He folded the blade away and slung the bag over his shoulder. He left the alley.

The kid had run away, the impression of his footsteps in the snow trailing down the sidewalk.

Dexter gazed at the footsteps as if they would lead to answers about what was happening to him. This was the second time he'd experienced the strange phenomenon. Was he losing his mind?

Or was he gaining . . . something?

Now where had that idea come from?

As unusual as it was, the thought comforted him. He, Dexter Lee Bates, could not possibly be losing his sanity. He was well-educated, well-balanced, in full control of his faculties. No, he wasn't going crazy.

The phenomenon was evidence of something good happening to him. What, he didn't know yet.

But he was certain that, like all good things, it would soon become clear.

Chapter 9.

When Joshua awoke at seven-thirty, Rachel had already left for work. He found a note on the nightstand, written in her elegant script: Hey, sleepyhead. Will call with time for OB-GYN appt. Love, Rachel.

At the mention of the doctor, giddiness bubbled through Joshua all over again. I'm going to be a father. I can't believe it.

But the memory of how Rachel had lied about her internet research put a damper on his excitement-and opened a Pandora's Box of questions, too.

Why was she researching penitentiaries? Did it have anything to do with her nightmare? Why had she lied about it? What was she hiding from him?

On his way downstairs to brew coffee, Joshua paused at the threshold of Rachel's study. He pushed open the door. Looked at the laptop.

The answers to his questions might reside on her computer. All he had to do was switch it on and take a look. Rachel would never know.

But he hesitated. He wasn't one of those rude individuals who took malicious pleasure in digging through another's belongings. His mother was nosy like that; he harbored bad memories of her rooting through his dresser drawers and closets, looking for anything she could use to make his life miserable. Once, when he was twenty-three years old and living at home after graduating from college, she discovered a pack of condoms during one of her search-and-seizure missions-and had thrown such a self-righteous fit that Joshua and his father had worried that they would need to admit her to the hospital for sedation.

Although Joshua would be looking through Rachel's computer not with ill intent, but with a sincere desire to learn why she was deceiving him, he felt uneasy with the idea.

He turned away from the study and went downstairs. He brewed a pot of coffee. In his office, he tried to work on some initial ideas for the restaurant's corporate identity package, but he was unable to concentrate.

He looked at the ceiling. His office was located directly beneath Rachel's study. Although it was surely his artist's imagination at work, he thought he could sense her computer up there, tempting him to uncover its secrets.

Finally, he pushed out of the chair and strode upstairs, walking so fast that Coco, sleeping on the sofa in the family room, awoke and chased after him, curious about his urgent mission.

Before he lost his nerve, he rushed into Rachel's study and punched the laptop's power button.

The machine whirred, proceeding through the boot-up cycle. He sat in the desk chair, started to adjust the height to accommodate his long legs, and stopped himself. If he neglected to re-adjust the chair, Rachel would know that he'd been in there.

Sweat coated his forehead. Snooping was a breach of confidence. By doing this, he was crossing a line in their marriage, admitting to himself that he no longer trusted her, was suspicious of her motives, and there would be consequences to pay for his actions, if not to Rachel, then to his own conscience.

Coco had not entered the room. The little dog sat on her haunches on the threshold, and he swore that her bubble-eyed gaze was accusatory.

"I don't have any choice," he said to the dog, as if the animal would tattle on him to Rachel. "I have to know what's going on."

The computer reached the Welcome screen. In a log-on box, the username field was populated by his wife's first name, but the cursor blinked in the password field-which was empty.

He clicked the OK button, hoping that the system would grant him access without a password.

Please enter a password.

"Shit," he said.

He drummed a tattoo on the desk. He had no idea what her password might be.

He glanced at Coco, typed the dog's name, and hit Enter.

Incorrect password.

He typed his own name.

Incorrect password.

Rachel's salon.

Incorrect password.

"Dammit, what is it then?"

He leaned backward, his weight making the chair springs squeak. He looked around the study. Gazed at her collection of dog figurines sitting on a shelf, the novels and business texts that packed the bookcase, the photograph of a sun-splashed beach standing on the corner of the desk.

Hunched forward, he began to type in anything that came to mind, combinations of numbers and letters, her birth date, their anniversary, his own birth date, the name of her favorite restaurant . . .

None of them worked.

Sighing, he spun away from the computer. His knee bumped against the desk and set a ballpoint pen rolling across the desktop. It dropped into a small trashcan.

He reached inside the can to retrieve the pen. His fingers brushed across a crumpled piece of paper.

He pulled out the pen, and the paper. He unfurled the paper on his lap.

It appeared to be a print-out of a web page. Unfortunately, the ink cartridge had run dry while printing the document; the text was so faint it was virtually unreadable.

Joshua raised the page to the overhead light, squinted.

He could make out four words: Illinois Department of Corrections.

There was other text, but it was too pale for him to decipher.

He checked the trashcan again. It contained only a discarded wrapper from a black ink cartridge. Nothing else.

Apparently, Rachel had printed this document, seen the low-quality of the text, and had then replaced the cartridge. After which, she presumably reprinted the page.

There was a two-drawer filing cabinet on the other side of the room. He opened the drawers, found the expected files: documents for their home, insurance, tax returns, marriage certificate, financial investments. Nothing suspicious.

He examined the page again. He'd at least learned why he'd glimpsed the word "penitentiary" on her laptop last night-she was researching the Illinois prison system.

But why?

He needed more information, and he could get it only from her computer.

On the screen, the pulsing cursor mocked him.

A painful idea occurred to him: if he knew his wife better, he would know her password. If they were truly soul mates, as he believed, he would understand how her mind worked, would be able to figure out the secret pass code she would create.

