Forty-five minutes later, twenty minutes after the motel fire had been brought under control if not put out, Harris watched the emergency medical personnel remove from the SUV someone they’d strapped to a rescue backboard. The victim looked to Harris to be a young woman. She had IV hoses dangling from her arm and wore an oxygen mask.

Five minutes later, the doors of the ambulance slammed shut, and its siren wailed as the unit began to roll. As if on cue, the other ambulance did the same only a minute later.

Harris scanned the motel and saw that the firemen were putting what Harris thought of as their toys back in their trucks. And he saw that the yellow and black POLICE LINE-DO NOT CROSS tape was being strung up, signifying the scene was being turned over to the police.

Well, now that all the excitement’s over, Harris thought, reaching for the door handle, professional curiosity overwhelms me.

[TWO] The Philly Inn 7004 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 1:15 A.M.

Forty minutes earlier, Becca Benjamin, despite having to wait in her silver Mercedes-Benz G550 at the back of a lousy Northeast Philly motel, had just reminded herself that she could not believe how much her luck had changed.

Becca-a trendy twenty-five-year-old brunette with olive skin who was five-foot-seven and just under 140 pounds, having recently started winning her battles to keep the bathroom scale from tipping 150-not only had reconnected with her prep school boyfriend two months earlier but they had found that they still enjoyed what first had brought them together: partying, mostly booze-fueled but with the occasional recreational drug.

They had first dated nine years ago when in the Upper School at Episcopal Academy. She had been a voluptuous sixteen-year-old in IV Form (tenth grade) and J. Warren Olde, known as “Skipper,” then eighteen and in VI Form (senior year), had begun flirting with her in the back row of an International Politics class. He was taking it for the second time, having yet to meet even the lowest threshold of the academic standards for passing the required course.

Skipper had a slender athletic build-he was a star player on the academy’s championship lacrosse team, a midfielder who seemed to float effortlessly from one end of the 110-yard field to the other-and stood five-ten. His sandy hair was cut to his collar, with long bangs that he regularly swept out of his eyes. He was genuinely gregarious, quick with a laugh. And Becca, herself outgoing, had been immediately taken by his attentions.

Their relationship had lasted, though, only until the end of the school year. It had been a wild ride-literally-as an inebriated Skipper, driving Becca home after a graduation party, had misjudged a Dam View Road curve-actually wound up going down an estate’s driveway at a high rate of speed-and put his little Audi in Springton Reservoir. Becca wound up with a broken collarbone and a trip to the Riddle Memorial Hospital emergency room in Media.

The Benjamins and Oldes-both families of significant means and, accordingly, connections with which they arranged to get the incident forgotten in the legal system, if not in their own tony community-were not amused. His parents declared Becca a wild child, albeit one in a woman’s body, while her parents deemed the older boy a bad influence, unfit for their impressionable sweet sixteen-year-old-and thus absolutely off-limits.

Neither Becca nor Skipper was thrilled about the forced separation. But then, while Skipper’s angry old man was still dealing with the lawyers and having the sports car fished from the reservoir, Skipper’s mother had sent him off early to the small private university he’d been set to attend in Texas-her alma mater in her hometown of Dallas. And so neither teenager had been prepared to fight the inevitable. They’d agreed to stay in touch, but even that turned out to be short-lived. They simply lost contact.

Then, two months ago, at a Fourth of July party on the Jersey shore thrown by a mutual friend from their prep school days, they’d run into each other. Becca had first noticed Skipper-who’d been standing beside the beer keg cooler on the beach-mostly because he wore, in addition to flowery Hawaiian-style surfer shorts and aviator-style sunglasses, a frayed straw cowboy hat and a white T-shirt emblazoned with a running red horse and block lettering that read S.M.U. MUSTANGS LACROSSE.

They had found that their outsized personalities were still in sync-with their appetites somewhat matured-and they damned near immediately picked up where they’d left off years before.

The party was back on.

Now Becca sat in the front passenger seat of the boxy Mercedes SUV; she’d had Skipper drive because she’d been shaking too much from the drugs. She hated that downside, which included her being stressed, as she was now. But she told herself there was no question that the upside’s euphoria was worth it, not to mention the added benefit of a killed appetite that helped her finally lose-and keep off-those damned ten-plus pounds.

Despite the night, she stared through dark bug-eyed sunglasses at the motel door to Room 52. Then she punched the map light switch in order to read her wristwatch. The white-platinum diamond-bezel Audemars Piguet had cost her parents more than most of the battered work trucks and cars parked near the Mercedes were worth, never mind the six-figure sticker of the SUV itself. Her arm twitched a little, but she could tell by the position of the watch’s hands-there were no numbers, just four dots of diamonds, twinkling in the map light, to represent the 3, 6, 9, and 12 on the face-that it now was just after one-fifteen.

Her hands and feet were cold-another side effect from the drug-so she sat with her feet tucked under her thighs, her arms crossed, with her hands resting and warming in her armpits. She wore cream-colored linen shorts and a tan silk blouse that was cut low in the front, revealing her ample bosom, which now was rising and falling more rapidly than normal.

He’s been in there fifteen minutes.

He said it’d take only one: “In and out, baby.”

What’s taking so long?

Is he okay?

Should I go in?

Hell no, I shouldn’t go in-who knows who’s in there?-and I sure as hell don’t want to go in that fleabag room.

But what if he’s not okay?

What if- Her cellular phone, resting on her lap, simultaneously vibrated briefly and made a ping sound, announcing the receipt of a text message.

“Damn!” she said, startled. It caused her to uncross her arms and kick out her feet.

She quickly glanced at the phone’s screen, thinking the text might be from Skipper. She saw-barely, as her sleep-deprived eyes had trouble focusing on the backlit small print-that it was from her girlfriend Casey, who was asking WHERE R U??

Becca threw the phone onto the leather-covered console between the front seats and sighed loudly.

She looked back at the motel door, wondering if she should shoot Skipper a text message. Maybe something along the lines of WTF???

Yeah, Skipper-What The Fuck?

The only movement she saw was from the motel room curtain, which was pulled closed over the open window and gently swaying, as if being blown by a breeze.

She crossed her arms and tucked her feet back under her and closed her eyes. After a while, she glanced at her watch again.

One-thirty!

That’s it. I’m going in there.

She had just clicked off the map light and reached for and found the button that would release her seat belt when the door of Room 52 swung open. Out came Skipper Olde, holding a white handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

Olde wore a baggy navy blue T-shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals, and his aviator sunglasses hung from the front of the collar of his T-shirt. At twenty-seven, he still had his athletic slender build and his sandy hair collar-length, but no bangs, as he was thinning noticeably on top.