TIEL stood facing the door of the store for a full ninety seconds before she heard the bolt being released. As she reentered, Ronnie eyed her warily.

She dispelled his suspicion. "I'm not carrying a concealed weapon, Ronnie."

"What did Galloway say?"

"He's thinking it over. He said he has to make some phone calls."

"To who? What for?"

"I gather he doesn't have the authority to grant you clemency."

Ronnie gnawed his lower lip, which had already been so brutalized it was raw. "Okay. But why'd you come back?"

"To let you know that Katherine is in excellent hands."

She told him about Dr. Emily Garrett.

"Tell Sabra. She'll want to know that."

The young mother's eyes were half closed. Her breathing was shallow. Tiel wasn't sure she was completely aware and listening, but after describing to her the neonatal specialist, Sabra whispered, "Is she nice?"

"Very. When you meet her, you'll see." Tiel glanced over at Doc, but he was taking Sabra's blood pressure, his eyebrows pulled together in the steep frown she'd come to recognize. "There's another very nice doctor waiting to take care of you. His name is Dr. Giles. You're not afraid to fly in helicopters, are you?"

"I did once. With my dad. It was okay."

"Dr. Giles is standing by to whisk you off to the hospital in Midland. Katherine will be glad to see you when you get there. She'll probably be hungry."

Sabra smiled, then her eyes closed.

By tacit agreement, Tiel and Doc retreated to their familiar posts. Seated on the floor with their backs propped against the freezer chest, legs extended in front of them, watching the second hand on the clock tick off the time limit Ronnie had imposed, it was the ideal moment for Doc to ask the question that Tiel expected from him.

"Why'd you come back?"

Even assuming that he would ask, she had no clear-cut answer prepared.

Several moments elapsed. His jaw was dark with stubble, she noticed, but it must be going on twenty-four hours since his last shave. The webwork around his eyes seemed more defined now than earlier, a distinct sign of fatigue.

His clothes, like hers, were grimy and bloodstained.

Blood was a cohesive agent, she realized. It wasn't necessarily the comingling of blood from two individuals that formed an irrevocable, almost mystical, bond between them. It could be anyone's shed blood that united people.

Consider survivors of plane crashes, train wrecks, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks, who had developed lasting friendships because of the trauma they had shared.

Veterans of the same war spoke a language among themselves that was incomprehensible to those who hadn't been there and experienced similar horrors. Bloodshed at the explosion in Oklahoma City, the public school shootings, and other unthinkable events had soldered former strangers together so solidly that the relationships would never be severed.

Survivors shared a common ground. Their connection was rare and unique, sometimes misinterpreted and misunderstood, but almost always unexplainable to those who hadn't encountered identical fears.

Tiel had taken so long to answer that Doc repeated his question. "Why'd you come back?"

"For Sabra," she replied. "I was the only woman left. I thought she might need me. And…"

He raised his knees, propped his forearms on them and looked at her, waiting patiently for her to complete her thought.

"And I hate to start something and not finish it. I was here when it started, so I figured I should stick around until it's over."

It wasn't quite as simple as that. Her reason for returning was more complex, but she was at a loss to explain her multilayered motivation to Doc when even to her it was unclear. Why wasn't she out there doing a live remote, taking advantage of the extraordinary insight she had on this story? Why wasn't she recording a voice track to couple with the dramatic images Kip was getting on video?

"What were you doing out here?"

Doc's question roused her from her musings. "In Rojo Flats?" She laughed. "I was on vacation." She explained how she was en route to New Mexico when she heard of the so-called kidnaping on her car radio. "I called Gully, who assigned me to interview Cole Davison. On my way to

Hera I got lost. I stopped here to use the rest room and call Gully for directions."

"That's who you were talking to when I came in?"

Tiel's gaze sharpened on him, her expression inquisitive.

He raised his shoulder in a slight shrug. "I noticed you back there on the pay phone."

"You did? Oh." Their eyes connected and held, and it was an effort for her to break that stare. "Anyway, I concluded my call and was buying snacks for the road when… who should walk in but Ronnie and Sabra."

"That's a story in itself."

"I couldn't believe my good fortune." She smiled wryly.

"Be careful what you wish for."

"I am." After a beat of five, he added quietly, "Now."

This time it was she who waited him out, giving him the opportunity either to expound on his thought or to let the subject drop. He must have felt the same implied pressure from her silence that she had felt from him earlier, because he rolled his shoulders as though his burdensome reflections were resting on them.

"After I found out about Shari's affair, I wanted her to…" He faltered, began again. "I was so pissed, I wanted her to…"

"Suffer."

"Yeah."

The long sigh he released around the word evinced his relief over finally getting the confession off his chest. Confidences wouldn't come easily to a man like him who had dealt in life-and-death situations on a daily basis. To have the courage and tenacity to battle such a seemingly omnipotent enemy as cancer, there was surely a generous degree of the god complex in Bradley Stanwick's makeup.

Vulnerability, any sign of weakness, was incompatible with that personality trait. No, beyond incompatible. Intolerable.

Tiel was flattered that he had confessed a weakness, had revealed to her even a glimpse of this all-too-human aspect of himself. She supposed traumatic situations were good for that, too. Like a deathbed confession, he might be thinking this was the last chance he would have to unburden himself of the guilt he had carried over his wife's terminal illness.

"Her cancer wasn't punishment for her adultery," she argued gently. "It certainly wasn't your revenge."

"I know. Rationally and reasonably I know that. But when she was going through the worst of it-and, believe me, it was sheer hell-that's what I thought about. That I had subconsciously wished it on her."

"So now you're punishing yourself with this self-imposed banishment from your profession."

He fired back, "And you're not?"

"What?"

"Punishing yourself because your husband got killed.

You're doing the work of two people to make up for the industry loss created when he died."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Is it?"

"Yes. I work hard because I love it."

"But you'll never be able to do enough, will you?"

An angry retort died on her lips. She had never examined the psychology behind her ambition. She had never allowed herself to examine it.

But now that she'd been confronted with this hypothesis, she had to admit that it had merit. The ambition had always been there. She had been born with a type-A personality, was always an overachiever.

But not to the degree of the last few years. She pursued goals with a vengeance and took perceived failures hard.

She worked to the exclusion of everything else. It wasn't a matter of her career taking precedence over other areas of her life; it was her life. Was her mad, singular desire to succeed a self-inflicted penance for those few ill-chosen words spoken in the heat of anger? Was guilt her propellant?