Under his arm appeared to be a plastic bottle of water; his right hand leveled a gun at her.

Sweat popped from her and she bit her lower lip to focus on that instead of her churning belly.

ENZO, she shrieked in her mind. The phantom dog did not answer. Great. He’d been pretty nearly inseparable from her and now he wasn’t here. Where the heck was he?

She stared at Ted, tasting bile again, acid searing her throat. He didn’t look scary, really. Unless you looked at his eyes . . . or his smile . . . or the gun he was holding. Her throbbing head indicated he would use violence to get what he wanted.

“So, what do you think? Ready to talk?” He offered the water.

She yearned for it. But, blinking, she saw that the cap had been broken and the bottle opened. No telling what filthy drug he might have put in there. Or could it be a fake-out and he expected her to notice that it had been opened and have qualms.

She realized she didn’t know enough about the jerk.

She could hold out for a little bit, until her aches subsided, her head felt less muzzy.

“I think I’ll refuse your so-generous offer.”

Color flushed his face reddish. The heat couldn’t be good for him. As for her, she knew she had a sweat stain along the spine of her shirt. “Fine!” He kicked the door shut hard. The tongue of the lock didn’t catch, and it bounced. Clare could have told him it would.

Scowling, he shut the door and locked it. This time she heard additional sounds, as if he’d added another lock on the outside of the door!

This was her house, had been her home, and she knew all its quirks. She went to the high window that didn’t close all the way, leaving a tiny gap she had to block during the winter.

Ted had managed to shut it, but she’d bet anything that even without the crank handle, she could open it. She set her hands against the window and tried to slide it open. It budged a tiny bit. She hissed a frustrated sigh. Maybe in several hours she could get the thing open. She didn’t think she had that amount of time, despite what Ted said. He was an impatient man, wanting, like so many people did, instant gratification . . . like quick access to mythical 1863 gold.

Now that Ted had mentioned it, she needed water. It had been a “trip day,” so she hadn’t drunk a lot. It had also been hot and she’d done minor physical labor. She was probably dehydrated.

She hadn’t eaten much either, and the way acid pitched in her stomach, she was glad of that. Soon, though, her bladder would be bothering her. She’d stopped once on the way back at a gas station to refuel the car to full and to pee, but that had been hours ago.

Enzo! she called again, and waited futilely for an answer.

She was right; Ted returned only a few minutes later with only the gun.

“A gunshot will be noticed in this neighborhood.” The area was solidly middle class.

His pursing lips made his mouth tiny. She’d never noticed his mouth was smaller than average, though when his grin showed his teeth all the way to his incisors, his mouth looked huge.

“You’re right.” He pouted. “I’ll have to work with a knife first, I suppose.”

THIRTY-THREE

HE TURNED AND left, not even closing the door, but Clare was busy holding her hands over her mouth swallowing and swallowing again. She should just upchuck and get it over with, instead of fighting to be mannerly, civilized, decent. Belatedly she lumbered to the door, found it blocked by Ted.

Again he shoved her back and she landed on her rump and winced, and then her eyes went to the gleam of a knife in his hand.

“I should maybe start with a knife. I have handcuffs and ropes and stuff, too, but I wanted to be nice about this.”

Her heart thumped hard, her pulse in her temples drowning out everything else.

 • • •

Around sunset, after a workout and shower and dinner, Zach got so twitchy that he couldn’t stay in.

The bartitsu studio was having a class that he’d been invited to observe and he decided to do that, dressed in old jeans that had plenty of give and a T-shirt.

As he exited his apartment, his scalp tingled and his hair rose. He heard a caw and instinctively his shoulders hunched. Didn’t matter that he couldn’t see the damn crows, he knew they sat on a power cable above and behind him. He could almost imagine the number of them . . . No. No, he couldn’t. So he’d have to turn around and look.

He let his shoulders sink, gripped the handle of his cane, and pivoted around.

Seven. Just like a few days before. Seven for a secret not to be told. Hell, he was in the business of secrets, ferreting them out. Shouldn’t he have expected this more often?

Then two more crows joined their friends. Fear skewered Zach. Nine. Nine for hell.

The last time he’d seen nine had been when he’d gone to help Clare and had noticed the bank robbery. Clare’s secret, the bank robber’s secret, whichever had pulled him had been . . . dire, hellish.

Not just run-of-the-mill secrets like who bought Mrs. Flinton’s antiques.

And he knew deep down in the marrow of his bones, in the ache around the damn titanium, that trouble had found Clare. Again.

If he went to her, he’d be admitting her insights were right, wouldn’t he? That he really had to accept the changes in his life, move past the denial part of the stages of loss that the shrink he’d talked to had laid out.

He’d passed right through the bargaining, not his kind of deal, and hard to bargain when you usually figured you’d lose, especially when you couldn’t control your own damn foot. Not hard to show the anger part, but he’d faked the acceptance, hadn’t truly gotten out of the denial phase. Deny, deny, deny. Change his venue so he could continue to deny.

Usually he didn’t let his mind play tricks on him, but he had now. He wasn’t ready to accept that his previous career was over, that his life had changed.

Crap. Where had his balls gone? Emotional courage. He’d always thought of himself as strong in every way, but he was nothing but an emotional coward.

Disgust at himself rolled tsunami-like through him, threatening to overwhelm. He could just go under. Prove himself weak, a lot weaker than his father. The thought of that man flashed anger that buoyed Zach. Like always, he wouldn’t ever be less than the General.

As far as Zach was concerned, the guy knew nothing about emotions. So Zach hurt, in his ankle and his mind and his heart. He damn well grieved for the life he had lost.

He stomped to his new vehicle, lifting his knee high so there was no chance of dragging his foot.

Yeah, he’d been avoiding the gut knowledge that Nothing Would Ever Be the Same. Because he sure didn’t want to wack out like Clare had.

She was better now . . . and his father, who’d stuck his always-vestigial emotions into the deep freeze when Jim had died . . . Zach didn’t want to be anything like General Slade. Better to hurt and suffer and . . . be a whole man. So he wouldn’t lie to himself anymore. He might not be able to admit, aloud and in words, that he hurt, but that was different.

Time to find out what danger threatened Clare.

He opened the door and stepped up into the truck, bumped his ankle and sweated and swore as his vision went white with pain. Then he set his jaw and went on, hit the ignition, exited from the drive, and turned onto the street. He glanced up at the line of crows. They were gone. He kept on swearing as he drove to Clare’s new place.

She wasn’t at home, the security was on, and there was no sign of her car. As far as Zach knew, she could have decided to keep on going to Cold Springs.