Praise for the novels of New York Times
bestselling author
KAT MARTIN

“[Martin] produces irresistible novels that blend the eerie and unexplainable with her own uniquely sensual and exciting style.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“In this intricately crafted novel, a terrific paranormal story unfolds that is sure to send shivers down many a reader’s spine…. Ms. Martin is a master storyteller.”

—Coffee Time Reviews on Scent of Roses

“A real page-turner…The Summit is a superb story…”

—Romance Reviews Today

“An edgy and intense example of romantic suspense with plenty of twists and turns; fans are sure to be turning pages well into the night to finish.”

—Paranormal Romance Writers on The Summit

“A terrific contemporary romance with an interesting setting, perfect pacing, compelling plot, fascinating detail.”

—Booklist on Midnight Sun

“A stunning achievement for such a talented author!”

—Literary Times on Bold Angel

“For once, here’s a paranormal book where the paranormal element is truly creepy.”

—All About Romance on The Silent Rose

KAT MARTIN
SEASON OF STRANGERS

To my friends on Rock Creek. What a great group

you are! Thanks for all the good times. It’s been

fun just getting to know you.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

One

It was an odd sound, like the wind whipping a heavy wire stretched too tight. She heard it and a tense shiver crawled up her spine. The sun scorched down, hotter than she’d expected. The sky, a washed-out white instead of its usual blue seemed to trap in the heat. There wasn’t the hint of a cloud to offer relief.

It was Wednesday, the middle of the week. No one swam in the ocean. No one looked down from the private, guarded cliffs rising up from this deserted stretch of beach. Only a stray black dog, little more than a pin-dot in the distance, wandered aimlessly in her direction, veering occasionally into the surf to cool its burning feet.

Ignoring the dog and the heat soaking through her red bikini, Julie Ferris turned to her sister, propped up on the sand just a few feet away. “Listen, Laura—do you hear that sound?”

The tall, sleek young woman beside her sat up on her faded yellow beach towel. A sticky breeze coming in off the ocean lifted strands of her pale blond hair. “What sound? I don’t hear anything.” She reached over and lowered the volume on the radio, extinguishing the low beat of rock music that filtered out toward the sea.

“It’s sort of a thick funny buzzing. I think it’s coming from someplace over there.” Julie pointed toward the west, out toward the breakers crashing in with the rising tide. They were lying in a private cove on Malibu Beach, part of a huge estate owned by Julie’s neighbor, Owen Mallory, a friend and her most important real estate client.

Cocking her head toward the odd hum that had begun to resonate along her spine, Julie rubbed her arms, trying to rid herself of the goose bumps prickling her skin. “Now it sounds like it’s coming from the east. I can’t exactly tell.”

Laura shifted in that direction, angling her slender frame and tilting her head. “Kind of weird, isn’t it? I can hear it and at the same time, I can’t. It seems to be sort of all around us.”

Julie dusted clumps of gritty sand from her hands, which were smaller, more petite than the long-boned supple fingers of her younger sister. At twenty-four, Laura Ferris had taken after their handsome fair-haired father, while Julie’s dark-red hair, lightly freckled nose, and small pointed chin came from her mother’s side of the family. She looked more pixieish than beautiful, though she was attractive. She was proud of her figure and shapely legs, and she thought she had a very nice behind.

“Whatever it is,” Julie said, “it’s irritating to say the least.” For a moment, the sound seemed to heighten and a sharp stab of pain shot into her head. “It’s getting on my nerves and giving me a headache.” She craned her neck, scanning the empty stretch of beach, careful to keep her eyes shaded beneath the brim of her big straw hat.

Glancing up at the washed-out blue sky, she tried not to stare into the harsh ball of early June sun. “Maybe it’s coming from above us…some kind of microwave something-or-other, or a military jet that’s flying really high.”

At twenty-eight, Julie was more outgoing than Laura, more vivacious, more driven to make the most of her life. Their father had left when they were just kids and the years of bare subsistence gave Julie her relentless drive. Laura had reacted in an opposite way, growing up shy and withdrawn, dependent on Julie to take the place of a mother who was rarely there. As a child, Laura was sickly much of the time—or at least believed she was.

“I don’t see anything,” Laura said.

Julie scanned the sky. “Neither do I, but that noise is giving me the shivers. Maybe we ought to go in.”

“I’m not ready to go in yet,” Laura said, sliding down onto her backrest. “Besides, it doesn’t seem quite so loud anymore. I think it’s starting to fade.” She yawned hugely. “It’s bound to stop in a minute or two.”

Julie rubbed at the irritating goose bumps, trying to ignore the piercing hum that didn’t seem to bother her sister. She lay back on the red-and-orange beach towel that read Watch Out For Sharks, which she had gotten at a real estate conference in Las Vegas.

“Turn the radio back up.” Julie clenched her jaw, wishing the grating noise would end. “Maybe that rock station you were listening to will drown out the sound.” Shoving her sunglasses up on her nose, she settled her straw hat over her face to shade her eyes. Beside her, Laura reached for the volume knob on the radio, but it was no longer working.

“Damned thing.”

“Probably the battery,” Julie mumbled from beneath her hat.

“Can’t be. I just replaced it.” Laura gave the radio a whack, but it didn’t go on. “They always crap out when you need them.” Grumbling, she picked up the book she’d been reading, a Danielle Steel novel about two sisters and the hardships they had suffered as children, a story much like their own early years.

“What time is it?” Julie asked, grateful the noise had finally stopped though the weird vibrations continued. Her body tingled from head to foot, her fingers felt numb, and her heart was throbbing strangely.

At the same time she felt unaccountably sleepy.

Laura glanced down at her diamond-faced wristwatch, a present from Julie last Christmas. “That’s weird…my watch has stopped working, too.” She grimaced and plopped the paperback book down over her face. “Nothing works when you want it to.” The words whispered out from beneath the pages.

“You’re not going to sleep, are you? One of us had better stay awake or we’ll wind up with a doozie of a sunburn.”

But already Laura’s eyes were closing.

And as the odd numbing sensations became more intense, Julie’s limbs began to feel heavy. Her eyes drifted closed and her thoughts slowly faded. A few moments later, she was soundly asleep.

When the stray black dog sauntered over from the edge of the surf, dripping water from the hair under his belly, he cocked an ear at the once again softly playing radio. A low growl rumbled from his throat and the thick black ruff of fur at the back of his neck shot up as he sniffed the terry-cloth folds of the two vacant beach towels, the empty backrests, and the cast-off book he found carelessly abandoned in the sand.

He growled again and glanced up, then whimpered and began to back away. Tucking his tail between his legs, the dog turned and bolted off down the beach.

Val lingered a moment in front of the monitor on the narrow metal table, studying the glowing blue screen. He’d been examining his research notes ever since the tests had been completed and all of the data assembled. Nothing he saw on the screen or in any of his other case studies gave him the answers he searched for, answers he so desperately needed.

He shut down the power and the monitor went blank. Panidyne would be waiting for a report and he still hadn’t reached a decision. He wasn’t usually so indecisive. Back home he tended to be somewhat outspoken, not a particularly desirable trait, considering the position he held. But this time the action he was considering was far too risky, too important to undertake without a great deal of thought.

The fact was, he needed more data before he put his radical notion before the council.

He moved away from the table, a sudden calmness settling over him. His superiors had wanted more testing, but he had disagreed. It was harmful to the subject, life threatening, they now knew.

But perhaps this time the council was correct. Perhaps it was worth the risk. Another round of tests might give them the key, hint at where to find the knowledge that up until now had remained so elusive.

More data would give him more answers. Perhaps he would know for sure if the perilous proposal he was about to make was worth the terrible risk.

Two

Julie Ferris shoved open the front door of her office on the corner of Canon and Dayton in Beverly Hills. Donovan Real Estate, a company that specialized in palatial-sized homes and properties, had been a fixture in the area for more than twenty years. Julie had been with the company for eight of those years, starting as a receptionist during her term at UCLA. She never thought she would wind up in a sales position—top sales—she corrected, thinking of the money she earned each year and the plaques that covered her office walls.

She stopped at the receptionist’s desk, dark mahogany, polished to a mirror-gloss sheen, the Queen Anne tables in front of the off-white sofa and chairs equally expensive and well-cared for.

“Any messages, Shirl?” Julie asked the voluptuous bleach-blond girl behind the desk, the only thing out of place in the elegant, conservative interior. “I meant to get in earlier, but my car wouldn’t start. I had to call Triple A and have them jump-start the battery.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to ignore the painful headache building behind her eyes.

“It’s been kinda slow so far,” Shirl said as she popped open a tube of bright red lipstick and began to smooth it over her pouty lips. Shirl was Patrick Donovan’s contribution to the office staff. His father had founded Donovan Real Estate and run the business for all but the last three years. A stroke had left Alexander Donovan partially paralyzed and his playboy son in charge. Shirley Bingham was a leftover from one of Patrick’s numerous affairs.

“There’s a call here from Owen Mallory and one from a Dr. Marsh,” Shirl said, putting the lipstick back in her purse. “The rest are on your desk.”

“Thanks, Shirl.” At least the woman was conscientious. She still carried a torch for Patrick, but then so did half the women in Beverly Hills. “Has Babs come in? I’ve got a client who’s interested in one of her listings.” Barbara Danvers was another sales associate, and Julie’s best friend.

“Sorry, Ms. Danvers hasn’t come in yet, but she phoned in a couple of times for her messages.”

“If she calls again, find out if she’s got plans for dinner. Tell her I’m tired of eating alone.”

“Will do, Ms. Ferris.”

Julie picked up her burgundy leather briefcase and started toward the door that led to her private office, one of the perks of being in a top sales position. Unconsciously, she rubbed her temple. The headache was building, growing with every minute. They’d been getting worse each day for the past two weeks, the first one hitting after she and Laura had spent the day together on the beach.

That was the reason for the message from Dr. Marsh. Three days ago, she’d awakened with a migraine so severe she couldn’t get out of bed. She’d been dizzy and nauseous, the pounding in her temples so excruciating four Advils hadn’t been able to numb it. She had gone to see Dr. Marsh that afternoon in an effort to discover what might be causing the headaches, and he had begun a series of tests. The doctor had promised to call with the results.

Lifting the receiver, Julie dialed his number, then waded through a barrage of secretaries and nurses until he finally picked up the phone.

“Julie, how are you feeling?”

“Not so good. My head’s beginning to pound. I hope I’m not getting another bad one. What did the test results show?”

“The MRI and CAT scans were clear. No sign of a tumor, nothing like that. The X-rays revealed no spinal problems. As a matter of fact, so far we’ve found nothing at all that would indicate headaches of the magnitude you’ve been suffering.” He paused and silence descended on the phone. Julie didn’t know whether to feel relieved or more worried than ever. “You’ve been working terribly hard, Julie. Stress can cause any number of problems. Severe migraine headaches are certainly among them.”

Julie said nothing. She had worried the headaches might be stress related. Though it would be simpler, in a way she hoped they weren’t. She had to work for a living. If stress was the trouble, there wasn’t much she could do about it.

“I’m not saying that’s what this is,” the doctor continued. “There are several more tests we need to run before we’ll know for sure. I’ve set them up for Thursday afternoon at two o’clock. If that doesn’t work, just call my assistant and have her reschedule.”

“Thursday’s fine, Dr. Marsh.” Julie said goodbye and hung up the receiver. She needed to return the stack of phone messages on her desk, especially the one from Owen Mallory, but the pain in her head had begun to worsen. So far the headaches had lasted no more than several hours. She could turn off her cell phone and have Shirl hold her calls, then close the door to her office and lie down on the sofa for a while. In a couple of hours she was sure to feel better. By then Patrick might have come in.

Giving instructions to Shirl not to be disturbed, Julie got up from the stack of paperwork on her desk, closed the door and the blinds over the window into the office, then lay down on the overstuffed camel-backed sofa. She had a bone to pick with Patrick over his bungling of the Rabinoff deal while she had been out of town. Typical Patrick, drinking and carousing instead of tending to business. She had promised the Rabinoffs the escrow on their house would close by the end of the month. Now she had to find a way to straighten out the problems and keep her word.

Julie closed her eyes and tried not to think of tall, dark and handsome Patrick Donovan. She tried not to see his disarming white smile, gleaming black hair, and perfect V-shaped body, all attractively packaged in expensive custom-tailored clothes.

Instead she forced herself to think of the wild, drunken parties he favored, the women, the drugs, the careless, reckless spending that was dragging Patrick and Donovan Real Estate right down the tubes. It was Patrick’s fault the company was near financial ruin. Patrick with his selfish overindulgence, his endless schemes, and self-destructive ways.

As she always did when her mind strayed to Alex’s charming, incorrigible son, she worried about the way he was destroying himself and thought what a terrible waste it was.

Patrick Donovan slammed the door of his sleek black Porsche Carrera a little harder than he meant to, then winced at the jolt of pain that shot from his head to his toes. Jesus, what a hangover. Sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Sometimes he wondered if it was worth it.

“Take care of her, will you, Monty?” He dangled the keys in front of the little valet who parked cars at Spago, the posh celebrity restaurant half a block down from his office.

“You got it, Mr. Donovan!” The kid grinned like a fool, grabbed the keys and a ten-dollar bill, and slid behind the steering wheel while Patrick continued on up the sidewalk to work. It was late afternoon. He should have been in the office hours ago, but the juicy little blonde he’d picked up at Jack Winston’s party last night had kept him up until nearly dawn.

She was into booze, big-time, a cokehead who occasionally got high with a needle, but she was also really built. She knew how to party and better yet, she knew how to screw. The trade-off was worth the price he’d paid for an eight ball of really good coke. And of course he hadn’t minded getting a little grilled himself.

“What’s up, Shirl?” Resting an elbow on the message center beside her desk, he leaned forward, giving himself a better view of her outrageous cleavage.

She beamed up at him. “I got tickets for Saturday night—The Jersey Boys. Front row seats. I didn’t really think you’d be interested, but if you’re not already busy—”

“I meant what’s going on around here. What calls I’ve had and whether or not anyone is desperately looking for me.”

“Oh.” She looked crestfallen. Shirley Bingham had never been long on brains but she was dynamite in the sack. Too bad getting her in bed meant he’d had to employ her. Shirl loved the job and now he didn’t have the heart to fire her. He was, however, smart enough to ignore the lure of temptation again.

She straightened in her chair, jiggling her magnificent breasts, and the front of his pants went snug. He might have one helluva hangover, but obviously he wasn’t dead yet.

“You’ve had a lot of calls, sir. I put them in on your desk. Oh, and Ms. Ferris has been waiting for you to come in. She’s in her office now.”

Julie Ferris. Patrick sighed as he straightened away from Shirl, turned, and made his way past the twin rows of desks, nodding to a salesman here and there as he walked by. If he had one regret in life it was Julie. He’d been attracted to Julie Ferris since the day she’d walked through the office front door eight years ago. She’d been only twenty then, not even old enough to drink. But she’d had a beautiful body and skin like cream, big green eyes, and the clearest, sweetest laugh he’d ever heard.

