"But couldn't you convince them?"

"I'm going to try, sweetheart."

"You better." Alison sipped thoughtfully at her wine, trying not to pull a sour face, then looked up brightly. "I just remembered-doesn't Lyssy have a birthday coming up this month?"

Corder nodded glumly. "On Wednesday."

"Are we going to have a party for him again?"

"I don't know-it's a stressful time for Lyssy, and-"

"Please? You know how much he loves coming over-and if what you said is true, it could be the last birthday party he ever gets to have."

"That's true enough." Corder glanced over to his wife. "What do you say, hon?"

She shook her head dubiously. "Wednesday's a bear for me. I'm getting my hair done in the morning, my book club meets in the afternoon, I'm not sure how I'd-"

"Please, Mom? I'll bake the cake."

"That I have to see," said Cheryl Corder-and so the family's fate was decided.

7.

For three years, Irene Cogan had been nursing an unlikely crush on the man who'd risked his own life to save her from Ulysses Maxwell's h.e.l.lhole. Or perhaps not so unlikely, despite his unprepossessing (well, okay, downright homely) appearance-she didn't need her Stanford degrees to understand how a damsel in distress might develop an affinity for the knight in shining armor who'd ridden to her rescue, or to recognize the resemblance between Pender and both her father and her late husband-big, easygoing men in whose strong arms a gal couldn't help feeling safe and protected.

At the time, though, Irene had been too traumatized by Maxwell to trust her feelings for Pender, never mind acting on them, and any remaining chance of a relationship developing between them seemed to have dissolved entirely when instead of moving out to California following his retirement from the FBI, as he'd once thought of doing, Pender had accepted a law enforcement job on the island of St. Luke, a U.S. protectorate in the eastern Caribbean.

Irene told herself it was just as well, that it would never have worked out for the two of them anyway. Then a few months ago Pender had called Irene out of the blue to tell her his plans had changed, that things hadn't panned out for him on St. Luke, and that he was thinking about moving to the central coast after all.

So much for just as well. Irene had helped Pender find a cottage to rent only a few blocks from her place in Pacific Grove, and he'd quickly been a.s.similated into her circle of friends and acquaintances. He'd grown particularly close to the DeVries family-Lily had taken to calling him Uncle Pen, and he'd become golfing buddies with both her real uncle, Rollie DeVries, and her grandfather Lyman.

But when it came to reciprocating Irene's romantic feelings, nothing had changed-their relationship was platonic, and in dire peril of remaining so. Then, a little over a month ago, Irene and Pender had each been contacted by The People's Posse, a Portland-based basic cable show on the order of America's Most Wanted, and asked to appear on an upcoming episode featuring the Maxwell case.

The offer-an all-expense-paid trip to Portland and a modest emolument-wasn't all that tempting until the two compared notes and discovered they were scheduled to be interviewed on consecutive days. To Irene it had seemed like a perfect opportunity to take one last shot at upgrading the relationship. She'd suggested to Pender that they make a joint vacation out of it; when he agreed, she booked them adjoining rooms at an upscale hotel advertising romantic midweek getaways.

She'd nearly lost her nerve a dozen times since then. As late as the previous Sat.u.r.day she'd been on the verge of calling the whole thing off; instead the business with Lily had brought them to Portland a full day ahead of schedule.

Luckily there'd been no problem checking into their hotel a day early, Pender told Irene when he picked her up at the Inst.i.tute in the white Toyota he'd rented at the airport. "Not only that, I talked to Marti Reynolds at TPP, they're going to move our interviews up a day apiece-mine's tomorrow now, yours is Wednesday."

"And the airline tickets?"

"I cancelled the round-trip reservations, got us seats for the last flight to San Jose on Wednesday evening-we can take the shuttle home from there."

Irene shook her head in admiration. "Pender, if I'd ever had a secretary that good-well, I'd still have a secretary."

"I always knew I had to be good at something," he said-receiving compliments, even left-handed ones, was never his strength. "How'd it go with Lily?"

Irene shrugged. "It went."

"Want to talk about it?"

"Hey, that's my line," she told him.

The hotel proved to be a standard chain affair-nothing particularly romantic about it. But the adjoining rooms were large and comfortable, with enormous beds and a handsome view of the Willamette. Upon arriving, Irene took a long hot shower to wash off the hospital vibes. She could feel her nerve starting to fail her again-she'd never seduced a man before, and wasn't sure she'd be able to manage it.

