# Call After Midnight

Tess Geritsen

A suspenseful romantic thriller from the author of the bestselling Rizzoli & Isles series.A ringing phone in the middle of the night begins a horrific journey for newlywed Sarah Fontaine when she is given the news that her husband, Geoffrey, has been killed in a hotel fire in Berlin.Convinced that Geoffrey is still alive, she challenges special agent Nick O'Hara of the U.S. State department to prove her wrong as they crisscross Europe in a desperate search, trying to stay one heartbeat ahead of a dangerous killer and risking everything for answers that may prove fatal.

A fan-favorite novel by internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen

Newlywed Sarah Fontaine has just received the news that every wife fears: her husband of two months has died abroad in a hotel fire. Yet convinced he's still alive, Sarah forges an alliance with Nick O'Hara from the U.S. State Department that has the two of them crisscrossing Europe on a desperate search for signs of life. As Sarah and Nick become quarry in the secret world of international espionage, they must risk everything for answers that may prove fatal.

## Rave reviews for the novels ofTess Gerritsen

VANISH

“Gerritsen’s latest novel is a tense, taut thriller that grabs readers from the get-go and never lets up.”

—Booklist

BODY DOUBLE

“An electric series of startling twists, the revelation of ghoulishly practical motives and a nail-biting finale make this Gerritsen’s best to date.”

—Publishers Weekly

“The story zips along.… A delightfully bizarro plot twist.”

—Entertainment Weekly

THE APPRENTICE

”Well-drawn characters and a compelling story will grab readers’ interest and earn Gerritsen more admirers.”

—Booklist

“Leave the lights on, check the closets, and lock the doors before cracking [The Apprentice].”

—People

THE SURGEON

“Gliding as smoothly as a scalpel in a confident surgeon’s hand, this tale proves that Gerritsen…has morphed into a…suspense novelist whose growing popularity is keeping pace with her ever-finer writing skills.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Gerritsen fans know by now what to expect from her: a fascinating story with a gripping plot and believably human characters. Such is The Surgeon, and, in places, then some. Let new readers learn what the fans delight in.”

—Booklist

THE SINNER

“Gerritsen gives atmospheric depth to her tale… satisfyingly gritty.”

—Publishers Weekly

Call After Midnight

Tess Gerritsen


www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Jacob,

who was always there

## CONTENTS

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

PROLOGUE

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

Extract

Endpage

Copyright

## PROLOGUE

Berlin

IT TAKES TWENTY seconds of pressure on the carotid arteries to render a man unconscious. Two minutes longer, and death is inevitable. Simon Dance didn’t need a medical textbook to tell him these facts—he knew them from experience. He also knew there could be no slack in the garrote. If the cord wasn’t taut, if it allowed just a short spurt of precious blood to reach the victim’s brain, the struggle would be prolonged. It made the whole process sloppy, even dangerous. There was nothing as savage as a dying man.

As he crouched in the darkness, Dance wound the garrote twice around his hands and glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. Two hours had passed since he’d turned off the lights. His assassin was obviously a cautious man who wanted to be sure Dance was deeply asleep. If the man was a professional, he would know that the first two hours of sleep are the heaviest. Now was the time to strike.

In the hallway outside, a footstep creaked. Dance stiffened, then rose slowly and waited in the darkness beside the door. He ignored the pounding of his own heart. He felt the familiar spurt of adrenaline as it kicked his reflexes into high gear. He stretched the garrote between his hands.

A key was easing into the lock. Dance heard the metallic click of the teeth grating softly across metal. The key turned, and the lock opened with a soft clunk. Slowly the door swung in, and light from the hall spilled into the room. A shadow moved through the doorway and turned toward the bed, where a man appeared to be sleeping. The shadow raised its arm. Three bullets from a silencer thudded into the pillows. As the third bullet struck, so did Dance.

He whipped the garrote around the intruder’s neck and snapped the cord up and back. It tightened precisely around the most exposed portion of the carotid artery, by the angle of the jaw. The gun fell to the floor. The man thrashed as if he were a hooked fish and tore frantically at the garrote. He reached back and tried to claw Dance’s face. His arms and legs went out of control, wildly jerking and thrusting in all directions. Then gradually the legs crumpled, and the arms reached out one last time before going limp. As Dance counted the minutes, he felt the body’s last spasms, the seizures of starved and dying brain cells. He held on.

When three minutes had passed, Dance released the garrote, and the body dropped to the floor. Dance turned on the lights and gazed down at the man he’d just killed.

The mottled face was vaguely familiar. Perhaps he’d seen the man on a street or on a train somewhere, but he didn’t know his name. Quickly he went through the man’s clothes but found only money, car keys and a few tools of the trade: extra ammunition clips, a switchblade, a lock pick. A nameless professional, thought Dance, wondering offhandedly how much the man had been paid.

