He moved to ease himself over the rocky edge and lower himself to the ground when a movement in the darkness below, another fifty yards farther to his left, caught his eye.

He stood absolutely still.

Staring down into the shadows, he saw nothing more and thought he must have imagined it.

Until a shape darker than the woods crept toward him and quickly became a human form.

But it couldn’t be.

He had such a head start on the man. How could he be here already?

Choices raced through his mind. Should he scramble back down the other side? Stay crouched on the ledge? Maybe he hadn’t been seen yet. Or any second there’d be a bullet. He drew his breath, determined not to scream and beg.

The figure crossed about ten yards below him. Mark could easily see the dark outline of a rifle barrel held upward toward the sky. But the man’s head seemed turned toward the forest, cocked to one side as if he listened for something down there. Not once did he glance up where Mark lay crouched.

Was it the same person who’d first shot at him? Had he found a less steep way up after all? Or was it someone else? His build looked slimmer, though in the dark Mark couldn’t be sure. An accomplice of the man who’d pursued him, perhaps, lying in wait, knowing his partner would chase the prey up to him?

Whoever it was remained focused on the forest below, looking down the hill, away from the ridge.

Some accomplice.

Mark breathed as softly as he could. The cold continued to rip through him, and he started to shiver. He clamped his jaws closed to keep his teeth from chattering.

The man beneath him continued to listen and stare into the woods, the white vapor of his breath whipping into the night.

If he turned, they’d be looking right at each other. Mark quietly curled into a ball and crept back against the bushes, burying his head in his arms to mask the white traces of his own breath in the frost. With his good eye he squinted along the ridge to see if the man he’d thought was on his heels had arrived.

No one.

Was the man not thirty feet from him the gunman?

No, Mark finally decided. From all the years he’d hiked and played around these hills he knew for certain there was no shortcut.

So who was this guy?

Just another hunter out poaching who had nothing to do with his pursuer?

Or is it me he’s listening for?

His shivering grew worse. His fingers ached. His eye throbbed.

He glanced once more along the ridge.

It was fully bathed in moonlight now.

There, against the sky, appeared the shape of a man climbing into view, a rifle on his back. An instant later he knelt and probed the ground around his feet with a penlight.

That same evening, Monday, November 19, 6:00 P.M.

New York City Hospital

Earl huddled against the wind at the Thirty-third Street entrance, cupping the mouthpiece of his cellular with his hand. Horizontal needles of rain stung against his skin. Everyone else rushing by seemed to have an umbrella. He eyed a kid who had been selling them out of a garbage bag and signaled him to bring one over, all the while continuing his conversation with Janet. “I came up empty. The only significant thing is that Cam Roper, Mark’s father, might have looked at those same charts just after Kelly went missing. Except he probably didn’t find anything either, or he would have done something about it. I can’t reach Mark to tell him. His phone doesn’t seem to be working.”

“It’s still pretty bizarre, those records attracting his interest,” Janet said.

“If I’m right about Kelly trying to find evidence of malpractice to use as leverage against Chaz, then maybe Cam Roper had followed up on those suspicions, or at least started to before he passed away.” He fished five bucks out of his pocket, and gave it to the pint-sized merchant, who cut the gloom with a grin as bright as polished ivory. Popping open what looked as flimsy as a bat wing and was undoubtedly stolen goods, Earl instantly felt better, but had to speak up as the rain drummed on the black material, creating the din of a thousand impatient fingers. “Cam could have thought she’d confronted Chaz with some grievous error he’d made that would ruin his career, and he’d killed her for it. Except Roper Senior likely came to the same conclusion as the M and M reports. ‘Unexpected but unavoidable digoxin toxicity with no obvious cause.’ ”

Janet said nothing.

In the roar of the storm he thought the connection was gone. “Janet?”

“I’m here.”

“So what’s got your tongue.”

“I hesitate to say it, but there’s another possible scenario.”

A wave of static interrupted them. “Go on,” he said, when it cleared.

“Somebody could have tried to murder those patients by secretly injecting extra doses of the drug.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched.”

“But not impossible. It’s occurred in hospitals before.”

“But no one ever raised the possibility of foul play here. Certainly it was never mentioned in the charts.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen.”

He exhaled the way only a former smoker can – long, slow, and from the bottom of his lungs. “Being unable to talk with either of them means I may never know.”

“What about family?”

“I talked with the woman’s son this afternoon, but he never brought up anything of that sort. I can call him back and ask him outright if she ever mentioned having any enemies or suspicions of someone trying to harm her, but I think he would have mentioned it if she had. As for the man who died, he’d no next of kin, so there isn’t a hope of finding out more there.”

She fell silent again.

“It isn’t entirely a dead end,” he continued. “I’ve arranged to meet with the floor staff involved in her care. Maybe they can tell me if she ever mentioned anyone who might hurt her. And it turns out Melanie Collins continued to see the woman as a patient from time to time over the years, so maybe she’ll be able to fill me in on something I’m missing.” He’d already left several messages on her service, asking her to call, but she hadn’t gotten back to him yet.

This time Janet let out a sigh, minor-league compared to his own. “Good luck, love. Oh, by the way, I looked up divorce law on the Internet, and as far as I can see, she’d have gone offshore.”

Once Janet got an idea, she was relentless. “That may be, but the police found no record of any plane or boat tickets in her name.”

“That doesn’t mean she didn’t intend to go there. Maybe her killer stopped her before she could make the move. All I know is, find a woman’s divorce lawyer, and you find someone who knows a lot about the woman.”

Mark huddled in the bushes, trying to blend with the scrubby growth.

The man on the ridge looked up from his study of the ground and seemed to stare right at him. Then he looked in the other direction, and finally rose to his feet. If he’d seen Mark or the hunter below, he showed no sign, turning away and peering into the night.

The hunter must have been outside his line of sight, Mark thought. Otherwise, if they were together, why hadn’t he called to him? Even if they weren’t, he would still have reacted, possibly even mistaken him for Mark and taken a shot at him.

Instead the man walked off in the opposite direction, playing his light over the snow on either side of the spiny path.

Mark exhaled in momentary relief.

Looking down he saw that the hunter hadn’t budged, his dark form still visible, his breath coming out in well-spaced puffs. By counting the interval, Mark estimated that whoever he was, he’d controlled his respirations down to ten a minute, which took rock-solid nerve.