"Just let me know," he said, hopping onto the dock.

As he began untying lines, she pushed the starter button on the small outboard diesel engine. A couple of minutes later, all lines free, she eased the boat out of the slip.

- At anchor in Little Bight Bay, the big catamaran floating in water so clear and still it looked to be suspended in air, Maggie pulled out the laptop and the satellite antenna and powered them up.

The window for her e-mail was up, so she clicked to update the list that was her in-box. There were a dozen new e-mails, including one from Matt Payne, and that made her curious.

The voice mail Amanda left me said she was in the Keys with Matt when she heard about the attack from Chad.

She clicked on Payne's e-mail, nodding thoughtfully as she read it. When she had finished, she realized she had begun to tear up.

If Matt has that e-mail I sent, then my father is behind this.

But Amanda has to have something to do with it, too.

I know the last thing she wants is Matt doing police work. Especially chasing another murderer.

She's carrying his baby...

She had to give her blessing for him to help me.

Maggie sighed, then quickly opened another browser window and typed in PhillyNewsNow.com.

"Well, so there you go," she said aloud, after reading the lead story's headline: "Update: Society Hill Home Invasion." Tailor-made real-time proof.

She reached into her canvas sail bag, pulled out a small digital camera, then, holding her head beside the laptop screen while holding the screen at such an angle that there would be only blue sky in the background, she forced a smile and snapped a series of photographs. Using the camera's wireless function, she sent the images to her laptop. And, after picking the one that clearly showed the headline, she went back to her e-mail window, clicked on REPLY, attached the photograph, and wrote: From: Maggie Date: 17NOV 0510 To: CC: SGT M.M. Payne

Subject: RE: Your safety Attachment: 1 Dear Matt, Thank you for writing. It is difficult to express how much I deeply appreciate your concern.

I hope the attached photograph is what you need to know that I am genuinely safe.

With all due respect, and with admiration for your proven skills as a police officer, considering the circumstances I could not be in a safer place.

Please know that while this is an arduous situation, one that I do wish were resolved, I feel there are a few things that I have to do before, as you put it, life is back to normal.

I sincerely hope to see you and Amanda soon.

Fondly,

Maggie

She read it over, nodded, then sent it.

Then she thought: Why should my family get it secondhand?

And she then forwarded it to her parents and to her cousin Emma.

She then went to the My Free Texts page, punched in the California telephone number it had assigned to her, then her password.

The conversation string of text message bubbles was still there, along with a new bubble. She read it.

He wants me to bring him a page from the book as proof?

How stupid does he think I am?

"A place of my choosing"?

How absolutely magnanimous of him.

She read the message again.

I need to give him something, though.

She took the camera inside the cabin. She pulled from her backpack the notebook that was the ledger on the girls. She turned to a page that had a list of the girls' names and the cities where they were working. At the top of the page there also was a crude doodle of a woman's crotch.

She took a couple of photographs of that page, then repeated the process of sending it to her laptop.

Sliding the notebook inside the backpack, she had to work it around the thick brass-zippered bank pouch. And then she had an idea.

She pulled the pouch and the plastic bag that was imprinted in gold with Lucky Stars Casino & Entertainment from the backpack. Then she removed a handful of the hundred-dollar poker chips that were in the bag and fanned a wad of the hundred-dollar bills from the pouch. She took shots of the chips on top of the cash and bank pouch.

At My Free Texts, she attached one of the images of the ledger page to her reply and wrote: HERE IS YOUR PROOF. NOW GET ME MY MONEY. I WILL TELL YOU LATER WHERE THE PUBLIC TRANSFER WILL TAKE PLACE.

She sent it, and a minute later was about to sign out when a new bubble popped up: 267-555-9100.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

BUT I AM AFRAID THAT I DO REQUIRE PHYSICAL PROOF. PLEASE.

THIS IS A GREAT DEAL OF MONEY INVOLVED.

We are not meeting, she thought, even if it were physically possible.

Not now. Not ever.

Maggie, after attaching an image of the poker chips and cash, fired back: PROOF? THIS IS ALL THE DAMN PROOF YOU NEED.

GET ME THE $200,000 AND YOU GET THE ACTUAL BOOKS.

[FOUR].

Kensington, Philadelphia Monday, November 17, 3:30 P.M.

Ricky followed Hector out the back door of the row house. As they walked toward a gate-the same razor-wire-topped chain-link fencing that surrounded the three backyards also separated them-he noticed that there was another heavy smell in the air, a different one, not quite as metallic as earlier.

On the other side of the gate, Ricky saw the large-gauge electric power cables, more or less concealed, running to the center row house from the PECO meters of the houses on both sides of it. He followed Hector past the enormous air-conditioning unit, a new one that had been spray-painted in clouds of black and gray so it would not stand out, then onto the small wooden back porch.

