She reached out now and lightly touched his shoulder. His cotton shirt was soft beneath her fingers, his arm warm. He didn't jerk away.

Rainie lay down at his side. She kept waiting for something. Fear. Discomfort. Yellow-flowered fields. Smooth-flowing streams. The places she'd learned to escape to in her mind. Mostly she was aware of the heat of Quincy 's body, pressed against her side. And she remembered now what she'd felt that final evening with him. Desire. Real, honest to goodness desire. She hadn't known she was capable of such a thing.

Quincy would never hurt you, Kimberly had said. Rainie knew that. She probably even truly knew that. Maybe it was herself she still didn't understand.

People could hurt you. They could beat you with their fists and they could do worse; they could die and leave you all alone with no hope of ever making things right. And people could attack you. They could inflict great physical and emotional harm. And you could attack back. You could even kill them, inflicting its own kind of great physical and emotional harm.

And you could punish yourself then, because your mother was dead and someone had to play the role of the abuser. So you could punish yourself day after day, creating the very lifestyle that got you into this mess because you didn't know any other way to live.

You could do all that, or maybe you could try to change. You could give up drinking. You could stop sleeping around. You could try treating yourself better, even respecting yourself. Except sooner or later, you also had to try believing in yourself, and maybe she still wasn't so good at that. She'd always figured it was better to be hostile and belligerent first, then no one could ever accuse her of hiding her true colors. Truth in advertising, that was her policy.

Dying in the desert. Struggling to survive, desperate to belong, but still not figuring out how to live.

She rolled over on the bed. She pressed her cheek against the curve of Quincy 's back. She could hear his heartbeat here, too. It sounded slow, and steady, and strong. She wrapped her arm around his lean waist. He murmured in his sleep. And then his hand came up and clasped hers.

She waited for the fear to strike. Images of yellow-flowered fields and smooth-running streams. Nothing.

She inhaled his cologne. She felt the warmth of his hand. And she thought… She thought this spooning business felt very nice.

Rainie closed her eyes. She held Quincy and finally fell asleep.

Quincy's House, Virginia

"Where have you been?"

A little after six-thirty Saturday morning, Glenda Rodman stood blurry-eyed in Quincy's foyer, watching Special Agent Albert Montgomery finally walk through the front door. It had been forty-eight hours since she'd last seen her fellow agent. Her gray suit was hopelessly rumpled from sleeping fitfully in Quincy 's desk chair. Her face looked like death warmed over. Multiple days of listening to threatening phone call after threatening phone call did take its toll on a person.

Now, the gifts had started. Yesterday morning, a disemboweled puppy in Quincy 's mailbox. Yesterday afternoon, four rattlesnakes released outside the gate. Two had made it onto Quincy 's property. Two had gone to the neighbors, where they had garnered the attention of a pet cat and two-year-old boy. Fortunately, the child's mother had snatched him away and called animal control before anyone got hurt. Last night, Glenda had gotten to listen to a voice cackle with glee on the answerin machine, telling Quincy that when the rattlesnato were done with him, he'd personally come skin agent and make him into a belt.

When Glenda slept, she did not have pleasant dreams.

Now, she glared at Montgomery, who had managed to shower and change since she'd last seen him. Her resentment felt an awful lot like a wronged wife's.

"I've been in Philly, of course." Montgomery scowled at her, coming through the door and kicking it shut behind him. He shrugged off his stained overcoat.

"Your assignment was to help me stake out Quincy 's house."

"Yeah, but that was before he turned his ex-wife into a shish kabob. You think the local yokels know how to handle a scene like that? Christ, I had to teach 'em how to analyze the glass shards myself. They really thought the window was broken from the outside. Dipshits."

"Agent, your, assignment – "

"Hey, fuck assignment. The action isn't here anymore, Rodman. It's in Philadelphia. If we want to know what's going on, we gotta focus our attention there."

"There are still things happening here!"

"What, a bunch of harassing phone calls? Dead pets? Oh you're right, we've learned so much by being here the last three days." Montgomery gave her a dubious look. Glenda shifted uncomfortably.

Nothing much had happened here. Poor Bethie had been attacked and brutalized in Philadelphia. Yesterday, Glenda had received word from Everett that Quincy 's ailing father had been kidnapped from a Rhode Island nursing home. Three agents had immediately been assigned to look for Abraham Quincy; after seeing what hadhappened to Pierces ex-wife, however, no one was hopeful.

So yes, there was action. But none of it was here. Glendasimply sat. She listened to horrible, horriblehone threats. And she felt her nerves fray inch-by-inch, hour-by-hour. Still, this was her task. She believed in her assignment. And it bothered her that Montgomery hadn't had the decency to even consult with her, though he apparently knew as much about what was going on in Quincy's house as she did.

"It's important to learn the source of the information leak," she told Montgomery. "And the person might still show up. We can't rule that out."

"What person? Quincy 's phantom stalker? Come on, don't tell me you're still buying his little fairy tale."

"What do you mean?"

"Look, I'll do you a favor. As the agent who's spent the last forty-eight hours in Philadelphia, I'll give it to you straight. That was no break-in. That was no stranger-to-stranger crime. The whole fucking thing is so staged it could open as a Broadway show. Take the bathroom window, the supposed mode of entry. It was broken from the inside out and the glass shards moved to disguise the fact. Then we have the state-of-the-art home security system – deactivated with proper code a little after ten P.M., same time the neighbor swears she saw Elizabeth Quincy enter the home with a man matching Quincy 's description. Even the crime scene – it was a fast, brutal attack, no rape, no torture. Posing of the body, postmortem mutilation, all done for show. All done to make it look like a sexual sadist predator."

"You think Quincy did it."

"I know Quincy did it. But hey, I have no career track left in the Bureau, so I can afford to look honestly at the reigning golden boy. On the other hand, I'm sure the very notion makes you real uncomfortable. I mean, taking on the best-of-the-best and all – "

"Shut up." Glenda stalked away from him into the kitchen. Montgomery, however, followed.

"I know you don't like me," he persisted. "I know I dress wrong. I know I don't do politics well or play all the little reindeer games. I'm a fat, wrinkled slob. That doesn't mean I'm an idiot."

"True, your state of dress does not mean you're incompetent – your conduct on the Sanchez case does."

"Oh." He drew up short, his hands clasping selfconsciously in front of him. "Figured it was only a matter of time before you heard about that."

Glenda felt better now, as if she were gaining the upper hand. She had known there were problems with the Society Hill crime scene. Quincy had all but told her that he would end up as the prime suspect. It was still difficult to hear her own doubts pouring from Montgomery 's lips. She went on the offensive instead.