Listen to me: Family Counselor Jack.

"But—"

"Give me a chance to take care of this without wrecking your relationship with Dawn."

She stared at him. "I could bear Dawnie never speaking to me again if I knew she'd never speak to Jerry Bethlehem again either."

Jack nodded. A mother's love. Christy didn't look tough but he sensed a lioness beneath her skin… one whose cub was threatened.

"A couple of days… can you keep mum for a couple of days?"

"It won't be easy, but yes, I can give you a couple of days."

Jack hoped she could hold to that.

4

"Tell me about that cute little stick man on the cover of your book," Jack said.

Hank Thompson smiled. "I wouldn't exactly call the Kicker Man cute."

After returning from Queens, Jack had made a quick stop home for a tape recorder, notepad, and pens to help him look reporterish, then headed for Fifth Avenue.

Vector Publications occupied the fourth floor of an office building in the upper Thirties. He'd stepped out of the elevator and found himself in a bare, nondescript hallway painted a sickly green. To his left he spotted a pair of glass doors etched with VECTOR PUBLICATIONS, LLC. On the far side of those he found a book-lined reception area. The guy at the desk had paged Susan Abrams and she'd led him to the author.

"Hank gives a great interview," she'd gushed. "You're going to love him."

Apparently Ms. Abrams—black hair, black dress, and bare arms as pale and thin as dental floss—already did.

She'd ushered him into the conference room and introduced him as John Tyleski of the Trenton Times to a rangy six-footer leaning against an oval mahogany table. With obvious reluctance, Susan left them to get down to business.

Most of Thompson's responses so far had been virtually word for word the same as Jack had read in the first article. Thompson seemed to have memorized them. When pressed on how the world would be changed, he'd offered only vague platitudes.

The guy had charisma, Jack had to grant him that. An easy smile and a comfortable, confident way about him. In person he looked even more like a mid-thirties Jim Morrison than in his photo, except for the eyes—his were blue.

They sat facing each other across the conference table, the recorder midway between them. Jack had opened with a few typical questions he'd read in dozens of author interviews: Where did he get his ideas, how had the book's success changed his life, blah-blah-blah.

Then came the time to home in on the Kicker Man. He'd undoubtedlv been asked about it before, but Jack hadn't seen the answer.

"No, Hank"—Thompson had quickly established a first-name relationship—"I don't suppose he is. Not with four arms. Why four?"

"I don't know. The figure kept recurring in my dreams. I figured that meant it was important so I began to draw it on all my things. And every time I looked at it I had this strange feeling inside."

Jack swallowed. Like what he'd felt when he'd first seen it?

Thompson added, "And later I found out I wasn't alone. A lot of people have told me they feel something when they look at it." His gaze locked on Jack. "How about you? Get a little chill when you first saw it?"

Jack shook his head. "Afraid not."

He hoped he was convincing.

"Well, it still does something to me. So much so that I even put it on the cover of my book."

Time now for a little probing.

"I've heard it's an ancient symbol."

His eyebrows shot up. "Really? Of what? I'd love to know."

He seemed sincere on that point.

"I don't know, but I read somewhere that it appeared in an ancient book."

Jack noticed a slight lessening of Hank's easygoing manner, a minor tightening of his tone.

"What ancient book?"

Jack frowned and put on a puzzled expression. "I wish I could remember the title. But I recall something about it having a metal cover. You ever see a book like that, Hank?"

He sensed Thompson stiffen in his chair. "No, I don't believe I ever have. How about you?"

Jack kept his tone innocently blase. "I believe I heard that it once belonged to Luther Brady."

"The Dormentalist guy?"

"Yes. Did you ever meet him?"

"No. And if what he's accused of is true, I don't want to." Thompson's eyes narrowed. "You're not one of them, are you?"

"One of whom?"

"A Dormentalist?"

If you only knew…

"No. But if I were…?"

"Check out their Web site. See what lies they're spreading about me. Scientologists too."

"Why would they do that?"

"Because lots of their members are leaving to become Kickers. They're losing dues to my clubs and it's driving them crazy."

"Interesting. But back to the book: I think I saw it in a museum once, but I can't remember which one. I'll let you know if it comes to me."

"You do that."

A definite cooling on the far side of the table.

"Let's move on to another topic. Tell me about your stay at the Creighton Institute."

Thompson fixed him with his blue gaze. "Why do you want to know about that?"

"Well, Hank, as I told you, I read your book to prepare for this, but I also read a lot of your other interviews as well."

He smiled but it had lost some of its previous warmth. "Doing your homework. I like that."

"Well, I wanted my piece to be a little different. You've earned yourself a lot of column inches lately and I'm looking to cover some new ground, if possible. So… about Creighton…"

"If you want to cover new ground, that's fine with me. But why the Creighton Institute?"

"Well, it struck me as odd that after your conviction—and I must say, I was impressed with your candor—the federal government shipped you from Georgia all the way across the country to New York. I don't know a lot about the federal penal system, but I doubt that happens very often." Jack put on a smile. "I mean, ITSV hardly makes you public enemy number one. You must have wondered at that yourself."

"I sure did."

"Did you ever find out why?"

"Nope."

"Not even from the Creighton people?"

"Not a hint. Can we move on?"

Jack was far from finished. "Did you know that the Creighton Institute is listed as an incarceration facility for the criminally insane?"

A semi-strangled laugh, then, "I'm a little crazy, but I'm not that crazy. Seriously, though, they had two separate populations: the violent types in the lockdown wing, and the nonviolent sort in the medium-security area."

Violent types… lockdown wing… could Jerry Bethlehem have been one of Levy's patients at Creighton? Could they be connected?

"Did you make any friends there?"

"I suppose."

"Have you kept in contact with any of them?"

"One of the conditions of parole is that you avoid contact with any other criminals—and anyone I knew inside was a criminal."

"How about the staff?"

"Look," he said, his annoyance clear, "when I got out they shipped me back to Georgia."

"But now you've returned to New York. Do you like it here?"

He relaxed a smidge. "Yeah. A lot. I'm thinking of setting up the Kicker HQ here. The city's already got the biggest number of Kicker clubs in the country. Seems like a logical choice."

"Indeed it does. Does that mean we can expect to see a lot more Kicker graffiti around town?"

He frowned. "That's not approved nor encouraged, but it is an indicator of the level of enthusiasm for the evolution."

"You keep calling it 'evolution.' Why is that?"

"It's like when an ugly caterpillar makes a cocoon and then comes out as a big, kick-ass butterfly—it's kicked off its lower form and evolved into a higher one."

Jack wondered whether this would be a good time to tell him that he wasn't describing evolution at all.

Nah.

"Speaking of the Creighton staff—"