At the time, she was a junior at UCLA, looking for part-time work. He had convinced his father to hire her on the spot and begun to put the moves on her right away. Eventually he’d convinced her to go out with him, but he was seven years older than Julie, and she was wary of a worldly man like him. When he’d driven her to his apartment after dinner to try his hand at seduction, Julie had come unglued.

“You’re drunk,” she had said, unwinding herself from his sticky embrace and leaving him sprawled on the couch. “I feel like I’ve been out with an octopus, and the whole time we were having dinner, your eyes were on every other woman who walked through the door. That might work with the bimbos you’ve been dating, but it won’t work with me.”

“Wait a minute, Julie—” He struggled to get to his feet and finally dragged himself upright. “So what if I am a little drunk? We’re out to party, aren’t we? I only wanted to have a little fun.”

“Fun for you, maybe.” She snatched her coat off the chair. “Certainly not fun for me.” She started for the door. “You don’t have to drive me home. If you tried, you’d probably get us both thrown in jail. I’ll take a cab.”

Julie had gotten home on her own and she hadn’t gone out with him since.

He thought of that night as he knocked on the door to her office, then turned the knob and walked in. Things had changed a lot between them since then. He was her boss now. Over the years, she had won his respect and they had come to a sort of understanding. He glanced to where she sat on the sofa, gently massaging her temple. She was usually behind her desk with the phone shoved into an ear.

“You don’t look good,” he said, noticing the lines of fatigue beneath her eyes.

“Neither do you.” She glanced up at his drug-ravaged face. It was hard to fool Julie. She always saw through to the truth. “Another rough night, I gather.”

He grinned boyishly, wishing he could charm her as easily as he could the rest of the women he knew. “Kind of. What about you? Not feeling well?”

Julie sighed and came to her feet. As always, she looked at him with a combination of regret mixed with disapproval. It always pissed him off.

“I had a headache,” she said. “It’s pretty much gone now.”

He knew she was attracted to him, but Julie Ferris wasn’t the kind of girl who went for one-night stands. She disapproved of the drugs he used and badgered him about his drinking.

“You don’t look like you’re feeling much better,” she said, frowning at the smudges beneath his eyes, the slightly sallow color of his usually suntanned skin. “That stuff is going to kill you, Patrick. How long will it take before you figure that out?”

Patrick stiffened, drawing himself up to his full six foot three inches. “What I do is none of your damned business.”

Julie stopped a few feet in front of him, tilting her head to look up at him and fixing those big green eyes on his face. “It is when my clients are involved.” Her brows drew together, moving the tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose. “We need to talk about the Rabinoff deal. You really blew that one, Patrick.”

“I know, I know.” He raked a hand through his wavy black hair, shoving it back from his forehead. “Things just sort of got away from me.”

“They got away from you because you weren’t paying attention. You’re too smart for that, Patrick. If you kept your mind on business instead of Shirl’s cleavage or Babs’s derrière—”

“Okay, okay, I’ll fix it.” He didn’t tell her it was her derrière that usually snagged his attention. “I know the secretary over at the mortgage company. I’ll get her to put a rush on the documents. Anything else you want me to do?”

She rattled off a list of items, each word punctuated by a green-eyed glare that scorched right through him. Damn, she was pretty. Not beautiful like some of the women he knew, but cute and smart and sexy as hell. He forced himself not to think of what she’d be like in bed.

After eight years of giving it the old college try, he knew it wasn’t going to happen.

Julie lay in the middle of her big pine bed, listening to the pounding of the surf rolling in on the beach, the intermittent throb of a foghorn in the distance. Her bedroom was white, like the rest of the house, with light pine hardwood floors and woven throw rugs in bright southwest colors—a bit of New Mexico on the California shore. The house wasn’t huge, just three bedrooms and an office, living room, dining room, kitchen, sunny breakfast room and two-car garage.

It was the wall of windows overlooking the beach, the deck that ran the length of the house, and the privacy of the property that had seduced her into buying it. That and her friend, Babs, nagging her that with the money she was earning, she needed the tax deduction.

Julie thought of the evening she had spent with her friend. A pleasant dinner at The Grill after they’d worked late at the office, though later she had suffered another migraine headache. It was a bad one, leaving her weak and drained, but once she got home it had disappeared. She had slept for a while, then awakened abruptly from an unpleasant dream. Now she was finding it impossible to go back to sleep.

She rolled onto her side, pulling up the covers, plumping her pillow, trying not to think of the work piling up on her desk and hoping the sound of the ocean would lull her as it usually did. Her love of the ocean was one of the reasons she had bought the expensive beachfront property. She had stumbled on to the place while working with Owen Mallory, showing him a series of luxurious homes, hoping he would add one of them to his worldwide collection.

This little house sat next door to the vast estate he had finally chosen, which meant, at his insistence, she had access to a long stretch of private white sand beach.

Julie fidgeted and turned just as the phone began to ring on the nightstand beside the bed. Sitting up quickly, she reached for it with a suddenly unsteady hand. She had always hated late-night calls. They were usually nothing but bad news.

“Julie, are you there?” Her sister’s trembling voice crackled over the receiver. “Julie?”

“Laura, what is it? What’s happened?”

“I-I’m frightened, Julie. I think somebody is outside my window.”

Julie tensed. “Did you call the police?”

“No. The last time I called them, no one was out there. I’m afraid they won’t come if I call them again.”

“Of course they’ll come. It’s their job to protect you. Hang up and call them right now. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

“Julie, don’t hang up. I’m afraid they’ll come if you do.”

Julie’s fingers tightened on the phone. “You’re afraid who will come? The people outside your window?”

“No…I…I don’t know who they are.”

A knot balled hard in Julie’s stomach. Laura had been acting strangely ever since the day they had spent on the beach. Still, her sister lived in a small apartment in an older section of Venice, not the safest place for an attractive single woman. Julie had seen some of the oddballs and riffraff who frequented the zany beach town. She had tried to persuade Laura to move somewhere else, but her sister had refused.

“Listen to me, Laura, do exactly what I tell you. As soon as you hang up, call 911. Make sure the doors and windows are locked, then stay inside until the police get there. I’ll be carrying my cell phone. You can call me if you need to. I’ll be there as fast as I can.” Steeling herself against her sister’s protests, Julie hung up and jumped out of bed. In minutes she was dressed in jeans and Reeboks and a navy blue sweatshirt, racing down the front steps and into the garage.

The powerful engine of her silver Mercedes SL convertible, her pride and joy, fired up when she turned the key. It sat next to a nearly new, four-door Lincoln Town Car she used when she wanted to show property.

Julie grabbed her scarf from the passenger side of the sports car and tied it around her bouncy, just-above-the-shoulders dark red hair. Then she jammed the car into reverse, slammed her foot down on the gas pedal, and peeled out of the driveway. In minutes she was flying down the Pacific Coast Highway, headed toward her sister’s apartment, her heart pounding like a drum inside her chest.

She dialed 911 on her hands-free cell phone, confirmed that her sister’s call for help had been received, and hung up, praying nothing would happen to Laura before she could get there.

Laura Ferris finally opened her front door. The officer on the other side had been pounding, cajoling, trying to convince her he was really with the police department but Laura was too afraid to believe him.

She sagged with relief when she saw his billed cap, dark blue uniform, and the shiny chrome badge that glittered beneath the porch light. “I’m sorry, Officer, I was just so frightened.”

“It’s all right, Ms. Ferris. Why don’t we go into the living room?” He urged her in that direction and Laura let him guide her, feeling weightless with relief.

“Did you see anyone? Did you catch them?” She brushed past the big leafy philodendron that had outgrown its pot, and sat down on the sofa. The orange floral fringed throw was a little crooked so she nervously began to straighten it.

A few feet away, the tall thin policeman stood in front of her, a man in his forties, a man with experience, she thought. A man who could protect her.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Ferris. We saw no sign of an intruder, nothing at all that would indicate a presence outside the apartment.”

Laura frowned. Surely she couldn’t have been mistaken. She glanced up at the sound of the door swinging open and saw her sister rush in, a small bundle of energy beneath a cap of glossy red hair.

“Julie—thank God you came.” Laura shoved a tousled blond curl behind her ear. “This is Officer—” she read the nameplate over his badge “—Ferguson. He says they’ve checked things out but they didn’t find anyone. You’d think the guy would have left footprints or something, but I guess he didn’t. Anyway, I guess he’s gone.”

“You’re related to Ms. Ferris?” the policeman asked.

“I’m her sister. I’m Julie Ferris.”

“Could I speak to you a moment? In private?”

Julie glanced at her slightly disheveled sister, noticing the pallor of her skin and the tic that had surfaced beneath one dark brown eye. “Yes, Officer, of course.” They made their way into the cozy little kitchen, dodging potted plants and ducking behind the red beaded curtain that clattered in their wake.

“You weren’t able to catch the man?” Julie asked worriedly.

“There was no man, Ms. Ferris. Are you aware this is the fifth 911 call we’ve received from your sister in the past two weeks?”

“No…I…I had no idea. She mentioned that she’d called once before, but I didn’t know there had been others.”

“The dispatch says each call’s the same. Your sister’s frightened voice coming over the phone claiming someone is trying to break into the house.”

“Maybe someone is trying to get in and you’re just not here quickly enough to catch him.”

“Prowlers leave traces, Ms. Ferris. Footprints, loosened window screens, tire tracks—something. There’s nothing of that sort here. I hate to have to ask this, but has your sister had any kind of psychiatric problems?”

A tightness pinched in Julie’s chest. “She’s been to counseling. Her childhood was extremely difficult. She had occasional bouts of depression, but she’s never seen a psychiatrist. Are you implying my sister may be suffering from some sort of mental disorder?”

“I’m not implying anything. I’m simply telling you that no one is trying to break into this apartment. It seems to me your sister may need psychiatric help a lot more than police assistance.”

Julie mulled that over. Laura had been acting strangely. “I’ll speak to her, Officer. It was my fault she called you again tonight. I didn’t realize she had done it four times before.”

“No problem. Besides, it’s always better to play it safe. At any rate, good luck with your sister.”

“Thank you.” They returned to the living room. The policeman said his goodbyes to Laura, and Julie sat down beside her on the sofa.

“Feeling better?”

“Yes…much better. I’m glad you came.”

Julie reached over and clasped Laura’s hand, gave it a comforting squeeze. “The officer says this is the fifth time you’ve called the police.”

Laura straightened a little on the sofa, began to fidget with the cord of her blue velour robe. “I-I didn’t realize I had called them so much.”

“Want to tell me about the other times?”

Laura sagged back against the sofa, resting her head against the top, catching her long blond hair beneath her shoulders. “I thought I heard something, that’s all. I thought someone was trying to break in.”

“You heard noises, something that frightened you?”

“Not noises exactly, more like just a feeling. It was terrifying, Julie. I’m sure someone was out there. I didn’t know what else to do.”

For a moment Julie said nothing. “You always said you liked living alone. You never used to be afraid.”

“I know. It’s just that lately…I don’t know what it is…I just feel scared all the time.”

Julie rubbed her temple, praying the slight nag of pain wasn’t the start of another headache. “You haven’t been frightened like that since we were children. When did all of this start?”

“I don’t know exactly. Not that long ago. Sometime after the day we spent together out at your place.”

“The policeman assured me no one was trying to break in, but if you’re frightened, maybe you should come home with me, spend a few days in Malibu lying on the beach.”

“I’d rather stay here. Besides, I can’t take time off from work.”

“It’s only a part-time job.” Laura worked in a little boutique called The Cottage down on Main Street, one of a dozen different jobs she had had since she dropped out of college. “You could always drive in to work from my house.”

Laura chewed her bottom lip. “Yeah, I guess I could.” She glanced at the door and then at the window. “Maybe if I just stayed there until the weekend. By then Jimmy will be back in town—”

“Jimmy Osborn? I thought you weren’t seeing that creep anymore.”

Laura straightened, pulling her hand away. “He isn’t a creep.”

“He hit you, Laura. If you want to be frightened of something, you ought to be frightened of him.”

“He just lost his temper, that’s all. He promised it won’t happen again.”

“He’s bad news, Laura. Forget about Jimmy Osborn, pack a bag and let’s go.”

She hesitated only a moment, then she got up from the couch and went into the other room. A few minutes later she returned with a small vinyl suitcase, enough clothes to last through the end of the week. She wouldn’t stay longer than that, Julie knew. Laura liked being on her own too much, and even if she didn’t go back to dating Jimmy Osborn, there were a dozen more men standing in line to take his place.

As they walked out to the car, Julie caught a glimpse of Laura’s strained, wary expression. Her sister glanced over her shoulder, looking right and left, then finally climbed into the passenger seat.

What was the matter with Laura now?

She’d always had a tendency to illness, both real and imagined, but this was something else. Julie wondered if the policeman might have been right, and silently vowed to find the name of a good psychiatrist.

Three

Julie walked out of her office, heading toward the front door at the opposite end of the room.

“Always in a hurry.” Seated at his desk, Fred Thompkins chuckled. “I told you what my doctor said about that.”

She paused beside his chair and smiled down at him. “He said you have high cholesterol and a heart condition. That you had better learn to slow down. You said that also applies to me, that I should stop and smell the roses. I believe you’ve mentioned that, Fred.”

“Maybe I have…a couple of dozen times.” He was an overweight retired math professor who wore funny little paisley bow ties. He grinned above the starched white collar that cut into the folds on his neck. “Unfortunately, you never listen.”

“That’s because I don’t have high cholesterol and I’ve got bills to pay.” More next month, she thought grimly, when Dr. Heraldson’s psychiatric bill came in. She just hoped the sessions would be of some help to her sister.

“You still looking for Patrick?”

“I’m always looking for Patrick, for one thing or another. He hasn’t come in yet, has he?”

“He’s never here before noon. You know that as well as I do.”

“He said he’d work on the Rabinoff deal. We’ve got to get that escrow closed.”

“Shirl said he was driving out to Flintridge to see his dad. He’s supposed to be in later.”

Julie’s heart tugged painfully. “I hope Alex is feeling better. He looked pretty bad when I saw him last Saturday.” Patrick’s father was confined to a wheelchair, the left side of his body paralyzed by a stroke, his speech impaired, one side of his once-handsome face now drooping.

It was tough on a strong, imposing man like Alexander Donovan, and yet he would not give up. Instead, he’d had a therapy room installed in his lavish Mediterranean style mansion. Daily he worked with nurses and equipment to rebuild his aging, ravaged body into something that resembled the powerful figure he had once been.

“He’s a good man,” Fred said. “This place was really something back when Alex was running it. There wasn’t a real estate man in town who could shine his shoes.” He shook his head, the lamp on his desk gleaming on the bald spot in the center, fringed by his thinning gray hair. “This place hasn’t been the same since he’s been gone.”

It could be, Julie thought morosely, if Patrick would put as much effort into his work as he did getting laid. He was smart enough, and certainly he was savvy enough about business if he would only apply himself.

Instead he was driving the company further and further into debt. Several people on the sales staff had already quit. Babs and Fred would like to leave, but they stayed on for Alex’s sake, just as Julie did. She loved that old man. She wasn’t about to abandon him, no matter what kind of a jerk his son turned out to be.

“I’ve got to run, Fred.” Julie started walking.

“Why am I not surprised?”

