"Don't start blaming yourself," Nana told me. "Like I said, we're very lucky. The best doctor in the hospital was right there in her room."

"I'm not blaming anybody," I muttered, knowing it wasn't true.

Nana frowned. "If you had been there during the seizure, she'd still be here having the MRI. And in case you think it could have been the boxing, Dr. Petito said there's almost no chance. The contact was too minimal. It's something else, Alex."

That was exactly what I was afraid of. We waited for the test to be over and it was a long hard wait. Finally, Jannie slowly slid out of the machine. Her little face brightened when she saw me.

"Fugees," she said, then took off the earphones for me to hear. "Killing me softly with his song." She sang along with the music. "Hello, Daddy. You said you'd come back. Kept your promise."

"I did." I bent down to kiss her. "How are you, sweetie?" I asked. "You feeling okay now?"

"They played some really nice music for me, "she said. 'I'm hanging in there, hanging tough. I can't wait to see the pictures of my brain, though."

Neither could I, neither could I. Dr. Petito had waited around for the pictures. He never seemed to leave the hospital. I met with him in his office at a little past eleven-thirty. I was beyond tired. We both were.

"Long day for you,” I said. Every day seemed to be like that for Petito. The neurologist had office hours starting at seven-thirty in the morning, and he was still around the hospital at nine and ten o'clock at night, sometimes later. He actually encouraged patients to call him at home if they had a problem or just got scared at night.

"This is my life." He shrugged. "Helped get me divorced a few years back." He yawned. "Keeping me single now. That and my fear of attachment. I love it, though."

I nodded and thought that I understood. Then I asked the question that was burning in my mind. "What did you find? Is she all right?"

He shook his head slowly, then he spoke the words I hadn't wanted to hear," I'm afraid there's a tumor. I'm pretty certain that it's a pilocytic astrocytoma, a kind of tumor that strikes the very young. We'll confirm that after the surgery. It's located in her cerebellum. The tumor is large, and it's life-threatening. I'm sorry to have to give you that news."

I spent another night at the hospital with Jannie. She fell asleep holding my hand again.

Early the next morning my beeper went off. I made a call and got bad news from Sandy Greenberg, a friend who works at Interpol headquarters in Lyons, France.

A woman named Lucy Rhys-Cousins had been savagely murdered in a London supermarket. She was killed while her children looked on. Sandy told me the police in London suspected that the killer was her husband, Geoffrey Shafer, a man I knew as the Weasel.

I couldn't believe it. Not now. Not the Weasel "Was it Shafer or not?" I asked Sandy. "Do you know for certain?"

"It's him, Alex, though we won't confirm it for the press vermin. Scotland Yard is positive. The children recognized him. Their Mad Hatter daddy! He killed their mother right before their eyes." Months before, Geoffrey Shafer had been responsible for Christine's kidnapping. He had also committed several grisly murders in the Southeast section of Washington. He'd preyed on the poor and defenseless. The news that he might be alive, and killing again, was like a swift, sudden punch below the belt. I knew it would be even worse for Christine to learn about Shafer.

I called her at home from St. Anthony's, but got her answering machine. I talked calmly to the machine. "Christine, pick up if you're there. It's Alex. Please, pick up. It's important that I talk to you."

Still, no one picked up at Christine's. I knew that Shafer couldn't be here in Washington and yet I worried about the possibility that he was. It was his pattern to do the unexpected. The goddamn Weasel!

I checked my watch. It was seven a.m. It seemed too early for Christine to have left for school. I decided to head over to the Sojourner Truth School anyway. It wasn't far.

As I drove there, I was thinking, Don't let this be happening. Not again! Please, God, don't do this to her. You can't do this. You wouldn't.

I parked near the school and dashed out of the car. Then I found myself running down the hall to Christine's corner office. My heart pounded dully in my chest. My legs were unsure. I could hear the clicking of the word processor before I reached the door.

I peered inside.

I was relieved to see Christine there in her warm and fuzzy, thoroughly cluttered office. She was always intensely focused when she worked. Not wanting to startle her, I stood and watched for a moment. Then I knocked gently on the door jamb.

"It's me,” I said in a soft voice.

Christine stopped typing and turned. For just an instant, she looked at me like she used to. It melted me. She had on a pair of navy-blue trousers and a tailored yellow silk blouse. She didn't look as if she were going through a bad time, but I knew that she was.

"What are you doing here?" she finally asked. "I already heard it on CNN this morning," she continued. "I saw the glorious murder scene at the market in London." She shook her head, closed her eyes.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

Christine snapped out an answer. "I'm not all right! I'm a million miles from all right. This news doesn't help. I can't sleep nights. I have nightmares all the time. I can't concentrate during the day. I imagine terrible things happening to little Alex. To Damon and Jannie and Nana, and to you. I can't make it stop!"

Her words cut right through me. It was a terrible feeling not to be able to help. "I don't think he'll come back here," I said.

Anger flashed in Christine's eyes. "You don't know that for sure."

"Shafer considers himself beyond us. We aren't that important in his fantasy world. His wife was. I'm surprised that he didn't murder the kids too."

"You see, you're surprised. Nobody knows for sure what these insane, pathetic maniacs will do! And now you're involved with more of them: Depraved men who murder innocent hostages for no reason. Because they can."

I started to walk into the office but she raised her hand. "Don't. Please stay away from me."

Christine then rose from her chair and walked past me toward the teachers' washroom. She disappeared inside without looking back.

I knew she wouldn't come out not until she was sure I was gone. As I finally walked away, I was thinking that she hadn't asked about Jannie.