, her office another matter as she chased every idea that occurred to her. I-Ie cleared the spare chair of files to have a place to sit.

'You look horrible," Lisa observed.

"Thanks. Tell me you have something." It had been six days of frustration and he would really like to end this week with some ood news.

They were chasin leads in four states with nothin substantial to o on. 'Eibers," she replied.

She handed him the Chinese carton. 'Eat. You look like you've been skipping meals." Spinning her chair around, she reached for the pale blue folder balanced on top of her phone.

'In your interview with Shari, she said the shooter was well dressed, wearing a navy suit."

Marcus nodded. The chow mein was lukewarm. Lisa must have been holding the carton for the good part of the last hour.

"It's blue-gray actually. European wool, European dye. I doubt it's a suit that comes off the rack. I'm working on getting a manufacturer. That a freebie. I've got something better." She shifted the photographs on the table to one side and laid out large perspective shots. "Look at where the shell casings fell."

Seven of them were shown in one photograph of the room, four in the other. "Okay. What am I supposed to be seeing?"

"Where was the shooter standing when he shot Carl?" "Somewhere about here, at the end of the bed," Marcus indicated. She nodded. "I used Carl's exact height, the entry and exit wounds, and the blood traces and projected those back. The shooter was standing right here." She pointed with a pen. "He shot Carl. That gives us these three shell casings." She indicated the three in a close grouping. "What did he do next?"

"Turned to shoot Shari."

"And hit the door flame kicking up wood. He was firing as he turned." She held out her right hand and swiveled. "Like this?"

It hit him then, what she was showing him. "The bullet should have been buried in the door flame or the wall as his hand came around, not splintered the door flame."

"He's left handed."

Marcus reached over, wrapped his hand behind her neck, tugged her over, and planted a kiss on her forehead. "You angel. Can you prove it?" She giggled. "What do you think?" "Show me."

She pointed to the picture. "Okay That fourth shot, the shell casing is up herel it struck and nicked the side of the dresser. The only way to get it angled in there is if he was firing with the gun in his left hand as he swiveled left to right."

She laid down a close up of the door flame. "See the angle of entry? The way the wood chip was kicked up? Here's the line." She laid down a ruler on the master grid she was using. "Same thing. The only way to generate the chip and throw it out like this is to be at this angle. Either the shooter stepped back before he turned and fired, or the gun was in his left hand."

She pushed aside the photos to lay down one that was a contrast photo. "And look at this. The bright white is the gunpowder residue luminescing. We're looking straight down at the carpet in this photol this is the edge of the bed. Look at the bright line of the arc."

"It goes left to right relative to the bed."

"And if the gun was in his right hand, the gunpowder residue would have fallen more on the top of the bedspread and it wouldn't have hit the draped portion. Instead it's bright on the falling edge of the bedspread." "You've convinced me."

Lisa leaned back in her chair. "Good, because that's the most useful news I've got. The rest you're not necessarily going to like."

"What is it?"

She had to search her office to find it. She retrieved a red folder from the floor by the whiteboard. She opened it and handed it to him. He recognized a photo taken from a microscopel the bottom index showing it was taken at 120 times magnification. It was a blowup of a dark, curved fiber.