He dragged the body onto the bed and tossed aside the three pillows that had been fluffed up beneath the covers. He estimated the body’s size to be six feet plus or minus an inch. The same height. Good. Dance exchanged clothes with the corpse; it was probably unnecessary, but he was a thorough man. Then he took off his wedding ring and tried to slip it onto the corpse’s finger, but it wouldn’t quite fit over the knuckle. He went to the bathroom, soaped the ring and finally managed to jam it on the dead man’s finger. Then he sat down and smoked a few cigarettes. He tried to think of any details he might have missed.

The three bullets, of course. Hunting around in the pillows and ticking, Dance managed to retrieve two of the bullets. The third was probably embedded somewhere in the mattress. Before he could probe any deeper, he heard footsteps in the hallway. Did the assassin have an accomplice? Dance swept up the gun, aimed at the door and waited. The footsteps moved on and faded down the corridor. A false alarm. Still, he should leave now; to stay any longer would be foolish.

From the dresser drawer, he pulled out a bottle of methanol. It would burn rapidly and leave no residue. He poured it over the body, the bed and the surrounding rug. The room contained no smoke alarms or automatic sprinklers—Dance had chosen the old hotel for just that reason. He set the ashtray beside the bed and gathered the dead man’s belongings, along with the empty methanol bottle, and put them in a trash bag. Then he set the bed on fire.

With a whoosh the flames took off, and in seconds the body was engulfed. Dance waited just long enough to be certain there’d be nothing recognizable left.

Carrying the trash bag, he left the room, locked the door and walked down the hall to the fire alarm. He didn’t see the point of killing innocent people, so he broke the glass and pulled the alarm lever. Then he took the stairs down to the ground floor.

From an alley across the street, he watched the flames shoot from his window. The hotel was evacuated, and the street filled with sleepy-eyed people wrapped in blankets. Three fire trucks responded within ten minutes. By that time his room was a blazing inferno.

It took an hour to extinguish the fire. A crowd of curious onlookers joined the shivering hotel guests, and Dance studied their faces, filing them away in his memory. If he saw any of them again, he would be warned.

Then, through the knot of people, he spotted a black limousine crawling slowly down the street. He recognized the man sitting in the back seat. So the CIA was here. Interesting.

He had seen enough. It was late, and he needed to be on his way, back to Amsterdam.

Three blocks away, he threw the trash bag with the empty methanol bottle into a dumpster. With that the last detail was taken care of. He’d done what he had come to Berlin to do. He’d killed off Geoffrey Fontaine. Now it was time to vanish. He walked off whistling into the darkness.

* * *

Amsterdam

THE OLD MAN was awakened at three in the morning with the news. “Geoffrey Fontaine is dead.”

“How?” asked the old man.

“A hotel fire. They say he was smoking in bed.”

“An accident? Impossible! Where is the body?”

“Berlin morgue. Very badly burned.”

Of course, thought the old man. He should have known the body would not be recognizable. Simon Dance, as usual, had done a superb job of covering his tracks. So they had lost him again.

But the old man still had one card to play. “You told me there was an American wife,” he said. “Where does she live?”

“Washington.”

“I will have her followed.”

“But why? I just told you the man’s dead.”

“He’s not dead. He’s alive. I’m sure of it. And this woman may know where he is. I want her watched.”

“I’ll have my men—”

“No. I will send my own man. Someone I can count on.”

There was a pause. “I will get you her address.”

After he’d hung up, the old man could not go back to sleep. For five years he’d waited. For five years he’d been searching. To have come so close, only to fail again! Now everything depended on what this woman in Washington knew.

He had to be patient and wait for her to betray herself. He would send Kronen, a man who’d never failed him. Kronen had his own methods to extract information— methods difficult to resist. But then, that was Kronen’s special talent. Persuasion.

## CHAPTER ONE

Washington

IT WAS AFTER midnight when the telephone rang.

Through a heavy curtain of sleep, Sarah heard it ring. The sound seemed impossibly far away, as if it were a distant alarm going off in a room beyond her reach. She struggled to wake up, but she was trapped somewhere in a world between sleep and wakefulness. She had to answer the phone; she knew her husband, Geoffrey, was calling.

All evening she’d waited to hear Geoffrey’s voice. It was Wednesday night, and on his monthly trips to London, Geoffrey always called home on Wednesday. Tonight, however, she’d crawled into bed early, sniffling and coughing, a victim of the latest flu virus to hit Washington. It was influenza A-63 from Hong Kong, a particularly miserable strain that she now shared with half her colleagues in the microbiology lab. For an hour she’d sat up reading in bed, fighting valiantly to stay awake. But the combination of a cold capsule plus the most recent Journal of Microbiology had worked faster than any sleeping pill. Within minutes she’d fallen back on the pillows with her glasses still perched on her nose. It would be just a short rest, she had promised herself, just a catnap…. In the end, sleep had crept up and ambushed her.

She woke with a start to find that the bedside lamp was on, Journal of Microbiology still draped across her chest. The room was slightly out of focus. Pushing her glasses back in place, Sarah glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Twelve-thirty. The telephone was dead silent. Had she been dreaming?

She jumped as the phone rang again. Eagerly she grabbed the receiver.