Julie waved at him over one shoulder. “I’ll talk to you later.” And then she was out the door, heading off to Spago to meet Jane Whitelaw for lunch.

Evan Whitelaw, Jane’s husband, was a big-time movie producer. Six months earlier, he had listed his home on Burton Way and it had finally sold last week. Now his wife was ready to start searching for a larger place to live. An estate in Bel-Air, she’d said, but Julie knew better than to listen to what a client said they wanted. You had to listen past what they said, learn to look inside and discover their secret yearnings. That was how she’d made so many sales—listening for wishes, instead of just meeting needs.

She had just reached the outside wall of the restaurant when Patrick’s black Porsche pulled up to the curb. There was office parking in the rear of the building, but Patrick liked the valet to take care of it for him personally.

The pudgy youth opened the passenger door as Patrick unwound his tall frame from the driver’s side of the car, and a long-legged, willowy blonde stepped out on the sidewalk.

Julie’s chest went a little tight, but she forced herself to ignore it. It always bothered her to see him with a woman. Silly. Stupid, beyond belief. Yet she couldn’t seem to stop the twinge she always felt watching Patrick squire one of his many one-night stands.

Ignoring the woman, she stopped him before he reached the curb, which gave her the advantage of looking straight into his eyes, the brightest shade of blue she’d ever seen. “I’m sorry to bother you…I can see you’re busy…but I have to find out if the Rabinoff escrow is going to be closing on time. Were you able to get those documents drawn?”

Patrick smiled and looked over her head. “Julie Ferris meet Anna Braxston. Anna is a model with the Ford Agency. Julie is one of my top sales associates.”

Julie forced herself to smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Anna.” She returned her attention to Patrick, who looked rested for a change, his tan slacks and navy blue sport coat immaculate as always. “I have to know, Patrick. Will the escrow be able to close by the end of the month, the way it’s supposed to?”

He grinned, a slash of white in a suntanned face that would give Tom Cruise a run for the money. “Relax. I told you I’d take care of it. The docs will be ready on Friday. Get the Rabinoffs in to sign them, and the escrow can close exactly the way you planned.”

She sagged with relief. “Thank God.”

“You worry too much, you know that?”

“And you don’t worry enough.”

He frowned at her words and for a moment she wondered if he was more aware of his financial problems than he let on.

She smiled faintly at the woman. “Nice to meet you, Anna. Patrick, I’ve got to run.”

“I’ll see you back at the office,” he said. Julie waved and hurried off toward the posh, high-walled interior of her favorite lunching spot.

Sometimes she imagined he watched her, though why he would when he was with a woman as beautiful as the blonde she couldn’t guess. Sometimes she pretended he was different, that he was more like his father, more like the man twenty-year-old Julie Ferris had once believed he was.

He wasn’t. He never would be and both of them knew it. As always the thought made her sad.

Laura lay awake in the guest room of her sister’s Malibu beach house. The antique iron bed had been painted a dull brick red and an old-fashioned quilt served as a spread. Throw rugs covered the hardwood floors, and a wall of windows led out to a deck overlooking the sea. Before tonight, Laura had envied her sister this house on the beach, envied the privacy afforded by the hundreds of acres of the exclusive Mallory estate next door.

Now she leaned back against her pillow, thinking tonight she wished the house was sitting on a lot in the center of the city. That it was surrounded by dozens of people, that it was the middle of the day instead of so late in the evening.

A series of waves, loud as gunshots, crashed against the shore outside the window, but they couldn’t quite block the dense dull hum Laura could barely hear above the roar of the ocean, a noise that had settled like a weight around the two-story batten-board structure. She tried to tell herself it was only her imagination, tried to concentrate on the pounding of the surf and the old Kirk Douglas movie on the television screen, though the volume was turned so low she couldn’t really hear it.

It was three o’clock in the morning, dark outside, a cloudy night with no moon. She had always liked staying in Julie’s guest room, but tonight the ceiling seemed lower than it usually did, the walls a little closer, the sound of the waves more irritating than soothing. Her palms were sweating, her pulse beating faster than it should have.

“Julie’s right next door,” she told herself, speaking the words aloud. “All you have to do is call out and she’ll come running.” Perhaps her sister would come even without the call. If anything was wrong, Julie seemed to sense it. Her sister had a way of doing that. Julie would protect her. Just like she always did.

Then the television set went off and the night light on the wall near the bathroom dimmed and finally sputtered out. Laura swallowed against the fear that was building in her chest.

A whispering noise sifted down from somewhere above her. She tried to cry out, but the sound lodged tight in her throat. She tried to get up, tried to swing her legs to the side of the bed, but her body was rigid, completely unwilling to move.

It was dark in the room, but now the darkness lifted and a blinding light filled the bedroom. Laura’s eyes slammed closed against the stab of brightness shooting into her skull. Her muscles strained to move so hard she quivered all over and arched up off the bed.

Help me! Julie, help me! But the words remained locked in her throat and the silent scream never emerged. Then the light began to fade. She heard a noise on the stairs leading up to the deck. Small, scampering footfalls that paused outside the door.

A strangling sensation engulfed her, a terror so great it throbbed through her body in great tormenting waves. She tried to move, but only her eyes responded, rolling in their sockets, darting wildly around the room, then fixing on the door. They were coming for her. She could feel it in every nerve ending, every fiber and cell in her body. They would take her as they had done before, strip her naked, use their cold metal projectiles to invade her body. Until now she hadn’t remembered.

Help me! she silently screamed, thrashing like an animal caught in a trap, yet her body never moved on the bed. Julie, where are you? But maybe her sister was also ensnared, caught as readily as she. Fresh terror speared through her. She remembered the pain of before, the humiliation she had felt, and prayed it wouldn’t happen again. Prayed that if it did, she would be able to endure it.

The shuffling continued outside. They were coming, just as she had feared. When the door slowly opened and she saw them, her mouth formed a stark O of terror and the bile rose in her throat.

Seconds passed. She blinked and they appeared all around her, lining the sides of the bed. Her terror inched deeper, long thin tentacles reaching down into her belly. Circles of blackness whirled, clouding the edges of her mind, carrying her toward the safety of unconsciousness. Finally the darkness overtook her, freeing her from the fear, sealing her mind from what was to come. Laura welcomed the descent into oblivion.

A deep blue glow resonated up from the floor of the examining room, lighting the rounded girders along the curving walls behind his back. A bank of diodes, dials and gauges spread across the console down at one end, and air hissed through vents in a pulsing rhythm that matched the bleeps of the heart being monitored on the glowing blue screen.

Val Zarkazian stared down at the subjects lying on the table. Their scanty night clothes had been removed, and the younger woman had already been examined.

It was the second woman, the one with the dark red hair, who had brought him out from behind the monitors of his research laboratory down the hall.

He surveyed the nude figure tossing restlessly on the stark blue surface of the table, her small hands clenched so tightly the muscles in her forearms quivered. A tongue block had been inserted, but not before she had bitten into her bottom lip, leaving a slight trace of blood.

He studied her with the same objectivity he had used on a dozen subjects before, noting the woman was smaller than average but well-developed, and in healthy physical condition. She was a normal female, except that she was far more resistant to any sort of mental intrusion than most of the larger male specimens who had been brought in for study.

The woman shifted restlessly on the table, fighting the tests with the same fierce determination she had shown on her visit several weeks ago.

He glanced down at a short thin figure in dark blue protective covering, one of the lab technicians, who stood beside the table studying the subject with puzzlement and concern. Behind him, just outside the door, several soldiers milled about, members of the team who had brought the women aboard.

They were troubled by her reaction and rightly so. The first time the study had been done, she had resisted so strongly they thought they were going to lose her.

This time they had done only cursory testing, nothing intrusive into the body, and only the mental scanning that could be done without a probe. He looked at the monitor at the end of the table. The subject, a healthy female in her twenty-eighth year, had suffered normal childhood diseases—what was known here as measles, mumps and chicken pox; a broken wrist at the age of eight; minor scars and healed abrasions.

Her vital signs were strong, but just as before, they had begun to shut down the moment they started their assessment of the brain.

A row of symbols came across the glowing blue screen. Is it happening again? The message came from the viewing area where senior officers and staff watched the proceedings.

He confirmed it was so and watched the corresponding symbols pop up on the screen. The last similar case had occurred six months ago, an artist taken from the hills outside Santa Fe. Over the years, there had been quite a number, from a variety of different backgrounds. Neither race nor gender seemed to be a factor in the degree of resistance, which could result in the subject’s mental incapacitation or death.

More questions appeared on the screen, one in regard to the proceedings.

Yes, he replied, the tests have been stopped. We don’t want to lose another subject.

He turned to the short lab technician and ordered him to finalize the tests on the younger sibling, to complete the external examination of the older, and return them both to the point of origin.

The screen on the console began to flash another communication, countering his orders. You must proceed, Commander. We must discover the cause of the older sibling’s reaction. We cannot afford to let her go.

He had known his superiors would want to continue, no matter how dangerous it was. Probing the outer boundaries of scientific knowledge was the first directive of their mission, one of the reasons others had come here before. It was an accepted fact that furthering that knowledge inevitably demanded a percentage of casualties.

But Val wasn’t prepared to lose the woman, or any more subjects in the future.

He turned back to the screen. There is another, better way. We have the technology. Why should we not proceed?

The symbols flashed in rapid succession. Such an undertaking would be dangerous. Who would take the risk?

He logged in the reply he had thought long and hard about. I have been working on this project for years. I am the logical choice.

The Ansor cannot afford to lose its most valuable research officer.

All men are expendable in the name of science. It was a basic tenet of their work.

The screen went blank. He waited with less patience than he usually displayed and even a hint of anxiety.

The recommendation will be made to the council at our next session.

Relief filtered through him. He didn’t want to see the woman die, and ever since his arrival three years ago, he had hoped for a chance like this. I am grateful for your assistance.

A long line of symbols appeared. I hope you will still be grateful once you are confined in such an uncivilized environment.

Four

Pain. Excruciating pain. Julie felt the throbbing, pulsing ache well up from the deepest part of her brain.

The slatted wooden blinds over the bedroom windows were closed, yet tiny cracks of light seeped in, stabbing like white hot rays behind her eyes. The hot, damp skin across her forehead felt stretched and swollen as if it might burst. Her lips were dry. She moistened them with her tongue. Nausea threatened, a reaction to the incredible pain in her head.

Julie rolled to her side, her small hands fisting the pillow, her teeth biting into her lower lip. It wouldn’t last much longer. It never did. No more than a couple of hours. The brief duration made them bearable, and the fact she had never had them until these past few weeks.

Perhaps it was some sort of virus, an illness that was fleeting. She could stand the pain, if only she knew the cause.

Knew for certain the headaches wouldn’t get worse.

A second hour passed. Her body lay on the sheet bathed in perspiration, but the pain had begun to recede. She felt limp and drained. It was nine o’clock in the morning. She was late for work, had already missed the weekly office meeting. She wished she could just stay in bed, but headache or no, she had to go in. There was too much to do, too many clients who depended on her.

Another fifteen minutes and the last of the vicious migraine—the worst she’d suffered so far—had ebbed away. Julie gripped the pine headboard, used it as a lever to swing her legs to the floor and ease herself up off the bed. As she passed the mirror over her dresser, she paused, took in the dishevelment of her hair, and the pallor of her face that made the freckles stand out across the bridge of her nose. She headed into the bathroom, turned on the shower and stepped in before the water got good and hot.

Perhaps the test Dr. Marsh was giving her this afternoon would provide the answer. A dozen horrible scenarios flashed through her mind, everything from cancer to the brain tumor the doctor had mentioned.

She had to find out. Then again, maybe she didn’t want to know.

Julie washed her hair, grateful for the soothing feel of the water running over her scalp. She shaved her legs, lathered her breasts and belly, then moved lower. She felt a twinge as her hand brushed sensitive flesh. It had been so long. Three years since she had been with a man.

Not like Laura. Laura had to have a man, needed one like people need to breathe. And her sleek model’s figure and glorious long blond hair made attracting them easy. But Julie wanted more from a relationship than just a sexual fling, and if she couldn’t have it she was happy to do without.

She stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel. Her head still throbbed and her hands were a bit unsteady, but her strength had begun to return. Maybe the headaches would disappear as quickly as they had started. She hoped so. With her worry for Laura, the problems she was facing at work, and her burgeoning expenses, she had enough problems already.

She sighed as she walked to the closet and slid open the mirrored doors. Her beige suit would do. She wasn’t in the mood for anything but plain-and-simple. She took her time dressing. Her muscles ached and she still felt a little bit shaky. As soon as she stepped into her matching leather pumps, she made her way to the guest room in search of Laura, but her sister wasn’t there.

The guest room looked a shambles. The bed was unmade, the sheets thrashed off haphazardly, the bright-colored quilt shoved carelessly onto the floor. Julie crossed to the closed bathroom door.

“Laura, are you in there? Are you all right?”

“I-I’m fine,” she answered through the door. “I’ll be out in just a minute.”

When Laura finally appeared, Julie was stunned at the sight of her sister’s pale, haggard face, at the faint purple smudges beneath her brown eyes and the sunken hollows in her cheeks. “My God, are you sick? You should have said something.” She set her palm on Laura’s forehead, checking for any sign of temperature, but the skin felt cold and slightly damp instead of warm, as she had expected. “Get back in bed. I’ll go down and get you something to eat.”

“I-I’m all right, Julie. I’m just a little tired is all.”

“You look like you’re a lot more than tired. Maybe you’ve got the flu or something.”

“Maybe. That’s kind of the way it feels.” A hint of embarrassed color rose into her ashen cheeks. “I-I was bleeding this morning…from inside. It wasn’t much, just a trace or two. You don’t think it’s anything serious, do you?”

“I-I don’t know. Has it happened before?”

“Only once. The morning after we suntanned in the cove on the beach.”

“I think we’d better have Dr. Marsh take a look at you. I have to go in for a few more tests this afternoon. You can come with me.”

“You’re still having those headaches?”

“Bad one last night. I finally took some sleeping pills and eventually fell asleep. I must have slept pretty hard once I did.”

Laura frowned. “I had a terrible dream last night. I can’t remember it now, but I remember at the time it was really scary.”

“It probably is the flu. You’d better stay here through the weekend, at least until—”

“No! I-I don’t want to stay here. As a matter of fact, I’m going home this afternoon. I’ll feel better sleeping in my own bed. That’s probably all that’s wrong with me. Too much dampness in the air.”

“I don’t know, Laura. Dr. Heraldson thought staying here was a good idea. And now that you’re sick—”

“I’m going home, Julie. I promise I won’t call the police or do anything crazy, okay?”

Julie looked at her hard. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure.”

“And you’ll go with me to the doctor’s this afternoon?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

Julie sighed. “I don’t mean to be pushy. I’m just worried about you is all.”

“I know that.” Laura walked over and hugged her. “Thanks for caring so much. You’ve always been there for me, ever since Dad took off. Mom wasn’t much of a mother, but you were always there. I appreciate it. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She smiled. “But I promise I’ll be okay, so you don’t have to worry.”

Julie fidgeted, smoothed the skirt of her tailored suit. “I guess neither one of us got a good night’s sleep last night.”

