He turned right and parked the Cayenne in front of a large ranch house. Would the Crown Vic pull up behind him? Or would it try to preserve some illusion of unconcern? He watched the dark blue silhouette slow as it passed the opening to the street, then drive on. Rusk shot forward, following the residential street through its long U-shape and back to the main road of the subdivision. When he emerged, the road in front of him was empty.

He checked his rearview mirror: the Crown Vic was idling about a hundred yards behind him. Rusk floored the accelerator, and the Turbo roared, pressing him into the seat like an astronaut in the boost phase of a launch. In seconds he was hurtling toward a wall of trees and chest-high weeds.

As the dead-end barrier expanded to nightmare proportions, Rusk spied a dirt road to the left of it. The opening was scarcely wide enough to accommodate the Porsche, but he didn't hesitate. With a rush of adrenaline, he wrenched his wheel left, gunned the Turbo, and blew right through the opening in the trees, praying that he wouldn't meet some kid on a four-wheeler and crush him like a bug on his grille.

The Cayenne jounced up and down like a dune buggy in Baja, but Rusk kept his foot jammed nearly to the floor. The ass of the Cayenne flew into the air, and its nose slammed down into a deep hole, spraying water in all directions. Before all momentum died, Rusk jiggered the steering wheel and applied power, letting the four-wheel drive do its work. After a few tense moments, the rear tires found traction and he scrambled up out of the hole, his front wheels spinning with a high whine. Rusk howled with delight when his front wheels grabbed the sandy ground and hurled him down the rutted track, his engine growling like an angry grizzly bear.

No cheap-ass Crown Victoria could follow him through that hole. The only remaining trick was to find his way back to a paved road before his pursuer figured out where he might emerge. He kept bearing toward the river-or where he thought the river was-keeping his eyes open for a wider track. His instinct didn't fail him. In less than a minute, he saw the broad brown stream of the Pearl cutting through a wide ravine thirty yards below. He whipped the wheel to the right and started following the river's course.

Where was the Crown Vic? Was its driver a Jackson native? Would he guess that Rusk was trying to work his way south and back onto paved roads? The mystery man in the Crown Vic could easily call for backup: another car, or maybe even a chopper. A chopper would be tough to evade, unless Rusk abandoned the Cayenne and went to ground in the woods. But what would that accomplish? They already knew who he was. He'd long had an escape plan in place-one that would put him out of reach of all American authorities-but it would be tough to implement if they were already sending choppers after him.

They're not, he told himself. It's not even a they, as far as I know. It's one guy.

"Yeah, but who?" he said aloud.

That fucking girl.

Rusk gritted his teeth against the juddering of the Porsche. All he could do was play the hand he was dealt.

A beautiful wooden canoe rounded the river bend ahead of him, piloted by two college-age girls with bright red backpacks stowed between them. Rusk wondered if they'd started out on the Strong River, then entered the Pearl not far away. He'd floated that trip back in high school, with some fellow Boy Scouts. As Rusk watched the girls, that memory brought strange baggage with it. He was a long way from the Boy Scouts now-good old Pack 8. And their motto…holy Christ. There was a reason people called babes in the woods Boy Scouts-

Rusk mashed his brake pedal. Just beyond a cluster of thick bamboo stalks on his right, a dark tunnel opened in the trees. Deep wheel ruts led into it, and at the opening lay a pile of half-burned logs and about a hundred empty beer cans. Rusk nodded with satisfaction. That road led back to civilization. He gave the Porsche some gas, ramped over a sand berm, and raced toward the tunnel. Ten seconds later the shadows swallowed him. He was still laughing when he bounced onto clean asphalt and drove unmolested toward the I-55 overpass towering in the distance.

The sun was fully up now, and Chris was pushing his pickup well over the speed limit. The rain had finally petered out, but his left front wheel threw up a wall of glistening spray as he swung onto the bypass that would take him to Highway 61 South.

Alex Morse's final revelation had left him hollow inside. He couldn't really think about it yet. But at least he'd solved the mystery that Darryl Foster had been unable to explain. Special Agent Morse was a rogue agent conducting a murder investigation that the FBI knew nothing about. And not just an investigation, but a quest, a single-minded mission to punish those she believed had murdered her sister. She had been on that mission for five weeks, yet all she had produced were some fascinating theories and circumstantial evidence. And yet, he thought with something like shame, when she finally offered to reveal real evidence, I cut her off. As he passed the Super Wal-Mart, he picked up the cell phone Morse had given him and dialed the only number in the SIMM memory.

"It's Alex," Morse answered. "Are you okay? I know I hit you pretty hard back there about Thora."

"What evidence do you have tying my wife to Shane Lansing?"

Morse took an audible breath. "Twice this week, Dr. Lansing has stopped at your new house while Thora was there."

Chris felt a wave of relief. "So what? Shane lives in that neighborhood."

"The first time he stayed inside for twenty-eight minutes."

"And the second?"

"Fifty-two minutes."

Fifty-two minutes. Long enough to-"Thora was probably showing off the place to him. She designed the house herself. And there were workmen there, right?"

Morse's reply was a blunt as a hammer. "No workmen."

"Neither time?"

"Neither time. I'm sorry, Chris."

He grimaced. "That could still be innocent contact, you know?"

"Is that how you think of Shane Lansing? A choirboy?"

Chris didn't think of Lansing in those terms at all.

"No matter who I ask about him," Morse said, "I hear three things: he's a gifted surgeon, he's an arrogant asshole who treats nurses like shit, and he's a pussy hound."

Chris flinched.

"I also hear he likes them pretty," Morse added. "Thora definitely meets that requirement."

"Is that everything?"

"No. I've talked to a few nurses in the last five days."

"And?"

"They say Thora had an affair with a married doctor when she first got to town. Seven years ago. That was before you knew her, right? The guy was an ER doctor. Did she ever tell you about that?"

"Who was the guy supposed to be?"

"His name was Dennis Stephens."

A faint memory of a young, bearded face went through Chris's mind. "Never heard of him."

"Apparently the affair started getting out of hand, so Stephens took a job in another state."

"The hospital is always buzzing with gossip like that."

Morse said nothing.

"Thora would have been single at that time, anyway."

"There's also a story about her and an ophthalmic surgeon who was here for a while. This would have been just before she married Red Simmons."

"A lot of nurses hate my wife, Agent Morse. They think she's arrogant."

"Is she?"

"That's hard to answer. Thora's smarter than half the doctors here, in terms of raw intelligence. You can imagine the effect that has on them. Most of them are men."

"I can relate to that." The cellular connection crackled with static. "I'm your friend, Chris, even though you don't know me. Friends tell the truth, even when it's tough."