Not that she had that far to go. Lathram Surgical Associates sounded like a multicenter medical group, but actually it was one surgeon at one location in Chevy Chase. That location was an old single-story stone building, somewhat Gothic looking, that had once been a bank.

Duncan Lathram and his brother Oliver, also a doctor, but a PhD in pharmacology, had maintained the old facade while completely gutting and refitting the interior into a state-of-the-art prlyate surgicenter.

The main floor offered a two-room operating suite, a large recovery room with six cubicles, a private V.I.P recovery room, an examination/consultation room, and Duncan's office. The records room, lounge, and Oliver's lab took up the basement.

Gin rushed into the scrub room, shucked her white coat, tucked her unruly black hair under a disposable cap, and joined Duncan at the sink.

His forearms were already coated with tan lather.

"Morning, Duncan." Since her first day here he'd insisted that since she was now a full-fledged physician, she must call him by his first name, "Call me Doctor Lathram' once more and you're fired." But she had to make a conscious effort to say Duncan. He'd been her hero since she was ten.

He grunted and nodded absently as he continued working the Betadine into his skin with the disposable brush.

Hmmm. Preoccupied this morning.

Gin watched him out of the corner of her eye as she adjusted the water temperature with the foot controls and began her own scrub. Assisting Duncan Lathram at surgery, still hard to believe it was true. Simply being alongside him like this never failed to give her a warm tingle.

She'd been working with him for months now and still marveled at how good he looked for a man of sixty-two. Neat as the proverbial pin, with dark, glossy, perfectly combed hair graying at the temples, piercing blue eyes over a generous nose set in a longish, rugged face that creased deeply when he smiled, which wasn't all that often. Six feet, maybe six-one, with a weathered Gary Cooper-Randolph Scott look, more like a saddle hand than a plastic surgeon. Long, lean, and close to the bone, a rack of baby-back ribs.

The image made her smile and took her back to her childhood when she worked in the family's Italian deli and meat market. Her dad made a practice then, still did, no doubt, of labeling certain customers with the names of cuts of meat or one of his Italian specialty dishes. Mrs. Fusco, who always had to touch everything, was a calatnan, potbellied Mr. Prizzi was a pork loin, Mrs. Bellini, who'd always leave her shopping list home and could never remember what she needed, was capozella, and once when he'd thought she was in the front of the store, Gin had heard Dad ask one of the butchers if he'd got a load of the cannolis on Mrs. Phillips.

Little Gin adopted the practice and began categorizing the kids she knew by cuts of meat. Duncan Lathram was definitely a rack of baby-backs.

But Duncan's hands didn't quite go with the rest of him, long, delicate, agile fingers that could perform miracles, do medical origami with human tissues.

She felt awkward even thinking it, but the old guy was sexy.

Listen to me, she thought. He's older than my dad.

But no getting around it, Duncan Lathram was an attractive man. Not that she felt any libidinous tugs toward him. God, no. But from a purely esthetic standpoint, he was pretty hot for an old dude.

Must be our history, she thought. We go back a long way. And I've got the scars to prove it.

The big guy was quiet today. Duncan almost always had something to talk about. A news junkie. Read all the District papers, plus the Baltimore San and the northern Virginia rags. Had them strewn all over his office every morning. Never missed MacNeil/Lehrer and Meet the Press.

And never failed to find something to tick him off.

Duncan had his Permanently-Ticks-Me-Off list and his Ticks-MeOff-Today list. Always had something to talk about.

But not today.

The silence was starting to get to Gin.

"Hear about Senator Schulz? " she said.

She thought he seemed to stiffen at the name.

"Schulz? " Duncan's voice was smooth, deeply melodic. "What about him? " "According to the TV there's rumors that his cause of death is being investigated." Duncan began to rinse the honey-colored foam from his arms and hands.

"The scuttlebutt on Schulz is that he jumped. And with reason. He was, please excuse the demotic crookeder than most, and his scams were unraveling." Duncan shook his head sadly. "Twenty stories straight down, flat on his face." He sighed. "All that exceptional plastic work, all those hours of toil, wasted."

"Duncan!"

"Well, it's true. If I'd known defenestration was in his future, I wouldn't have taken such pains with him." Gin thought she was used to his dark sense of humor, so often skating along the line between mordant and sick. But sometimes he did veer over the line.

He pressed his elbow against a chrome disk in the wall and the OR doors swung open. "Hurry up. Another of the kakistocracy's finest awaits us." Gin glanced at the clock. Another minute to go with her scrub.

She felt a warm flush as she remembered yesterday's chance encounter with Gerry Canney, and wondered if he'd call. Not the end of the world if he didn't, but it would certainly be nice. She reviewed the obscure words she'd collected to spring on Duncan today, and then her thoughts probed the enigma that was Duncan Lathram.

When they first met nineteen years ago he wasn't a plastic surgeon.

At age ten she woke up in a hospital with everything hurting.

Struggling through the maze of her jumbled thoughts was the memory of horsing around with two of the neighborhood boys, proving to them that she could ride a bike as well as they could, and matching any dare they wanted to try. Suddenly she was in the middle of Lee Highway with a panel truck screeching and swerving toward her. She remembered the pale blurs of the driver's bared teeth and wide, shocked, terrified eyes through the dirty windshield as he stood on his brake pedal and tried to miss her.

Pain shoved the memories aside . . . pain and fear ... Where was her mama and who were these strange people bustling around her? Who was this big doctor bending over her and pressing his fingers into her tummy? Some deep part of her subconscious must have felt her life slipping away. She remembered asking him if she was going to die, and how he'd looked so shocked that she was conscious. Most of all she remembered the giant doctor going down on one knee beside the gurney so that his face was only inches from hers, squeezing her hand and saying, "Not if I've got anything to say about it. And around here, what I say goes." Something about his supreme confidence soothe her. She believed him.

She closed her eyes and slipped back into unconsciousness .

That big doctor had been Duncan Lathram. And Duncan Lathram had been a vascular surgeon then. Not just a run-of the-mill type who spent his days doing varicose-vein strippings, but a gonzo with a scalpel, unafraid to take on any vascular catastrophe, the messier the better.

Like hers. The impact with the truck had ruptured her spleen and torn her renal artery. Duncan had removed her spleen and repaired The gushing artery, saving her kidney and her life.

Gin remembered being absolutely infatuated with the man. He became a demigod in her eyes. From age ten on she sent him a card every Christmas. Even went to work for him at sixteen as a part-time clerk in the record room of his office in Alexandria. She learned how hard he worked, putting in fourteen- and sixteen-hour days in the hospital and office, and often being called to the emergency at one or two in the morning to repair leaking or severed arteries damaged by everything from atherosclerosis to car wrecks to knife fights. He could be gruff, self-absorbed, even arrogant at times, but Gin didn't mind. After all, wasn't that part of being a demigod? His stamina amazed her, his dedication and boundless enthusiasm for his work inspired her so much that when she registered as a freshman at Princeton, she chose premed biology as her major. The course of her life had been set.