"But- " George grabbed the man's hand and squeezed, breaking two bones.

With his free hand George covered the man's mouth and snuffed out his scream. Then George readjusted his grip on the shattered hand, squeezed a little tighter, forcing the broken bones to scrape against each other and rip at the tendons. The man's face went white.

"I told you to do what I say without question. Will you remember that now?"

The man nodded quickly and ducked into the trunk. George knew the man wanted to ask if there would be enough air once the trunk was closed, but he did not dare. He had experienced pain. Pain, George had learned, can be a greater threat than death.

George looked down the street. Three men had just circled the corner and were coming toward them. They looked pretty wasted, each walking a wobbly line which more often than not crossed the others. George closed the trunk and drove away.

He found an abandoned road that he had used for this purpose before. He parked the car and grabbed the knife from the glove compartment. As per the instructions given to him on the phone, George slipped on surgical gloves and a mask. He felt like a doctor, preparing for a major operation.

"Scalpel," he said out loud. He laughed at his own joke.

George got out of the car and went toward the trunk. This was the part of the job George found most intriguing. He always wondered what was going through the victim's mind. A little earlier, his world had been normal, average, seemingly safe.

Suddenly, he had been threatened, assaulted, and locked in a trunk. No longer did he have any say in what happened to him.

What was going through his mind?

It was a fleeting thought. In the end, George knew it didn't matter.

For George only the finished job mattered.

When George opened the trunk, the man looked up at him with the eyes of a trapped animal.

"Wh... Wh... What...?"

George put his finger to his mask-covered lips.

"Shhh."

George reached down and grabbed the man's head to hold still. Then he gripped the knife and placed it below the man's nose, the cool blade directly below the nostrils. He lowered the handle toward the mouth, almost touching the lips, and drove) the blade upwards. It sliced through the thin tissue, through th cartilage, and into the brain.

Blood gushed freely. The body spasmed, but death was instantaneous.

The man's final gaze was locked on George, his eyes wide and uncomprehending.

George tugged the knife out and just as he had with the first two jobs, he stabbed the body two dozen times. Wet, ripping sounds accompanied his methodical undertaking. George's face remained calm as he drove the knife home over an dover again.

It was all very messy.

George knew that he would have to keep the body in the trunk for the night. Then he would be able to dump it in the appropriate area. With the others, it had not mattered where the corpse was found, but the voice on the phone had given specific instructions to leave this one in the alley behind a gay bar called Black Magic in Greenwich Village. At night, George knew, such places were filled with all sorts of bizarre happenings. They were crowded. He decided it would be safer to dump the body in the daytime when the area was empty.

Early the next morning George awoke refreshed from a wonderful, dreamless sleep. He drove back into the city and pulled up behind the Black Magic bar. A sleazy-looking dump, he thought. It reminded him of Patpong Street in Bangkok.

Patpong, Bangkok's famed red-light district, catered to heterosexuals, but everyone knew about the area two blocks farther north devoted exclusively to homos. And Pattaya, the popular Thai beach resort not far from Bangkok, had a whole street jammed with little boys who served their male customers without question or hesitation.

Pretty sick, George thought.

He stopped the car and stepped out. He glanced about the alley. No one. Dozens of stuffed plastic trash bags were piled by the bar's rear entrance. Rear entrance, George mused. How appropriate.

Taking one last look, George hefted the corpse out of the trunk, dumped it by the trash bags, climbed back in the car, and drove off. He had traveled three blocks when he glanced at his reflection in the rear-view mirror.

Damn. His hair looked horrendous."

Sara limped along after him as Harvey sprinted toward the emergency ward. Ten yards in front of the entrance he almost slammed into Eric Blake, who was making a blind turn in the same direction.

"They paged you too?" Eric asked.

Harvey nodded. The two men barely broke stride as they I crashed through the door and into the waiting area. They immediately spotted Reece Porter.

It was Harvey who reached him first.

"What happened?"

"Don't know. Mikey just grabbed his stomach and collapsed.

He's in there."

"Come on, Eric."

The two doctors disappeared behind a guarded door reading No Admittance. A moment later Sara hobbled into the emergency ward.

Reece looked up, surprised to see her at the hospital already.

"What are you doing here?"

She ignored the question.

"Where is he? Is he all right?"

"The emergency room doctor is already with him. Harvey and Eric are in there too."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. We were scrimmaging like always, making jokes and all that stuff. We stopped for a break and a minute later..."

"A minute later what?"

"Mikey collapsed on the floor holding his stomach. We called an ambulance and I drove over with him. The pain seemed to let up a little on the way. When we got here, I told the nurse to page Eric and Harv."

"Is he conscious?"

"Yeah, he's awake. I bet it's just some food poisoning or something all that Chinese food he's eating all the time. Now answer my question: what are you doing here?"

"I had a doctor's appointment next door."

"Are you okay?"

His voice rang with the warmth of genuine concern. In the background Sara could hear children whisper, "Look, Mom, that's Reece Porter!"

Reece's six-eight frame was about average for the NBA, but it was semi-freak anywhere else. His height always drew fascinated glances.

"I'm fine," Sara said, hugging him tightly.

"Reece, thanks for going with him."

Reece shrugged.

"He's my friend," he said simply.

"And don't worry too much about Mikey. The man is blessed. Remember how scared we were the last time we met in a hospital? All that blood and everything?"

Sara did. Every year when basketball season ended, she and Michael had joined Reece and his Eurasian wife Kureen for a getaway-from-it-all vacation. Five years ago, when Michael and Sara were first getting serious, the four decided to charter a small cruise boat out of Florida and explore the Keys and the Bahamas. The past basketball season had been a particularly long one, ending when the Knicks bested the Seattle Supersonics in a grueling, bruising seven-game showdown. All four of them had been anxious to escape the world, the fans, and the press.

On the third day of the voyage Michael and Reece had gotten up early, hired a kid with a speed boat, and gone water-skiing.

The kid had gotten drunk and crashed the boat into a rock formation while Michael was on the water-skis. He had been rushed to a local Bahamian hospital, bleeding heavily, and spent the next three weeks in bed.

"I remember," Sara said softly.

"But Mikey is as one of the rookies would say a tough old dude. He'll be okay."

Sara tried to take solace in Recce's words, but something kept jabbing at the back of her mind, telling her that he was not going to be okay, that nothing was ever going to be okay again.

"what's going on?" Harvey asked.