Laura just shrugged, but she looked uncomfortable with the subject. For some strange reason, Julie was uncomfortable with it, too.

“I’ll be back to pick you up around noon. In the meantime, why don’t you go back to bed for a while? You’ll be all right until I get here, won’t you?”

“Sure,” Laura said lightly, “I’ll be fine.” But as soon as her sister left, she got up and bolted the doors. She checked and locked all the windows in her bedroom, then locked the ones in the rest of the house. She didn’t open them, not even when the sun came out and the day turned warm. Not even when the temperature began to climb into the nineties and she began to perspire in the closed-up, airless bedroom.

“I’m worried about her, Babs.” Julie shifted restlessly in the black leather chair behind her desk. “I can’t figure out what’s wrong with her.”

Seated on the opposite side, Barbara Danvers made a rude sound in her throat. “You’re always worried about your sister and there’s always something wrong with her. Until she takes control of her life, there always will be.” Black-haired and dark-eyed, Babs had just turned thirty. She’d been married three times, to a banker, an actor and a successful television producer. She was divorced again, worked too hard but didn’t really have to, not after the settlement she’d received from Archibald Danvers two years ago.

“You’re too tough on her, Babs.” Julie sat forward in her chair, propping her elbows on the desk. They were working in her office, going over the Richards file, an estate in Palos Verdes that Babs had listed and Julie had sold. “You know the kind of life Laura’s had. A father who was gone by the time she was five years old, a mother who was never home. No supervision, no direction, never enough money to make ends meet. It’s a wonder she hasn’t had more problems than she has.”

“I hate to remind you, but Laura had the same childhood you had and look at the difference in the way the two of you turned out. You put yourself through college. You’re a successful real estate agent with a lovely home on Malibu Beach. Laura’s a twenty-first-century hippie.”

“Hardly that.”

A sleek black brow arched up. “No?”

“Just because she’s had a number of different jobs—”

“She hasn’t worked more than three months in a row since I’ve known her. How much did you spend on Laura’s medical bills last year?”

“That isn’t fair.”

“I’ll tell you what isn’t fair. Having to work the kind of hours you do to support your sister’s hypochondria.”

Julie glanced away. “This is different.”

“I’ll just bet it is. What does the psychiatrist have to say…Dr. What’s-his-name?”

“Heraldson.” Staring through the glass into the main part of the office, Julie jumped up from her chair as Patrick strode in, grateful for the chance to avoid Babs’ last question. She almost wished she hadn’t brought the subject up, but maybe she needed a dose of Babs’s honesty. “I have to speak to Patrick. I have an offer on one of the units in his condo project.”

“Brave girl. You’re actually going to sell something Patrick Donovan’s involved in?”

Julie jerked open the door without responding. Another shot of Babs’ honesty right now was more than she could manage. She hurried out into the office, running to catch up with Patrick’s long-legged stride.

“Sorry to bother you, Patrick. Have you got a minute?”

“Sure, come on in. Shirl said you wanted to see me.” He led her into the plush interior of his spacious office, remodeled since the days when the place had been his father’s. Instead of the understated mahogany and beige used throughout the rest of the building, Patrick’s office was bold and energetic, done in electric blue and black. Julie took a chair in front of his black lacquered desk, settling herself in one of the deep leather chairs, and Patrick sat down across from her.

“What can I do for you, love?”

Julie glanced up from the manila file folder she’d been rifling through. “I asked you not to call me that. Save it for Anna, or Charlotte, or another one of your bimbos.”

He leaned back in his chair, crossing one long leg over the other. “My, we’re testy today, aren’t we?”

She looked up at him, saw the usual dark shadows beneath his eyes, as well as a puffiness she hadn’t noticed before. Some of her anger at him faded. “You look like hell, Patrick. You’ve got to start taking better care of yourself. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for your father.”

He said nothing to that, but his shoulders sagged a little, and some of his cockiness faded. “He’s not doing so well, Jules. The doctors are afraid he might have another stroke.”

“Oh, God, Patrick.”

“I’m sure he’ll be all right. The old goat’s too tough to die.” He smiled but it came out a little shaky. “You said you needed to see me. What about?”

Escaping the painful subject of Alex’s failing health, Julie pulled the thick sheaf of documents out of the file she’d retrieved from her briefcase. “I’ve got an offer on one of the units in your condo project. Mr. and Mrs. Harvey are interested in buying number thirty-three.”

His long fingers tightened around the burgundy Mont Blanc pen he was holding. “I thought you said you didn’t like the project, that it was too shaky, that you wouldn’t put one of your clients into the development until it was almost full.”

“I think the construction could be better. You skimped too much as far as I’m concerned. But the Harveys insisted I show it to them. They like the location—so do I for that matter. Santa Monica is growing and this is very near the beach. Besides, you said the units had finally begun to sell. The last time I checked the board it looked like over fifty percent of the project was now sold out.”

Instead of looking happy, Patrick looked grim. “Condos aren’t your normal dose of poison, Julie. Are these people friends of yours? How did you wind up working with them?”

“I got them on a floor call while I was covering for Fred. Mr. Harvey is a retired aerospace engineer. They made a little money buying and selling houses when the market was good. That’s why they’re purchasing a condo. They plan to pay cash for it, and whatever is left will be a nest egg for their old age.”

Patrick said nothing for the longest time.

“I thought you’d be happy,” Julie said. “I know how much that project means to you. You risked everything when you decided to build it.”

His shrugged his wide shoulders, rustling his custom-fitted Oxford-cloth shirt. “In the beginning, I may have felt that way. Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because now other people are involved. When I couldn’t get the construction money I needed, I had to take in partners. Lately they’ve been calling most of the shots.”

He shoved back his chair and came to his feet, then leaned toward her over the desk. With those piercing blue eyes and hard jaw, he could look darned intimidating when he wanted to. “I’ll give you a word of advice, Julie—I shouldn’t but I will. Put your clients in some other deal. Something that isn’t so risky. That’s all I’m going to say on the subject and if anyone asks, I never said anything at all. If your people won’t listen, that’s their problem. If they still want the property on Monday and the price is right, they’ve bought themselves a new home.”

“You took an offer from Fred’s clients, why don’t you want this one?”

Instead of giving her an answer, he turned away. “I’ve got to go.” Reaching behind him, he jerked his black Italian-cut sports jacket off the wooden valet in the corner. “I just remembered something I have to do.”

“Wait a minute, Patrick, I don’t understand why all of a sudden—”

“See you later, Julie.” And then he was gone.

Julie stared after him, wondering how he always managed to leave her speechless.

Val tried to concentrate on the screen, review the notes on his latest experiment, but he felt restless. In nearly half a lifetime, he hadn’t learned the virtue of patience. He wondered if he ever would.

For the sixth time since his arrival in the lab, he turned to his message file, hoping to find some news, then sighed inwardly when he found nothing there. It had been nearly a full month since the council had agreed to his plan. Initial preparations had been made. Now he was forced to wait.

The mission could not be accomplished until a suitable donor was found. In order for that to happen, a death had to occur. Sophisticated computer calculations had come up with a list of possible candidates, people who lived or worked in close proximity to the Ferris subject.

The data had shown a ninety-percent probability that one of the primary donor candidates would face a life-threatening occurrence within ninety days; a seventy-percent chance it would happen in less than sixty; and a fifty-percent chance it would happen within thirty days from the date the calculations were made.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t.

Unfortunately for him, he reminded himself, but not for the donor. Still, there was nothing personal involved. Now that the project was underway, he just wanted to get on with it.

He punched up a row of symbols. Though he knew the information well, he found himself returning to the donor file. The Alexander Donovan candidate was predicted to be the most likely. He was the eldest and in the worst physical condition. He was also the least desirable. He had no use of his legs and less access to the Ferris woman than the others.

The Fred Thompkins candidate was closer to the subject since he worked in her office. His heart was unstable and he could suffer a heart attack at any time. Unfortunately, as with the previous candidate, he was still much older, and he had only limited subject contact.

Perhaps, he thought, he should be grateful that so far nothing had happened. It was the Patrick Donovan candidate he really wanted as the donor. Physically the younger Donovan was within his prime years, just as Val was. Donovan’s body was physically abused, but with a little effort on his part, it could be returned to the superior specimen it once was. The man was intelligent, appeared to have plenty of the trading currency used on Earth, and worked in close proximity to the subject.

As her superior, he even had a certain amount of control over her. It was only logical Val should prefer Patrick Donovan over the others.

And from what their sensors had discovered, not only did Donovan have a weak wall in his heart that was on the verge of collapse, his behavior patterns were conducive to hurrying the event along.

Val couldn’t help a small throb of excitement, a rare emotion in his experience, rare, for that matter, for anyone from his planet. Science was everything there. Discoveries were made daily, hourly, becoming almost mundane.

But this was different. Experiencing a new world—not from the outside looking in, as they had been doing for hundreds of years. But from the inside—from an actual functioning position within the world they studied. Though he would technically be there to discover the reason for the Ferris woman’s exceptional resistance, it was the knowledge of Earth in general that Val found so intriguing.

He punched in the symbols and opened another computer file, deciding to reread the reports he had requested, observations, limited though they were, made by his predecessors during their brief stay on Earth. There wasn’t much, he knew. The process called Unification had only been done a few times, and never for any duration.

Still it was something. When the time came for him to go, he wanted to be prepared.

Patrick Donovan reached for the rolled-up hundred-dollar bill lying on the acrylic coffee table in front of the sofa in his penthouse apartment. “How ’bout another little toot, baby?”

Anna Braxston smiled. She was a classy piece of ass, no doubt about it. In her long, slinky, black-sequined dress, her blond hair piled up in soft waves on top of her head, she looked like she’d just walked off a page out of Vogue. She was almost as tall as he was in her high-heeled shoes, though the shoes had come off long ago, along with the dress and all but the skimpy little peach satin teddy she was wearing.

“Thanks, honey.” She set her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray, a fine thread of smoke drifting up. He’d been trying to quit, but what the hell? He reached over and took a long lung-filling draw, let the smoke drift out through his nostrils.

Anna took the rolled-up bill, leaned over and snorted a long line of powdery cocaine up her nose. A second line followed. She wiped the residue away, leaned over and rubbed a coke-laden finger across his lips, but he was too far gone to feel the numbing sensation.

He poured a shot of tequila into his glass and tossed it back, grimaced at the fiery taste, and took the bill from her hand. Another line of coke disappeared, then another. She was after him to do a speedball—half heroin, half cocaine. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that…then again, maybe later….

He leaned back on the gray wool sofa, felt her long supple fingers running through his curly black chest hair. He was already hard. She unzipped his navy blue slacks, the only clothes he still had on, reached inside his fly and freed his erection, then began to gently stroke him.

“You like that, don’t you,” she purred. It wasn’t a question. She’d have to be a fool to think he didn’t. Sex was the only thing he liked more than booze and drugs, the only thing that still gave him the kind of kicks he’d always needed. Everything else seemed bland in comparison, and he had tried them all.

Sports cars when he was in high school. Motorcycle racing after that. He had run the European circuit two years in a row, staying on to ski the winter in St. Moritz. He’d gotten his pilot’s license, bought an old P-38, had it completely refitted, flown it in the Reno Air Races and come in third, then gotten bored and sold it for less than he’d paid for it. He’d tried skydiving. Not bad. Especially after he had done it high on cocaine.

With no responsibilities, no one to answer to but a father who was buried to his bushy gray eyebrows in work, and more money than any kid his age had a right to have, he figured why not enjoy himself? And so he always had.

Anna’s lips moved over his hardened length, stroking him like a pro. His muscles flexed. He thrust upward and groaned. When she stopped for a moment to help him slide on a condom, he propped his back against the sofa, pulled her teddy off over her head, cupped her buttocks, and dragged her up on top of him, spreading her long legs until she straddled him.

“Oh, yes,” Anna whispered. “Give it to me, honey.”

He’d give it to her, all right. All she could take and more. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, felt her soft little breasts pressing into his chest. Her nipples were hard and distended. She was slick and hot, gloving his erection neatly.

“Hand me a popper,” he said as he flexed his hips, moving in and out with a slow rhythm that had her panting and squirming. She picked the drug up off the end table, neatly broke the capsule in half, and shoved it under his nose.

God, what a rush.

He ground himself deeper, thrust into her harder, fought to hold his climax in check. He liked it this way, being in control, setting the pace.

Doing something to please somebody besides himself.

But then he liked it just about any way he could get it. Not very personal, he supposed. Not very meaningful. Just more kicks to keep him going, something to help him tolerate the empty, vacuous days.

Something to distract him from the money he was losing, the father he’d disappointed, the mess he had made of his life.

Coming in from the parking lot, Julie walked in the back door of the office just in time to see Patrick walking out the front.

“Patrick! Patrick, wait a minute! I’ve got to talk to you!” She was late getting to work. She’d gone by to see Dr. Heraldson, Laura’s psychiatrist, who had asked for a meeting to discuss Laura’s childhood, hoping he might uncover something that would help him understand what Laura was going through. Dr. Marsh, their family physician, had found nothing physically wrong with her, but Laura’s paranoia had continued to increase, and her nightmares were getting worse. Julie wished she knew what to do.

She glanced ahead to Patrick’s tall retreating figure. “Damn it, Patrick!” She raced down the sidewalk in pursuit, but didn’t catch up with him until he’d reached the corner. “Where the hell are you going in such an all-fired hurry?” Panting with exertion, she leaned against the lamp post, watched Patrick’s long dark fingers punch the button on the light so he could cross the street.

“I’ve got a lunch date with Anna.” He turned to face her, winked, and flashed her a cocky, wicked grin. “Want to come along?”

It was the first time today that she had actually seen his face, and something clenched hard in her stomach. “My God, Patrick, what in the world have you done to yourself?”

His fine black brows drew together in a frown. “Give me a break, will you? So I’m a little washed out. I haven’t had a chance to catch any rays lately.”

He started across the street, but Julie caught his arm. “This is serious, Patrick. Your face is so pale it’s practically blue. Something’s wrong. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

“I’m fine. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“More problems with the Rabinoff closing. I thought maybe you could help.” She stopped him the minute they reached the curb on the opposite side of the street. “Patrick, your health is more important than any closing. Something is seriously wrong with you. For once in your life, please, will you listen?”

He stopped in the alley outside The Grill, a nearby restaurant that was a local haunt for movie higher-ups: producers, directors, agents, a few hopeful starlets and a lot of hangers-on. “I’ve got a little heartburn, okay? I’ll be fine just as soon as I eat.”

Julie’s face turned nearly as pale as Patrick’s. “You’re having chest pains?”

“Heartburn. That’s all it is. I took some Maalox tablets. In a few more minutes, they’ll kick in and I’ll feel great.”

“Patrick, listen to me—” She took a deep breath, terrified he wouldn’t, since he never had before.

Before she could finish, Patrick swayed and leaned against the wall, one hand flat against it, the other sliding up the lapel of his coat, stopping somewhere near his empty breast pocket. His breath seemed to catch on a heavy gasp of air, and his eyes looked suddenly frightened.

“Julie…” The words passed through lips that were dry and the same pale color as his face.

“Oh, my God!”

