“Stand. Don’t say a word.”

The intruder stood, didn’t say a word.

Better.

He would have to break the heavy rings articulating each leg. If he could chip away that part of the hardened exoskeleton without damaging the soft, unprotected leg beneath, Henrietta might have a chance. Four joints each leg. Eight legs.

He settled in for the painstaking work, still aware of the presence behind him, the girl who did not move, would not move, until he spoke again.

Five minutes rolled into ten, thirty, forty-five minutes. An hour. He chipped away at the hardened exoskeleton on each leg, slowly, carefully, ring by ring.

When he finally looked up, he was surprised to find that perspiration stuck his shirt to his skin and he was breathing hard, as if he’d been hiking for hours, and not just hunched over a table in a pool of dim light.

He had all eight legs free, though several were bent awkwardly, clearly damaged. As he watched, however, one leg moved, then another. Henrietta was still with him, fighting to pull through.

“You are so beautiful,” he crooned to his favorite pet. “That’s my girl. That’s my girl.”

“Is…is she all right?” a tentative voice finally came behind him.

He didn’t turn around, his voice clipped as he set aside the tweezers. “I don’t know. Molt this bad, she probably has trouble with her mouth, pharynx, and stomach. Odds are she’ll be dead by morning.”

“Oh.”

“But at least this gives her a chance.” He took grim satisfaction in that, snapping off the light, leaving Henrietta to fight her own war the way she would prefer-alone in the dark.

He finally turned, his eyes adjusting rapidly to the gloom and taking in the girl standing in the doorway. She had her chin up, a small show of defiance that showed off the spider tattoo on her neck, but didn’t fool either one of them.

“Did you get it?” he asked without preamble.

Wordlessly, she held out the business card.

He snatched it up, turned it over, read the cell phone number scrawled on the back. For the first time all morning, the man smiled.

“Tell me exactly what you did.”

And the girl, being well-trained by now, did.

THE CALL CAME THREE NIGHTS LATER. KIMBERLY’S team had finally wrapped up the crash scene and she and Mac were celebrating by eating dinner together. He’d brought home a honey-baked ham, accompanied with coleslaw and biscuits.

He ate the ham, she ate the biscuits.

“So once I had the ring all cleaned up,” she was reporting excitedly, “you wouldn’t believe the level of detail. Alpharetta High School is engraved around the center stone. Then on the right side, the word ‘Raiders’-their mascot-with a picture of a football, engraved with a number eighty-six and beneath that the initials QB.”

“Really?” Mac said, helping himself to a fresh beer. “You have the name of the kid’s high school, plus the fact that he’s the quarterback with jersey number eighty-six?”

“Oh, it gets even better. On the other side of the ring is a name: Tommy, with an emblem, Class of 2006.”

“I don’t have any of that on my class ring,” Mac said.

“You have a high school ring?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve never seen you wear it.”

“Well, if my ring were as cool as Tommy’s, maybe you would.”

Kimberly rolled her eyes at him, decided a fourth biscuit probably wasn’t healthy for her or the baby, and went with some coleslaw. “So now I have a first name, high school, and graduating class. I figure, okay, some afternoon when I’m in the area, I’ll swing by Alpharetta High School, talk to a guidance counselor, and, ding, ding, ding, mystery will be solved. But then I have a better idea.”

“Of course.”

“I log on to the Internet. Figure I’ll see what I can learn about Alpharetta High School.”

“And what did you learn about Alpharetta High School, my dear?”

“Hey, sarcasm is only going to earn you more middle-of-the-night diaper changes.”

“Point taken.”

She gave him a look.

He shrugged. “Honestly, I’m interested. I spent the whole day sitting in a van, listening to two alleged drug dealers carry on a highly serious discussion of how Keanu Reeves is the most underappreciated actor of our time.”

“Was it his performance in Speed?”

“More like his decision not to make Speed 2.”

“So true.”

“All right, all right. Back to the ring…”

“Well,” she started again, mollified, “Alpharetta High School is frighteningly large.”

“Alpharetta is frighteningly large.” They had originally looked at buying a home there. It was a booming, upwardly mobile, decidedly professional community just south of them. In the end, it was the booming that concerned them. From three thousand residents in 1980 to over fifty thousand now, the town was bursting at the seams, with all the public resource strains and traffic woes that generally came of such things.

“Nearly two thousand kids,” Kimberly reported. “That worried me a little. School of that size, one kid could be hard to find. But then it occurred to me, check the sports page. And you’ll never believe what I found.”

“Delilah Rose?” he guessed helpfully.

“No. Tommy Mark Evans. Varsity QB of 2006. His photo, game stats, everything, right there on the information superhighway. For that matter, I found pictures and names of all the cheerleaders, JV sports teams, drama club, chess club-you name the kid, his or her information is all there online. I tell you, it’s not enough to monitor MySpace or YouTube anymore. Every public organization has a website that is freely giving away information and photos of America’s kids. Think about it: I didn’t even leave my desk and from one class ring, I surfed the Internet straight to Tommy Mark Evans’s front step.”

“Our son will never be allowed a computer in his room,” Mac announced. “Any portal out is a portal in, and I want to know what or who is coming into our home at all times.”

“Our daughter will probably never use a computer,” Kimberly countered. “By the time she can type, it’ll all be done on a cell phone and how the hell are we supposed to control that?”

“No phone privileges works for me.”

“So you’re gonna be the Draconian daddy with a curfew and a shotgun?”

“Absolutely. But I’ll also buy her a pony. I mean, er, I’ll buy him a baseball bat.”

But Kimberly had caught the slip and was already grinning at him. “I heard that. You’re thinking about a little girl…”

“Any healthy, happy baby will be fine-”

“You want to buy pretty pink dresses…”

“Hey, can I help it if the clothes in the baby girls’ section are much cuter?”

Kimberly was laughing now, mostly at the thought of her tall, dark, manly man husband going through the girls’ clothing rack. But he probably did like the little pink dresses. And he probably would buy their child a pony. As well as a handgun with basic firearms safety lessons.

“Well, if you’re done mocking me,” he said, making a show of hurt dignity as he stood and started clearing paper plates, “what are you going to do now?”

“You mean because so far I’ve processed evidence and pursued a lead in a case where I don’t actually have a case?”

“That was my thought.”

Kimberly didn’t have a good answer for that one. “What do you think of Sal?”

“Good guy. Reputation for digging his heels in and getting the job done.”

“Is he a renegade, works best by himself, alienates those in authority?”