“Mrs. Sarah Fontaine?” asked a man’s voice.

It wasn’t Geoffrey. Sudden alarm shot through her like a jolt of electricity. Something was terribly wrong. She sat up at once, fully awake. “Yes. Speaking,” she said.

“Mrs. Fontaine, this is Nicholas O’Hara, U.S. State Department. I’m sorry to call you at this hour, but…” He paused. It was the silence that terrified her most, for it was too deliberate, too practiced, a strategically placed buffer to ready her for a blow. “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” he finished.

Her throat tightened. She felt like shouting, Just tell me! Tell me what’s happened! But all she could manage was a whisper. “Yes. I’m listening.”

“It’s about your husband, Geoffrey,” he said. “There’s been an accident.”

This isn’t real, she thought, closing her eyes. If Geoffrey were hurt, I would have felt it. Somehow I would have known....

“It happened about six hours ago,” he continued. “There was a fire in your husband’s hotel.” Another pause. Then, with concern in his voice, he asked, “Mrs. Fontaine? Are you still there?”

“Yes. Please go on.”

The man cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Mrs. Fontaine. Your husband…he didn’t make it.”

He allowed her a moment of silence, a moment in which she struggled to contain her grief. It was a stupid, irrational act of pride that made her press her hand over her mouth to stifle the sob. This pain was too private to share with any stranger.

“Mrs. Fontaine?” he asked gently. “Are you all right?”

At last she managed to take a shaky breath. “Yes,” she whispered.

“You don’t have to worry about the…arrangements. I’ll coordinate all the details with our consulate in Berlin. There’ll be a delay, of course, but once the German authorities clear the body’s release, there should be no—”

“Berlin?” she broke in.

“It’s in their jurisdiction, you see. There’ll be a full report as soon as the Berlin police—”

“But this isn’t possible!”

Nicholas O’Hara was struggling to be patient. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fontaine. His identity’s been confirmed. Really, there’s no question about—”

“Geoffrey was in London,” she cried.

A long silence followed. “Mrs. Fontaine,” he said at last in an irritatingly calm voice, “the accident occurred in Berlin.”

“Then they’ve made a mistake. Geoffrey was in London. He couldn’t have been in Germany!”

Again there was a pause, longer this time. Now she could tell he was puzzled. The receiver was pressed so tightly to her ear that all she heard for a few seconds was the pounding of her heart. There had to be a mistake. Some crazy, stupid misunderstanding. Geoffrey had to be alive. She pictured him, laughing at the absurd reports of his own death. Yes, they would laugh about it together when he came home. If he came home.

“Mrs. Fontaine,” the man said at last, “which hotel was he staying at in London?”

“The—the Savoy. I have the phone number somewhere here—I have to look it up—”

“That’s all right, I’ll find it. Let me do some calling around. Perhaps I should see you in the morning.” His words were measured and cautious, spoken in the unemotional monotone of a bureaucrat who’d learned how to reveal nothing. “Can you come by my office?”

“How—how do I find it?”

“You’ll be driving?”

“No. I don’t have a car.”

“I’ll have one sent by.”

“It’s a mistake, isn’t it? I mean…you do make mistakes, don’t you?” A bit of hope, that was all she was asking him for. Some small thread to cling to. At least he could have given her that much. He could have shown her a little kindness.

But all he said was “I’ll see you in the morning, Mrs. Fontaine. Around eleven.”

“Wait, please! I’m sorry, I can’t even think. Your name—what was it again?”

“Nicholas O’Hara.”

“Where was your office?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “The driver will see you get here. Good night.”

“Mr. O’Hara?”

Sarah heard the dial tone and knew that he had already hung up. She immediately dialed the number of the Savoy Hotel in London. One phone call, and the matter would be settled. Please, she prayed as the phone connection went through, let me hear your voice....

“Savoy Hotel,” answered a woman from halfway around the world.

Sarah’s hand was shaking so hard she could barely hold the receiver. “Hello. Mr. Geoffrey Fontaine’s room, please,” she blurted out.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the voice said. “Mr. Fontaine checked out two days ago.”

“Checked out?” she cried. “But where did he go?”

“He gave us no destination. However, if you wish to send a message, we’d be happy to forward it to his permanent address….”

She never remembered saying goodbye. She found herself staring down at the telephone as if it were something alien, something she’d never seen before. Slowly her gaze wandered to Geoffrey’s pillow. The king-sized bed seemed to stretch forever. Sarah had always curled herself into one small part of it. Even when Geoffrey was away from home and she had the bed to herself, she still never moved from her spot.

Now Geoffrey might never come home.

Sarah was left alone in a bed that was too large, in an apartment that was too quiet. She shuddered as a silent wave of pain rose and caught in her throat. She wanted desperately to cry, but the tears refused to fall.

She collapsed onto the bed with her face against the pillows. They smelled of Geoffrey. They smelled of his skin and his hair and his laughter. She clutched one of the pillows in her arms and curled up in the very center of the bed, in the spot where Geoffrey always lay. The sheets were ice-cold.