His legs turned to rubber. He swayed and slid down the wall, coming to rest slumped over at the bottom. Beads of perspiration popped out across his forehead and dampened the black hair at his temple.

“Somebody help us!” Julie looked frantically toward the people passing by on the sidewalk just a few feet away. “Please…somebody call 911!” A few heads swiveled in their direction, but no one ran into the alley or even started walking their way.

Julie fumbled with her purse, finally found her cell phone and made the call herself. She was shaking by the time she finished.

She forced a note of calm into her voice. “Take it easy, Patrick. Help is on the way.” She didn’t know if he could hear her, but it gave her a feeling of being back in control. Up ahead, the valet in front of The Grill had just hopped into a big white Mercedes-Benz and driven away.

No help there.

She didn’t know CPR. For years she had been going to take a class, but there never seemed to be enough time. Leaving Patrick on the sidewalk, she raced to the shiny brass doors of the restaurant, pulled one of them open and rushed inside.

“Please, you have to help me,” she said to the dark-haired maître d’. “Patrick Donovan’s on the sidewalk outside. I think he’s having a heart attack. Is there someone here who can do CPR?”

“I know Patrick,” the man said. “He’s too young to be having a heart attack. It’s probably just gas or something.”

“It isn’t just gas! You’ve got to help us! Patrick may be dying!”

He went into action then, telling her not to worry, hurrying toward the paging system and asking if there was a doctor in the house. Julie raced back outside. By now a small crowd had gathered. She shouldered her way toward a man in a navy blue suit leaning over Patrick’s now unconscious form.

“A-are you a doctor?”

“No.” The slender man stood up and backed away. “I’m a stockbroker. But I checked for a pulse and I couldn’t find one. I don’t think he’s breathing.”

Julie swallowed past a growing lump of fear. “Do you know CPR?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Is there anyone here who does?” When no one in the small, worried crowd answered, she steeled herself. She had seen it done, but she had never tried it. Still, someone had to do something and fast. “Well then,” she said, forcing a note of authority into her voice. “Get out of my way so I can get to work.”

They wouldn’t let her ride with him in the ambulance. She wasn’t his next of kin, after all, and he still wasn’t breathing on his own. His heart had not responded to her clumsy efforts at CPR and the ambulance seemed to have taken forever to get there.

Julie drove like a woman possessed all the way to Cedar Sinai Hospital. She hadn’t called Patrick’s father yet, afraid the news might cause Alex to have another stroke. Better to wait, see what the doctors had to say.

Better to pray that Patrick was still alive when she got there.

On trembling legs, she shoved through the glass doors into the reception area and hurried toward the information desk, stopped at the counter, afraid to ask, afraid she already knew the answer.

She had called Babs on her cell, had found her at the office, which wasn’t too far away. Now the sight of her friend’s purposeful, no-nonsense strides as she pushed through the front doors into the lobby gave Julie a shot of courage. She took a slow, bracing breath and worked to calm her thundering heart.

With a small silent prayer, she turned toward the desk and spoke to the gray-haired receptionist, who looked at her over the top of her gold-rimmed reading glasses.

“May I help you?”

“Yes. I’m here to inquire about a friend…Patrick Donovan. They just brought him in.” The woman began to search the names on her computer screen while Julie stood tensely, running her tongue over her trembling lips.

“How is he?” Babs asked when she reached Julie’s side.

“I-I don’t know yet.” They both turned to stare at the woman.

“His condition is listed as stable,” she said, the age lines around her mouth puckering unbecomingly. Too many years in a job where it was all too easy for people to become merely numbers. “He’s been taken to intensive care, but he can’t have visitors, only immediate family.”

“We are immediate family,” they both said in unison, then looked over at each other and grinned, light-headed with relief. At least he was still alive.

“I thought you said he was a friend,” the woman reminded her tartly, her rheumy eyes suspicious above the rim of her glasses.

“Well, he is,” Julie agreed. “But he’s also our brother.”

The receptionist eyed her with suspicion, but one hard look from Babs and she pointed a bony finger down the hall.

“Take the elevator up to the third floor. Follow the signs. They’ll tell you where to go from there.”

“Thanks,” Julie said as they walked away, thinking it was time she called Alex, but first she wanted to speak to the doctors.

Babs pushed the elevator button. “At least he isn’t dead,” she said with her usual bluntness.

“He nearly was.” Julie nervously plucked a speck of lint from the front of her pink linen suit. “His heart had stopped and he wasn’t breathing. I was afraid he wasn’t going to make it.”

“It’s the damned drugs and booze. We’ve both been telling him for years that one day it would kill him.”

“Maybe now that this has happened, he’ll listen. Sometimes a close call with death can make a person change.”

Babs flashed her a look of disbelief. “Don’t get your hopes up, honey. Nothing is going to change Patrick Donovan. Between his motorcycle races and his skiing, he’s had half a dozen close calls. He hasn’t changed a lick and this time won’t be one bit different.”

Julie knew she was right, but it still hurt to admit it.

Patrick would always be Patrick.

Yet the memory of him lying on the sidewalk, of his pale, waxen face and blue, bloodless lips—the terrible thought of him dying—was enough to make her heart pump painfully again.

Five

Commander Valenden Zarkazian lay quietly beneath the clean white sheet on the hospital bed, listening to the beeping sound of the heart monitor attached by wires to his chest. The curtains were drawn so that only a sliver of light fed into the darkened room, dimly illuminating the stark white walls and dull gray linoleum floors. He was lying on his back, his mouth and nose covered by a plastic oxygen mask, his arms resting limply at his sides. A needle dripped clear liquid into a vein in his wrist.

He was glad for the quiet, the undisturbed moments to gather his thoughts and come to grips with where he was and what he was feeling.

To discover exactly who he had become.

It was the oddest sensation, lying there in the darkness, one that, with his limited information, he hadn’t completely expected. His body lay still but his thoughts were in turmoil. His mind was a jumble of information, his senses bursting with memories, images, and sensations—both tactile and internal—the forces so powerful they nearly overwhelmed him.

It was easier to deal with the physical aspects of his incredible journey, the weight of a body influenced by Earth’s heavy gravity, the pulsing of a heart inside the cage of his chest, the in-and-out motion of air rushing to and from his lungs. Those things he had expected. He had been studying the human form for years; he was well prepared for the physical transition he would make.

It was the invasion of the mind, the onslaught of memories and emotions he was ill-prepared to deal with, the meshing, the mixing, the overwhelming oneness he felt with Patrick Alexander Donovan.

The astonishing fact was, in a way he hadn’t expected, he actually was Patrick Donovan. He knew everything Patrick knew, every thought he’d ever had, every fear, every need, every wish. He knew the man’s strengths as well as his failings. He knew the depth of his depravity as well as the heights of his goodness.

Fortunately, considering Patrick’s somewhat weak, self-destructive personality, it was Val Zarkazian who was now in control.

It was Val’s strength of will, Val’s sense of purpose, Val’s set of values that would rule Patrick Donovan’s heretofore misused mind and body.

He settled his head against the pillow, feeling the slick white smoothness of the case, smelling the stringent hospital odors, and trying not to think of the prickle of pain in his wrist where the intravenous needle pumped fluid into his body. Instead he let himself absorb the memories, the experiences that had been the sum total of Patrick Donovan’s life.

Val knew most humans had not been born into the privileged existence Patrick had, yet from the images he received of the boy’s lonely childhood, he wondered if other, less advantaged children were not far better off.

He wondered about Patrick’s father, the man Patrick had loved so much, a man too busy after the death of his beloved wife to pay attention to his only son. A man Patrick had always admired, yet also resented. A man who in the past few years had tried to reach out to him. Unfortunately for Patrick, by then it was too late.

He wondered about the mother who had died when the boy was ten years old, at the stepmother, a society woman, a beautiful “social butterfly”—to quote one of Patrick’s own thoughts—who dressed him up in blue blazers and showed him off to her friends, who bought him dozens of expensive toys, but abandoned him to a nanny until he was big enough to be left on his own.

Big enough to get into trouble. Big enough to turn to sex and drugs.

Val wondered about the former. On Toril, the planet he came from, generations were perpetuated by test tube births. Male and female were paired genetically, then linked together after their maturity to form a loosely regulated, monogamous family unit. There was no such thing as sex, not in the sense of the physical linking that Patrick had apparently enjoyed so much.

Drugs Val understood. He was a scientist, after all. He knew their debilitating effects, the totally destructive power the misuse of drugs could unleash. In that regard, there was no need for experimentation. Only a need to repair the damage to Patrick’s ravaged body that the drugs, alcohol, and off-and-on smoking had caused.

Val stirred restlessly on the hospital bed. Now that he was here, there was so much he wanted to do, so much to see, so much to experience. There was nothing he could do to hurry things along; he couldn’t afford to alert them to the fact that this Patrick was somehow different than the Patrick he was before. The change would have to be gradual. Believable. Allowing Val to emerge, to become an acceptable part of Patrick without destroying the essence of who Patrick was.

It would happen all in due course, he told himself. Patience had been a virtue he had tried hard to cultivate, yet already he found himself straining at the bit, as Patrick would have said, itching to be free to get on with his work. Patrick’s body had been physically repaired, the massive damage to his heart had been undone at the moment of Unification. By a physical weakness, an instant of good fortune for Val, and Patrick’s own reckless nature, the perfect vessel had been provided for him to continue his work.

It was the chance he’d been waiting for.

The chance of a lifetime.

Val clenched his hands into fists, testing the dexterity, feeling the smooth glide of muscle between skin and bone. Careful not to disturb the needle in his wrist, he held them up in front of his face to survey the long, dark, tapering fingers, the short, blunt, neatly manicured nails. It was one thing to know Patrick’s thoughts, another to experience exactly what a human male was feeling.

There was so much ahead of him. So much to learn, so much to explore. Of chief concern was the Ferris female. In the next few hours, he would search Patrick Donovan’s memory banks for every thought, every recollection of the woman the man had ever had. Soon he would begin, but not yet.

Instead Val closed his eyes and willed his turbulent thoughts to rest. He would start with something else, something that would help his host’s battered body regain the strength it needed. Something he could do right here in this quiet, barren room. He would begin by experiencing the phenomena humans called sleeping. He closed his eyes and allowed the sensation to begin.

Alexander Donovan gripped the sides of his wheelchair as it rolled down the busy corridors of Cedar Sinai Hospital pushed by Nathan Jefferson Jones, the big ex-football tackle who served as his male nurse. The pair made an odd combination, Alex thin and frail with a leonine mane of snowy hair; Nathan, brawny, bulging with muscle, his head completely shaved and as shiny and black as a bowling ball.

While Alex was left-brained and fixated on work even after the stroke his stressful life had caused, Nathan lived for the moment, always smiling, cheery in the face of nearly any adversity. Keeping Alex going when he sometimes so badly wanted to just give up and let the good Lord take him away.

“There’s Julie, Mr. D.” Nathan pointed down the corridor. “I figured she’d be waiting right there, in front of Patrick’s door.”

Alex shifted in his wheelchair, relaxed a little when he saw the small, red-haired figure beside the door to his son’s hospital room. Things were always better when Julie was around.

“Alex! I’m so glad you’re here.” She hurried toward him, walked over and hugged him hard. He could only hug her back with one arm, but it felt good to absorb her warmth and reassuring strength.

“How is he? Have you seen him yet?” The words came out a little slurred, since one side of his mouth didn’t move, but Julie had grown used to his affliction and easily understood.

“I peeked in on him as soon as they would let me, but Patrick was sleeping. Babs was here with me until just a few minutes ago. She had to leave for an appointment but she stayed until the doctor came. He says the news is all very good.”

“Thank God,” Alex said, his bent frame sagging with relief. Standing next to his chair, Julie absently rubbed her temple. Alex frowned, worried she might be getting another of her recent migraine headaches.

She smiled, but it looked a little forced. “How about you? Are you okay?”

“By the time you called, Patrick was already out of danger. I suppose I should be angry that you didn’t call me sooner, but I know why you did it, and my doctor would probably argue you did the right thing.”

“I didn’t want to upset you any more than I had to. I did what Patrick would have wanted me to do.”

Just then Dr. Manley, the cardiologist who had been caring for Patrick, walked up, a slight, dark-haired man wearing spectacles and a long white lab coat. “You’re Alex Donovan, Patrick’s father?”

“That’s correct. And this is Ms. Ferris, a close family friend.”

“Ms. Ferris and I have already met,” the doctor said.

“What can you tell us, Dr. Manley? What has happened to my son?”

“First let me say that your son can look forward to a full recovery. I want you to know that right from the beginning so that as we speak, you won’t be unduly upset.”

“I understand your concern for my health, Doctor, but Julie has already spared me the worst of it. Now if you will, I’d like you to tell me exactly what you know.”

The doctor glanced down at the papers on the clipboard he held in a pair of elegant, long-figured hands. “At exactly 11:45 a.m. this morning your son suffered a massive myocardial infarction. We believe it was drug-induced, a toxic reaction that usually occurs from an overdose, but in this case was caused by an accumulation of drugs taken over a number of years in smaller, but still harmful doses.”

He glanced down at the chart. “The drugs produced hemorrhage and cardiac arrhythmias. Cardiac dysfunction occurred, causing damage to the ventricle and the adjacent portion of the inter ventricular septum, which at first we believed might be too extensive to repair, or that by the time we were ready to operate, it would be too late.”

The doctor studied a note on the paper, then looked up. “Fortunately, once your son reached the hospital and we began our series of tests, we discovered the damage to the wall of the heart was minimal. The electrocardiogram showed surgery wasn’t necessary after all.”

Alex said nothing for the longest time, but his insides felt knotted up inside him. He had known about Patrick’s drug use for years, but his son had never been an addict. Alex had tried to convince himself Patrick would eventually mature, assume more responsibility, and outgrow his fascination with alcohol and drugs. Obviously, that hadn’t happened.

Alex felt defeated in a way even his stroke had not accomplished.

“How long will he have to stay in the hospital?” he asked.

“A couple of days. He’ll need to take it easy after that for several weeks—and he’ll have to stay off drugs.”

“Of course,” Alex replied automatically. But in his heart, he knew his wayward son never would.

“Perhaps he’ll slow down a little now,” Julie said gently. “People can change, you know, even people like Patrick.” But the look in her pretty green eyes said she didn’t really believe it any more than he did.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to excuse myself,” the doctor said. “There’s another patient I have to see before I leave. If you have any questions, I’ll be in my office tomorrow.”

Alex watched him walk away, took a steadying breath and turned toward Julie. “Shall we go in and see him?” he asked with tender affection.

He had known Julie Ferris for the past eight years, had been her mentor in the real estate business and come to love her like the daughter he never had. He knew she cared a great deal for his son. But not enough to overlook his many failings. Even Alex couldn’t hope for that.

Julie took hold of his thin, veined hand, lacing her fingers through his. As Nathan shoved his wheelchair through the door, he noticed how tired she looked, the tight, strained lines around her mouth. It appeared as if she had slept in the wrinkled pink linen suit she wore. Perhaps for a time she had.

Julie held the door so Nathan could push him into the room. Surprisingly Patrick’s eyes were open when they walked in.

Julie left Alex’s side and moved toward him, clasped one of his dark hands in her own. “We’ve been so worried. How are you feeling?”

