She sighed.

“I see that room and… it’s like I’m going to pass out,” he told her. “It’s like I want to pass out.”

She shook her head, as if it were a way to change the subject. “I guess you’ve got enough on your mind,” she told him.

He looked puzzled.” I do?”

“Well, brain surgery.” She placed the pointed end of one chopstick atop a single black bean, punctured it, then tried to obscure what seemed like an unfortunate metaphorical action by messing around with the rest of the food on her plate.

“Do you always do that?” he said after a while, his tone light.

“What?”

He indicated the little mounds of rice and vegetables she’d constructed. “Because Dr. Freud has some pretty interesting opinions about that kind of thing.”

She laughed. “Playing with my food,” she said, pushing the food into a single mound, then squaring it off. “My detractors would say it’s the only kind of play I’m capable of.”

“You have detractors?”

She drew diagonal paths through the square of food, separating it into four triangles. “Ummmm. ‘I’m not much fun. I’m a worker bee. I’m all business.’”

He laughed. “I think your detractors are jealous.”

She smiled. Said, “Thanks.” Thought, Uh-oh.

She was starting to get attached to this guy. In fact, she was starting to like him—and maybe more than like him (which would be a real disaster). Probably the Stockholm Syndrome, she thought. While Duran wasn’t her captor, they were captive together in this weird situation, and it was natural, she supposed, that she would begin to feel that they were some kind of… team. She ran her thumb down the side of the Tsing Tsao bottle, leaving a clear path through the condensation. Then she picked it up and drained it.

An hour later, she was standing in the kitchen, washing up, when she heard him make a call. Turning off the water, she set the plate in the drainer, and listened.

“Yeah, Doc,” he said, “It’s Jeff Duran… right. Fine, thanks. Listen, I just wanted to say—I’ve thought it over, and… I’m in.”

Shaw telephoned at eight in the morning, waking Adrienne even as Duran pulled a pillow over his head.

“We can do it on Tuesday,” he told her. “I’ve got Nick Allalin on board—he’s the neurosurgeon—and I’m lining up the O/R. I may have to do a bit of camel-trading, but… we’re there.”

Adrienne swung her legs out of the bed, and sat up. “Tuesday?”

Shaw could hear the disappointment in her voice. “Best I could do,” he said. “Even that—”

“Tuesday’s fine,” she decided. “It’s just that… I was wondering what we’d do in the meantime. New York’s so expensive, and—another three days…”

“Why not go home? Tell Jeff to put his feet up for a while, and—I’m sure you’re missed at Slough, Hawley.”

“Mmmnnn…”

They rolled into Bethany at dusk, and stopped at the supermarket, first thing.

“I wish I could cook something fabulous,” Adrienne said, as she requested a rotisserie chicken from the clerk—who expertly plucked it free of its metal prongs and slipped it into a bag lined in aluminum foil. They continued down the aisle, stopping to get a prepackaged salad. “But the truth is,” she continued, “the kind of things we ate at home, well, I’m not sure you’d be too happy.”

“What,” Duran said. “You mean, like meatloaf? I happen to like meatloaf.”

“Meatloaf—that would be haute cuisine. My personal specialty was tater-tot casserole,” Adrienne said. “And Hamburger Helper was pretty big. Tuna wiggle. Chicken à la king. And you know that thing with marshmallows and coconut that someone always brings to potluck dinners? I used to love that.”

“What’s a tuna-wiggle?” Duran wondered. “Sounds like—”

“Don’t ask. You need noodles, and cream of mushroom soup. And lots of Ritz crackers.”

Returning to the cottage, parking behind it, hearing and feeling the familiar crunch of the pea gravel under their tires—all this gave Adrienne a brief flush of pleasure, a spurious (she reminded herself) sense of coming home.

When they’d eaten, she changed into jeans and a sweater and, accompanied by Duran, went for a walk on the beach, braving the cold. She loved the smell of the sea, the thump of the surf, and the clatter of pebbles dragged by the undertow. But the air was freezing. She could see her breath, and it made her shiver. Noticing this, Duran put his arm around her shoulders, even as he lowered his head against the onshore wind. For a moment, Adrienne stiffened—then, warming, relaxed, sagging into him ever so slightly.

After a while, she asked, “Are you worried about the surgery?”

Duran shrugged.

“You’d be crazy not to be.”

He chuckled. “Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?”

After a couple of hundred yards, they returned to the house, invigorated. “I want to take another look at this,” Adrienne said, sitting down at the dining room table with Nikki’s computer. “I’m sure there’s something on it that I missed.” She waited for the machine to boot up. “You any good with these things?”

Duran shrugged. “I could take a look.” He leaned over her shoulder.

“I’ve been through everything I could think of: calendar, address book, e-mail, accounting programs. I’ve called up every file I can find, and there’s nothing.”

“You look at the temporary Internet files?”

She rolled her eyes. “No.”

Duran sat down beside her. “Go to Start,” he said. “Then Settings. Then Control Panel.” She moved the pointer as he directed. “Now hit the Internet icon and… you see where it says, ‘Temporary Internet Files’… click on the Settings button, and—”

“‘View Files’?”

He nodded. She clicked, and a window appeared with scores of Internet addresses, listed by Name, Address, and Last Access.

The two of them scanned the addresses together, scrolling down the page. Besides the usual assortment of cookies, banner and GIF files, there were lots of URLs, though most of them had been accessed only once or twice:

cookie:jacko@jcrew.com

cookie:jacko@washingtonpost.com

http://www.travelocity.com

http://www.mothernature.com

http://www.theprogram.org

http://www.jcrew.com

http://www.victoriassecret.com

http://www.theprogram.org

“What’s that one?” Duran asked, stabbing his finger at an entry that came up, time and again: cookie:jacko@theprogram.org

Adrienne shook her head. “It’s like she went there every day.”

Duran nodded. “And who’s Jacko?” he asked.

“Her dog,” Adrienne explained. “I guess she named her computer after her dog.” She continued scrolling.

cookie:jacko@theprogram.org

cookie: jacko@ceoexpress.com

http://www.theprogram.org

http://www.theprogram.org

http://www.theprogram.org

http://www.mothernature.com

http://www.jcrew.com

http://www.theprogram.org

“It’s every day,” Adrienne said. “Sometimes, a couple of times a day.” She looked at Duran. “Shall we?”

He nodded.

She closed the Control Panel windows, clicked on the AOL icon, and waited as it went through its routine. Finally, there was a rush of white noise, some honks and beeps—and she was on.

“You want a beer?” Duran asked, getting to his feet.

“Sure,” she replied. Moving the cursor to the window at the top of the screen, she typed theprogram.org, and hit Return. A moment later, Duran was back with a couple of bottles of Hop Pocket Ale, which he set on the table beside her as he took a seat. Her foot was tapping impatiently on the floor. “I hate how long this takes,” she muttered.