Victor clutched his book to his chest and hurried toward the door to the hall.

Marcus made a stiff little bow to Annie, trying to be dashing. "May I walk you out, Annie? Obviously, you need to be careful."

She refrained from pointing out that having him escort her would hardly be considered a safe thing. He was either a killer or possibly the target of a killer. "I'm not leaving just yet. I've got some work to do."

He let it go as they started down the aisle toward the front of the room and better light. "Have you made any progress on finding that driver who helped me?"

"No. I've been very busy."

"But you're trying."

The DMV list was still under the blotter on her desk. "I'll do what I can."

"I know you will, Annie," he said as they reached the vacant desk area, where Victor stood in the doorway facing the hall, rocking himself from side to side. "I know you'll do your best for me, Annie. You're very special."

Before Annie could protest again, he said, "Will you be going to the street dance with anyone Friday?"

As if he meant to ask her, Annie thought, amazed. She took another step away from him. "I'll be going in uniform if they hold it at all. I'm scheduled to work."

Marcus sighed. "Too bad. You've been working so hard lately."

Because of you, Annie thought, but she wasn't going to be the one to bring on another round of cloying gratitude.

She watched the Renard brothers go, Victor hugging the wall of the stairwell, his bird book raised to hide his face. Mask.

He wanted to hide who he was behind another facade. His brother may well have been hiding an alter ego beneath his bland, ordinary face. Annie turned toward the printer and the stack of articles that involved Chaz Stokes, who used his badge as a mask to cover God knew what. Mask.

"Yeah, Victor," she murmured, collecting her things. "There seems to be a lot of that going around."

"It doesn't match," Doll harped. "I told you it wouldn't match. I had a premonition."

"It's wet, Mother," Marcus said, dabbing at the paint with a sponge in hopes of better blending it in with the rest of the wall. "Paint always appears lighter when dry than when wet."

Doll scrutinized the dining room wall, her thin face pinched tight with concentration. She crossed her arms and declared, "I don't believe it's the same color. What's it called? Is it called forest?"

"Idon't know, Mother. The can has a number, not a name."

"Well, it had ought to say forest. Idistinctly remember choosing the color forest. If it doesn't say forest, then how can you know it's the same shade?"

"Because I know that it is."

He could feel his patience fraying like an old rope, and he resented her for it. He had come home from the library with his head full of Annie, a pleasant warmth glowing just under his skin. Shutting out Victor's incessant noise, he had spent the drive home replaying the encounter in his mind, from Annie's look of surprise when she'd first turned to face him to the subtle messages in her tone of voice. She couldn't publicly accept his attentions until she had cleared him of Pam's murder. He understood. He would have to be discreet. It would be like a game between them, another secret only they shared.

"It's not forest,"Doll muttered, moving to examine the spot from another angle. "It's just as I saw it in my premonition. The color won't match no matter what we do, and every time I look at that wall I'll be taken with the fear of that night. Fear and shame-that's all my life has become. I can barely bring myself to leave the house these days."

Marcus bit back the words that sprang instantly to his tongue. She had hounded him all morning to take her into town because she needed to go to the drugstore and the supermarket. She didn't trust him to get the brands she liked and she refused to write them down because she didn't necessarily go by names, but by the colors and graphics on the packages. And of course she couldn't take her own car and go herself on account of her nerves and the mysterious undiagnosed palsy mat had been coming on her lately- because of him and the unwanted attention he'd drawn to the family.

"All because of your infatuation with that woman," she said now, as if she was simply jumping back into the conversation they'd had nine hours ago. "I don't know why you can't content yourself, Marcus."

Content myself with what? With you? He looked at her out the corner of his eye as he climbed down from the step stool and began the process of cleaning up. He envisioned forcing her head into the paint can and drowning her in her damned forest paint, but of course he wouldn't do that any more than he would cram the paint-soaked sponge into her mouth and suffocate her, or stab her in the base of her throat with the screwdriver he'd used to open the can.

"Look what happened. Look what it's done to our lives."

"What happened was not my fault, Mother," he said, tapping the lid of the can down with a rubber mallet. If wielded with enough fury, would it do the same damage as a hammer?

"Of course it is," Doll insisted. "You were infatuated with that woman, and now she's dead and everyone naturally believes you did it. You should have left her alone."

"It was a misunderstanding," he said, gathering up his tools and the can. The spot would need a second application, but the paint couldn't be left out. Victor enjoyed the texture and viscosity of paint, and would put his hands into it and spill it out to watch it pool on the floor. "Annie will clear it up for us. She's working on the case day and night."

"Annie." Doll shook her head, following him into the kitchen. "She's no better than the rest of them, Marcus. You mark my words, she's not your friend."

He stopped at the back door and stared at his mother, defiant. "She saved my life. She's going out of her way to help me. I believe that would define the word friend."

He pushed the door open with his elbow and went out to the small, locked shed where he kept things like paint and power tools. A single bulb illuminated the rough cypress walls. He put the paint and tools away and shut the light off. If he waited long enough, he knew his mother would go to bed and he wouldn't have to speak to her again until morning. It was nearly ten o'clock. She had to be in her room for the start of the news, though he could never imagine why. The news never failed to agitate and disgust her for one reason or another. Ritual. She was as bound to it as Victor.

She couldn't understand about Annie, he told himself as he waited for the kitchen light to go out. What did his mother know of friends? She'd never had one that he'd ever been aware of. He doubted even his father had been a friend to her. She would never understand about Annie.

The lights went out in the kitchen, then the dining room. Cutting across the terrace, Marcus went to his workroom and let himself in through one of the French doors with the key he kept under a flowerpot. He went first into his bedroom for a Percodan, to calm both his pains and his nerves, then came back into his studio and gathered his things from his private cupboard.

The drug began to work quickly, relaxing him, giving him a vaguely floaty feeling, insulating him from both physical pain and emotional unpleasantness. Staring at his sketch, he drove everything from his mind except Annie.

Of course he was taken with her. She was pretty. She was intelligent. She was fair-minded. She was his angel. That was what he called her when he imagined the two of them together-Angel. It would be his secret name for her, another little something they would share only with each other. He drew a finger across his lips like closing a zipper, then smiled to himself. That had already become a pet signal between them. They had to be careful. They had to be discreet. She was risking so much by helping him.