The tunnel itself seemed to be crushing him, and he felt a scream rising in his throat. But just as his howl was about to erupt, Jagger's enormous hand closed on his shoulder, and the solid grip somehow eased the sharp talons of panic that had been sinking deep into his mind.

"Somethin‘ up ahead," Jagger whispered in his ear, his lips so close that Jeff could feel the other man's breath.

"Where?" Jeff asked, matching Jagger's barely audible tone.

Jagger's hand went over his mouth. "Sshhh…" he cautioned, clicking off his flashlight and plunging them into blackness. The pounding of Jeff's heart sounded like drums in his own ears, then Jagger whispered again. "Can't you hear it?"

Jeff willed his heartbeat to slow, and very dimly it came to him.

A whimpering sound, like an injured dog might make.

Jagger edged around Jeff. "Let me go first," he whispered.

They advanced carefully, Jagger flicking the light on just long enough to be certain he wasn't about to stumble into an unseen shaft.

The whimpering grew louder.

They came to yet another intersection, and now the whimpering was clear.

Not a dog.

A human.

It was coming from the left, and Jagger turned the light back on and played its beam into the darkness.

The whimpering fell silent.

At first there seemed to be nothing there but a pile of rubbish, a heap of filthy rags. Then the light glinted off a pair of eyes and an anguished moan came from the mound of rags.

Jagger inched forward with Jeff right behind him until they were standing over the rags. Jagger kicked one of them aside with the toe of his shoe.

A man's face, twisted into a mask of pure terror, peered up at them, his clawlike hands scratching at the floor of the tunnel as if he were trying to burrow into the cold concrete itself. As Jagger crouched down beside him, he cowered against the wall, clutching a ragged blanket to his belly. "Get away," he whispered. "Get away before they find you, too!"

"Who?" Jeff asked, crouching down and peering into the man's face. Though he'd thought at first that the man was much older, now he saw that he couldn't be more than twenty-two or twenty-three. His hair was tangled and matted, and his face was smeared with dirt and grease. "Before who can find us?"

The man's eyes rolled first one way and then the other, and for a moment Jeff thought he hadn't heard him. But then the man's jaw began working, and a dribble of blood ran down his chin. "Hunters," he whispered. "I thought I was safe. I thought I…" His voice trailed off and he lay against the wall, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath. Then, his words cracking like shards of glass, he said, "Can't get away. They said it was a game… said I could win. All I had to do was… was…"

He fell silent again, and Jeff heard something else. Another voice, softly echoing off the walls of the tunnel.

"Here-look at this. He went this way."

The man's eyes widened as he, too, heard the voice, and once again he seemed to want to speak. His body went rigid and a strangled gurgle came from his lips. Then, abruptly, he relaxed. His hands, still clutching at the rags, fell away from his belly.

The blood oozing from the hole in the man's stomach glistened crimson in the beam of the flashlight.

As the sound of voices grew closer, Jeff and Jagger plunged back into the darkness.

It was the kind of evening that was perfect for walking. The icy chill of winter had given way to spring, and there was a faint scent of new flowers drifting from the park. It was the kind of evening, in fact, that had often enticed Jeff and Heather out for one of their hours-long rambles, Jeff soaking up the architecture while Heather regaled him with stories of what it was like growing up as a poor little rich girl in the heart of Manhattan. Perhaps it was the perfect weather that kept Heather walking that evening.

Or perhaps it was the fact that there wasn't any place she wanted to be.

Certainly, she did not want to be anywhere near her father!

Pain-pain and anger-boiled up inside her as she remembered what he'd said after he gave her the news that Jeff had died. He'd put his arms around her and spoken words that, even in her anger, she assumed he must have thought were comforting: "I know you're upset, sweetheart, but you'll get over it. There will be other men, and in the long run I think you'll come to understand that this has saved you from a lot of grief."

And tonight he'd asked her to go to Le Cirque! Had he really thought she'd be able to sit in a restaurant where she not only knew most of the customers, but would have to put up with them acting as if nothing were wrong? After all, most of the people she'd grown up with had made it perfectly clear what they thought of Jeff Converse. "He'll never really understand you, darling," Jessica van Rensellier had told her a couple of years ago. "Fine for a summer romance, of course, but he's just not someone you could get serious about, is he? I mean, isn't his father one of those men who take care of our houses?"

For the last year, Heather had gotten the impression that Jessica and the rest of the people she'd grown up with were trying to avoid her, and she discovered she didn't mind-the people she was meeting through Jeff were a lot more interesting than the Le Cirque crowd had ever been. Carolyn was even worse than the people who had once been her friends. She had managed to not even mention Jeff's name in the last two days.

So Heather kept walking, heading away from the East Side, where she was all too likely to run into someone she knew from high school, someone coming home from a Junior League or DAR meeting. She wandered toward the West Side, but not until she found herself on Broadway, three short blocks from Jeff's building, did she realize exactly where she'd taken herself.

She almost turned away, almost hailed a cab to take her back home, when she paused, recalling Jeff's words as he'd told her where they were going: "We'll know when we get there."

Had he been leading her tonight? Was that why she'd walked all the way across town and fifty blocks north? She shook her head hard, as if to rid herself of the thought, then flushed as a passerby gave her a funny look and turned away-the same kind of look she sometimes gave one of the crazy people on the streets.

But they actually think they hear voices, she reassured herself. I'm only remembering what Jeff always said.

Yet even knowing it was only her recollection, Heather didn't raise her hand to hail a cab, though half a dozen of them were prowling the street, starved for fares, thanks to the perfect weather. Instead she gave in to an urge to walk the final three blocks and see the dark windows of Jeff's apartment.

Except that tonight his windows weren't dark, and as she gazed up at them a few minutes later-as she always had when she knew Jeff was waiting for her-she saw him standing just as he had always stood, looking down at her. Her heart skipped a beat. It couldn't be! It wasn't possible! Jeff was dead! Confused, knowing what she'd seen was impossible, she glanced around as if in search of someone who might have been playing tricks on her.

When she finally trusted herself to look back up at the window, the figure was gone.

But the window was still lit.

Who could it be?

The super? The moment the thought came to her, she knew that had to be the explanation. She could almost see the building superintendent, Wally Crosley-"Crawly Wally," Jeff had always called him-creeping around Jeff's apartment, helping himself to whatever he thought might be worth something. Her hand went into her purse and she felt for the keys she hadn't used in so long. They were still there. A few seconds later she was climbing the half-dozen steps to the building's door. She let herself in.