“Better.” He smiled at her, but it looked strained and unsteady. “I’m glad you’re here. I should have known you…would be.” The words sounded rough, husky, as if he had trouble forcing them out.

“Your father’s here, too.” Julie stepped back as Nathan wheeled Alex closer to the bed.

“I got here as soon as I heard,” he said. “Julie was playing protector. She didn’t call me until she knew for sure you’d be all right.”

Patrick smiled again, a little less stiffly this time. “She spends more time watching out for other people than she does watching out for herself.”

“Are you kidding?” Julie squeezed his hand. “If I didn’t have someone to look after, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”

“You can look after me any time you like,” Patrick said, and for an instant, he seemed surprised he’d said the words, then he relaxed and looked up at her. “The doctor says I’ll be out of here in a couple of days. You can look after me back at the office.”

“He also says you’re supposed to take it easy. If it takes Babs and me, Nathan, Alex and Dr. Manley all put together, we’re going to see that you do.”

Patrick said nothing to that. He was watching her strangely, staring into her eyes as if he wanted to reach down inside her. Color crept into her cheeks. Her hand fluttered nervously when she withdrew it from his.

A noise in the hall disturbed them, drew Alex’s attention to the opening door. “I’m sorry,” the stout nurse said, “but all of you will have to leave. It’s time for Mr. Donovan’s medication. He needs peace and quiet, and as much rest as he can get.”

Patrick made an disgruntled sound in his throat.

“I’ll be back to see you in the morning,” Julie said. “In the meantime, get some sleep—and Patrick?” A fine black eyebrow arched up. “For once in your life, do what the doctor says.”

But Julie’s admonitions had never had much success in controlling Patrick’s excesses. Alex wished his son could learn to control himself.

Sitting at her desk, going over the Whitelaw escrow file, Julie answered the phone and was surprised to hear the sound of Patrick’s voice coming through the receiver.

“Julie?”

“Patrick? You’re feeling well enough to use the phone?”

“Yes…in fact they’re releasing me today.” Since his heart attack, his voice sounded a little huskier than it usually did, a bit gruffer, yet at the same time more refined. Perhaps it was the oxygen he’d been forced to breathe…or maybe it was just her imagination.

“That’s wonderful, Patrick.” She had gone to see him during visiting hours every day, but after the first time, she had stayed only briefly. As soon as word got out of Patrick’s illness, the corridor outside his room had been clogged with his legions of women, which was why the next words that came from him over the phone were so surprising.

“I was wondering…if you weren’t too busy…if you might be able to pick me up.”

Something unfurled in her stomach, a mixture of wariness and pleasure. Julie ruthlessly forced it down. When she spoke to him next, a note of tartness rose into her voice. “I thought Anna, or Charlotte, or—”

“If you don’t have time, I understand. I know how much work you have to do.”

She felt churlish and silly. She and Patrick were friends, after all. Of course she’d be happy to pick him up. “I’m not that busy. What time are you being released?”

“Sometime after two. They didn’t exactly say.”

“All right, I’ll be there at two.”

“It might be later. I can call you after the paperwork’s done and I’m ready to leave. It won’t take long for you to get here.”

“I’ll be there at two. I can imagine how eager you are to get out of there. Maybe I can hurry things along.” If it hadn’t seemed so foolish, she would have sworn she could feel him smile as she hung up the phone.

As Patrick had predicted, the paperwork wasn’t finished when she arrived at the hospital at two-fifteen. Patrick was still in bed, fidgeting nervously, ringing the bell for the nurse for at least the tenth time since noon.

“Sorry,” he said, “I should have insisted you wait for my call.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll speak to the nurse and see if I can’t get them to hurry.”

A few minutes later, she returned with the news that Dr. Manley had just come in and signed the release forms. The nurse would be there in a few more minutes to help him get dressed. As soon as he was ready, he could leave.

“I don’t need the woman’s help,” Patrick grumbled, swinging his long, suntanned legs to the side of the bed. The sheet slid away. Julie noticed the white cotton hospital gown had bunched midthigh and that his bare legs were muscled and covered with a dusting of fine black hair. “She’s more overbearing than a…than a…”

“Drill sergeant?” Julie supplied.

He seemed to ponder that. Then he smiled. “Exactly. I’d rather do it on my own.” But when he tried to stand up, his legs turned suddenly unsteady and a shaft of weakness rippled through him.

“Here, let me help you.”

Patrick swayed precariously as she drew near and only the arm she slid beneath his shoulders kept him from sprawling on the floor.

“Thanks,” he said softly.

He was staring at her oddly, studying her with those striking blue eyes. Something fluttered in her stomach, sent a thread of heat spiraling through her. It made her notice how handsome he was, even with his hair slightly mussed and the ugly white hospital gown sliding off a wide, tanned shoulder. It was ridiculous and yet she couldn’t deny that physically, she had always been attracted to Patrick.

His glance shifted, came to rest on the place where their two bodies touched. She could feel the heat shimmering between them and apparently so could he. His whole body stiffened and impulsively he jerked away, nearly knocking them both to the ground.

“For heaven’s sake, Patrick, take it easy. If you keep that up, you’re going to land us both in a heap. Why don’t you just stand still and I’ll get your clothes. You can sit in the chair and put them on.”

He simply nodded. His face looked flushed and even his ears were red. She couldn’t imagine Patrick Donovan being embarrassed in front of a woman, but it certainly looked as though he was. She took her time removing his shirt, shoes, and pants from the tiny closet, giving him a chance to collect himself. The items were freshly laundered, she saw, not the clothes he had been wearing when he’d been brought in. Anna or Charlotte or one of his whoevers must have brought clean clothes from his apartment. She wondered why he hadn’t asked the woman to pick him up.

Setting his garments on a table beside the chair, she pulled open the door. “I’ll be right outside if you need me. All you have to do is call out.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said stiffly, and began to rifle through the clothes.

Outside the room, Julie sat down on a narrow gray vinyl bench. Watching patients and nurses, doctors and visitors making their way down the hall, she toyed with the strap of her purse and hoped Patrick was truly all right.

A few minutes later, the door opened up and he walked out into the corridor, smiling as if he was pleased with himself for simply getting dressed, though she couldn’t imagine why he would be.

“I’m ready if you are,” he said.

Julie came to her feet. “I’m afraid you still can’t leave. You’ll have to go out in a wheelchair. The nurse says that’s hospital policy.” It occurred to her that for a man recovering from a heart attack, he certainly looked good.

In navy blue slacks and a short-sleeved, knit pullover sweater, he could have just stepped off of a billboard.

Patrick stared at her and frowned. “A wheelchair? Why would I have to do that?”

“Because they don’t want to get sued if you should fall.”

The nurse walked up just then, a big beefy woman in her fifties. “That’s right, Mr. Donovan, that’s the way it’s got to be, and if you want to blame somebody for it, blame the shyster lawyer who sued us for damages and won.”

He had nothing to say to that, just sat down quietly and let the woman wheel him away. Julie was a little amazed. Patrick was anything but meek, especially when he didn’t get his way. Then again, maybe the heart attack had left him weaker than he looked.

Val let the woman push him into the elevator and the stainless steel doors slid closed. Beside him in a soft peach suit, Julie Ferris fidgeted with the strap of her over-the-shoulder purse.

He tried not to look at her. When he did, he thought of the way Patrick Donovan’s body—his body now—had behaved when she had unwittingly pressed against him to steady his wobbly legs.

He understood what had happened. He understood an erection—theoretically.

The soft feel of her breasts had triggered a memory of her naked, thrashing on the blue-veined curlon examination table, her small, well-formed body fighting the invisible force that had held her in place.

The meshing of that memory with those Patrick Donovan carried, heightened by the close physical contact, had caused his reproductive organ to grow momentarily hard. He knew it meant the male of the species was physically aroused, that he wanted to mate with the female and deposit his sperm.

He just hadn’t understood the way the sensation would make him feel.

He said nothing as the nurse wheeled him silently down the hall, but soon his thoughts of Julie Ferris were swamped by more pressing sensations. The noise of footfalls in the corridor, the soft thud of rubber-soled shoes mixed with the crisp slap of leather. The dull roar of mingling voices, some of them low and speaking in whispers, others raised in heated debate as they hurried through the halls. The odors he had noticed in his room earlier were magnified a thousand times out here, some of them so strong they made his nostrils burn.

As they approached the front doors, sunlight streamed into the reception area. Val blinked several times, wincing as the bright rays stabbed painfully behind his eyes.

“Take care of him, Ms. Ferris,” the nurse said, pushing the wheelchair out through the automatic doors and onto the wide cement steps in front of the building. A strong female arm helped him stand up. “I guarantee he’ll be a handful.” She winked and Julie smiled.

He watched the woman walk away, saying nothing, too caught up in the sights and sounds pressing in on him.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Julie asked, her expression worried, her eyes fixed on his face. She linked an arm through his, helping to steady him. “All of a sudden, you look kind of pale.”

Val ran his tongue across lips that felt rubbery and numb. Even if he could tell her what he was feeling, he couldn’t possibly begin to describe it. There was no way to express the riot of colors—the bright green of the lawns and trees, the azure blue of the sky, the stunningly vivid red of a sports car roaring past them on the street.

“I’m fine, Julie. I’ll just be glad to get home.”

She studied him with concern. “The car’s right out front in the passenger loading zone. We don’t have far to go.”

She said nothing more and neither did he. He could barely function for the jagged sensations ripping through his head. Toril was a planet of peace and serenity. There were no bright colors, no loud noises, no pungent smells. It was a pastel world, a world of grays and browns and a few muted blues, a palette of shaded colors that seemed amazingly washed out in comparison to the splashy, vibrant hues that enlivened the world of Earth.

Aside from the clothes he had seen on the subjects they had been studying, and what they had observed of the planet through their surveillance devices, he had never experienced anything to compare with the rich display spread before him like a banquet for the eyes. On Toril, the sky was a nondescript white, the plant life, even in blossom, brightened to no more than shades of weak pastel. People dressed in solid colors of those same watered shades, the styles varying little between social orders, the three different races, or male and female gender.

Here it seemed as though each individual tried to carve out his own identity by the color and style of his clothes. It gave the place an atmosphere of constant festivity, a parade of vibrant stripes, prints, and plaids all run together in a mishmash of design and color that splashed against the inner wall of the eye.

They had nearly reached the curb when a car horn blared and he stumbled backward. Another horn answered then another and another, driving the cacophony straight into his head. His hands came up to cover his ears, and beside him he felt Julie stiffen.

“Get in the car,” she commanded, opening the door and easing him in. Noticing his growing pallor, she moved the seat back a little and helped him settle his long legs inside.

The car was small, a Mercedes, Patrick’s memory said. But the top was up and so were the windows. When Julie closed the door, some of the loud noise abated. As she eased herself into the driver’s seat, snapped her seat belt then his, Val leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

“You don’t look good. Maybe it’s too soon for you to leave. Maybe I should take you back inside.”

His eyes snapped open. He sat up a little straighter in the seat. “I’m fine. I just want to go home.”

“Are you sure, Patrick—and don’t lie to me. I’d feel terrible if something else happened to you.”

He turned his head in her direction, an odd tingling warmth in the pit of his stomach. “Would you?”

The color rushed into her cheeks. He knew the surge of blood was caused by feelings of embarrassment. He understood the sensation, since it had already happened to him.

“Of course, I’d care. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Yes…friends.” But in his head, something said friendship wasn’t all that Patrick had felt for Julie Ferris and it was never what he’d wanted.

Val lay back against the seat as the car rumbled to life, the funny vibrations running up his back and shoulders. In the confines of the car, a faint, sweet fragrance drifted over from Julie’s side of the car, a smell so subtle he hadn’t noticed it before.

“I like the…perfume…you’re wearing,” he said, testing the word on his tongue.

“It’s Michael Kors. Your father bought it for me last year for my birthday. It’s expensive, but it’s definitely my favorite.”

“Mine, too,” he said, inhaling deeply. There were no vile smells on Toril, not like the ones he’d noticed in the hospital, or those drifting up from the gutter he had whiffed as he’d slid into the car. But there was also nothing like the soft sweet fragrance of Michael Kors, either. He liked the way it mingled with Julie’s own special scent, giving her a softly feminine fragrance all her own.

The small car hummed along. Val settled back in the seat, stretching his long legs out as best he could. Outside the window, the landscape of Beverly Hills slid past in a blur of sound and color. Automobiles of every design and hue crammed the streets to overflowing. People crowded along the sidewalks, hurrying to destinations he couldn’t begin to guess. Buildings rose up from the pavement, their storefronts shaded by bright canvas awnings, the windows glowing with vibrant signs made of…neon…yes, that was the word.

“We’re almost there,” Julie said, turning the car off Wilshire onto Oakhurst Drive. Just past Burton Way, she slowed the engine, turned, and pulled off the road, stopping in front of the heavy metal fence that enclosed the parking garage. “I found this with your clothes.”

She held up a small square box Patrick’s memory said opened the door to the underground parking. “One of your lady friends must have come by and picked it up along with the rest of your things.”

The woman called Anna, he recalled. A tall, slenderly built blond female who had come to see him several times in the hospital. She had kissed him, he recalled, not an unpleasant sensation, but when she had reached beneath the covers to stroke his sex, he’d nearly had a second heart attack.

Patrick’s memory had kicked in, enlightening him on their recent acquaintance—and the fact the woman was a great deal of the reason that, aside from the part of Patrick that Val had absorbed, the living, reasoning essence of Patrick Donovan was gone.

Still, the transformation was not as he’d expected. With each passing hour, he felt a subtle shifting, a reaching out, a melding of consciousness as new information, more of Patrick’s being was fully absorbed. He had expected to be solidly in control, less vulnerable to the thoughts Patrick once had, the emotions he had experienced.

Instead it was if he and Patrick had merged, begun to form a third, distinctly different being. It frightened him. Made him worry what residue those changes might leave inside him.

Fear. Val could taste it in his mouth.

It was an emotion unknown to the people of Toril.

Six

“But I don’t want to come out for the weekend, Julie. I’d rather stay here.”

“Come on, honey,” Julie coaxed her sister over the phone, “it’s my birthday. Babs is coming for dinner on Saturday night. Owen’s in town. He’s promised he’ll stop by. We’ll have ourselves a party.”

“I-I don’t know….”

Julie rubbed her temple, trying to ignore the headache that had built behind her eyes. “Come on, Laura, please? The weather’s going to be clear. We can lie out in the cove and no one will bother us. You can tell me how your sessions with Dr. Heraldson are going.”

“He wants to hypnotize me.”

“So?”

“I don’t want him to, Julie.”

“Why not?”

“I-I don’t know. I just don’t like the idea.”

Julie took a steadying breath and slowly released it. “We’ll talk about it when you get here.”

“It’ll be too late by then. Tomorrow’s my appointment.”

“Well…if Dr. Heraldson thinks it’s a good idea, maybe you should do it.”

“I suppose so. I guess it couldn’t hurt.” A pause on the phone. “I’d forgotten it was your birthday.”

“Does that mean you’ll come?”

“Of course I will.”

“Great. Can I count on seeing you Friday night? We could go out for a bite of dinner.”