Fortunately, the restaurant Irene had selected with the help of the hotel concierge was both romantic enough for her purposes and informal enough to accommodate Pender's tragic wardrobe, which tonight consisted of a madras sport jacket, a boldly striped sport shirt, and rumpled polyester slacks; the only items that didn't clash were his brown Basque beret and his beige Hush Puppies.

Irene herself wore a green frock that showed off her best feature, her long slender legs. Emboldened by an unaccustomed in-take of alcohol-she'd polished off most of a carafe of house red while Pender stuck to his Jim Beam on the rocks-she contrived to rest her hand on his more than once during the meal. And in the backseat of the cab on the way back to their hotel she edged closer and closer to him, until their thighs were touching-any closer and she'd have been in his lap.

But still he seemed clueless. In the elevator on the way up to their adjoining rooms he kept plenty of s.p.a.ce between them. When they reached his door and she turned her face up to his for a good-night kiss, closing her eyes expectantly, all she got for her brazenness was a platonic peck on the cheek.

So what's a gal to do? Persuading herself she was drunker than she actually was, Irene took another shower, changed into a slinky, nearly transparent black negligee, and knocked on the door that communicated between her room and Pender's.

"Pen?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I come in for a sec?"

The door opened. Pender, wearing a too-small hotel bathrobe-one size fits almost all-looked down at Irene, standing in the doorway with her arms at her sides. "Oh, s.h.i.t, oh dear," he said.

Irene wanted to sink through the floor-or failing that, die on the spot. Instead, feeling stunned and foolish, she began backing away, her arms crossed over her chest. Pender, realizing the enormity of his gaffe, took her by the wrist and drew her back into his room. "I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't mean it like that."

"No, it's my fault," she heard herself say. "I shouldn't have just...I mean, I had no right to.... "

"Ssshh," he murmured, wrapping his arms around Irene and pulling her tightly against him. "It's not your fault-there's no way you could have known."

"Known what?" she said, in a tiny voice.

"Long story," Pender replied gently.

After six months, either the pain was beginning to subside or he was growing inured to it, Pender explained to Irene a few minutes later. The two were sitting side by side on the edge of his bed; he'd fetched her the monogrammed hotel bathrobe from her room, filled an ice bucket, and fixed them each a gla.s.s of Jim Beam on the rocks. Rare now were the body blows, he told her, the attacks of grief so visceral the sobbing literally doubled him over.

The trouble was, said Pender, he wasn't so sure he wanted the pain to subside. Except for his memories and a few trinkets, it was all he had left of his second wife, who'd died from pancreatic cancer only a few months after their wedding. So perhaps it had been a mistake to leave the tropical paradise where the two had met, wed, and lived happily ever after-if three months qualifies as ever after.

But at the time, the reminders had been too plentiful and too painful to bear. Every Caribbean sunset broke Pender's heart all over again, and with booze duty-free on the island and a bar on virtually every corner, it didn't take him long to realize that you can't drown your sorrows in alcohol, you can only pickle them. So he'd opted for the geographical solution instead, resigning his post as St. Luke's chief of detectives and moving nearly four thousand miles west to the golfing mecca of the Monterey peninsula to take another stab at retirement-and at lowering his handicap, which after twenty years on the links still hovered around the drinking age.

Not that there was any shortage of either booze or bars on the peninsula, he told Irene. But at least there n.o.body felt sorry for him-largely because he'd told no one of his loss. "So you can see, it's nothing personal," he concluded. "You're an attractive, intelligent woman, Irene-with legs to die for, don't think I haven't noticed. And I'm flattered as h.e.l.l you'd even consider...well, you know. But it's too soon-I'm just not ready yet."

Irene raised her head-she'd spent the last few minutes studying the carpet-and c.o.c.ked it to the side, looking up into Pender's pained eyes. "Yet being the operative word?" she asked him.

"Oh, definitely," said Pender.

She smiled. "Well that's going to be a little awkward, isn't it? Waiting for yet, I mean."

Pender thought it over. "Tell you what. When the time is right, I'll show up at your door in a slinky negligee," he said, just as Irene raised her gla.s.s to her lips.

And so what was to have been an evening of romance dissolved into a spit take. But afterward, alone in her room, when her mind insisted on exploring her moment of humiliation the way a tongue explores a broken tooth, up popped the image of Pender knocking on her door in a see-through negligee, carrying a box of candy and a floral bouquet, and she found herself smiling instead of weeping.

Pender too, had a well-developed sense of the ridiculous. Smooth move, Ex-Lax, he told himself, when he was alone in his room again. Turning down that elegant trim at your age-good G.o.d, man, you must have lost your mind.