Geoffrey might never come home. They had been married only two months.

* * *

NICK O’HARA DRAINED his third cup of coffee and jerked his tie loose. After a two-week vacation wearing nothing but bathing trunks, his tie felt like a hangman’s noose. He’d been back in Washington only three days, and already he was edgy. Vacations were supposed to recharge the old batteries. That’s why he’d gone to the Bahamas. He’d spent two glorious weeks doing absolutely nothing except lie around half-naked in the sun. He’d needed the time to be alone, to ask himself some hard questions and come to some conclusions.

But the only conclusion he’d reached was that he was unhappy.

After eight years with the State Department, Nick O’Hara was fed up with his job. He was headed in circles, a ship without a rudder. His career was at a standstill, but the fault was not entirely his. Bit by bit he’d lost his patience for political games of state—he wasn’t in the mood to play. He’d hung in there, though, because he’d believed in his job, in its intrinsic worth. From peace marches in his youth to peace tables in his prime.

But ideals, he had discovered, got people nowhere. Hell, diplomacy didn’t run on ideals. It ran, like everything else, on protocol and party-line politics. While he’d perfected his protocol, he hadn’t gotten the politics quite right. It wasn’t that he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

In that regard Nick knew he was a lousy diplomat. Unfortunately those in authority apparently agreed with him. So he had been banished to this bottom-of-the-barrel consular post in D.C., calling bad news to new widows. It was a not-so-subtle slap in the face. Sure, he could have refused the assignment. He could’ve gone back to teaching, to his comfortable old niche at American University. He had needed to think about it. Yes, he’d needed those two weeks alone in the Bahamas.

What he didn’t need was to come home to this.

With a sigh, he flipped open the file labeled Fontaine, Geoffrey H. One small item had bothered him all morning. Since 1:00 a.m. he’d been staring at a computer terminal, digging out everything he could get from the vast government files. He’d also spent half an hour on the phone with his buddy Wes Corrigan in the Berlin consulate. In frustration he’d finally turned to a few unusual sources. What had started off as a routine call to the widow to give her his regrets was turning into something a bit more complicated, a puzzle for which Nick didn’t have all the pieces.

In fact, except for the well-established details of Geoffrey Fontaine’s death, there were hardly any pieces at all to play with. Nick didn’t like incomplete puzzles. They drove him crazy. When it came to poking around for more information, more facts, he could be insatiable. But now, as he lifted the thin Fontaine file, he felt as if he were holding a bagful of air: nothing of substance but a name.

And a death.

Nick’s eyes were burning; he leaned back in his chair and yawned. When he was twenty and in college, staying up half the night used to give him a high. Now that he was thirty-eight, it only made him crotchety. And hungry. At 6:00 a.m. he’d wolfed down three doughnuts. The surge of sugar into his system, plus the coffee, had been enough to keep him going. And now he was too curious to stop. Puzzles always did that to him. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

He looked up as the door opened. His pal Tim Greenstein strode in.

“Bingo! I found it!” said Tim. He dropped a file on the desk and gave Nick one of those big, dumb grins he was so famous for. Most of the time, that grin was directed at a computer screen. Tim was a troubleshooter, the man everyone called when the data weren’t where they should be. Heavy glasses distorted his eyes, the consequence of infantile cataracts. A bushy black beard obscured much of the rest of his face, except for a pale forehead and nose.

“Told you I’d get it,” said Tim, plopping into the leather chair across from Nick. “I had my buddy at the FBI do a little fishing. He came up with zilch, so I did a little poking around on my own. Not easy, I’ll tell ya, getting this out of classified. They’ve got some new idiot up there who insists on doing his job.”

Nick frowned. “You had to get this through security?”

“Yep. There’s more, but I couldn’t access it. Found out central intelligence has a file on your man.”

Nick flipped the folder open and stared in amazement. What he saw raised more questions than ever, questions for which there seemed to be no answers. “What the hell does this mean?” he muttered.

“That’s why you couldn’t find anything about Geoffrey H. Fontaine,” said Tim. “Until a year ago, the guy didn’t exist.”

Nick’s jaw snapped up. “Can you get me more?”

“Hey, Nick, I think we’re trespassing on someone else’s turf. Those Company boys might get hot under the collar.”

“So let ’em sue me.” Nick wasn’t in the least intimidated by the CIA. Not after all the incompetent Company men he’d met. “Anyway,” he said with a shrug, “I’m just doing my job. I’ve got a grieving widow, remember?”

“But this Fontaine stuff goes pretty deep.”

“So do you, Tim.”

Tim grinned. “What is it, Nick? Turning detective?”

“No. Just curious.” He scowled at the day’s pile of work on his desk. It was all bureaucratic crap—the bane of his existence—but it had to be done. This Fontaine case was distracting him. He should just give the grieving widow a pat on the shoulder, murmur a kind word and send her out the door. Then he should forget the whole thing. Geoffrey Fontaine, whatever his real name, was dead.

