Naturally, not long after the Whos were born, when their married life demanded responsibility and sometimes just plain hard work and sacrifice, Joan gave rein to her dissatisfactions and moods.

Parker tried everything he could think of. He went with her to therapy, took over more than his share of work with the children, tried joking her out of her funks, planned parties, took her on trips, cooked breakfasts and dinners for the family.

But among the secrets Joan had kept from him was a family history of alcoholism and he was surprised to find that she'd been drinking much more than he'd believed. She'd do twelve-steps from time to time and try other counseling approaches. But she always lapsed.

She withdrew further and further from him and the children, occupying her time with hobbies and whims. Taking gourmet cooking classes, buying a sports car, shopping compulsively, working out like an Olympian at a fancy health club (where she met husband-to-be Richard). But she always pulled back; she gave him and the children just enough.

And then there was the Incident.

June, four years ago.

Parker returned home from work at the Bureau's document lab and found Joan gone, a baby-sitter looking after the Whos. This wasn't unusual or troublesome in itself. But when he went upstairs to play with the children he saw immediately that something was wrong. Stephie and Robby, then four and five, were sitting in their shared bedroom, assembling Tinkertoys. But Stephanie was groggy. Her eyes were unfocused and her face slick with sweat. Parker noticed that she'd thrown up on the way to the bathroom. He put the girl into bed and took her temperature, which was normal. Parker wasn't surprised that the baby-sitter hadn't noticed Stephanie's illness; children are embarrassed when they vomit or mess their pants and often try to keep accidents secret. But Stephie-and her brother-seemed much more evasive than Parker would have expected.

The boy's eyes kept going to their toy chest. ("Watch the eyes first," his Handbook commands. "Listen to the words second.") Parker walked toward the chest and Robby started to cry, begging him not to open the lid. But of course he did. And stood, frozen, looking down at the bottles of vodka Joan had hidden there.

Stephanie was drunk. She'd tried imitating Mommy, drinking Absolut-from her Winnie the Pooh mug.

"Mommy said not to say anything about her secret," the boy told him, crying. "She said you'd be mad at us if you found out. She said you'd yell at us."

Two days later he started divorce proceedings. He hired a savvy lawyer and got Child Protective Services involved before Joan made the false abuse claim the attorney thought she'd try.

The woman fought and she fought hard-but it was the way someone fights to keep a stamp collection or a sports car, not something you love more than life itself.

And in the end, after several agonizing months and tens of thousands of dollars, the children were his.

He'd thought that he could concentrate on putting his life back together and giving the children a normal life.

And he had-for the past four years. But now she was at it again, trying to modify the custody order.

Oh, Joan, why are you doing this? Don't you ever think about them? Don't you understand that our egos-parents' egos-have to dissolve into benevolent vapor when it comes to our children? If he truly thought it would be better for Robby and Stephie to split their time between Parker and Joan he'd agree in a heartbeat; it would destroy part of him. But he'd do it.

Yet he believed this would be disastrous for them. And so he'd duke it out with his ex-wife in court relentlessly and at the same time shield the children from the animosity of the proceedings. At times like this you fought on two fronts: You battled the enemy and you battled your own overwhelming desire to be a child yourself and share your pain with your children. But this you could never do.

"Daddy," Robby said suddenly, "you stopped reading."

"I thought you were asleep." He laughed.

"My eyelids were just resting. They got tired. But I'm not."

Parker glanced at the clock. Quarter to eight. Fifteen minutes until-

No, don't think about that now.

He asked his son, "You have your shield?"

"Right here."

"Me too."

He picked up the book and began to read once more.

Margaret Lukas looked over the families at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

She and Cage stood in the main entrance, where hundreds of people were gathering for parties and dinner. Lukas was wearing a navy-blue suit she'd designed and made herself. It was cut close to her body, made from expensive worsted wool, and it had a long, pleated skirt. She'd cut a special dart in the jacket to make certain that the Clock 10 on her hip did not ruin the stylish lines of the outfit. It would be perfect for the opera or a fancy restaurant but, as it happened, she had worn it only to weddings and funerals. She called it her married-buried suit.

Fifteen minutes until eight.

"Nothing, Margaret," came the gruff voice in her headset. C. P. Ardell's. He was downstairs at one entrance to the Ritz, the parking garage, pretending to be a slightly drunk holiday reveler. The big agent wore a considerably more mundane costume than Lukas's-stained jeans and a black leather bikers jacket. On his head was a Redskins hat, which he wore not because of the cold but because he had no hair to obscure the earphone wire of his radio. There were an additional sixty-five plainclothes agents in and around the hotel, armed with more weaponry than you'd find at an El Paso gun show.

All looking for a man for whom they had virtually no description.

Probably white, probably average build.

Probably wearing a gold crucifix.

In the lobby Lukas and Cage scanned the guests, the bellhops, the clerks. Nobody came close to matching their fragile description of the Digger. She realized they were standing with their arms crossed, looking just like well-dressed federal agents on stakeout.

"Say something amusing," she whispered.

"What?" Cage asked.

"We're sticking out. Pretend we're talking."

"Okay," Cage said, smiling broadly. "So whatta you think of Kincaid?"

The question threw her. "Kincaid? What do you mean?"

"I'm making conversation." A shrug. "Whatta you think of him?"

"I don't know."

"Sure you do," Cage persisted.

"He's perp smart, not street smart."

This time Cage's shrug was one of concession. "That's good. I like that." He said nothing more for a moment.

"What're you getting at?" she asked.

"Nothing. I'm not getting at anything. We're pretending to talk is all."

Good, she thought.

Focus…

They studied a dozen other possible suspects. She dismissed them for reasons she knew instinctively but couldn't explain.

Street smart…

A moment later Cage said, "He's a good man. Kincaid."

"I know. He's been very helpful."

Cage laughed in the surprised way of his-the way that meant: I'm on to you. He repeated, "Helpful."

More silence.

Cage said, "He lost his parents just after college. Then there was that custody battle a few years ago. Wife was psycho."

"That's hard," she said and made a foray into the crowd. She brushed up against a guest with a suspicious bulge under his arm. She recognized a cell phone immediately and returned to Cage. Found herself asking impulsively, "What happened? With his folks?"

"Car accident. One of those crazy things. His mother'd just been diagnosed with cancer and it looked like they caught it in time. But they got nailed by a truck on Ninety-five on the way to Johns Hopkins for chemo. Dad was a professor. Met him a couple times. Nice guy."