He folded his arms tightly across his chest and the moment of nausea passed.

He knew he needed a plan. He needed to test his conclusions somehow and then react to the findings. It was time for some AE, time to experiment.

There was only one way to do that, he decided. He would go see her, confront her, get the truth.

He remembered his vow to fight. He decided to take his first shot. He picked up the phone and called Jacob Kaz's office. It was late in the day but the patent lawyer was still there and picked up the transfer quickly.

"Henry, you were fantastic today," he said by way of greeting.

"You were pretty good yourself, Jacob."

"Thank you. What can I do for you?"

"Is the package ready to go?"

"Yep. It has been. I finished with it last night. Only thing left to do is file it. I'm going to fly out Saturday, visit my brother in southern Maryland, maybe some friends I have in Baileys Crossroads in Virginia, and then be there first thing Monday morning to file. Like I told Maurice today. That's still the plan."

Pierce cleared his throat.

"We have to change the plan."

"Really? How so?"

"Jacob, I want you to take a red-eye tonight. I want you to file it first thing tomorrow morning. As soon as they open."

"Henry, I… that's going to be a bit expensive to get a flight tonight on such short notice.

I usually fly business class and that's -"

"I don't care what it costs. I don't care where you sit. I want you on a plane tonight. In the morning call me as soon as it's filed."

"Is something wrong, Henry? You seem a bit -"

"Yes, something's wrong, Jacob, that's why I'm sending you tonight."

"Well, do you want to talk about it? Maybe I can help."

"You can help by getting on that plane and getting it filed first thing tomorrow. Other than that, I can't talk about it yet. But just get over there and get the thing filed and then call me. I don't care how early it is out here. Call me."

"Okay, Henry, I will. I'll make the arrangements right now."

"When does the filing office open?"

"Nine."

"Okay, then I will talk to you shortly after six my time. And Jacob?"

"Yes, Henry?"

"Don't tell anyone other than your wife and kids that you're going tonight. Okay?"

"Uh… what about Charlie? He said today that he might call me tonight to go over lastminute -"

"If Charlie calls you, don't tell him you're going tonight. If he calls after you leave, tell your wife to tell him you had to go out with another client. An emergency or something."

Kaz was silent for a long moment.

"Are you all right with this, Jacob? I'm not saying anything about Charlie. It's just that at the moment I can't trust anybody. You understand?"

"Yes, I understand."

"Okay, I'll let you go so you can call the airline. Thank you, Jacob. Call me from D.C."

Pierce clicked off. He felt bad about possibly impugning Charlie Condon in Kaz's eyes.

But Pierce knew he could take no chances. He opened a fresh line and called Condon's direct line. He was still there.

"It's Henry."

"I just went down to your office to look for you."

"I'm at home. What's up?"

"I thought maybe you'd want to say good-bye to Maurice. But you missed him. He left.

He heads back to New York tomorrow but said he wants to talk to you before he leaves.

He'll call in the morning."

"Fine. Did you make the deal?"

"We came to an agreement in principle. We'll have contracts the end of next week."

"How did it come out?"

"I got the twenty, but over three years. The breakdown is a two-million bump on the front end and then one million bimonthly. He becomes the chairman of the board and gets his ten points. The points will vest on a schedule. He gets a point for the up-front payment and then a point every four months. If something happens and he bails early, he leaves with the points he's accumulated only. We retain the option to buy them back within one year at eighty percent."

"Okay."

"Just okay? Aren't you happy?"

"It's a good deal, Charlie. For us and him."

"I'm very happy. So is he."

"When do we get the up-front money?"

"The escrow period is thirty days. One month, then everybody gets a raise, right?"

"Yeah, right."

Pierce knew Condon was looking for excitement if not jocularity over the deal. But he couldn't give it. He wondered if he'd even be around at the end of a month.

"So where did you disappear to?" Condon asked.

"Uh, home."

"Home? Why? I thought we'd -"

"I had things to do. Listen, did Maurice or Justine ask you anything about me? Anything more about the accident?"

There was a silence while Condon evidently thought about this. "No. In fact, I thought they might bring up that thing about wanting the accident report again but they didn't. I think they were so blown away by what they saw in the lab that they don't care anymore about what happened to your face."

Pierce remembered the blood red color of Goddard's face in the vision field of the heat resonance goggles.

"I hope so."

"You ever going to tell me what happened to you?"

Pierce hesitated. He was feeling guilty over hiding things from Condon. But he had to remain cautious.

"Not right now, Charlie. The time's not right."

This put a pause in Condon's reply, and in the silence Pierce could feel the injury he was inflicting on their relationship. If there was only a way for him to be sure about Condon.

If there was a question he could ask. His social engineering skills had deserted him and that left only silence.

"Well," Condon said. "I'm going to go. Congratulations, Henry. Today was a good day."

"Congratulations, Charlie."

After hanging up, Pierce pulled out his key ring to check for something. Not the padlock keys. He had left them behind at the storage facility, hidden on the top of an exit sign on the third floor. He checked the ring once more to make sure he still had the key to the house on Amalfi Drive. If Nicole wasn't home, he was going to go in anyway. And he would wait for her.

Pierce took the California Incline down to the Coast Highway and then north to the mouth of Santa Monica Canyon. He turned right on Channel and parked at the first meter he found open. He then got out of the BMW and walked back toward the beach, looking over his shoulder and about him every ten yards for followers. When he got to the corner he looked around once more and then quickly went down the stairs into the pedestrian tunnel that went under the highway to the beach.

The walls of the tunnel were a collage of graffiti, some of it recognized by Pierce even though it had been at least a year since he had walked through the tunnel. During happier times with Nicole it had been their routine to get the paper and coffee on Sunday mornings and take it all down to the beach. But over the last year Pierce had been working on Proteus most Sundays and didn't have time for the beach.

On the other side the tunnel branched into two separate staircases leading up. He knew the further staircase came up on the sand right next to the drainage channel that emptied surface water runoff from the canyon into the ocean. He chose this stairway and came up into the sunlight to find the beach deserted. He saw the yellow lifeguard stand where he and Nicole would have their coffee and read the paper. It looked as abandoned as their Sunday ritual had become. He just wanted to see it, to remember it, before he went up the hill to her. After a while he turned back to the mouth of the tunnel and went back down the stairs.

A quarter of the way back through the sixty-yard tunnel Pierce saw a man coming down the opposite staircase. Because of the light from above him, the man was in silhouette.