It was a brief drive, for the Hanfords lived only a few miles from the church. When the van arrived at the house, Luke pulled through the security perimeter and around to the back of the house.

Marcus pushed open the van door. He counted nine men in the security detail that had assembled to meet them. "Jim?"

"We'Fe secuFe."

Marcus opened the door for Josh, helped him ease out. 'Keep your mom and Shari in the kitchen for a minute," he asked Josh in a low tone. 'And next time lie better. You're pale as a ghost. You nailed that shoulder hard."

'Yeah. But mom will forgive me, and what Shari doesn't know she won't worry about," Josh replied grimly. 'Besides, you don't look too good yourself."

Marcus knew again why he admired this man. 'Go."

He slid open the van door. 'Beth." He extended his hand and helped her out. Her face was tense, but it was worry for her daughter not for herself. Marcus had come to love this lady. for she reminded him of his own mom . He gave her a brief hug and passed her to Jim. 'Into the house." He turned back to the van. 'Okay. Shari."

She didn't want to take his hand because of the blood staining hers. He reached in and grasped her forearms, sympathetic to the problem. She was showing definite tremors as adrenaline faded.

He didn't expect her balance to be good, and he didn't intend to risk letting her stumble. He lifted her down, ignoring the pain that tore through his arm. She started to say something, but he shook his head. 'Inside." He tucked her close and hurried her toward the house.

When they entered the house the doctor who had been called was waiting and Marcus didn't give Shari a chance to turn her focus on him or her brother. He eased her into a kitchen chair and let the doctor take over. 'I'm so sorry about the nose."

She leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and relaxed. 'Josh has done worse. He nearly broke it one time. But if you could find a couple aspirins, I would dearly love you."

Dearly love you... In the emotions of the moment, the words first hit his heart and made him blink before his mind sorted out the figure of speech. If she ever said it and meant it...he shook his head as he inwardly smiled at his reaction, part of him still caught off guard. "Not a problem."

Fie got them for her, then wordlessly handed the bottle to Joshua. Finally admitting to himself how seriously he also was hurting, he swallowed four.

"Marcus, let the doctor take a look at that arm," Beth insisted.

Shari struggled to lean around the doctor to see him. The last thing he needed was Shari seeing the reality of someone else who had been shot. "In a moment," he assured Beth. Fie stepped out of the kitchen. "Jim, what are you hearing?"

"They got plates on a black SUV. An APBjust went out. They're looking. So far-" Jim shook his head.

The shooter had gotten away. It physically hurt. "Are we in a position we can hold here for tonight?"

"Yes."

"Okay. The detail is yours while I get this gash bandaged. After the doctor looks at Joshua's shoulder, send him back to the spare bedroom."

Marcus had not yet unpackedl he wrestled his suitcase open with one hand, found a clean short sleeve shirt. Fie walked into the adjoining bathroom.

The bullet had scored through his suit jacket and shirt. Marcus sucked in his breath as he eased off the material. The O'Malley clan was going to be all over his case when they heard about this.

The gash wasn't deep, but it was long with very ragged edges, and it burned like fire. Marcus was grateful it hadn't cut deeper into the muscle. Another two inches over and it would have shattered bone and possibly ruined his career. And if a fluke of glass hadn't deflected the shot, Shari would be dead.

That was the source of the real fury he felt. Fie should have overruled them on the funerals and refused to let Shari attend. Fie should have gotten her out of the area immediately after the graveside service. Regrets didn't change reality.

Fie hated being shot. Fie was trying to wipe off the blood when the doctor joined him. "Flow's Joshua?"

"Bruised, but the stitches held."

The doctor was good, efficient, but did not have the bedside manner of Jennifer. 'I can try and butterfly it closed or just stitch it."

Marcus did not like needles any more than tate did. 'Butterfly it."

Fie let out a deep breath when the doctor finally wrapped gauze around his upper arm.

'Change it tomorrow morning. If the bleeding seeps, we'll have to stitch it."

Fie nodded and slipped on the clean shirt. 'Let Jim get you past the press out there."

'Will do."

Marcus headed back to the kitchen.

Beth had put on coffee. 'Let me," she gestured to the collar he was trying to straighten one handed. 'Shari went up to change, and Josh is handling the onslaught of phone calls."

Tm sorry that William's funeral was touched this way. I'm more sorry than I can say"

She looked at the bandage on his arm, then back up at him. 'We knew this risk existed, Marcus. We took a gamble and we lost, and it looks to me like you paid the price for our decision."

'It's just a graze."

'Sure it is. I'm grateful for what you did. Thank you for keeping my daughter safe." She reached up and kissed his cheek.