“I can’t, I’ve got a date. I’ll drive out Saturday afternoon.”

A date, Julie thought, praying it wasn’t with that no-good Jimmy Osborn. Her head throbbed even harder. “I guess if that’s the best you can do, it’ll have to be good enough. I’ve got a couple of properties to show on Saturday morning. If I’m not home when you get here, you know where to find the extra key.”

They both said goodbye and Julie rang off thinking about Laura. She was worried about her, but then as Babs had said, she usually was. Walking into the bathroom, she opened the medicine cabinet and searched the shelves, looking for the plastic bottle of painkillers Dr. Marsh had prescribed for her migraines. This one was shaping up to be a doozie.

Her hand shook as she pried off the lid and dumped a couple of capsules into her palm. A third fell out. For a moment she was tempted, then she thought of Patrick’s drug abuse and where it had finally landed him, and slid the third pill back into the bottle.

Thirty minutes later, the medicine had still not kicked in. Pain shot into her skull as the phone beside the bed began to ring. She reached over and lifted the receiver.

“Julie? It’s Patrick.”

The headache was getting so bad it was starting to upset her stomach. She dampened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, thinking she might throw up. “Hello, Patrick. How are you feeling?” It had been a week since Patrick’s release from the hospital. He had been taking it easy, as the doctors suggested, surprisingly circumspect for Patrick.

“Better than I have a right to. That’s why I’m calling. I’m down at the office. I thought you’d be in. I figured you might want to go over the Rabinoff file.”

“I’m afraid I’m not feeling well, Patrick. But the escrow’s all set to close. I don’t think there’ll be any more unforeseen problems.”

“You’re sick?” He sounded suddenly worried. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Another one of my headaches. This one’s pretty bad and nothing seems to help. I took some of the pills Dr. Marsh prescribed, but—”

“I’m coming over. I’ll be there in just a few minutes. Lie down and take it easy till I get there.”

“Patrick—you can’t drive all the way out here. You probably shouldn’t be driving at all. Besides, there’s nothing you can do the doctor hasn’t already done.”

“Maybe there is. I have hidden talents you wouldn’t believe. Besides, you helped me, didn’t you? I owe you one.” He hung up the receiver before Julie could say any more.

Val knew what was wrong with Julie Ferris. Her resistance to their scanners had been painful and immediate. The brutal headaches that followed were not unexpected, since they had occurred in subjects like Julie before. But the vicious assaults had lasted far longer than they had predicted, perhaps because, unlike the others, she had been taken aboard a second time.

Val felt a shot of guilt, a feeling he had never really known. When he’d made the difficult decision to bring the older sibling back aboard, he had known there might be complications. He wished he could explain, reassure her that the headaches would soon disappear. But he wasn’t exactly certain that would happen. It was one of the things he’d been sent here to observe. Grabbing his coat off the wooden valet in the corner of his office, he started for the door.

In the meantime, he knew the cause and what to do to treat them. At least he could ease some of her pain.

Shoving open the office door, he walked down the sidewalk toward the pudgy young man in front of Spago’s who parked Patrick’s car, and handed him a couple of dollar bills. He had driven the shiny black Porsche for the first time that morning—an antique mode of transportation he found fascinating. He was grateful Patrick knew how to handle the car and had enjoyed every second behind the wheel.

Patrick was a very good driver, he had discovered, with what seemed a natural ability to handle the vehicle on the route through Laurel Canyon. Later he had cruised Mulholland Drive.

All along the way, a fierce blue sky curved above him, brightened by clouds so white and incredibly lovely it made him feel funny inside. At the top of the hill he’d parked the car for a while and simply stared out over the landscape. Wildflowers in vivid purple and saffron gold, poppies in scorching red-orange. A large brown bird, a goshawk, his memory recalled, spiraled down off the mountain, coasting on the currents of the wind.

Afterward, he jotted down the experience in the journal he was keeping, filling the pages with words written in Patrick’s bold hand. It was the only way he could think of to capture the unfamiliar feelings, the subtle nuances of his thoughts. He had been making reports to his superiors, of course, communicating with the Ansor team through normal space channels.

But there was just no Torillian way to describe what was actually going on.

The journal would have to do that. When he returned to the ship, the pages could be scanned, translated by computer into words and images far more detailed than his logical, straightforward mind could manage.

Val tipped the valet for the second time that day, vowing to start parking the car himself in the office parking lot, then slid into the deep red leather seat of the softly purring sports car. He stepped on the gas, relaxed his mind, and let Patrick’s well-honed driving skills take over. He knew the way to Julie’s house and the fastest way to get there. Avoiding as much of the traffic as he could, he pulled onto Pacific Coast Highway and roared along the beach to Julie’s batten-board, ranch-style beach house.

He spotted it clinging to the side of a cliff, a two-car garage on the bottom, forming a two-story structure, the walls of the house draped with shocking-pink azaleas. If he hadn’t been so worried, he might have smiled.

Instead he parked the car in the driveway, knocked on the door, and a few minutes later, Julie Ferris let him in.

“This is silly, Patrick. You shouldn’t have come.”

But she looked so pale he was glad he had. He felt responsible for what was happening to her. Was responsible. There was just no way around it. Still, science was all-important. The Ansor’s mission was all-important.

And yet when he looked at Julie, he wished there could have been some other way.

“Why don’t you lie down on the couch?” he said gently. “I give a great massage. Why don’t we see if it will help?”

“I don’t know, Patrick….”

“Come on, Julie, please. Do it for me?”

A hint of uncertainty appeared in her face. She had always been wary of Patrick and yet they were friends of a sort. “All right. What have I got to lose?”

A few minutes later, she was lying on her stomach on the sofa, her pale blue terry-cloth robe covering her primly from neck to ankle. Val knelt beside her, began to massage her shoulders.

“I must be crazy,” she mumbled when his hands moved a little bit lower, kneading the muscles across her back. “If you try anything, Patrick, I swear I’ll never forgive you.”

He flushed a little at that. Partly because he had begun to like the feel of her small woman’s body beneath his hands and partly because the heavy male part of his anatomy was coming to life again.

Val swore something Patrick would have said. “I promise my intentions are completely aboveboard.”

“They’d better be.”

He continued his deep massage, working upward again, toward the muscles in her neck, reaching the area at the base of her skull that had been his objective from the start. His fingers sifted through her hair. He couldn’t believe how soft and silky it felt, while at the same time it was bouncy and vibrant, shimmering with life and substance.

Her skin was soft and smooth to the touch. When he had seen her that night onboard the ship, he had never noticed the satiny texture. But Patrick must have noticed it at least a hundred times, and because he had, now, so did he.

His hand shook, felt a little unsteady. The blood pumping through him seemed to thicken, pool low in his belly. He forced himself to ignore it.

Beneath his hands, a tiny vessel throbbed under an obscure layer of flesh. He searched it out, applied a gentle pressure, and felt the tension begin to ebb from Julie’s body.

“Better?” he asked, feeling a little more in control.

She made a purring sound and nodded. “I can’t believe how much.”

He continued to work on the vessel, knowing exactly how much blood to let flow and when to cut back.

Julie’s body relaxed even more. “How on Earth did you learn to do that?”

It wasn’t on Earth, he thought. But he just smiled and didn’t say it. “I’m just glad it’s working.”

“Uhmmm, it’s working, all right. My headache is almost gone.” She yawned hugely and her eyes drifted closed. Her breathing smoothed out, grew deeper. A few minutes later, she was asleep.

Val eased away from her, oddly reluctant to leave. He crossed the room to a serape-draped chair several paces away and sat down to watch her, taking advantage of the chance to study her unobserved. He made mental notes of her posture, the way she curled up in the robe like some small warm-blooded animal. He studied her breathing, watched the way it caused a strand of dark red hair to float beside her ear.

He assessed her small feet and hands, the soft pink polish on her fingernails and toes. He knew what she looked like beneath the robe, but he tried very hard not to think of it. When he did, his stomach muscles tightened and he started to grow hard again. Eventually he drew out the journal, began to use Patrick’s words as well as his own impressions to describe what he’d learned—and how watching her sleep made him feel.

He wasn’t at all happy with that discovery. He felt warm all over, somewhat sexually aroused, and precariously close to losing some of his precious control. Since control was the thing he needed most, he vowed to be more careful in the future.

In the end, he left Julie a note on the rough-hewn bleached pine coffee table in front of the sofa, then let himself out, pushing the button on the doorknob to lock it behind him. All the way home he wondered if his reactions to Julie belonged wholly to Patrick—or if some part of them could have belonged to him.

Brian Heraldson, Doctor of Psychiatry, sat behind the desk in his walnut-paneled, book-lined office on Galey Avenue in Westwood. He leaned back in his chair, his long fingers steepled in front of him, his thick brown eyebrows drawn together in a frown. Brian was thirty-five years old, divorced three years ago, over it now but wary of relationships that involved any form of commitment. His practice was everything—employer, friend, mistress—and he was good at what he did.

He was open, objective and concerned. To him psychiatry wasn’t just a job. It was a guideline of how to live and a deep responsibility. And so he pondered his newest patient, Laura Maxine Ferris. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

He was uncomfortable thinking of that. It was highly unethical to become involved with a patient. And he staunchly believed in those ethics. He wouldn’t allow the physical attraction he felt for Laura to stop him from giving her the help she so desperately needed.

Unconsciously, Brian stroked his neatly trimmed beard. He had grown it ten years ago, when he had first gone into practice. It had made him look older, more mature, gave his patients more confidence in his ability to help them. Since that time, he had grown so used to his bearded appearance, he couldn’t imagine how he would look without it. He wondered if Laura Ferris was attracted to men who wore beards, then prayed most sincerely that she wasn’t.

Leaning forward, he pressed the button on the small, digital tape recorder sitting on his desk and Laura’s soft feminine voice floated out through the speakers in the compact machine.

She was telling him about her childhood, describing the day her father had left them, how terribly sad they all had been. “Mama cried the most,” she said. “I held onto Daddy’s leg when he opened the door and begged him not to leave. I said, ‘Don’t go Daddy, please,’ but he only shook his head. I remember the way his hand stroked through my hair. It was exactly the same light blond as his and his eyes were brown like mine. I started to cry and he looked like he might cry, too.”

“What about your sister? What did she do?”

“Julie just stood there and watched him pack his things. She was leaning against the wall in the corner, staring at Mama and me. She saw us crying and for some reason it made her really mad. She started shouting at Mama and me, telling us to let him leave. She said, ‘Let him go! He doesn’t want us anymore—let him leave!’ She ran over to Daddy and told him to go away. She said she didn’t care if he ever came back. I don’t think Mama ever forgave her for that.”

The chair squeaked as Brian sat up straighter. “Your mother thought it was Julie’s fault your father left you?”

A sad look crossed her face. “Not really. She just wanted someone besides herself to blame for driving him away.”

“What about you? Did you blame your sister?”

Laura smiled faintly. “No. I knew Julie loved Daddy more than any of us. That was the reason she didn’t cry. She was afraid if she started, she’d never be able to stop.”

Brian punched the stop button on the recording machine, bringing the tape to a whirring halt. He felt Laura’s pain a second time as he listened to her story, felt sorry for the lonely little girls who had only each other to love.

He’d been seeing Laura three times a week since she had been coming in for treatment. There was lots of ground to cover but she seemed to be responding very well and they had developed a nice rapport.

He fast-forwarded the tape, coming to the hypnosis session she had finally agreed to that had taken place yesterday afternoon. He had wanted to start with her childhood, hoping to pinpoint the catalyst responsible for her recent paranoia, which had apparently started only a short time ago.

He wanted to know if something frightening had actually occurred, something Laura had suppressed, something perhaps she was afraid to remember. Had she been assaulted, raped, or in some other way abused? Or was the paranoia a result of some earlier problem that had only just now begun to surface?

In either case, a single incident might have occurred which could have brought her fears to a head. He pushed the play button and leaned back in his chair, listening carefully to the final part of the session. Under deep hypnosis, he had taken Laura backward through time to the day several weeks ago when she had first become frightened.

He knew when she had reached it by her sudden rigid posture, the long slim fingers clawing into the arms of her chair.

“Where are you, Laura?” he asked gently.

She only shook her head.

“Where are you? Laura, you don’t have to be afraid. Just tell me where you are?”

Her face grew pale. Her eyebrows drew tightly together. Her hands were shaking, her knees trembling beneath the folds of her loose-fitting paisley cotton skirt. “Hospital,” she whispered.

“You’re in the hospital?”

She nodded stiffly, her arms still gripping the chair.

“When, Laura?”

“June. I went to Julie’s house. We took a day off from work to lay on the beach.”

It didn’t make sense. As far as he knew, no accidents, no emergencies, nothing like that had occurred. “Did Julie take you to the hospital?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“How did you get there?”

“I don’t…I don’t know.”

This wasn’t going the way he planned. He took another tack. “All right, Laura. You’re in the hospital. Tell me about it. Tell me why you’re afraid.”

She chewed her bottom lip. For the longest time she didn’t speak, just stared straight ahead as if she were there again. “They took off my clothes,” she finally said. “I was naked. It was cold in there…so cold.” She started to shiver.

“Go on,” he softly urged.

“They washed my body with something like alcohol, but it was slimy and it didn’t have much smell. When they washed between my legs, I started to cry.”

Brian stared at his patient in silence, turning over what she had said. “What happened next?” he asked, suddenly not sure he wanted to hear.

“I tried to fight them, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t lift my arms. They bent my knees, pushed up my legs. They shoved something cold and hard up inside me. I tried to scream, but nothing came out.”

Brian’s own hands started to shake. “Go on, Laura.”

“I begged them not to hurt me. ‘Please don’t…please don’t hurt me.’ But they couldn’t hear. They pulled the metal things out from inside me and stuffed something rubbery into my mouth. I could feel it tickling the back of my throat and I started to gag. I was afraid I’d choke if I threw up. I closed my eyes as tight as I could, tried not to think about the thing in my mouth, tried to ignore the crunching sound inside my head when they shoved a little hard thing up my nose.”

Brian rubbed the back of a hand across his lips. “What else do you remember, Laura?”

She didn’t answer. Just sat there shaking.

“Laura? Tell me what else you recall.”

She shook her head. “Nothing else. I don’t remember why I went there. I don’t know how I got home.” She started to cry then, soft little sobs that jabbed at his insides. He knew he should press her, try to discover how this wild delusion had gotten started, but he was fairly certain he knew.

Her medical history said Laura hadn’t been inside a hospital in years, not since she was seventeen years old, pregnant, and unmarried. Her boyfriend had convinced her to have an abortion, but his choice of practitioner wasn’t the greatest. Complications had set in. Fortunately, her sister found out what had happened and had taken her to a reputable doctor, who had seen she got the proper care.

It was all in her medical files.

All but the trauma the incident must have caused.

Brian turned off the tape and leaned back in his chair. Two more days until her next appointment. Another hypnosis session might prove interesting. Then again, it was certain to be hard on her. Perhaps it was too early in the treatment for any more trauma. He would have to give it some thought.

Then again, more time spent thinking about Laura Ferris might be the last thing he ought to do.