8.

"Anything else before I go?" inquired the chunky, bespectacled night nurse. She had already brought Lyssy a gla.s.s of water, given him his sleeping pill, helped him take off his leg and change into his pajamas, and tucked the covers around him.

"Yeah, could you move my crutches closer to the bed? In case I have to go to the bathroom?" Lyssy, who'd been trying to postpone the inevitable, began to sense the nurse's growing impatience. The problem was, he wasn't just afraid of the dark, he was afraid of anybody knowing he was afraid.

"There you go. Anything else?" She waited by the door, her finger poised at the keypad, ready to punch in the security code.

"I guess not."

"Good night, then."

"Good night."

The heavy door slid open, then closed again behind the nurse, locking automatically. The ceiling panels dimmed gradually; soon the only illumination in the room was a faint trapezoid the color of moonlight, cast onto the carpet by the recessed night-light in the bathroom.

What a roller coaster of a day, thought Lyssy, slipping one hand under his pajama bottoms and closing it around his p.e.n.i.s, which was already satisfactorily heavy with antic.i.p.ation.

To make it hard, he thought about the girl he'd met this afternoon, then plugged her image into his standard masturbatory template, which always involved a rescue. Tonight he would save Lily from a fire-another night it might be Miss Stockings whom he saved from a flood, or the pretty black nutritionist who had to be rescued from one of Lyssy's neighbors on the locked ward. And after the fire (because for Lyssy the idea of even taking the initiative in a s.e.xual encounter, much less resorting to coercion or violence, was a brake-screeching turnoff), Lily became the grateful aggressor. I know what you want, she whispered as she began to undress herself at the foot of the bed, I know what you need....

Another feature common to Lyssy's s.e.xual fantasies was that the actual s.e.x tended to be indistinct, breast-oriented, and R-rated-he rarely got as far as the nitty-gritty before reaching o.r.g.a.s.m.

Tonight, though, strange things started happening. Lyssy had stroked himself into a sort of trance state, picturing the girl turning her back to him while she slipped off her bomber jacket. But when she turned around to face him again, she was no longer Lily-instead, she had turned into Dr. Al's wife.

Nothing too unusual there. Though she was in her midforties and starting to spread a little in the waist and rear, Cheryl Corder was still nice and bosomy up front, and had a sort of Martha Stewart ice-queen thing going: frosted hair, knowing eyes that crinkled at the corners, and a wry, crooked smile.

Nor was there anything unusual about the way the fantasy played out at first. Stripped down to her panties, Mrs. Corder sashayed around the bed until she was standing directly in front of Lyssy, then cupped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in both hands for him to nuzzle, kiss, tongue, and suckle.

Most nights, that would have been enough to bring the furiously masturbating Lyssy to o.r.g.a.s.m. If not, he'd picture her climbing onto his lap and lowering herself onto him-that would generally do the trick. But tonight, instead of waiting pa.s.sively, he grabbed the woman roughly by the hair and threw her facedown onto the bed-not his own narrow twin, but a big double bed with satin sheets.

Frightened now, whimpering, No, please, she tried to crawl away. Unable to stop himself-it was as if someone else had hijacked his fantasy-Lyssy threw himself on top of her, jerked her panties down roughly. His c.o.c.k was huge, red-k.n.o.bbed, and throbbing, a real two-hander. You like it rough, don't you, he said as he spread her cheeks and thrust himself into her hard. She screamed; the more she screamed, the better he liked it. Humping, driving, crushing her down, feeling the dark tightness enveloping him as one scarred hand gripped her hair for control while the other snaked under her to play with her fat, white, heavy-hanging b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Gone was any semblance of control over his own fantasy-Lyssy wasn't even surprised, when he turned his head, to see Dr. Al and young Alison tied to chairs at the foot of the bed, both naked, bound and gagged, forced to watch. Don't worry, your turn's coming, he hissed to Alison in a voice that was no more his own than was the fantasy. And you'll get yours too, he confided to Dr. Al.

And as he began to come, a succession of disconnected images flashed before Lyssy's eyes-a knife being drawn across a throat, blood spattering a wall, a lolling head, a slumping body....

Lyssy opened his eyes, found himself back in his own bed, frightened and ashamed, his hands sticky with s.e.m.e.n. With a moan of horror he threw back the covers and hopped into the bathroom, where he scrubbed his hands with soap and hot water, roughly, obsessively, until the scar tissue stretched across the palms was red and raw.