But Tim had set Nick’s curiosity on fire. He glanced at his friend. “Say, how about hunting up a few things about the guy’s wife? Sarah Fontaine. That might get us somewhere.”

“Why don’t you get it yourself?”

“You’re the one with all that hot computer access.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got the woman herself.” Tim nodded toward the door. “I heard the secretary take down her name. Sarah Fontaine’s sitting in your waiting room right now.”

* * *

THE SECRETARY WAS a graying, middle-aged woman with china-blue eyes and a mouth that seemed permanently etched in two straight lines. She glanced up from her typewriter just long enough to take Sarah’s name and direct her toward a nearby couch.

Stacked neatly on a coffee table by the couch were the usual waiting room magazines, as well as a few issues of Foreign Affairs and World Press Review, to which the address labels were still attached: Dr. Nicholas O’Hara.

As the secretary turned back to her typewriter, Sarah sank into the cushions of the couch and stared dully at her hands, which were now folded in her lap. She hadn’t yet shaken the flu, and she was still cold and miserable. But in the past ten hours, a layer of numbness had built up around her, a protective shell that made sights and sounds seem distant. Even physical pain bore a strange dullness. When she’d stubbed her toe in the shower this morning, she’d felt the throb, but somehow she hadn’t cared.

Last night, after the phone call, the pain had overwhelmed her. Now she was only numb. Gazing down, she saw for the first time what a mess she’d made of getting dressed. None of her clothes quite matched. Yet on a subconscious level, she’d chosen to wear things that gave her solace: a favorite gray wool skirt, an old pullover, brown walking shoes. Life had suddenly turned frightening for Sarah; she needed to be comforted by the familiar.

The secretary’s intercom buzzed, and a voice said, “Angie? Can you send Mrs. Fontaine in?”

“Yes, Mr. O’Hara.” Angie nodded at Sarah. “You can go in now,” she said.

Sarah slipped on her glasses, rose to her feet and entered the office marked N. O’Hara. Just inside the door, she paused on the thick carpet and looked calmly at the man on the other side of the desk.

He stood before the window. The sun shone in through pencil-sketch trees, blinding her. At first she saw only the man’s silhouette. He was tall and slender, and his shoulders slouched a little—he looked tired. Moving from the window, he came around the desk to meet her. His blue shirt was wrinkled; a nondescript tie hung loosely around his neck, as if he’d been tugging at it.

“Mrs. Fontaine,” he said, “I’m Nick O’Hara.” Instantly she recognized the voice from the telephone, the same voice that had shattered her world just ten hours earlier.

He held his hand out to her, a gesture that struck Sarah as too automatic, a mere formality that he no doubt extended to all widows. But his grip was firm. As he shifted toward the window, the light fell fully on his face. She saw long, thin features, an angular jaw, a sober mouth. She judged him to be in his late thirties, perhaps older. His dark brown hair was woven with gray at the temples. Beneath the slate-colored eyes were dark circles.

He motioned her to a chair. As she sat down, she noticed for the first time that a third person was in the room, a man with glasses and a bushy black beard who was sitting quietly in a corner chair. She’d seen him when he’d passed through the reception room earlier.

Nick settled on the edge of the desk and looked at her. “I’m very sorry about your husband, Mrs. Fontaine,” he said gently. “It’s a terrible shock, I know. Most people don’t want to believe us when they get that phone call. I felt I had to meet you face-to-face. I have questions. I’m sure you have, too.” He nodded at the man with the beard. “You don’t mind Mr. Greenstein listening in, do you?”

She shrugged, wondering vaguely why Mr. Greenstein was there.

“We’re both with state,” Nick continued. “I’m with consular affairs in the foreign service. Mr. Greenstein’s with our technical support division.”

“I see.” Shivering, she pulled her sweater tighter. The chills were starting again, and her throat was sore. Why were government offices always so cold? she wondered.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Fontaine?” Nick asked.

She looked up miserably at him. “Your office is chilly.”

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“No, thank you. Please, I just want to know about my husband. I still can’t believe it, Mr. O’Hara. I keep thinking something’s wrong. That there’s been a mistake.”

He nodded sympathetically. “That’s a common reaction, to think it’s all a mistake.”

“Is it?”

“Denial. Everyone goes through it. That’s what you’re feeling now.”

“But you don’t ask every widow to your office, do you? There must be something different about Geoffrey.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “There is.”

He turned and swept up a file folder from his desk. After flipping through it, he pulled out a page covered with notes. The handwriting was an illegible scrawl; it had to be his writing, she thought. No one but the writer himself would ever be able to decipher it.

“After I called you, Mrs. Fontaine, I got in touch with our consulate in Berlin. What you said last night bothered me. Enough to make me recheck the facts.” His pause made her gaze up at him expectantly. She found two steady eyes, tired and troubled, watching her. “I talked to Wes Corrigan, our consul in Berlin. Here’s what he told me.” He glanced down at his notes. “Yesterday, about 8:00 p.m. Berlin time, a man named Geoffrey Fontaine checked into Hotel Regina. He paid with a traveler’s check. The signature matched. For identification he used his passport. About four hours later, at midnight, the fire department answered a call at the hotel. Your husband’s room was in flames. By the time they got it under control, the room was totally destroyed. The official explanation was that he’d fallen asleep while smoking in bed. Your husband, I’m afraid, was burned beyond recognition.”