Marcus blushed slightly. 'You're welcome." His mom had been like this, always calm despite the circumstances. And those were the best memories he had, of an innocent time before his own life had gone wrong.

'I need to head back to the church. Jim will keep security tight here." 'Please be careful."

He gave a rueful smile. 'You've got my word, for what it's worth at the moment."

'It is worth a lot. Godspeed, Marcus."

'Let's go back on videotape, Ben," Lisa requested. She broke the seal and entered hotel room 1319, pulling on a fresh set of latex gloves. They were looking for blood, for gunpowder residue, for fibers. With thirty-seven rooms to cover, the process was painfully slow. They had been at it for a week, working late into the evenings. This was the third room she had looked at today, and she was only doing the cluick tests, a complete team was coming behind her.

She broke open the tape on a rolled up plastic guard used to give a safe footpath until fiber collection could be done. Every precaution that could be taken to preserve evidence was being made. She just hoped the effort would only be wasted in thirty-six of the thirty-seven rooms. "Lisa."

She paused and came back to the doorway, "Yes, Walter?"

"You're going to want to see this."

She pulled off her gloves, made sure Ben had her on tape as closing, sealing, and initialing the tag for the room. She was determined to make it hard for a defense attorney to challenge the evidence collection.

She moved to join Walter at the door of room 1323.

Two technicians were working with him, and they had both stepped out into the hallway, leaving the room empty, She scanned the room. It was orderly, the bed made, but she noticed the less than straight way the bedspread draped. Someone had disturbed it since housekeeping had last made up the room. A light gray dust used to raise fingerprints coated the furniture showing the progress the technicians had made.

There were no fingerprints. It hit her like a shock, how even the gray dust was. Not a single tape lift had been made of a print. And that made this room shout like it had been painted red. "No prints at all?" she asked, incredulous.

"Not even on the wooden coat hangers," Walter replied.

It couldn't be this obvious. "Where's the room paperwork?" Walter handed her the clipboard. She flipped through the stack of notes. "This room was not done by housekeeping since the last guest checked out on Saturday?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Maintenance had been pushed off until the conference was over. This was one of a block of rooms marked unavailable so that they could upgrade fixtures in the bathroom, replace the closet doors. They were planning to also replace the shower caulking and the bathroom tile grit. The work order is here; they just hadn't gotten to this room yet. Housekeeping wasn't scheduled until after that work was done."

Lisa looked at Walter, and her friend who rarely reacted to what evidence suggested until the last lab tests were run actually smiled. "We've got the room exactly as he left it."

She looked back at the paperwork. Henry James. He had used a credit card for payment. "Fingerprints, what else?"

"We were just getting ready to luminol for blood."

"Ben, I want both you and Tom videotaping. Mark, go to the highest contrast film you have. We're going to do this room a foot at a time. Expect the traces to be faint."

Fifteen minutes later, with preparations complete, the room lights were shut off. They worked clockwise around the room.

Lisa shifted back on her heels to avoid brushing against the bedspread. Faint places began to glow as Walter sprayed the carpet. "Hold it there," Lisa asked as a streak appeared.

Against the tight weave of the carpet it appeared at first as a quarter inch wide straight line and then the smudge appeared. It rolled to the right. She frowned, studying the surprising pattern. She was expecting something from his shoes or his clothes... "He sat down, took off his shoes, and one rolled on its side."

"Shoe polish?" Walter asked, indicating with his pen dark spots in the pattern.

"I certainly hope so."

She waited until Mark had photos taken, then moved to collect several samples, using a penlight clamped between her teeth for light, sealing the swabs in vials. "l may want to cut out this piece of carpet. Grid it off." "The hotel will love you." "And I'm just getting started."

She completed the evidence tags on the vials.

They moved to the bedspread and found nothing. "Give us the room lights," Lisa requested. She blinked as her eyes adjusted. "Fold up the spread, we'll take it to the lab. The same with the sheets. Walter, I'm going to start working fibers on the carpet. See what you can raise in the bathroom. If he washed up-"

"I'll find it."

She used what had once been a lint brush, tape sticky side out to collect the fibers, rolling it on the carpet, then rolling the tape onto evidence strips of paper, documenting where each lift was made. It was slow work, hard on the knees, as the carpet was gone over with care to insure nothing was missed.

This evidence analysis would take hours of microscope work back at the lab. Lisa found the first visually promising fiber an hour into the work. Against the white of the paper strip, the fiber trapped by the tape was dark.

She made a side note to put this fiber strip at the front of the queue to be analyzed.

Having covered the carpet by the bed, she began working toward the wall.

"Lisa, we're negative for blood traces in the bathroom."

