She glanced absently at her answering machine and was surprised to see that she had eight new messages.

"Do you mind?" she asked, nodding her head toward the digital display. "It will only take a minute."

"By all means. Do you have some sherry? I can pour us each a glass while I wait."

Bethie directed him toward the small wet bar in her dining room, hoping her cleaning woman had been conscientious about checking the crystal decanter for dust; Bethie had last had a glass of sherry five years ago. Well, this was a night for new beginnings.

She picked up a little spiral notepad and hit play.

The first message was a hang up, from seven-ten that morning. The caller had just missed her: she'd left with Tristan only moments before. Then came another hang up. Then another. Finally, a person: Pierce calling shortly after noon. "We need to talk," her ex-husband said in that crisp manner of his. "It's about Mandy."

Bethie frowned. She felt the first prickle of unease. Another hang up. Another hang up. Then another one. The muscles in her abdomen tightened. She realized now that she was steeling herself for something bad, preparing her body for the blow.

It came at precisely 8:02 P.M. Pierce, once more on the machine. " Elizabeth, I've been trying to reach you all day. I'll be honest, I'm very worried. When you get this message, please call me immediately on my cell phone, regardless of time. Some things have come up. And Bethie – maybe we need to talk about Tristan Shandling because I tried to run a background check on him today and no such person exists. Call me."

Bethie's gaze came up. She fumbled with the volume switch on her answering machine but it was already too late. Tristan stood in the doorway, holding two tiny glasses of sherry and gazing at her curiously.

"You asked Pierce to run a background check on me?"

She nodded dumbly. The blood had drained out of her face. She felt suddenly light-headed, unsteady on her feet.

"Why, Elizabeth Quincy, you have finally surprised me."

Tristan set down the two glasses on a side table. Run, Bethie thought. But she was in her own house, she didn't know where to go. And then she was thinking of all those textbooks Pierce used to have in his office. The day she'd come home and found her girls staring wide-eyed at a pile they'd pulled down from the bookshelf, color photo after color photo of mutilated female flesh, naked, tortured bodies with hacked-off breasts.

"Who… who are you?"

"Supervisory Special Agent Pierce Quincy, of course. I have a driver's license that says so."

"But… but you have the scar. I touched it, I know!" Her voice was rising.

In comparison, he sounded increasingly serene. "Did it myself, the day you pulled the plug on Mandy. A sterile knife, a steady hand with the needle. There are certain things you should never leave to chance."

"Mandy… You knew Mandy… Her expressions, my nickname…"

"Have you seen me take any pills, Bethie? Haven't you wondered if a man with a brand-new kidney should drink two bottles of champagne? My cover is never perfect, you know. I like to leave the person a sporting chance. But you women insist on seeing only what you want to see – at least while you're falling in love. We all know it changes after that."

"I don't understand."

"Your understanding is not important to me."

"Pierce is a high-ranking FBI agent. You won't get away with this!"

He smiled thinly. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his black leather gloves. "That's what I'm counting on. You know, I wasn't going to do this so soon. I was going to wait until the night you came to me, hysterical about what had happened to Kimberly. And then I was going to tell you how much she always hated you. Kimberly and Mandy. It was never their father who traumatized them, Bethie. It was you, "weak, overprotective, unforgiving you."

"Don't hurt my daughter. Don't you touch Kimberly!"

"Too late." He pulled on the gloves. "Run, Bethie," he murmured. "Run!"

Greenwich Village, New York City

Inthe middle of the night, Kimberly bolted awake. Her breathing was harsh and sweat had glued her T-shirt to her skin. She was shivering. Bad dream. She didn't remember of what.

She waited, focusing on breathing again until her heart finally slowed in her chest. Then she turned on her bedside light and padded silently into the kitchen. The door of her roommate's bedroom was closed. She could just make out the low undertones of Bobby's rhythmic snores. The sound soothed her. Bobby had a new girlfriend and hadn't been around much lately. That was his business, of course, but tonight she was glad that he was here. Someone else shared the tiny apartment. She was not alone.

She sat down at the kitchen table. She knew from prior experience that it would be a while before she would go back to sleep. Even then, she could not be sure that she wouldn't dream. Sometimes it was Mandy driving her Explorer while Kimberly tried desperately to grab the steering wheel. Sometimes it was herself, running through a long dark tunnel, seeing her father far ahead but never able to catch up with him. Once she dreamed of her mother. Bethie was dancing ballet in a beautiful white tutu and no matter what Kimberly did, she could not get Bethie's attention. Then a rift opened up in the floor, and Kimberly watched her mom dance right over the edge.

Anxious dreams from an anxious subconscious. Kimberly glanced at the phone. She should just pick it up. Call her mother. Call her father. Get over whatever it was she needed to get over.

But she didn't do it. She sat at the kitchen table. She listened to the deep sound of silence that exists only after midnight. And then, after minutes turned into an hour, she made her way back to bed.

Motel 6, Virginia

Rainie had just returned from her salvage-yard rendezvous, when the phone in her motel room shrieked to life. She glanced at the clock. Three A.M. She looked back at the phone. She wondered if the caller was Quincy or the hotshot lawyer Carl Mitz. Then she wondered which would be worse. She picked up the phone.

It was Quincy. "I'm in Philadelphia. At Bethie's house. She's dead."

Rainie said, "I'll be right there."

SocietyHill, Pennsylvania

Rainie made the nighttime drive to Philly in just over two hours. She ignored speed limits, rules of the road, and most standard courtesy. And she arrived in full-warrior mode.

Elizabeth Quincy's elite town house was not hard to find. Rainie simply drove into Society Hill and followed the garish display of flashing lights. A white medical examiner's van was illegally parked up on the sidewalk. A cluster of three police cruisers represented the ground troops. One older unmarked sedan would be the pair of homicide detectives; they'd had the decency to also park up on the sidewalk, trying to leave enough room for traffic to squeeze by on the narrow lane. Three larger, dark sedans, however, lined up as a single clog in the space the detectives had tried to leave. They would be the feds. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians, Rainie thought immediately, and wondered how Quincy was faring.

She parked a block back and walked up as the sky was just beginning to lighten with the first tinge of dawn. Half a dozen neighbors hovered in overpriced doorways, wearing silk dressing robes and Burberry overcoats and gazing at Rainie cautiously as she passed. The neighbors looked scared. The tall, narrow town houses sat shoulder to shoulder, and for all their impression of discreet wealth, they weren't that different from one long apartment complex. Now, a very bad thing had happened down the hall, and not all the money in the world could put enough distance between that and them.