"Why?"

"Why you think? I told her that heifer walked out on you."

Joshua gritted his teeth. "Jesus, Mom, why'd you tell her that? That's none of her business!"

"Don't take the Lord's name in vain. Chaquita ain't never stopped lovin' you. She wants to help you through all your troubles."

"I don't need her help." He looked at his satchel on the kitchen table. "I've gotta go. A . . . a client is calling me with an emergency."

"You better come by here tomorrow. Had me fix all this food for nuthin'. . ."

"I'll stop by, promise. Bye."

He hung up before she launched into another rant.

Someday, he would have to deal with his mother's overbearing manner and intrusions into his life. But it was easier to avoid her, or suffer her antics, than it was to confront her. He hated confrontations.

He took out the laptop and cell phone. And the gun.

Gazing at the items, he realized that his tendency to avoid clashing with people had landed him in this position: studying his wife's possessions for clues as to her whereabouts and past. Early in their relationship, he should have pushed Rachel for full disclosure. He should have demanded the truth.

Because of his weakness, he was left alone to muddle through her life and piece things together.

Coco wandered into the kitchen. He pulled away a chair and sat, and the dog hopped into his lap, tail wagging.

"Let's see what your Mommy was hiding on here," Joshua said, and turned on the computer.

Joshua pulled up various file folders on the computer's hard drive. He soon discovered the thing that he'd most feared.

Rachel had deleted everything.

The only files remaining on the system were those required to power the programs and applications. But the folder labeled "My Documents," and all of its subfolders-"Salon Business," "Finances," "House Docs," "Miscellaneous"-were empty. The "My Photos" folder was wiped clean, too.

"I don't believe this." He pressed his fingers his temple, which was pounding again, a headache brewing in the front of his skull. "Now what?"

When he'd walked in on Rachel in her study a couple of nights ago, she'd been surfing the Web. She said she'd been researching pregnancy, but he'd spotted the word "penitentiary" on the screen. A few hours later, going through her wastebasket, he'd found the document printed from the Illinois Department of Corrections Web site. But the ink had been too weak for him to read the text.

He launched the Web browser. Her laptop, like his, was equipped with a wireless router connected to their home's DSL network. The browser loaded the Google home page.

He went to the browser's address bar, to pull down a list of the last few sites that she'd visited.

The list was empty. She'd deleted the history of visited sites, too. Another dead end.

"Damn."

He could try her cell phone. He could search through the call records and address book. And hope she'd left some information on her phone.

But he wasn't ready to give up on her computer just yet. There had to be something of value left on there.

He lifted Coco from his lap and placed her on the floor, pushed away from the table. He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a can of Red Bull, which he drank sometimes to boost his concentration when working on a design project. To figure out his next move, he needed to kick his brain into a higher gear.

He popped the tab and guzzled the entire drink within a minute. He tossed the empty can into the garbage container.

And stopped. He stared at the trashcan, riveted.

The recycle bin.

On the laptop again, he hit the Recycle Bin icon.

The folder opened, revealing dozens of files that Rachel had assigned for deletion. In her apparent haste to leave, she had neglected to empty the bin-if she had, the files might have been gone forever-and her oversight enabled him to restore the files and examine them.

Now the question was: which of them most likely contained the information he sought?

He scrolled down the screen. The Internet Explorer files that Rachel had saved, and then sent to the Recycle Bin, were scattered throughout the folder. There were at least five of them, but only one piqued Joshua's interest.

It was from the Illinois Department of Corrections Web Site.

He highlighted the file, and selected the Restore option. The file vanished, returned to its original location on the hard drive. He found it again by going to the My Documents main folder; it was stored in the "Miscellaneous" subfolder.

He double-clicked it.

Within a couple seconds, the file opened in the Internet Explorer window.

"Oh, shit," Joshua said.

A man named Dexter Bates glared back at him.

Chapter 34.

Belle Coiffure was located in Camp Creek Marketplace, an outdoor shopping and dining complex off Camp Creek Parkway, a busy artery that led directly to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. National chain stores and restaurants were represented there: Target, Lowe's, Circuit City, Barnes & Noble, Red Lobster, Ruby Tuesday. Dozens of local businesses were represented, too: wing restaurants, barber shops, delis, dentists' offices.

Belle Coiffure had a prime location between a Hollywood Video and a Publix grocery store. The name "Belle Coiffure Hair Salon," was spelled in elegant lettering in a big, luminous red sign. A red awning, emblazoned with the salon's name, offered protection from the elements that could ruin a fresh 'do. Large front windows gave views of the action inside: black women busy doing hair.

Dexter crawled past the salon in his Chevy. There were a several stylists at work, but none that he recognized as his wife.

He swung toward the corner of the large parking lot. He had to be careful about being seen. His wife knew he was hunting for her. She might have alerted her employees to the situation, circulated a photo of him, and instructed them to call the police if they spotted his face.

To take a closer look, he would have to conceal himself.

"Invisible," he said. The expected visual and aural impressions arose: darting . . . hissing . . . and then the warm, rippling force field enveloped him.

To avoid setting off a bell dinging at his entrance, he waited until one of the customers came outside, and slipped through the doorway as she brushed past smelling of hair spray and grease.

It was like walking into a cage of squawking hens. As a Whitney Houston holiday song played over a stereo, the women chatted about men, children, other women, clothes-stupid female gossip that drove Dexter nuts. When he would pick up his wife from her job at the beauty salon in Chicago, he usually avoided going inside. He didn't want his ears assaulted.