“Then how can they be sure it was him?” Sarah blurted. Until that instant she’d been listening with growing despair. But Nick O’Hara had just introduced too many other possibilities. “Someone could have stolen his passport,” she pointed out.

“Mrs. Fontaine, let me finish.”

“But you just said they couldn’t even identify the body.”

“Let’s try and be logical, here.”

“I am being logical!”

“You’re being emotional. Look, it’s normal for widows to clutch at straws like this, but—”

“I’m not yet convinced I am a widow.”

He held up his hands in frustration. “Okay, okay, look at the evidence, then. The hard evidence. First, they found his briefcase in the room. It was aluminum, fire resistant.”

“Geoffrey never owned anything like that.”

“The contents survived the fire. Your husband’s passport was inside.”

“But—”

“Then there’s the coroner’s report. A Berlin pathologist briefly examined the body—what was left of it. While there weren’t any dental records for comparison, the body’s height was the same as your husband’s.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Finally—”

“Mr. O’Hara—”

“Finally,” he said with sudden force, “we have one last bit of evidence, something found on the body itself. I’m sorry, Mrs. Fontaine, but I think it’ll convince you.”

All at once she wanted to clap her hands over her ears, to shout at him to stop. Until now she’d withstood the evidence. But she couldn’t listen any longer. She couldn’t stand having all her hopes collapse.

“It was a wedding ring. The inscription was still readable. Sarah. 2-14.” He looked up from his notes. “That is your wedding date, isn’t it?”

Everything blurred as her eyes filled with tears. In silence she bowed her head. The glasses slipped off her nose and fell to her lap. Blindly she hunted in her purse for a tissue, only to find that Nick O’Hara had somehow produced a whole box of Kleenex out of thin air.

“Take what you need,” he said softly.

He watched as she wiped away her tears and tried, somehow, to blow her nose gracefully. Under his scrutiny she felt so clumsy and stupid. Even her fingers refused to work properly. Her glasses slid from her lap to the floor. Her purse wouldn’t snap shut. Desperate to leave, she fumbled for her things and rose from the chair.

“Please, Mrs. Fontaine, sit down. I’m not quite finished,” he said.

As if she were an obedient child, Sarah returned to her seat and stared at the floor. “If it’s about the burial arrangements…”

“No, you can take care of that later, after we fly the body back. There’s something else I need to ask you. It’s about your husband’s trip. Why was he in Europe?”

“Business.”

“What kind of business?”

“He was a—a representative for the Bank of London.”

“So he traveled a lot?”

“Yes. Every month or so he was in London.”

“Only London?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me why he was in Germany, Mrs. Fontaine.”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have an idea.”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it his habit not to tell you where he was going?”

“No.”

“Then why was he in Germany? There must have been a reason. Other business, perhaps? Other…”

She looked up sharply. “Other women? That’s what you want to ask, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer.

“Isn’t it?”

“It’s a reasonable suspicion.”

“Not about Geoffrey!”

“About anyone.” His eyes met hers head-on. She refused to turn away. “You were married a total of two months,” he said. “How well did you know your husband?”

“Know him? I loved him, Mr. O’Hara.”

“I’m not talking about love, whatever that means. I’m asking how well you knew the man. Who he was, what he did. How long ago did you meet?”

“It was…I guess six months ago. I met him at a coffee shop, near where I work.”

“Where do you work?”

“NIH. I’m a research microbiologist.”

His eyes narrowed. “What kind of research?”

“Bacterial genomes…. We splice DNA…. Why are you asking these questions?”

“Is it classified research?”

“I still don’t understand why—”

“Is it classified, Mrs. Fontaine?”

She stared at him, shocked into silence by the sharp tone of his voice. Softly she said, “Yes. Some of it.”

He nodded and pulled another sheet from the folder. Calmly he continued. “I had Mr. Corrigan in Berlin check your husband’s passport. Whenever you fly into a new country, a page is stamped with an entry date. Your husband’s passport had several stamps. London. Schiphol, near Amsterdam. And last, Berlin. All were dated within the last week. Any explanation why he’d visit those particular cities?”

She shook her head, bewildered.

“When did he call you last?”

“A week ago. From London.”

“Can you be sure he was in London?”

“No. It was direct dial. There was no operator involved.”

“Did your husband have a life-insurance policy?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know. He never mentioned it.”

“Did anyone stand to benefit from his death? Financially, I mean.”

“I don’t think so.”

He took this in with a frown. Settling back onto the desk, he crossed his arms and looked away for a moment. She could almost see his mind churning over the facts, juggling the puzzle pieces. She was just as confused as he was. None of this made sense; none of it seemed possible. Geoffrey had been her husband, and now she was beginning to wonder if Nick O’Hara was right. That she’d never really known him. That all she and Geoffrey had shared was a bed and a home, but never their hearts.