The industrial smell was getting stronger. Ricky turned toward it and saw where it was coming from. A sheet-metal hood, bowl-shaped and also spray-painted with gray-black clouds, was mounted outside a rectangular hole at the foot of the back wall. It covered what had been a small window to the basement. Ricky visualized the four-inch-diameter vent tube behind it. The tube went down to the heavy steel lid that was cinched tight to the top of a 110-gallon drum, a ring of flames from a gas burner flickering under it.

Hector, approaching the back door, saw him looking at the vent.

"Another day and then that's done." He shrugged. "Bigger ones take a little longer than usual."

Hector slipped a key in the door's dead bolt, turned the knob, and swung it open. When they stepped inside, Ricky saw that there was another curtain of floor-to-ceiling clear plastic. Immediately beyond it, at the top of the stairs that led down to the basement, there were two cardboard boxes, their sides labeled "Technical Grade Sodium Hydroxide Lye Beads." One bulged with women's clothes. The other, half full, contained shoes and purses.

"All that," Hector said, "is to get incinerated."

Ricky nodded.

Hector pulled the plastic curtain aside, and they entered.

Hector grinned and made a sweeping gesture toward what was the main floor of the house. It held a giant tent made of the plastic sheeting-inside which was a small forest, two long rows of bushy green plants six feet tall-and what looked, at least by comparison to the old house, like a space-age array of hoses and wires and tubes supporting the tent.

"My controlled growing environment," Hector said, waving Ricky inside the tent. "This is much better than what I started with in Miami. And soon we start another one in the first house."

Hector had stripped the interior shell of the house bare. Then a framework of two-by-four studs had been added, and between the studs thick fiberglass insulation installed.

The entire room was then outlined in the tent of heavy plastic sheeting. Industrial-sized sheet-metal vents brought in the air-conditioning while other sheet-metal boxes drew the air out of the tent, sending it to activated carbon charcoal filters that removed odors and contaminates, then routed the scrubbed air back to the air conditioner. The complete volume of air in the tent was refreshed once an hour. The recirculated air was augmented with carbon dioxide created by burning natural gas in what once had been the kitchen and in the basement.

The forty plants were in two neat rows of twenty. They grew in plastic pots that sat on wooden racks built two feet high, allowing warm air to circulate around the roots. A web of black irrigation lines, on an automated pump system, regularly fed the plants a solution of nutrients from a sterilized stainless steel reservoir that resembled an oversized hot water heater.

Hanging a few feet from the ceiling were two rows of fluorescent light fixtures, each with ten one-thousand-watt lamps. The ropes passed through pulleys mounted to the ceiling, allowing the lights to be raised as the plants grew. Wall-mounted fans, above and below the height of the lights, circulated the air, as did big box fans, some set up to push air through the thick plant leaves while others pulled the air.

While it had been chilly outside the tent, the air now felt very warm and, with the high humidity, almost steamy.

And there was the strong, distinct smell of marijuana.

Ricky remembered what Hector had told him when he first started the project. It sounded like another language.

"When the plant terpenoids evaporate, there is produced a chemical. It has an odor that is organic and heady. It smells the same as pot when it burns. If that gets to the outside, word would spread and we will have a rip-off. Or what happened to me in Miami-the cops come. So I will create a sealed space."

"These plants are healthier than our first ones," Hector now said. "With more air flow, their stalks grow bigger. And with bigger stalks, the nutrients can travel better. And with more nutrients, the yield is bigger and better."

Hector showed him the bank of monitors.

"This is the perfect growing environment," he said proudly.

Ricky saw that the readouts showed: TEMPERATURE: 78 DEGREES F.

HUMIDITY: 50 PERCENT.

CO2 (PARTS PER MILLION): 1,500.

"And see these leaves?" Hector went on. "No webs of mites, no bugs, no nothing but perfect formation."

Ricky nodded. "How did you get rid of them?"

"Same as we kill all pests, whether they have two legs or eight. We turn up the gas burners and create more carbon dioxide-the see-oh-two." He pointed to the monitor. "If we crank that up to ten thousand parts per million for an hour or two, spider mites and everything else is wiped out."

Hector pulled from his pocket a jeweler's loupe and handed it to Ricky.

"Check the color inside the heads of the trichomes. Almost perfect. This crop is about ready to harvest."

Ricky nodded, made a cursory look with the magnifying glass, then handed back the loupe.

He looked him in the eyes.

"It is good, Hector. Really good. But I came for something else. I need your help again."

Ricky glanced at the cardboard boxes labeled "Technical Grade Sodium Hydroxide Lye Beads."

"Another?" Hector Ramrez said. "Just say who and when."

Ricky Ramrez looked back at him and began: "When is right now. Who is not as simple. That is why I need your help. That woman Krystal ran to? She is..."

- Five minutes later, Ricky finished, ". . . and we don't know how to find her to get the books."

Hector began to laugh.

"What?" Ricky snapped, thinking he was being mocked.

"No, Ricky. But this also is simple. You have already called it."

"Called what?"

"The halcnes. You said they want to be assassins. Then we can make them assassins."

Ricky thought about that for a moment.

"How can they shoot this woman if we don't know where she is?"

Hector shook his head.

"You know where she works..." he began.