Eli Bellitto lay in his hospital bed and stared at the flickering polychromatic beacon of the TV screen in his darkened hospital room.

"Who's a ghost?" Adrian said.

Strauss sat at the right foot of the bed, Adrian at the left. The big man had propelled himself into the room in his wheelchair. His left knee was braced and straight out before him. Even in the dim light Eli could see the pair of ugly purple swellings on his bare scalp. His long arms hung at his sides, almost touching the floor.

"The guy who clobbered you and stabbed Eli," Strauss said, his words clipped with impatience. "Haven't you been listening?"

Adrian's short-term memory hadn't quite recovered yet and he'd been having difficulty following Strauss's excuses for coming up empty in his search for their attacker. Even Eli found his repeated questions annoying.

Adrian shook his head. "I have no no memory of it. I remember having dinner last night, and after that... it's all a blank. If it weren't for my knee and this pounding headache, I'd think you both were having me on." memory of it. I remember having dinner last night, and after that... it's all a blank. If it weren't for my knee and this pounding headache, I'd think you both were having me on."

Adrian had regained some of his recent memory-at least now he accepted that this was August instead of July-but he'd made this same statement at least half a dozen times since his arrival. Eli wanted to throw something at him.

I'm the one who's suffered the real damage! he wanted to shout. You just got a knock on the head!

He clenched his teeth as a new gush of magma erupted in his groin. His left hand flailed about, found the PCA b.u.t.ton, and pressed it; he prayed he hadn't already used up this hour's morphine allotment.

What a day. An afternoon from h.e.l.l. A nurse, a three-hundred-pound rhino in white named Horgan had come in and insisted he get up and walk. Eli had refused but the woman would not take no for an answer. She may have been black but she was a n.a.z.i at heart, leading him up and down the hall as he clung to his rolling IV pole, his catheter snaking between his knees, his half-full blood-tinged urine bag dangling from a hook on the pole for all to see. Agony enhanced by humiliation.

And then Dr. Sadiq had visited, telling him that he had to walk more more, and how tomorrow they'd be removing his catheter-Eli's b.u.t.tocks clenched at the thought of Nurse Horgan dragging the tube out of him, and that caused another eruption of pain. Dr. Sadiq said he antic.i.p.ated discharging Eli tomorrow morning.

Not soon enough as far as Eli was concerned. As long as he could take this PCA unit with him.

"In other words," Eli said to Strauss as the morphine took effect, "once we trim away all your excess verbiage, we are left with the simple fact that you've failed us."

The detective spread his hands. "Hey, I can only do so much. It's not like you two've given me a whole lot to work with."

It frightened Eli to know that his attacker was still unidentified.

He knows me, but I don't know him.

He could be in the hospital now, pretending to be visiting someone else, but all the while waiting for Strauss and Adrian to leave so that he can come in and finish the job.

If only they had his name. The Circle could take it from there. With their connections they'd make short work of him.

"Did you bring me his number?" Eli asked Strauss.

"Yeah." He fished a piece of paper out of his pocket "Got it here."

"Dial it for me."

"You're kidding. It can't be traced and he doesn't-"

"Dial it now!"

Shrugging, Strauss punched the number into the bedside phone and handed Eli the receiver. After four rings, Eli heard a disembodied voice say the client he'd called was not available. He handed the phone back to Strauss.

"Leave the number on the nightstand."

"Waste of time, I tell you. Guy doesn't keep his phone on."

"I'll keep trying. Who knows? I may get lucky."

Eli wasn't sure exactly what he'd say, but the phone number was his only link to the man who'd violated him.

"Hey," Strauss said, pointing to the TV screen. "Isn't that-?"

Eli shushed him and turned up the volume when he recognized the Vietnamese child's face. He missed the introduction as the scene cut to a dark-skinned woman reporter on a crowded sidewalk, a scene obviously shot earlier in the day.

Her name was Philippa Villa and she was doing man-on-the-street interviews about how, in the wake of little Due Ngo's recent abduction, people thought child molesters should be treated.

Child molesters! Why did everyone a.s.sume that the child was going to be s.e.xually molested?

As each bloated visage from Manhattan's multihued lumpen proletariat flashed onto the screen to mouth predictably ba.n.a.l comments about capital punishment being "too good for them," Eli's anger grew. These ignoramuses knew nothing of the Circle's exalted purpose, and were casting them as perverted lowlifes. They were being egged on by this reporter, this Philippa Villa. The Circle had a powerful link within the media. Eli would see to it that this woman's career came to a screeching halt.

He was about to change the channel when the reporter's grinning face filled the screen.

"And if you think the folks we've just seen are tough, you should have heard one woman who did not want to appear on camera. I wrote down what she said: 'The guy who s.n.a.t.c.hed that little boy should be castrated-'"

Eli stifled a moan as he relived the moment when the blade of his own knife sliced into his tenderest flesh.

"'And after that he should have his hands cut off so he can never touch another child, and then his legs cut off so he can never stalk another child-'"

He saw Strauss lean back, as if trying to distance himself physically as well emotionally from the TV.

"'-and then his tongue ripped out so he can never coax another kid into his car, and his eyes put out so that he can never even look at a child again-'"

He saw Adrian wince and run a trembling hand over his face.

"'-I'd leave his nose so he can breathe in the stink of his rotten body.' "

Eli felt the PCA b.u.t.ton crack under his thumb. He hadn't realized he'd been pressing it so hard.

Forget the reporter. Eli now had somebody else he would much rather ruin. If he could find her.

