A silence followed, one so awkward that even through the miasma of alcohol and weirdness Anna generated, unspoken messages pounded like invisible radio waves.

"I've already called her," Frederick said, his voice curiously devoid of expression.

At the time Anna had sensed there was something bizarre about the end of her and Frederick's relationship. Anna was snapped back two years, held in the time warp of flashback. At her request Frederick had traveled to New York City to help her sister with a series of threatening letters. That was when things had gotten strange.

With the impact of an Old Testament revelation, Anna knew: Frederick had had an affair with Molly.

The knowledge, accurate or not, broke on her consciousness with the force of lightning. A pit beside which Lechuguilla paled opened in Anna's befuddled mind. The least breath of air would topple her into it. A vision of her sister's face dropped like a lifeline, and Anna grabbed on to it. Molly could be-indeed had been-trusted with Anna's life. A cornea, a kidney, a loan, a place to sleep; if Anna needed it, Molly would provide it. Were there a single drop of water in the Sahara, a last bite of ankle bone among the Donner party, Molly would give it to Anna. She knew this the way she knew her heart pumped blood.

Had Frederick Stanton been the proverbial last man on earth and Molly the recipient of the last fabled Spanish fly, there wouldn't have been an affair.

The pit closed. Sanity resurfaced.

"And?" Anna said.

"She wasn't home," Frederick admitted.

Of course she was home. It was 11:40 P.M. New York time on a Tuesday night. Molly was drinking Scotch and watching Leno. She was a woman of regular habits. Nothing short of a patient crisis or a seventy-five-percent-off sale at Bergdorf Goodman could lure her out from one of her sacred "at home" nights. She'd refused to pick up. She'd probably refused to pick up for two years.

"She'll be home for me," Anna said unkindly, and, "Thanks for calling." As a courtesy, she let him say good-bye and hang up first.

Three times she tried to dial Molly. On the third attempt her fumbling fingers pushed all the right numbers. As expected, the machine answered.

"It's me, Anna."

A clatter of plastic followed as Anna's older sister grabbed up the phone.

"Anna. Thank God."

"I've been drinking," Anna said. It was the last piece of information she'd intended to communicate that night.

"It happens," Molly said.

"And thinking about Zach."

"Oh, my. Sounds like you've had a real bad day."

Not alone, Anna thought. Not alone at all.

Her part in the rescue at an end, Anna had no business remaining at Carlsbad Caverns and no intention of returning to Mesa Verde until she had unraveled what had happened to Frieda. At best guess the body recovery would take another twelve to twenty-four hours. Till then she had a place to stay. Pleading injury, exhaustion, and all manner of unprovable but debilitating ills, she'd asked for and received sick leave. Hills Dutton, her district ranger-indeed, all the staff at Mesa Verde-was reeling from Frieda's death. Winter was the slow season, and Anna was not really needed. She could easily beg a week or more and get it.

Beer and bruises had given her a fitful night's sleep. Thrashing around in Zeddie's down comforter, she stalked and was stalked by killers of all stripes. More than once she woke up in a panic, fighting a ceiling of stone that was no longer there. Around three in the morning she'd dragged her bedding out onto the back patio to feel the reassuring cold of starlight on her skin as she slept. When day finally dawned she was relieved, if not rested.

Between her first cup of coffee and her morning shower she formulated a modest plan. Or the first stumbling steps of a plan. Sondra needed to be tracked down, information on the other members of the team to be ferreted out. Bundled up in a sweater of Zeddie's and a battered leather jacket she'd inherited when Zachary died, she walked from the housing area to the cluster of neat stone buildings that housed Carlsbad's administrative offices.

Clouds hung heavy over the desert, adding a pervasive damp to winter's chill, dulling the light of the sun to a gray throb in the south. To Anna the day was made beautiful by its mere existence. Cold embraced and invigorated her. A sharp wind from the northwest reminded her how magnificently alive even this barren chunk of earth was. Down a steep slope from the cave resource building where she'd originally been assigned to man the telephones were the offices of George Laymon and the superintendent. Anna hoped for a low-profile schmooze with the secretaries. In a park as small and isolated as Carlsbad Caverns there would be few secrets. Whose car was parked too long in front of whose home, who drank and, perhaps more damningly, who didn't, would be common knowledge. It seemed as good a place as any to begin.

That assumption couldn't have been more wrong. Once in the door she was caught up in the machinery of government.

In the wake of the failed rescue attempt and the blaring media coverage, administration was buzzing with activity. Each decision would be reviewed, all plans reconsidered in a new light that would change as the political winds changed. Blame might be assigned, selected heads might roll but, most important, a dense layer of paper would be generated. Like a frightened squid obscuring the past with ink, the NPS would muffle the incident in memos, reports, and revised operating procedures.

As Anna walked in the door, Jewel, George Laymon's secretary, said, "Just the person I was looking for." Never a good sign. "George wants to talk to you. He's in with Brent, but they should be pretty close to done."

The implication that Anna would, of course, sit and wait docilely till summoned was strong. At an early age a serious streak of contrariness had been discovered in Anna. The only two stickers she'd ever considered slathering on her Rambler's bumper read "God Bless John Wayne" and "Question Authority." Today she chose not to rise to the occasion. Claiming a folding chair near Jewel's desk, she sat and composed her face along cooperative lines.

Jewel was a stocky woman in her early thirties with an abundance of black hair curling down her back to bra-fastener level. Not a glint of a shine escaped the careful tangle of curls, not a thread of gray or red or brown. The hair was black as construction paper, flat and rough. Bangs and sides were cut short and teased high on the crown. Hair was molded into flying wings above each ear with industrial-strength hair spray. From the front the coif looked big, a lion's mane. From the side the effect was lost. The volume was two-dimensional; the popular style always made Anna think of the false fronts on buildings along movie Main Streets of the Old West.

"What's up?" she asked in hopes of opening channels of communication.

The secretary was more interested in her computer screen than in gossiping with Anna. "Debriefing," she said without bothering to turn around.

"Critical incident stress debriefing?"

"Something like that."

After incidents in which rangers were exposed to unusually stressful situations-the death of children or fellow employees, long rescues in which the victim died, or messy accidents with burned or mutilated bodies-the National Park Service had instituted debriefing sessions, times when the rangers involved could theoretically come to terms with their own personal trauma. Undoubtedly the idea was a sound one, but Anna'd never been to a session that proved helpful. It's just me, she thought, not for the first time.

She eyed Laymon's office door suspiciously. Jewel had just said Brent, not a whole host of cavers. One-on-one was unusual unless it was with a bona fide psychologist. Laypeople trained to run the sessions always had all the participants in at the same time. Part of the therapy: sharing fears, inadequacies, strengths. Coming to know you weren't alone, that the bizarre things that passed through your mind weren't an indication of a character flaw. She turned her attention back to the secretary.