No, this was all wrong; it was a betrayal of his memory. She believed in Geoffrey. Why should she believe this stranger? Why was this man telling her these things? Was there another purpose to all this? Suddenly she disliked Nick O’Hara. Intensely. He was flinging these questions at her for some unspoken reason.

“If you’re finished…” she said, starting to rise again.

He glanced at her with a start, as if he’d forgotten she was still there. “No. I’m not.”

“I’m not feeling well. I’d like to go home.”

“Do you have a picture of your husband?” he asked abruptly.

Taken aback by his sudden request, Sarah opened her purse and pulled a photograph from her wallet. It was a good likeness of Geoffrey, taken on a Florida beach during their three-day honeymoon. His brilliant blue eyes stared directly at the camera. His hair was bright gold, and the sunlight fell at an angle across his face, throwing shadows on his uncommonly handsome features. He was smiling. From the start she’d been drawn to that face—not by just the good looks, but by the strength and intelligence she’d seen in the eyes.

Nick O’Hara took the picture and studied it without comment. Watching him, she thought, He’s so unlike Geoffrey. Not golden haired but dark, not smiling but very, very sober. A troubled cloud seemed to hang over Nick O’Hara, a cloud of unhappiness. She wondered what he was thinking as he gazed at the picture. He showed little emotion, and except for the lines of fatigue, Sarah could read very little in his face. His eyes were a flat, impenetrable gray. He passed the photo briefly to Mr. Greenstein, then silently handed Geoffrey’s picture back to her.

She closed her purse and looked at him. “Why are you asking all these questions?”

“I have to. I’m sorry, but it really is necessary.”

“For whom?” she asked tightly. “For you?”

“For you, too. And maybe even for Geoffrey.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It will when you’ve heard the Berlin police report.”

“Is there something else?”

“Yes. It’s about the circumstances of your husband’s death.”

“But you said it was an accident.”

“I said it looked like an accident.” He watched her carefully while he spoke, as if afraid to miss any change in her face, any flicker of her eye. “When I spoke to Mr. Corrigan a few hours ago, there had been a new development. During a routine investigation of the fire, the debris from the room was examined. When they sifted through the mattress remains, they found a bullet.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “A bullet?” she said. “You mean…”

He nodded. “They think it was murder.”

## CHAPTER TWO

SARAH STARTED TO speak, but her voice refused to work. Like a statue, she sat frozen in her chair, unable to move, unable to do anything but stare at him.

“I thought you should know,” said Nick. “I had to tell you in any event, because now we’ll need your help. The Berlin police want information about your husband’s activities, his enemies…why he might have been killed.”

She shook her head numbly. “I can’t think of… I mean I just don’t know…. My God!” she whispered.

The gentle touch of his hand on her shoulder made Sarah flinch. She looked up and saw the concern in his eyes. He’s worried I’ll faint, she thought. He’s worried I’ll get sick all over his nice thick carpet and embarrass us both. With sudden irritation she shook off his hand. She didn’t need anyone’s rehearsed sympathy. She needed to be alone—away from bureaucrats and their impersonal file folders. She rose unsteadily to her feet. No, she was not going to faint, not in front of this man.

Nick reached for her arm and nudged her gently back into the chair. “Please, Mrs. Fontaine. Another minute, that’s all I need.”

“Let me go.”

“Mrs. Fontaine—”

“Let me go.”

The sharpness of her voice seemed to shock him. He released her but did not back away. As she sat there, she was acutely aware of various aspects of his presence—the faint smell of after-shave and fatigue, the dull gleam of his belt buckle, the wrinkled shirt sleeves.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to crowd you. I was just worried that…well…”

“Yes?” She looked up into those slate eyes. Something she saw there—a steadiness, a strength—made her suddenly, and against all instinct, want to trust him. “I’m not going to faint, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “Please, I’d like to go home now.”

“Yes, of course. But I have just a few more questions.”

“I don’t have any answers. Don’t you understand?”

He was silent for a moment. “Then I’ll contact you later,” he said at last. “We have to talk about the arrangements for the body.”

“Oh. Yes, the body.” She stood up, blinking back a new wave of tears.

“I’ll have the car take you home now, Mrs. Fontaine.” He moved toward her slowly, as if afraid of scaring her. “I’m sorry about your husband. Truly sorry. Feel free to call me if you have any questions.”

She knew none of those words came from the heart, that none of them held any genuine sympathy. Nicholas O’Hara was a diplomat, saying what he’d been taught to say. Whatever the catastrophe, the U.S. State Department always had the right words ready. He’d probably said the same thing to a hundred other widows.

Now he was waiting for her response, so she did what was expected of any widow. She pulled herself together. Reaching out, she shook his hand and thanked him. Then she turned and walked out the door.

* * *

“DO YOU THINK she knows?”

Nick stared at the door that had just closed behind Sarah Fontaine’s retreating figure. He turned and glanced at Tim Greenstein. “Knows what?”

