The lady sighed. "Poor Tommy. He was madly in love with Dianna. A hopeless, hurting sort of crush, you know." The eyes flashed at Bolan. "Dianna favors more mature men."

"How is Dianna? She had a rough — "

"I sent her away."

Bolan stared at the lady, thoughts chugging and images frozen. "You did what?"

"She has conflicting loyalties, Mr. Bolan. I convinced her that she should make a decision and act accordingly."

He growled, "I need more than that, Margaret."

"She has a lover," the lady reported, sighing.

So what and why not? As the young lady herself had observed, it wasn't 1940 — and, even then, many young ladies had lovers. But why had Boland blithely overlooked even the question?

He told the young lady's mother, "I still don't understand. Unless you're saying that I'm a threat to her morals. There's a much larger threat waiting out there for your daughter, and it — "

She halted his speech with a pained expression and a hand at his shoulder. "No, not that. I said 'conflict' and that is exactly what I meant. Dy paced around here for an hour, crying and wringing her hands. She's not nearly so sophisticated as she appears, Mr. Bolan. Dy is a — well, a very direct sort. She handles emotions at the heart level. She — "

"What's the conflict?"

"You. And John Franciscus."

"Who's he?"

The lady shook her head. "Dy met him through some association with Allan. I hadn't heard of them, though, until just today. Until Dy began pacing and crying, in fact. But I gather that he is in the enemy camp."

It was a nutty family, Bolan was deciding. The lady had sent the Executioner after her husband, presumably because the man was a detestable criminal type whom she could simply not condone — married to it or not. The lady's daughter, who supposedly hated her stepfather, made love to his executioner and pleaded for his life though marked for death, herself, by the guy's associates. Now the mother was telling the executioner that she'd "sent" her daughter into the death camp because of "conflicting" loyalties — an affair of the heart with one of the enemy.

Bolan shook his head to clear it and growled, "Wait a minute, now."

"She felt that she had to at least try."

"Try what?"

"Stop the killing."

"And how would she go about doing that?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. But she felt compelled to try."

"You're lying to me, Margaret," Bolan decided. "You didn't advise Dianna to do anything of the sort. You didn't 'send' her anywhere."

The gaze wavered and broke. The lady sighed. She said, "I suppose I'm not a very good liar. You're right, of course. I tried every piece of logic at my command — but Dy makes her own decisions, ill-based though they may often be." The artful version of Dianna Webb raised creamy shoulders slightly and dropped them. "She left here barely an hour behind you. I promised her that I would remain at least until morning, in case you should return."

"She didn't expect me to return, did she?"

Margaret's gaze returned level to his. "No."

"She was going to turn me over."

"I believe that was the general intent."

"How was she going to do that?"

"Don't blame her too strongly, Mr. Bolan. She is quite young. And confused about love."

Bolan said, "Yeah. How?"

"She had a rather detailed description of your — your motor home."

A moth to the candle, yeah. Bolan got up quickly and killed the lights in the living area. "Get dressed!" he commanded.

"I don't understand."

"Don't even try. Just do as I say. I'm taking your life back into my hands, Margaret. Now come on! Do you go dressed or do you go like that?"

"I'll dress," she whispered.

Bolan's guts were now yelling in forty forked tongues. He growled, "Second thought, forget it!" He grabbed her by the arm and hustled her to the screen porch, then pushed her low and led her through the doorway, taking her by the hand there and urgently whispering, "Run!"

They broke cover at the front corner and plunged blindly into the mists toward the water on a dead run, and they had not covered twenty yards when the chilling staccato of choppers in concert tore the silence behind them.

Margaret faltered and almost fell. Bolan jerked her on and put an arm about her to keep her moving.

Three and possibly four Thompsons were taking that house apart at close range — and the lady understood the implications of that as well as Bolan did.

"Oh Dy, Dy!" she moaned.

"She couldn't have known," Bolan assured her.

They were circling toward the drive when flames shot skyward back there along the water and a rumbling explosion shook the ground beneath their feet.

The death crew had come to "stop the killing." Apparently they'd known that Bolan was in there, and they were leaving no stone unturned nor board unburnt.

Scorched earth, sure.

A lone gunner had been posted at Bolan's rented Fairlane. He took the guy from behind, with a garrote — and the moth and the lady shook the flames of that place from their wings.

Close, yeah. Too damned close for chuckles.

Leo Turrin sent his tagman on with the rest of the crew to handle the formalities of registration while he stopped off at the message desk.

But there were no messages for "Joe Petrillo."

He proceeded on to a telephone booth at the far side of the lobby and made a coin call to his unlisted "cold drop" in Pittsfield, an automated answering system.

The connection was made and he fed in the verbal coder which would trigger the electronic brain to a release of messages stored since the last check-in.

There was but one, very brief — but the one which Turrin had been anxiously awaiting all day.

"This is Striker," announced a familiar voice. "Tap me at the floater, Seattle, two thousand and two hundred."

That was it, but it was plenty.

Turrin hung up and gazed at his watch. Twenty-two hundred meant ten o'clock. What the guy really meant, though, was ten minutes past that hour. He would answer no ring except at that precise moment.

"Floater" was, of course, the mobile number in the guy's vehicle.

You didn't simply pick up a phone and call Mack Bolan — not even if you happened to be the guy's only contact with the straight world. You called at ten past ten, if that's what the man wanted, then you called every hour after that until you connected.

It was now nine fifty, Seattle time.

Turrin went into the smoke shop and bought some cigars, then returned to the lobby in time to intercept the dumb but loyal tagman, Jocko Frensi.

"Go on up with the stuff," Turrin instructed him. "I'm going to hang around and make a few calls without switchboards. What's our room?"

"Ten hundred," Fresni reported with a woebegone frown. "Man says it's the best in the joint, but I dunno, it's only got one teevee. Uh, don't you think I better stay down here with you?"

"Naw, it's okay. Go on. You look beat. Boys on the same floor?"

"Yeh. We can open the doors and connect with them if we wanta. Pers'nally, boss, I don't wanta."

Fresni had once ridden some of the best mounts in thoroughbred racing circles. That was years ago. The little guy's last horse died under him, literally, and Jocko damn near died with him. He'd never been right in the head, since. Fast man with a blaster, though, and as loyal a bodyguard as would be found anywhere. And he really did look beat.

Turrin stepped over to his chief torpedo and told him, "See that Jocko goes right to bed. You guys leave 'im alone. Stay in your own damn rooms,"

"Yeh, sure," the guy growled back. "We're going to get some broads, anyway. What're you going to be doing?"