With the entire room wiped of fingerprints, the news was disappointing but not surprising. "l don't suppose he left the obvious? Something in the trash can?"

"Not even a gum wrapper."

"l would have preferred he left the gum," Lisa replied with a smile as she carefully lifted another tape. It was rough as she smoothed the tape against the paper. A closer look tilting it to the light showed it glittered. Glass fragments?

She looked with curiosity back at the carpet. A foot from the wall and the carpet was smooth. The shards weren't crushed deep into the fabric as if they had been vacuumed over. It was an odd place to find glass.

"Is there a glass missing from the set on the bathroom counter?" Walter checked. "All four are here, still wrapped. What do you have?" "I'm not sure. Do you still carry thatjewelers eyepiece?" "Sure." He passed it to her.

The light refracted through the shards captured under the tape. She looked up at the wall, saw a faint stain on the wallpaper. "Someone got mad and shattered a glass against the wall?" It would take some force to break one of the thick hotel drinking glasses.

"Walter, the housekeeping records for this room-they've got a missing and restocked items checklist on the back of the forms. Did they replace a glass recently? And have we done an inventory of the room? Towels, soaps, those plastic dry cleaning bags, the contents of the minirefrigerator-l'd like to know if anything is missing."

She worked twenty minutes lifting glass, finding nothing larger than slivers. Someone had spent time trying to clean this up. "Let kill the room lights; I want to look again at this area."

Nothing showed when they sprayed the surface of the carpet. Lisa used a straight ruler edge to rifle the carpet fibers. A few faint glimmers appeared down in the carpet. She nodded, pleased. He'd cut himself picking up the shattered glass, probably no more than a paper cut, but it was there. "Think there will be enough to test?" Walter asked.

"Doubtful. And it's odd that there isn't a glass missing from the room. This may be old. Mark, give us room lights."

She eased back to her feet. "Check the trash bag for any hint. And swab that stain on the wallpaper. It looks like a liquid splash the way it trails down."

She took a step back trying to get perspective on what she knew from what she suspected. No fingerprints. Everything else maybe. If she made the wrong call..."Walter, I'm going to go give Dave a heads-up. I want the room sealed when we're done and an officer assigned to sit outside the door and make sure it stays that way. Get a forensic team working on the paper trail- the guest signature card that was filled out, anything with room service." "Will do."

She clipped on the security badge needed to get her past the security one flight up. The command center had moved to the telecommunication conference room on the fourteenth floor, freeing up the Belmont loom for the hotel and letting Dave coordinate easier an investigation now active in four states.

As soon as she entered the room, Lisa knew something was going on. The tension was palatable.

"Any word from Marcus and Quinn?" Dave asked, pacing.

"Not yet," Mike replied. "The situation is still fluid." The large screen at the far end of the room was shifting satellite feeds. "The local television station has a cameraman at the scene; we're tapping into their uplink to get a firsthand look."

It emerged out of the snow on the screen, the picture zooming in on the building, recognizable as a church even in the fading light. The audio was that of the reporter and cameraman talking to the station manager; this feed was not going out to a live audience. When the camera panned left to right, the back of the building appeared dark.

"Tactical is there," Mike observed. "There's (uinn."

"Dave."

"Not now, Lisa. Someone took a shot at Shari."

"We found the room."

"I'll be done-" He spun around. "What did you say?"

Marcus found Quinn walking across the church parking lot. "He got away."

"Left the sandbag he used to brace the rifle and walked away." Quinn replied. There was a touch of admiration in his voice; even the hunter could appreciate when an adversary made a smart move. "Come on, I'll show you."

Quinn led the way from the church grounds across a footpath that ran to the nearby ball diamond into a grove of elm trees. Marcus could hear the faint sound of water in the quiet night. There was a drainage tile forming a narrow ravine. Quinn stepped over it and up a slight rise. Large spotlights had been set up with bright yellow crime scene tape wrapped around a section of tree trunks.

The rifle lay on the ground in the underbrush, the barrel resting on a twelve-inch wide, rough fabric sandbag. Someone would have noticed a guy carrying a rifle, but leaving it andjust walking away-it showed cool nerves. And the fact the shooter wasn't worried about it being traceable.

"The clear weather worked in his favor, the sun behind him, the elevation giving line of sight into the sanctua It appears he walked out after the shooting by circling around the shed used to hold the groundskeeping equipment for the ball diamonds. The SUV was sighted there."

"Our patrols?"

Quinn tipped his powerful flashlight to the right and luminated a crushed path through the tall grass going through the grove. "Our two man patrol. The guy was fifteen feet away and wasn't seen. He probably had his blind in place before dawn."

Marcus swore.