A look around confirmed that his wife was absent. But he found proof that this was her establishment hanging beside the front door: a large photograph of the salon owners and their team of stylists, all of them wearing matching black work shirts with "BC" embroidered on the breast pocket. His wife and another woman who was surely the co-owner, Tanisha Banks, posed front and center.

His wife looked different. She had cut her long auburn hair, and dyed it black. She wore glasses, too.

He wanted to laugh at her amateur disguise. Who did she think she was fooling? Drastic cosmetic surgery would have failed to conceal her identity from him. Her eyes would always be the same.

Each of the stylists had a dedicated station with a styling chair, full-length mirror, shelving, and utility cart that held the tools of their trade. The name of each stylist was elegantly inscribed above their respective mirrors: Precious, Tanisha, Jordan, Ashley . . .

Rachel's station was near the front of the shop, on the right. The space was clean, all of the brushes, combs, curling irons, scissors, and other implements put away. It looked as if she had gone home for the day.

But there was one item of interest on the shelf: a wedding photo. His wife in her white bridal dress (as if this were her first marriage) stood beside a very tall, broad-shouldered brother with glasses. Both of them were cheesing for the camera.

Dexter's cheeks bulged as if packed with tobacco.

The bitch, the motherfuckin' bitch!

He turned on his heel and strode out of the salon. It would not have been wise for him to linger inside any longer.

If he had, he would have killed someone.

He'd parked in a location that gave him a good view of the salon's front doors. It was a quarter past eight, and according to the listed hours, the shop closed at nine.

He would wait in the car. His wife might not have been working that evening, but one of those women could tell him where she lived-and one of them would, once he exercised his powers of persuasion.

Chapter 35.

His heart galloping, Joshua read the one-page profile of Dexter Bates.

The record included two mug shots: one from the front, another from the side. Bates was a handsome man, in a severe, angular sort of way, but with his I-wish-you-would expression, he looked like a guy you didn't want to screw around with.

His eyes were his most striking feature. They were dark, intelligent, cunning. The eyes of a predator.

Bates had been incarcerated at a maximum-security penitentiary in Menard, Illinois. The vitals section stated that he was thirty-eight, stood six-one, and weighed two hundred pounds. He had a puckered scar on his right cheek, apparently from a bite wound.

He'd been convicted for attempted murder, and taken into custody a little over four years ago. His sentence was for ten years.

But he had been paroled on Monday, December 18. Two days ago.

On Tuesday, Rachel had gone on the run.

Bates was unquestionably the one from whom she was fleeing. This was the man who'd inhabited her nightmare.

When Joshua reflected on Bates' attempted murder conviction, he felt a chill all the way down to his molecules. Rachel bore a long scar on her left side. She'd claimed, when Joshua had asked about it, that it had come from an "old accident," and declined to elaborate further. Joshua never broached the subject again.

Without doubt, her "accident" was Dexter Bates.

Oh, baby. I'm so sorry.

Rachel would not have left their home without good reason to believe that Bates could track her from Illinois. Joshua remembered her sad tears shortly before her departure- Bates must've done something to compel her to run. Hadn't Tanisha said she'd overheard Rachel in the back office of the salon, screaming at someone on the phone, after which Rachel had abruptly left the shop?

Joshua pushed up his glasses on the bridge of his nose and continued to examine Bates' photos, as if he could understand the man by scrutinizing his picture.

What had been Rachel's relationship to this guy? Ex-boyfriend? Had to be. Or maybe she had dated him only once, and he'd gone nuts and stalked her. Or maybe she hadn't known him at all, but he'd spotted her and gotten obsessed.

He could not imagine that she'd been in a serious relationship with a man like this, a man with such cold, unsettling eyes. The Rachel he knew was a shrewd judge of character.

Another possibility regarding Bates' connection to Rachel lurked in the lower regions of Joshua's thoughts, but he didn't want to acknowledge it. It was too disturbing to consider.

He skimmed the remaining documents in the Recycle Bin, but found nothing else of importance. The inmate profile of Bates was a major discovery, however, filling in some critical gaps in his understanding of the situation. He'd finally identified Rachel's enemy.

Their enemy.

If Bates was a threat to Rachel, he was a threat to Joshua, too.

In fact, Bates might regard Joshua as the bigger prize, a more satisfying target for his violence. An undoubtedly jealous man like Bates would be enraged by Joshua's marriage to Rachel, would consider it a betrayal of the worst kind, and as a means of punishing her, would be eager to scrub Joshua off the face of the planet.

Joshua glanced at the gun case.

I wish I was wrong . . . but you know how I sometimes get these feelings.

He removed the gun from the box and loaded it, as Ariel had taught him. He placed it within easy reach.

Next, he picked up Rachel's cell phone.

Joshua began his search in the phone's address book.

Scrolling through the list, he found the expected numbers. His own cell phone number. The salon's. Tanisha's cell and home numbers. Cell and home numbers for a handful of women whom Joshua recognized as members of the salon staff. The number for the bank where they kept their accounts.

He also found two numbers that he didn't recognize.

One was for Prescott Property Management. The number had an Atlanta area code.

The other was for a person named Thad. The area code prefix of 314 was unfamiliar to him.

Joshua turned back to the laptop, accessed the Internet, and found a site that listed nationwide area codes. The prefix of 314 was assigned to St. Louis, Missouri.

Thad, in St. Louis? Rachel had never spoken of a guy named Thad, or of knowing anyone in St. Louis.