"Did you hear that?" he said to Adrian and Strauss. "Did you hear what that woman said about us?"

"Not us us," Strauss said. "She knows nothing about The Circle. And besides-"

"But she thinks she does. She thinks she knows our intent. She knows nothing of our purposes and yet feels free to mouth off in public and accuse us of being child molesters. Are we going to stand for this?"

"I don't see that we have much choice," Strauss said.

"There are always choices."

"Really? And what are they here?"

Strauss's unruffled att.i.tude irked Eli. "Find this loudmouthed woman and teach her a lesson."

"I think you're overreacting, Eli," Strauss said.

"Easy for you to say!" Eli hissed. He wanted to shout but was wary of raising his voice. "You're not the one with the stab wound or the concussion!"

"Finding this woman won't make you feel any better."

"Oh, it will! I guarantee you, it will!"

Eli was well aware that he was overreacting, but he'd been hurt and he was in pain, and Strauss had given him no target for retribution, offered scant hope of providing one in the foreseeable future. Finding and ruining this woman would provide a much-needed outlet for his pent-up fury.

"How am I supposed to find her? She hasn't committed a crime."

"Contact Gregson."

"Gregson's with NBC. This was on-"

"Gregson will know what to do." Eli felt his anger bubbling over. Did he have to lead Strauss by the hand? Did he have to do everything everything! "If you can't find our attacker's name, then get me this woman's name! Do something something, d.a.m.n it!"

13.

Charlie closed his Bible. Tried to read 'bout the tau cross in Ezechiel 9:4 but it wasn't happening. The words broke up into jumbles soon as they hit his brain.

Maybe it was the music. The jiggly beat of Point of Grace's "Begin With Me" was pumping through his headphones. Righteous lyrics, but the high-gloss arrangement and funky vocals were distracting tonight. He popped them out of his portable CD player and slipped in "Spirit Of The Century" by the Blind Boys Of Alabama. As their traditional harmonies soothed his head, he lay back on his bed, closed his eyes, and prayed for peace.

But no peace tonight. He kept on seeing his brother splashing like a drowning cat in that pool of blood, kept hearing Jack's voice telling 'bout the Otherness...

Where was Jesus in all this? Why this happening?

Charlie figured it for a test. But of what?

My faith?

He knew his faith was strong. Powerful. So powerful he wondered how he'd got through his pre-conversion years without it. It was like oxygen now. If someone stole it from him, he knew sure he'd die in minutes.

But what says I'm the target of this test? Maybe it Lyle... a test of his faith in nothing.

For as surely as Charlie believed in the healing love of Jesus, so Lyle believed in nothing beyond his five senses. Maybe G.o.d was offering Lyle a chance to see how there was more to life than his senses, that life extended beyond the body, that each human body was home to an eternal soul that was gonna be judged when its life on earth was done. Maybe this gonna be Lyle's chance to change, to accept Jesus as his personal savior and see his name written in the Book of Life.

But... if this was the work of G.o.d, why was He hiding His hand?

Because that the way He wishes it.

Don't go second guessin' the Lord, Charlie reminded himself.

But where did Jack and Gia fit in? Pretty plain that neither of them were saved. Gia had faith in Jack, but in what else?

And Jack? He a mystery. What he'd said the other night about value for value still hung with Charlie. True that. The way things should be, but weren't... especially not in how he and Lyle had been earning their daily bread.

Jack's outlook didn't seem to be as earthbound as Lyle's, but his talk of the Otherness and the Ally power, of two cosmic forces in eternal conflict... that had Charlie a little shook. Where was G.o.d in all that? It didn't even give the G.o.d of the Holy Bible the props of being denied. Instead He got bypa.s.sed, left and forgotten like an old store by a freeway with no ramp.

And when Charlie had tried to point out that this "Otherness" was just another disguise for Satan, Jack had flipped it 'round, hinting that maybe the idea of Satan had come from awareness of the Otherness.

Charlie rubbed his eyes. He still hadn't answered his question: Who was being tested?

He reopened his Bible. All the answers were here. Have faith and Jesus would guide him to them.

But as for leaving Lyle and breaking up the team, that'd have to wait. Yeah, he promised Reverend Sparks, but if G.o.d was gonna go testin' Charlie's faith, he couldn't very well turn his back and geese outta here. And if G.o.d testing Lyle, then Charlie wanted to take his brother's back, help him to salvation any way he could. That what brothers was for.

14.

Lyle stuck his head into Charlie's room and found him in his usual position, lying on the bed, reading the Bible with gospel playing through his headphones. He waved to catch his attention.

"I'm heading for bed," he said when Charlie took off the headphones.

"Kinda early, yo?"

"Yeah, but there's nothing but that old stuff on the tube. Can't bring myself to watch any more of that."

Charlie held up his Bible. "Gotta extra one if you interested. Great comfort to me, and bro, you look like a dawg who could use some comfort."

Lyle waved him off-not ungently. "Thanks, but I think I'll pa.s.s."

"Okay, but you gotta standing offer." Charlie sat up on the edge of his bed. "Strange 'bout the TV. If we think this girl die in the sixties, why's it stuck in the eighties?"

Lyle had been pondering that one too.

"I don't know," he said. "And at the moment I'm too tired to care." He yawned. "You'll be ready to go back to work tomorrow?"

Charlie stared at him. "You gonna be ready to give value for value?"

"What's this? You've switched from quoting scripture to quoting Jack?"

As Lyle started to turn away, Charlie gripped his arm and looked up at him, his eyes searching his face.