And though in the forefront of his mind he was repeating the same phrase over and over, like a mantra, as he scrubbed-it's not my fault, it wasn't me; it's not my fault, it wasn't me-in the back of his mind Lyssy was pretty sure he could hear dry laughter emanating from the dark place where he was never to go.

CHAPTER THREE.

1.

Lily awoke to the sound of an over-hearty female voice bidding her good morning through a speaker in the wall near the head of the bed. For a few seconds that seemed to last an eternity, she felt lost and frightened, totally disoriented. Then it all came flooding back: the airplane, her grandparents, and-oh G.o.d-the Inst.i.tute!

A moment later the room's only door slid open, then closed behind a ma.s.sively built young woman in white duck trousers and a tight-sleeved white polo shirt with the RCI logo over the left breast. Her light brown hair was cut in a mullet: shaved sidewalls, buzzed on top, hanging straight down to her powerful shoulders in back. PATRICIA BENOIT, PSYCH. TECH., read the plastic name badge pinned to her shirt.

"Hi, I'm Patty. Dr. Corder wants me to stick with you this morning, kinda show you the ropes, get you orientated, how's that sound?"

"I have to pee."

"You might want to try out the shower, too." Patty wrinkled her nose. "Getting a little gamy, if you catch my drift. I'll be at the nurses' station-buzz me when you're ready." At the doorway, Patty angled her body to block Lily's view of the keypad before punching in the code.

Although she was wearing a modest cotton-flannel nightgown from the suitcase full of clothes and personal effects Dr. Cogan had packed and brought along for her (the nurse who'd helped her unpack last night had confiscated her tweezers and nail file), Lily waited until the door had closed again before pulling the covers back and climbing out of bed. In the bathroom, she wiped off the toilet seat with a neatly folded square of toilet tissue before sitting down, and patted herself dry afterward with another neatly folded square, keeping her nightgown rucked up onto her lap the whole time. Lily hated exposing herself-even at home, she preferred to lock the bedroom door before disrobing, and the bathroom door as well, whether for a quick pee or a long bath.

Here, though, there was no bathroom door to lock, or shower-stall door, or even a shower curtain-the recessed shower head set high and flush in the curved wall angled away from the open stall doorway, and a six-inch-high tiled ledge in the bottom of the doorway kept the water from flooding the bathroom.

After brushing her teeth, Lily reluctantly pulled her nightgown over her head and looked around the bathroom for a place to hang it. There being no hooks or towel racks, she folded the nightie and placed it on top of the towels and washcloths stacked on a high rounded shelf. Naked, she peered tentatively into the shower stall. There were no temperature controls, no faucets, no taps, but the moment she stepped inside, warm water cascaded from the single jet eighteen inches above her head. Electric eye, she guessed; a little experimenting proved her right.

Boy, they thought of everything, Lily told herself as she soaped up and lathered her luxurious dark mane-shampoo, body wash, conditioner in tiny motel-size plastic bottles were arrayed on a recessed shelf under the jet. You couldn't drown yourself, scald yourself, hang yourself, cut yourself, or even tweeze yourself. Not enough in the little bottles to poison yourself, either. Maybe you could choke or something if you tried to swallow one, but they probably even- Then suddenly Lily remembered what Lyssy had mentioned yesterday-there's a reason they call it the observation suite-and all at once, she knew she was being watched. Panic seized her; she squatted on her heels with her legs together and her knees drawn up, crossing her arms over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hugging herself miserably. The shower turned itself off; she was below the electric eye. Cold and shivering, rocking on her heels, Lily uncrossed her arms and buried her face in her hands.

2.

Lilah emerges from her blackout to find herself crouched naked in a shower stall, rubbing her right thumb against the pads of the first two fingers. Awakening abruptly in unfamiliar surroundings is nothing new for Lilah-her life has always been a disconnected series of sudden appearances.

So she rises-and jumps back against the wall of the stall with a startled laugh as the water comes on. Electric eye-cool. Fragrant soap, water not as hot as she likes it, spray not as needle-fine, but there doesn't seem to be any way to control it. She lathers and rinses luxuriously, sensuously, with special attention to the erogenous zones, idly masturbating for the sheer sensation of it, no intention of going for an o.r.g.a.s.m.

The water shuts off when she steps out of the oddly doorless stall. Wherever she is, she tells herself-if it's a hotel, it's one of those modern ones-at least the towels are clean, thick, and plentiful. She wraps a bath towel around her torso, makes a turban of a second, and is drying herself with a third when she hears a knock. "Be right out!"