"I'll play your silly game," he said. "These are fresh bao, but sadly I only bought a dozen."

She gave him a look, held out a be-ringed hand punctuated with red nail polish. "A dozen feeds a hungry family of four. Give."

"Besides, they're just out of the oven. Way too hot to eat."

"I'll blow on them."

Hunt sighed theatrically. "It doesn't seem right." He opened the bag, handed her one of the buns. He turned and let himself into his office, closing the frosted glass door behind him. Taking off his coat, hanging it on the rack by his door, he reached around and took out his new gun, just to look at it again. But holding it now, he suddenly realized that he needed to run downtown and get his CCW-carry a concealed weapon-permit updated to cover it. Technically, he shouldn't be walking around with the thing in its holster on him until he'd done all the paperwork. He reminded himself to remember to take care of it at lunchtime, then put the gun back where it belonged and went around to his desk.

The office was good-sized, square, utilitarian. When he'd first seen it, it had essentially been a large windowless closet-a major factor in its affordable rent. His first improvement was to knock out a three-foot-square section of the wall and put glass between Tamara's office and his own to let in some natural light.

Next Hunt installed wall-to-wall carpet throughout. He had a standard-issue IKEA blond desk with a computer and phone and a matching swivel chair and a double stack of light tan metal filing cabinets. From his home, he'd brought down two acoustic guitars-one steel and one gut-and hung them for easy access on the wall to his left. On his right was a Corian counter with a sink and hot plate and printer and fax machine on top and a small refrigerator with drawers for surveillance supplies-night goggles, binoculars, pilot bags when pit stops to pee weren't an option-and photo equipment underneath. He thought that the bunch of framed old black-and-white baseball photographs that he'd gotten cheap at the ballpark didn't look too bad above the counter.

He'd resisted the urge to call Andrea when he'd gotten up. He knew that he could have pretended that he was just checking up on her, making sure she was feeling okay, that her hangover had abated, but he didn't need Juhle to tell him how lame that would be. He'd get in touch later in the day, casually. No mention of the phone call she had promised yesterday.

Now that he'd made it all the way into work without having yielded to the temptation to call her, he resolved that he'd put it off until later and simply ask her out. She'd either say yes or no. He didn't really believe it, but he knew it was possible that their moment yesterday could after all have been her exhaustion and vulnerability, and he didn't want to play to those cards. If anything real had been there yesterday, it would still be there today-or even tomorrow.

He forced her out of his mind.

After his day off yesterday, his workload had backed up and was fairly heavy. At noon, he was scheduled to assist in some predeposition statements from some witnesses in a fraud case at one of his clients' offices, which might take up a good portion of the afternoon. He had three surveillances of one kind or another that were in more or less active status. A doctor had also hired him to find out some history about his very rich mother's new and much younger boyfriend. And when things got slow, he could always fall back on locating witnesses-there were always a few that needed to be found.

But he had some computer work to get out of the way first. He was taking an online class on information technology and computer forensics, pumping up his skills set to compete with the big PI firms should his specialization as a legal investigator become a liability. When he finished today's lesson, he was planning to search the Net as part of a background check on one of the job applicants with an executive headhunting firm that he'd snagged as a client.

Engrossed in the intricacies of computer forensics, he never heard the telephone ring outside on Tamara's desk. He had told her that he was doing his lesson online and didn't want to be disturbed for an hour. So he jumped when the phone went off at his elbow.

"That was a short hour," he said.

"I'm sorry, but it's Amy Wu. I thought you'd want to talk to her. She sounds upset."

If it was Wu, he would talk to her. He punched at the phone. "Amy, what's up?"

Her voice unusually serious, Wu said, "Maybe nothing. Maybe I'm just paranoid. I was wondering if you've talked to Andrea recently."

"Not since yesterday afternoon."

"Okay, maybe that's good news. What time was that?"

"Two. Two thirty. Why would it be bad news?"

Wu paused. "I've been calling all around. Nobody's seen her. Well, nobody I've talked to at least. I've called Spencer, too, and he hasn't heard from her since Tuesday night. He told me to try you."

Hunt knew well enough the reason that her Trial TV producer hadn't heard from her. He also assumed that Fairchild must have seen him rush out after Parisi at the Occidental.

But Wu was going on. "Last night I paged her and also left a message at her home, asking her to call me no matter what time she got in, and she never did."

"Call? Or get in?"

"I don't know for sure. Both."

"What was so urgent?"

Wu hesitated. "Did you hear they identified the woman who was killed with Judge Palmer?"

"I did. Staci something, right? Waitress at MoMo's. I didn't know her."

"We did. Andrea and Jason and I. We all knew who she was at least."

"So that's why you wanted to get to Andrea? To tell her about Staci?"

"Originally. You know, to talk about it a little. But then when she didn't call back…"

"Did you try her at work? She was going in there when I left her."

Another pause. "When you left her? You're saying you didn't just talk to her yesterday afternoon, you were with her?"

"She passed out, and I took her back to my place." He gave her the short version. "Anyway, after she got herself together, I took her home. She was talking about going in to work."

"But she didn't go to work. Not yesterday. And she's not there now and hasn't called this morning."

Hunt, frowning, checked his watch. True, it wasn't yet ten o'clock. And okay, Parisi could have gotten in sometime after he left her driveway last night and be out having an early meeting with a client. She could be doing a morning workout. She could be out jogging. She could have simply decided to sleep in and not answer her telephone. She might even have stood him up to go out with another guy and wasn't back home yet. But Wu, not really given to histrionics, was upset. Hunt felt a seed of real concern in the bottom of his gut. "Was her secretary worried?" he asked.

"Not particularly. She said that sometimes she comes in later."

"That's probably what it is."

"Maybe. But you know Andrea, Wyatt. You page her, she calls back. Her cell phone's surgically implanted in her ear."

"Maybe she's turned it off."

"That would take us to the outer fringes of reality."

Hunt believed Wu, but so what? Given the events of Parisi's last couple of days, he considered it plausible that she might have turned off her cell phone and simply checked out for a few hours. She'd given him every sign that she wanted to think about things. But again, Wu was their mutual friend, and her worry was genuine and somewhat contagious. "Who else have you tried?" he asked her. "Does she have family nearby? Maybe she's staying with them."

"I know her mom teaches at Cal and lives in Berkeley, I think, but I don't have her number, and I'm not sure if I want to get her worried, too."

"I could find her and call and make it sound innocuous. I promise."

"Do you think it would be dumb to check anywhere official?"