Her frustration finally boiled over. "Listen to me! I know you don't like hearing it, but your wife drove two hours to Jackson to meet with Andrew Rusk, and she lied to you by not telling you about it. What do you think that adds up to?"

"Not murder," Chris said stubbornly. "I don't believe that. I can't."

Morse touched his arm. "That's because you're a doctor, not a lawyer. Every district attorney in this country has a list of people who come in on a weekly basis to plead with them to open a murder case on their loved one. The deaths are recorded as accidents, suicides, fires, a hundred things. But the parents or the children or the wives of the victims…they know the truth. It was murder. So they work their way through the system, begging for someone to take notice, to at least classify what happened as a crime. They hire detectives and spend their life savings trying to find the truth, to find justice. But they almost never do. Eventually they turn into something like ghosts. Some of them stay ghosts for the rest of their lives." Morse looked at Chris with the furious eyes of a hardened combat soldier. "I'm no ghost, Doctor. I will not stand by and let my sister be erased for someone's convenience-for his profit." Her voice took on a dangerous edge. "As God is my witness, I will not do that."

Out of respect, Chris waited a few moments to respond. "I support what you're doing, okay? I even admire you for it. But the difference is, you have personal stake in this. I don't."

Her eyes narrowed. "Yes, you do. You just haven't accepted it yet."

"Please don't start again."

"Doctor, I would do anything to get you to help me. Do you understand? I'd go over there in the bushes and pull my shorts down for you, if that's what it would take." Her eyes gleamed with cold fire. "But I don't have to do that."

Chris didn't like the look that had come into her face. "Why not?"

"Because your wife is cheating on you."

He tried to keep the shock out of his face, but nothing could slow his pounding heart.

"Thora's screwing a surgeon right here in town," Morse went on. "His name is Shane Lansing."

"Bullshit," Chris said in a hoarse whisper.

Morse's eyes didn't waver.

"Do you have proof?"

"Circumstantial evidence."

"Circumstantial…? I don't want to hear it."

"Denial is always the first response."

"Shut up, goddamn it!"

Morse's face softened. "I know how it hurts, okay? I was engaged once, until I found out my fiancé was doing my best friend. But pride is your enemy now, Chris. You have to see things straight."

"I should see things straight? You're the one spinning out Byzantine theories of mass murder. Cancer as a weapon, a newlywed planning to murder her husband…no wonder you're out on your own!"

Morse's level gaze was unrelenting. "If I'm crazy, then tell me one thing. Why didn't you call the FBI to report me yesterday?"

He stared down at the concrete rail.

"Why, Chris?"

He felt the words come to him as if of their own accord. "Thora's leaving town this week. She told me last night."

Morse's mouth dropped open. "Where's she going?"

"Up to the Delta. A spa up in Greenwood. A famous hotel."

"The Alluvian?"

He nodded.

"I know it. When's she leaving?"

"Maybe tomorrow. This week, for sure."

"Returning when?"

"Three nights, then home."

Morse made a fist and brought it to her mouth. "This is it, Chris. My God…they're moving fast. You have to deal with this now. You're in extreme danger. Right now."

He took her by the shoulders and shook her. "Do you hear yourself? Everything you told me is circumstantial. There wasn't one fact in the whole goddamn pile!"

"I know it seems that way. I know you don't want to believe any of it. But…look, do you want to know everything I know?"

He stared at her for a long time. "I don't think so." He looked at his watch. "I'm really late. I need to get back to my truck. I can't wait for you now."

He climbed onto his bike and started to leave, but Morse grabbed his elbow with surprising strength. With her other hand she removed something from her shorts. A cell phone.

"Take this," she said. "My cell number is programmed into it. You can speak frankly on it. It's the only safe link we'll have."

He pushed the phone away. "I don't want it."

"Don't be a sap, Chris. Please."

He looked at the phone like a tribesman suspicious of some miraculous technology. "How would I explain it to Thora?"

"Thora's leaving town. You can hide it for a day or two, can't you?"

He angrily expelled air from his cheeks, but he took the phone.

Morse's eyes fairly shone with urgency. "You have to drop the nice-guy routine, Chris. You're in mortal fucking peril."

A strange laugh escaped his mouth. "I'm sorry, I just don't believe that."

"Time will take care of that. One way or another."

He wanted to race away, but again his Southern upbringing stopped him. "Will you be okay out here?"

Morse turned and lifted the tail of her shirt, revealing the molded butt of a semiautomatic pistol. It looked huge against her tiny waist. As he stared, she climbed onto her bike and gripped her handlebars. "Call me soon. We don't have much time to prepare."

"What if I call the FBI instead?"

She shrugged as though genuinely unconcerned. "Then my career is over. But I won't stop. And I'll still try to save you."

Chris slipped his feet into his pedal clips and rode quickly away.

Andrew Rusk gunned his Porsche Cayenne, shot across two lanes of traffic, then checked his rearview mirror. For the past week, he'd had the feeling that someone was following him. Not only on the road, either. He usually ate lunch in the finer local restaurants, and on more than one occasion he'd had the sense that someone was watching him, turning away just before he looked around to catch them. But he felt it most on the highway. Yet if someone was tailing him, they were good. Probably using multiple vehicles-which was a bad sign. Multiple vehicles meant official interest, and he didn't want to have to say anything to Glykon about official interest. And he hadn't had to, so long as he remained unsure.

Today was different. Today a dark blue Crown Victoria had been pacing him ever since he climbed onto I-55. He had made several extreme changes in speed, and the Crown Vic had stayed with him. When Rusk pretended to exit the freeway, then shot back onto the interstate at the last second, his pursuer had finally betrayed himself. The good news was that a law enforcement entity using multiple vehicles would be extremely unlikely to make a bush-league mistake like that. The bad news was that Rusk had a meeting to make, and no time to waste losing a tail.

As he drove southward, a possible solution came to him. Exiting onto Meadowbrook Drive, he drove under the interstate and headed east. The Crown Vic stayed ten car lengths behind. Soon he was rolling through Old Eastover, one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the capital city. Rusk wondered if the Ford might be a government car. The FBI sometimes used Crown Vics. Underpowered American crap…

He kept to the main street, which was slowly but steadily dropping in elevation. He wondered whether his tail knew that this gradual drop was caused by their increasing proximity to the Pearl River. A few years ago, the area ahead of them had been a flood plain, unsuitable for building. It was still a flood plain, but in the interim money had spoken, and now the low-lying land was a spanking new housing development.

A few years back, Rusk had done some kayaking on the Pearl with a friend who was getting in shape for a float trip in Canada. At that time, the woods near the edge of the river had been honeycombed with dirt roads, most of them kept open by crazy kids on four-wheelers. If Rusk was right, some of those rutted roads would still be there, in spite of the new houses…