“Give me your number. I’ll get back to you when I’ve pinged it.”

When she’d hung up, she detached the flexible plastic sheet from the computer’s screen and put it carefully back in its case. Then she thought about it, and decided to put the overlay somewhere that Duran couldn’t get at it. Rolling it up, she stuck it in her purse—which she’d keep with her in her room.

Then she laid out what she’d need in the morning, and set it by the front door. Somehow, without consciously thinking about it, she’d reached a decision about her job: in the morning, she’d go to Washington. Not to work (after what had happened at the Comfort Inn, there was no way she could go to the office). But if she got up early enough—at six, say—she could catch Slough at home. He never got to work before 10:15, so if she got there by nine or nine-thirty, she might be able to explain things. And save her job.

That, at least, was the plan, and it was certainly better than sitting around in Bethany Beach, waiting for Duran to go off.

When she’d finished getting her things together, she scrubbed the kitchen sink and wiped down the counters, emptied all the trash into a garbage bag and carried it outside to the Dumpster. Then the telephone rang, and she ran back in to answer it.

“Scout?” It was Carl.

“Hi!”

“I got it for you. The site with the error message.”

“Oooh! What a good boy! Tell me, tell me, tell me—”

“Believe me, this was not a piece of cake.”

“I believe you.”

“For some reason, there’s a lot of insulation—”

“Tell me.”

“It’s in Switzerland. Something called the Prudhomme Clinic.” He spelled it for her. “It’s in a town called Spiez.” He spelled that, too. “Any of this mean anything to you?”

“Not exactly. Although my sister—she had… well, she had a head injury in Europe, and part of the time—she was in Switzerland. But I’m not sure where.”

“Well, I looked the place up. It’s been in business since ‘52. Specializes in eating disorders. Your sister anorexic?”

“No. She was in a coma for a while. And when she woke up… she had amnesia.”

Carl grunted his disappointment. “So it’s probably not this place, then.” His voice brightened. “Wait—did she have a drug problem? Because this place does drug rehab, too, what they call addiction services.”

“Well… I don’t think she was an addict, but… yes.”

“Yeah? Well, there you go.”

She thanked him for all the help he’d been, and hung up, thinking that she’d better get to bed if she was going to be up at six.

Going from room to room, she locked the doors, turned down the heat and shut off the lights. Then she set the alarm and climbed into bed, where she lay beneath the covers, thinking about the Prudhomme Clinic. Maybe the fact that the Web site had all that “insulation,” as Carl put it, had to do with medical privacy. Could it be an aftercare protocol of some sort, where former patients checked in for support? She sighed. If so, Nikki had never mentioned it. And what about that weird stuff with Duran? What was his connection to the clinic? The Web site was interactive in some way, and in his case, it had induced a trance state. And what about those images, flipping and rolling like that?

It didn’t make sense. None of it did.

She left a note for Duran in the morning, explaining that she’d gotten up early and gone to Washington to get Nikki’s mail—the checks Nikki had written and her credit card records. She’d be back by five with a couple of steaks and a bag of hardwood charcoal for the grill. She remembered that he didn’t have any cash, and left him a twenty.

Buy a bottle of cabernet, okay?

A.

What she didn’t mention, because she knew that Duran wouldn’t approve, was that she was going to see Curtis Slough, first. Not that she’d given much thought to what she’d say. But something had to be done. She couldn’t just disappear. And neither could she go to the office—that much was for certain after what had happened at the Comfort Inn. At any rate, he wouldn’t even be at the office today. It was Sunday, and she was going to catch him at home. At least she hoped so.

Driving through the flat Delmarva farmland, the sky brightening in her rearview mirror, Adrienne thought about what she might say—and rehearsed it as she drove, babbling at the windshield, making fun of herself.

In point of fact, Curtis, the most remarkable thing occurred the other night: as I slept on my cot at the hospice, where I’ve been caring for the elderly and infirm… No. Slough didn’t give a damn about the elderly or infirm. But he did make a big deal about people in the office giving to Catholic charities, so how about: Curtis, I’ve had a vision of the Blessed Virgin, and need a leave of absence to communicate her message. No. That wouldn’t do either.

It lifted her spirits to joke like this, but the truth was, a lot was riding on the meeting she was about to have—and whatever she said, it had better be good. I need a lawyer, she told herself. And not just any lawyer, but a trial lawyer—Johnny Cochran, or Racehorse Haynes. A real advocate. But she didn’t have one. Which put her in the awkward position of having to fall back on the truth.

It wasn’t her fault, after all. On the contrary, she’d risked her life to go to work last week, and it had almost gotten her killed. And it wasn’t as if she’d taken a lot of time off before her sister died. On the contrary, she’d worked sixty-hour weeks for nearly a year, with no vacation or sick-days, coming in on weekends and holidays. Admittedly, she’d blown the deposition, but hey—depositions could be rescheduled. At most, she’d inconvenienced people—for which she was sorry, but it wasn’t as if she’d had any choice.

So it went, from 7 to 8 and 8 to 9, rehearsing her spiel through farmland, suburbs and, finally, the Beltway and city traffic—by which time, she had her story down pat.

Curtis Slough’s house was a million-dollar pile in Spring Valley, an Edenic woodland in the heart of the city, just off Rock Creek Park. Adrienne had only been there once before, and that was on an errand, bringing Slough his briefcase from the office. She didn’t remember the number, but there weren’t that many homes in this most expensive of Washington subdivisions—and Slough’s house was an eyeful that one didn’t forget.

According to Jiri Kovac, who worked in the firm’s L.A. office and came to Washington once a month for meetings, the house was a dead ringer for Marshall Tito’s villa at Lake Bled. Three stories tall, with stucco walls and Palladian windows, it sat on a low rise behind boxwood hedges and a circular drive with a small fountain at its center. Parking behind Slough’s 700-series Bimmer, Adrienne got out and crossed the driveway to the front door, feeling like a kid at the top of the drop on the Rebel Yell at King’s Dominion.

Yikes, she thought, as she knocked softly on the hard, wooden door. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, maybe—

“Adrienne!” Slough appeared in the doorway—in brown cords and an olive sweater—with a look of emphatic surprise. “What the… ? Come on in—it’s freezing out there!” Holding the door open, he let her in and led her down the hall to the living room, where a pair of wing chairs faced each other across a sprawling Chinese rug in front of a limestone fireplace. “Is everything all right? Hang on a minute, and I’ll have Amorita bring us some coffee…”

She waited nervously, studying Slough’s collection of Russian icons, until a pretty Latina came in with a silver tray and a coffee service. Adrienne poured herself a cup, and was sipping it when Slough returned, fastening his huge Breitling wristwatch.

“Whut up?” he asked, in a crazed attempt to be one of the boys (or something).