And the realization brought a more painful truth: if their marriage was stronger, she wouldn't be hiding anything like this from him in the first place.

The phone on the desk rang. According to Caller ID, the call was coming from Rachel's salon.

Shame burned his face. He grabbed the phone off her desk, and left her study for the hallway.

"Hey, love," she said. "Whatca up to?"

"Just working."

"You okay? You sound kinda weird."

"I'm fine. Just been busy this morning."

"I won't keep you then. I wanted to let you know that my appointment with the OB-GYN is for two o'clock. You wanted to meet me there, right?"

"Definitely. Where's the doctor's office?"

She gave him the address, and told him to call her if he didn't think he'd be able to make it. He assured her that he would be there. They talked a couple more minutes about inconsequential things, and then hung up.

He returned to her study and replaced the phone on the cradle. He'd left the piece of scrap paper on her desk. He balled it up again, and tossed it in the trash. Then he turned off the laptop, too.

At the doorway, he gave the room a once-over, to make sure he'd left nothing out of place. The study looked exactly as it had before he'd entered.

Too bad that he didn't feel like he had before he'd stepped inside. He had hoped to find answers that would put his mind at ease. But with no clear answers, he felt worse than ever about his wife's deception. Like a man sinking in quicksand.

Chapter 10.

At a seedy, used-car dealership on the South side, Dexter paid two thousand dollars, cash, for a 1994, black Chevy Caprice Classic with ninety thousand miles on the odometer. The salesman didn't bother asking for Dexter's ID, but he gave Dexter the requisite pink slip, which was all Dexter needed.

The Chevy's cloth upholstery was ripped as if a pack of feral cats had been trapped inside, the heater coughed like an old man with emphysema, and the exterior passenger door was riddled with what appeared to be bullet holes, but the eight-cylinder engine was in good working condition. For his purposes, he didn't want an eye-catching car. The old Chevy Caprice, long associated with police officers, ironically, was so obsolete and plain it was all but invisible on the streets.

Navigating the slushy roads, Dexter left the city and took I-94 West. Pre-incarceration, he had sped around town in a Mercedes convertible, driving fast and recklessly. Now, he was careful to keep the Chevy under the speed limit. With his expired license and duffel bag full of cash and deadly cutlery, he couldn't afford a run-in with the law.

Around ten o'clock in the morning, he arrived in the city of Zion.

Although Dexter had grown up in Chicago, forty-five minutes south, until he'd met his wife he'd never visited Zion. There was little there worth seeing, in his opinion-it was one of those dull Chicago suburbs that restless teenagers fantasized about escaping as soon as they graduated. The so-called downtown was a miserable mess of mom-and-pop stores and mainstream establishments. Ugly, split-level homes and featureless ranches dominated the neighborhoods. There was a church on almost every corner, and most of the streets had Biblical names: Enoch, Bethel, Ezekiel, Gabriel, and the like.

His wife had told him that, until a few years ago, they hadn't even allowed the sale of alcohol within city limits. It was no wonder that she had left this shit hole for Chi-town, where he'd met her and they had lived in a glitzy downtown high-rise.

But Dexter believed that she had returned to Zion. She had grown up there, and her aunt, her closest surviving relative, still lived in the town. While he was incarcerated, and the letters that he mailed to her at their condo came back as undeliverable, and his attempts to call her revealed a disconnected number, he was positive that she had moved back here to be near her family.

Several times, he had attempted to collect call her aunt from prison, to learn his wife's whereabouts. The old bitch had refused to accept the calls, an insult he never forgot.

Her aunt lived on the west side of town, in a quaint neighborhood of brick ranches with large yards, winter-stripped elms, and towering, ice-mantled pines. Dexter slowly cruised past her house.

Like the other homes in the neighborhood, hers was a brick ranch, accessible via a long, snow-covered walkway flanked by naked elms. A Christmas tree stood in the front window, merry lights twinkling.

Briefly, he wondered if the old bitch might have moved-perhaps into a nursing home or a grave. Then he saw the wooden plate on the mailbox that stated The Leonards in scrolling script, and he knew she still lived there.

There were no newspapers piled on the porch. He remembered she'd been a stickler for following the daily news. The lack of a paper outside meant that she'd already plucked it off the ground, which meant that she was probably home at that moment.

He parked a couple of doors down, shut off the engine, and waited. He wanted to stake-out the house for a while. Prison had taught him many things, and chief of all them was patience.

Occasionally, a car grumbled past, tires spitting up snow. A few houses down, a kid came outdoors with a golden Retriever, and child and dog tumbled through the snow until a woman yelled at them to come back inside.

Two hours later, no one had emerged from the house. It was another freezing day, however, and old folks tended to stay indoors in such weather, their brittle bones unable to withstand the low temperatures.

He pulled his hat low over his head.

He already had a knife clipped inside his jacket.

He climbed out of the Chevy and crunched through the slush. A white delivery van rumbled down the road, and he waited for it to pass before he crossed the street.

He trudged toward the house. Thick, hard snow carpeted the walkway. Someone needed to get out here and shovel. She probably paid a neighborhood kid to do the dirty work, and hadn't gotten around to it yet for the most recent snowfall.

It gave him an idea.

A short set of concrete steps, caked with ice, led to the front door. A half-full bag of salt stood nearby, next to an aluminum snow shovel.

He reached inside the bag and got a handful of salt. He tossed the granules across the steps.

Then he picked up the shovel. Returning to the end of the walkway, he began to scrape snow and ice off the pavement, tossing it aside into the yard.

When he had gotten deep into his work and had cleared off half the path, the front door finally creaked open.

Back turned to the house, he continued to shovel, as if he were only a good neighbor concerned about the snow piling up on an elderly lady's property. But he slowly worked his way backward along the path, drawing closer to the doorway.