Julie checked the time on her Rolex watch. It was only 10:00 a.m. She was feeling pretty good this morning—no headaches for the past two days—and there was a two-hour break in her schedule before her luncheon with Evan Whitelaw and his wife, a meeting to discuss the escrow instructions on the Beverly Hills estate they had just purchased.

Julie smiled to think of the sale she had made. True, the house was bordered by Bel-Air, but it wasn’t technically in Bel-Air, as Jane Whitelaw had insisted. Her smile broadened as she thought of how glad she was she had talked the woman into a quick look at what had turned out to be the Whitelaws’ perfect home.

Heading out of her office, she walked past where Shirl Bingham sat filing her nails at the reception desk.

“If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be upstairs in the fitness center. I’ll be back before lunch to check my messages.”

Shirl just nodded and continued filing her long red nails. Julie thought of the fit Alex Donovan would have pitched if he had caught her, but company image was hardly a concern his son would have.

Julie walked out the front doors, into a different entrance of the same building, and stepped into the elevator. She got off on the third floor and went into the health club. For a number of people who worked nearby, the place was well maintained and convenient and not too overly large. Julie had been attending aerobics classes with a fair amount of regularity for the past three years.

She went into the locker room, changed into a pair of black shorts and a tank top, tied the laces on her Reeboks, then went into the weight room to warm up on one of the five stationary bikes. She stopped dead in her tracks when she looked over and saw Patrick on the treadmill, his tall frame drenched in sweat.

“My God, will wonders never cease.” She stopped beside the machine, grinning with disbelief.

“Hi,” he simply said. His face glistened with perspiration. A curl of damp black hair clung to his forehead. She had the strangest urge to reach out and brush it back out of the way.

“I didn’t know you were a member here,” she said.

“I wasn’t. Not until a couple of days ago. I thought, since it was so handy, it would be a good way to get in shape.”

Her grin slid away. “Are you sure you’re well enough for this? I thought you were supposed to take it easy.”

For a moment he looked uncomfortable, then he smiled his charming white smile. “I am taking it easy. I’m in bed every night by ten, no smoking, no drugs, no liquor. I’d say that’s about as easy as it gets.”

One of her eyebrows shot up. “In bed by ten? I don’t doubt that. The question is with whom? Let’s see—could it be the lovely Anna? Or are you back with Charlotte? Or maybe by now there’s someone new.”

A flush crept under his tan. Julie couldn’t believe it.

“Suffice it to say, I’m staying out of trouble. I’m getting myself in shape, just like the doctors said.”

She didn’t believe it, of course, or if by some miracle it was true, that it could possibly last. She studied him, struck by a sudden thought. “That wasn’t your car I saw in the parking lot this morning when I got in?”

“I came to work early. I had some business I needed to catch up on.”

Julie fell silent, for the first time allowing herself to really take a look at him. She had never seen Patrick in so few clothes, nothing but a pair of damp, clinging white shorts that hinted at the considerable bulge of his sex, a red tank top, socks, and running shoes. With every stride he made on the treadmill, long corded muscles bunched in his legs. His waist was lean, his shoulders very wide, more thickly muscled than she imagined, and the dark skin across them appeared surprisingly smooth. Curly black chest hair glistened with beads of perspiration above the scooped neck of his tank top.

“I hope you like what you see,” Patrick said softly, his blue eyes suddenly intense, and this time it was Julie’s turn to blush.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare, it’s just that I-I…that seeing you here was so unexpected.”

“I’ll be through in a few more minutes. Why don’t you finish your workout, and afterward—how about lunch?”

Lunch with Patrick? “I-I’m meeting the Whitelaws, going over their escrow instructions.” Had she heard him right? Was he actually asking her out? He hadn’t done that in years.

“If you can’t go to lunch, what about dinner? We’ll go someplace quiet where we can talk.”

This was crazy. Patrick hated quiet restaurants. He wanted to be where the action was. The hottest see-and-be-seen he could possibly find.

“Talk about what?” she asked dumbly, sure she was missing something. “Is there a problem I don’t know about at work? Is one of my clients upset? The Rabinoff deal had a few shaky moments but I thought they were happy in the end.”

Patrick slowed down, finally stopped jogging altogether, and stepped off the machine. “Nothing’s wrong, Julie.” It was amazing how much taller he seemed when she was wearing flat-heeled shoes. He wiped the sweat from his face with a white cotton towel. “I just wanted some company. I thought you might want some, too.”

“I don’t believe this, Patrick.” Unconsciously, she took a step away. “We decided years ago we’d be far better off as friends. We both know what it is you expect from the women you take out. You also know that’s not what you’ll get from me. I think the best course is the one we’ve been on up till now.”

He studied her for long, quiet moments. She couldn’t ever remember him looking at her quite that way. “I’m asking as a friend, Julie. I don’t expect anything more.”

She felt foolish then. Of course it was friendship he expected. He had half a dozen beautiful women he could call on a moment’s notice. The only reason he had ever wanted her was because she had always said no.

And aside from an unwelcome physical attraction, she certainly didn’t want him.

On the other hand, after the scare he’d had, Patrick might need a friend very badly. Besides, it might be pleasant to spend the evening with a man for a change, instead of a client, Babs, or her sister.

“How about it?” he pressed.

Julie smiled. “I can’t go tonight, but tomorrow night would be fine. I’ve got appointments until eight. After that I’m all yours.”

He cleared his throat. “Right. Great. So shall I pick you up at your house or will you still be down at the office?”

“The office. I’ll be there all afternoon. Now I’ve got to run. I’ve missed fifteen minutes of class already. I’ll see you back at work.”

Patrick just nodded. He used the towel around his neck to wipe away more sweat as he watched her walk away.

Julie had the strangest feeling, one that had nagged her off and on since he got out of the hospital. Patrick seemed different lately, in at least a dozen ways. He even looked a little different, more mature somehow, more commanding. And his attitude toward her had somehow changed, though in exactly what way she couldn’t be sure. Perhaps the evening he planned would shed some light on the subject. If it did, maybe she would find some way to help him stay away from booze and drugs. If nothing else, she owed that much to Alex.

Julie decided firmly—she would help Patrick if she could.

Seven

Sitting behind the desk in her office, Julie hung up the phone with a shaky hand and slowly came to her feet. Brian Heraldson, Laura’s psychiatrist, had just called. He said he needed to see her. He said Laura had just left the office, having finished her second hypnosis session. He said it was important that he and Julie speak.

On the surface, that didn’t seem all that ominous. As Laura’s sister, she had offered to help in any way she could, knowing he might want input from the only immediate family Laura had left. Yet there was something in his voice, something urgent, perhaps even fearful, that turned Julie’s stomach upside down.

She pressed the intercom button, told Shirl she’d be out for a while, then left through the rear door leading out to the parking lot. Westwood wasn’t far. In minutes, she was standing in front of the receptionist’s desk, asking the pretty little brunette to tell the doctor she was there.

“He’ll be right with you, Ms. Ferris,” the young woman said, probably a UCLA student doing part-time work, since the campus was just blocks away. The same sort of work Julie had done.

She glanced around the office, liking the soft gray carpet, the muted tones, and the Impressionist paintings on the walls that made the room feel warm and not sterile.

“Hello, Julie.” Dr. Heraldson stood in the open doorway leading into his private suite of rooms. “Please come in.”

She smiled uncertainly as she moved past him, her heart beginning to throb inside her chest. “I came as quickly as I could. Laura’s all right, isn’t she? She was able to drive herself home?”

“Laura’s fine…at least on the surface.” He firmly closed the door. “I’ve asked you here in the hope that you might shed some light on a subject that has me somewhat concerned.” He indicated she should take a seat on the light-gray overstuffed sofa. “I want to play a tape for you. I don’t normally do this and certainly not without the patient’s permission. Laura has given her consent, and I’d like your opinion about what she has said on the tape.”

“Of course. I want to help Laura in any way I can.” She sat down on the couch while the doctor walked to the chair behind his desk. He was a good-looking man, she saw, with his thick brown, slightly too-long hair and neatly trimmed beard. She wondered that she hadn’t noticed that when she had first met him, the day Laura’s sessions had begun, or the second time she had stopped in.

“I’m not going to play it all. Some of it is extremely personal.” He stopped the tape, backed it up a little, ran it forward again, and then pushed the button. “This is the tape I made the first of the week, her first hypnosis session. Here’s the part I wanted you to hear.”

Julie sat unmoving as Laura described the first time she had been afraid. It was the day they had suntanned on the beach. At first it was the same as Julie remembered, then Laura’s story turned different. Laura said that after the beach, she had gone to the hospital, which of course wasn’t the least bit true. Julie’s skin began to crawl as her sister recounted her terrifying experience, describing in vivid detail the humiliating examination she had been subjected to, the way her body had been stripped, washed, and probed.

Unconsciously, Julie clasped her arms across her chest, waiting for the gruesome tale to finish. She jumped when the doctor pressed the stop button, abruptly ending the strained, terror-stricken voice of her sister on the tape.

“It isn’t true, you know,” Julie said softly. “She didn’t go to the hospital. After she left my house, she simply went home. I called her later, so I know she got there safely.”

“I didn’t think this had actually occurred. At least not on that day. There was nothing in her medical files and nothing on the admission forms she filled out when she started treatment.”

“I thought under hypnosis, people were supposed to tell the truth.”

“They tell the truth as they perceive it. I think Laura may have confused another event in her life, perhaps the abortion she went through some years ago. At least that was my feeling until the session we attempted today.”

“She told you about that?”

He nodded.

The abortion wasn’t something Laura liked to discuss. At seventeen, the pregnancy and botched abortion was just another incident in a lifetime of mistakes.

“You said that was your feeling until today.”

“That’s right.”

Julie’s stomach began to churn. “So what…what happened today?”

“I think the best way to tell you is simply to play the tape.”

Julie just nodded. Her insides felt tied in knots. There was something strangely unsettling about what Laura had said, though she knew it wasn’t the truth. Sitting back on the sofa, she concentrated on the soft whir of the recorder, her chest feeling leaden. Dr. Heraldson skipped the first part of the session where he had done the hypnosis and the conversation leading up to the subject he wanted to discuss. He started the tape at the part where he’d asked Laura about her trip to the hospital the day they had gone to the beach, and if since then, she had ever been frightened like that again.

A long nervous pause ensued. Then, “One night I thought I heard them. I thought they were there, outside my bedroom window. I called the police. They searched outside, but no one was there. A few days later, I thought I heard them again. I was so scared…I didn’t know what to do. I called the police again, but they never found any trace of them.”

The doctor’s deep voice came softly over the tape. “Who did you think was out there, Laura?”

“I don’t know. The people from the hospital I guess.”

“Have you seen them again?”

She swallowed so hard Julie could hear it on the tape. “Yes…They came for me at Julie’s. I should have known they would—that’s where they came for me before…there on the beach. I shouldn’t have stayed with Julie.”

Julie sat up straighter on the sofa, her stomach clenching tighter.

“Tell me what happened,” the doctor said.

“I-I heard them outside on the balcony…footsteps…little scratching noises. I knew it was them. Oh, God, I was so frightened. I wanted to hide. I wanted to run. But I knew they would find me wherever I went. It was dark outside. When the lights went off, I wanted to curl up and die. A few minutes later, a bright light filled the room, so strong it hurt my eyes. Then it was dark again.” Laura made a soft choking sound of despair. “That’s when they came into the bedroom.”

There was the sound of the doctor’s chair moving. “Go on, Laura,” he whispered gently, “this is only a memory. You’re distanced from it. The memory can no longer hurt you.”

She seemed to relax at that. “I don’t know how they got in. One minute they were out on the deck, the next they were there, standing all around the bed. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even scream. They stared at me for the longest time…then they carried me away.”

The doctor cleared his throat. “What else do you recall?”

“Nothing until I woke up. I was there…in the hospital. They stripped off my nightgown and washed my body with the same wet slimy stuff they rubbed on me before. They parted my legs and probed inside me. It hurt a little, but mostly I was embarrassed. I don’t think they really meant to hurt me, but I hated them just the same. I hated them for what they were doing. I laid there naked and I prayed they weren’t real, that what was happening was only a nightmare. I prayed that I would wake up, but in my heart I knew I wasn’t dreaming.”

The doctor said nothing.

The tape whirred in the silence of a pause. “There’s something more,” Laura said, “but I-I can’t seem to recall what it is.” She must have bent her head for the sob that slipped from her throat came out muffled and ragged. Then she started crying.

Julie jerked when the tape recorder went off, looked up from the hands she’d been gripping in her lap, and returned her attention to Brian Heraldson. She wished the blood would flow back into her face.

“Now you can see why I called.”

She moistened her lips. Her mouth felt like cotton. “Yes.”

“Is there anything you can remember about either of those occasions, anything that might help explain the things Laura has said?”

“No. It makes absolutely no sense. The day we went to the beach, we both fell asleep for a while. Afterward we packed our things and went back to my house. Neither of us felt very good. Probably too much sun. Afterward I had a terrible headache, but other than that, nothing extraordinary occurred.”

“How about later, the weekend she spent with you after the incident with the police?”

“As she said on the tape, she was afraid someone was trying to break into her apartment. She was frightened. That was the reason she agreed to come home with me in the first place.”

“How did she behave that night? Did you notice anything unusual?”

“Not really. We ate an early supper—lemon chicken. It’s one of her favorites. We had a glass of wine and talked for a while out on the deck, then we both went to bed. I was having another one of my headaches, so I took some sleeping pills. I seem to recall seeing a very bright light that night, but it could have been anything…perhaps a spotlight on one of the beach patrol Jeeps. After that, I guess I must have fallen asleep. I don’t remember anything until I woke up in the morning.”

“How was Laura then?”

Julie frowned as she recalled Laura’s pale face the following day. “Now that you mention it, she did seem kind of upset. I thought she was getting the flu. I took her to see our family physician that afternoon.”

“I read Dr. Marsh’s report. The bleeding she suffered coincides with her memory of the physical examination she believes she experienced—but the body has been known to assist us in our delusions.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is not uncommon in cases of trauma for marks to appear with no physical contact, burns, bruises on the skin, that sort of thing. Psychosomatic manifestations can cause all sorts of problems.”

The doctor caught her worried gaze and came up from his chair. “I can see that you are upset and that wasn’t my intention in bringing you here.” He rounded the desk and walked toward her. “We’ve only just started Laura’s therapy. She hasn’t heard the tapes. I wanted to speak to you first, find out as much as I could. I’ve decided to play them for her during her next session. Perhaps hearing them will help her remember what it was that unleashed her fears in the first place. At the very least, since none of this actually occurred, she’ll be able to understand their groundless nature. Then we can begin delving into her feelings about the abortion.”

Julie rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying not to notice the headache that had started to build. “You really believe that’s what this is about?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know. It was extremely traumatic for her at the time, but I really thought she’d gotten past it. “I’m not really sure what to believe, but I’m very worried about her.”

“I know you are, Julie. And your concern is one of the things that’s going to help her get well.” He walked her to the door. “I’d prefer you didn’t discuss this with Laura, at least not yet.”

“All right. And if there’s anything else I can do, please just call.” He showed her out the door then closed it softly behind her. All the way to her car, Julie’s stomach churned to think of the terror going on in her sister’s beautiful head.

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