"Get those guns over the rail!" Tarver snapped again. "Now!"

"Where's Jamie?" Alex asked, tossing the Sig over her shoulder.

"You'll see."

Dear Lord, let him be alive…

"I love you, baby girl," said the faintest whisper beside her.

Baby girl? That was what Will had called his daughter, before she died in the-

In the same motion that Will tossed his shotgun over his shoulder, he whirled away from Alex with all the speed that a seventy-year-old man could muster. He fired his pistol as he spun, trying to disorient Tarver as much as possible while he bought Alex one chance. Her hand was almost to the.38 in her ankle holster when the artillery-like boom of the shotgun blotted out the reports of Will's pistol. The sound hurled her back to the Federal Reserve bank, when a desperate man had shattered her closest friend and half her face in a matter of seconds. When she came up with her.38, the smoking mouth of Dr. Tarver's shotgun was only two feet from her eyes.

"It would be a shame to ruin the other half," he said.

Moving only her eyes, Alex glanced down to her right.

Will lay on his stomach, a dark pool spreading beneath him. Several ragged exit wounds revealed splintered white bone from his scapula. One hole was almost directly over his spine.

"Aaahhhhh," Alex moaned, her eyes stinging. "You son of a bitch!"

"He chose his fate," Dr. Tarver said. "A brave man."

He died like my daddy did, said the voice of the little girl inside her.

"What?" asked Tarver, snatching the.38 from her hand.

Had she spoken aloud?

"Into the house," Tarver ordered. "Go."

Alex started to step over Will, but Tarver shook his head and pointed to the front of the house-the reservoir side. As she walked, she stared along the pier, wondering if the Carrera was in the boathouse. Bill often left the key out there. If she could get Jamie out of the house…then get him to the boathouse-

The front section of the wraparound porch was screened. She opened the door to the protected area, walked in, then stopped before the stained cypress door that led to the main house. What nightmare lay on the other side of it?

"Go in," Dr. Tarver said.

She turned the knob and pushed open the door.

Bill Fennell lay sprawled at the foot of the main staircase. His long legs were bent at odd angles, and his mouth appeared to be frozen open. As Alex swept her eyes across the room, frantically searching for Jamie, the shotgun barrel prodded her between the shoulder blades, driving her forward.

"Why did you kill him?"

"He's not dead," said Dr. Tarver. "I sedated him."

True or false? "Where's Jamie?"

Tarver pointed the shotgun across the room to a hall that led to the rear of the house. "That way."

A paralyzing numbness made itself known in her lower trunk. It was spreading upward fast. She looked back at the doctor. "Are you taking me to Jamie?"

A chiding smile in the gray beard. "You're not here for a reunion."

Her palms tingled.

"Open the laundry room."

She braced herself for unendurable horror, then opened the slatted door.

Jamie was perched atop the washing machine, staring down at two black coils on the floor. It took Alex a moment to absorb the reality. The snakes were thick and short, with big triangular heads and pointed snouts. Water moccasins-

"Aunt Alex!" Jamie cried, his eyes flashing. "You came!"

She forced herself to grin as though everything were fine now. "I sure did, buddy." She turned back to Dr. Tarver and hissed, "You sadist."

Tarver chuckled. "The boy's fine. See those cases?"

He'd gestured at two large waterproof cases on the safe side of the snakes. Pelicans, Alex thought. The kind of cases engineers used to haul expensive gear around the world. The larger case was bright yellow, the other white.

"I want you to carry them to the front of the house," Tarver said. "Move it."

"I'll be back, Jamie," she promised.

Jamie nodded with complete faith, but his eyes quickly returned to the snakes on the floor. The cases were almost too heavy for Alex to lift. As she backed out with them, she saw Dr. Tarver pick up a white croker sack with a drawstring and open it wide. Maybe he was going to bag the damned snakes for a while.

Realizing that Tarver had not followed her to the front room, she dropped the cases and rushed to Bill's gun cabinet. Behind those doors lay a wealth of firearms, but they were locked tight. She was trying to break them open when Tarver walked back into the room, dragging Jamie by one arm. Jamie screamed blue murder as he came, in the furious high-pitched voice of a ten-year-old boy. "My aunt Alex is going to blow your goddamn head off, you big ape!"

Tarver smacked the boy on the side of his head, dropping him to the floor. Jamie's screaming ceased.

Where's the shotgun? Alex wondered.

Tarver walked over to a bookshelf, reached up to a high one, and brought down an automatic pistol that Alex recognized as a Beretta from Bill's collection. Then he drew Alex's borrowed Sig-Sauer from the small of his back.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked. "Why didn't you just take off when you had the chance?"

Tarver gave her a tight smile. "I'm entering a new life today. Vanishing into another identity. And I would gladly have let you live to old age. But I'm afraid you have a clue to the road I'm taking to my new life. You may not know you have it, but you do. And if I let you live, you'll eventually remember."

With the most casual of motions, Dr. Tarver half turned and shot Bill Fennell in the head with Alex's Sig.

She jumped back in shock, but she had no time to worry about Bill. Jamie was stirring on the floor. If he raised his head, he would see his father's ruined face. She lunged across the space between them and covered Jamie with her body.

"Perfect," said Tarver. "How's this sound? You couldn't live another minute with the idea that your nephew was under the power of your brother-in-law. You came to rescue him. Fennell resisted, so you shot him. Sadly, the boy was killed in the crossfire. I think the Bureau will want the investigation closed as quickly as possible."

"Please," Alex said to the emotionless face. "Kill me, just let him live."

Tarver shook his head. "He can't survive to tell your friends at the Bureau that he had two strangers as overnight guests last night."

She blinked in bewilderment. "Two?"

"My brother Judah."

Alex pondered this. "Is that who's driving the truck? With the boat?"

Tarver smiled. "A little makeup can do wonders. Good-bye, Alexandra. You led a merry chase."

He switched the Beretta to his right hand, then stepped back, moving the gun left and right as though selecting a target appropriate to the intended fiction. An almost irresistible rush of instinct told Alex to lift Jamie as best she could and run. She knew she would accomplish nothing, but wasn't it better to die trying? The Beretta stabilized as Tarver settled on his final target. At least Jamie was unconscious for the end. Forcing her arms under him, she struggled to lift his sagging weight. No shot came. Why hasn't he fired? she wondered.

Dr. Tarver had cocked his head as though straining to hear something above the sound of the storm outside. Alex found herself listening, too, first in vain, but then…the relentless slapping of rotor blades separated from the rain, and she knew that John Kaiser's glorious Bell 430 was dropping down over the house like the Air Cav descending on a besieged hamlet in Vietnam.

"Your plan won't work now, Doctor," she said, summoning the calm equanimity of a hostage negotiator who has nothing personal at stake in a confrontation. "You'll never sell that story now, no matter what you do. Your being here screws it all up."