“That her husband was a spook?”

“Hell, we don’t even know that.”

“Nick my man, this whole thing reeks of espionage. Geoffrey Fontaine was a total nonentity till a year ago. Then his name shows up on a wedding license, he has a brand new Social Security number, a passport and what have you. The FBI doesn’t seem to know a damn thing. But intelligence—they’ve got the guy’s file under classified! Am I dumb or what?”

“Maybe I’m the dumb one,” grunted Nick. He walked to his desk and dropped into the chair. Then he scowled at the Fontaine file. Tim was right, of course. The case stank to high heaven of funny business. Espionage? International crime? An ex-federal witness, hiding from the mob?

Who the hell was Geoffrey Fontaine?

Nick slouched down and threw his head back against the chair. Damn, he was tired. But he couldn’t get Geoffrey Fontaine out of his head. Or Sarah Fontaine, for that matter.

He’d been surprised when she walked into the office; he’d been expecting someone with a little more sophistication. Her husband had been a world-class traveler, a guy who’d whisked through London and Berlin and Amsterdam. A man like that should have a wife who was sleek and elegant. Instead, in had walked this skinny, awkward creature who was almost, but not quite, pretty. Her face had been too full of angles: high, sharp cheeks, a narrow nose, a square forehead softened only by a gentle widow’s peak. Her long hair had been a rich, coppery color; even tied back in a ponytail, it had been beautiful. Her horn-rimmed glasses had somehow amused him. They had framed two wide, amber-colored eyes—her best feature. With no makeup and with that pale, delicate complexion, she’d seemed much younger than the thirty or so years she must be.

No, she was not quite pretty. But throughout the interview Nick had found himself staring at her face and wondering about her marriage. And about her.

Tim rose. “Hey, all this grief is making me hungry. Let’s hit the cafeteria.”

“Not the cafeteria. Let’s go out. I’ve been sitting in this building all morning, and I’m going stir-crazy.” Nick pulled on his jacket, and together they walked out past Angie’s desk and headed for the stairs.

Outside a brisk spring wind blew in their faces as they strode down the sidewalk. The buds were just starting to swell on the cherry trees. In another week the whole city would be awash in pink and white flowers. It was Nick’s first D.C. springtime in eight years—he’d forgotten how pretty it could be, walking through the trees. He thrust his hands in his pockets and hunched over a little as the wind bit through his wool jacket.

Vaguely he wondered whether Sarah Fontaine had reached her apartment yet, whether she was lying across her bed now, sobbing her eyes out. He knew he’d been rough on her. It had bothered him, hounding her like that, but someone had to break through all of her denial. She had to understand the facts. It was the only way she’d ever really recover from her grief.

“Where we going, Nick?” asked Tim.

“How about Mary Jo’s?”

“That salad place? What, are you on a diet or something?”

“No, but it’s quiet there. I’m not into loud conversation right now.”

After two more blocks, they turned into the restaurant and sat down at a table. Fifteen minutes later the waitress brought their salads, which were cloaked in homemade mayonnaise and tarragon. Tim looked at the lettuce and arugula on his fork and sighed.

“This is rabbit food. Give me a greasy burger any day.” He stuffed a forkful of the salad into his mouth and looked across the table at Nick. “So what’s bugging you? The new post got you down already?”

“It’s a damned slap in the face, that’s what it is,” said Nick. He drained his cup of coffee and motioned to the waitress for another. “To go straight from being number two man in London to shuffling papers in D.C.”

“So why didn’t you resign?”

“I just might. Since that fiasco in London, my career’s been shot. And now I’ve got to put up with this bastard, Ambrose.”

“Is he still out of town?”

“One more week. Till then I can do the job my way. Without all that bureaucratic nonsense. Hell, if he rewrites any more of my reports to make ’em ‘conform to administration policy,’ I’m going to puke.” Nick put his fork down and scowled at the salad. The mention of his boss had just ruined his appetite. From the very first day, Nick and Ambrose had rubbed each other the wrong way. Charles Ambrose reveled in the bureaucratic merry-go-round, whereas Nick always insisted on getting straight to the point, however unpleasant. The clash had been inevitable.

“Your trouble, Nick, is that even though you’re an egghead, you don’t talk gobbledegook like all the others. You’ve got ’em all confused. They don’t like guys they can understand. Plus you’re a bleeding-heart liberal.”

“So? You are, too.”

“But I’m also a certified nerd. They make allowances for nerds. If they don’t, I shut down their computers.”

Nick laughed, suddenly glad for the company of his old buddy, Tim. Four years of being college roommates had left strong bonds. Even after eight years abroad, Nick had come home to find Tim Greenstein just as bushy and likable as ever.

He picked up his fork and finished off the salad.

“So what’re you going to do with this Fontaine case?” Tim asked over dessert.

“I’m going to do my job and look into it.”

“You gonna tell Ambrose? He’ll want to hear about it. So will the guys at the Company, if they don’t already know.”

“Let ’em find out on their own. It’s my case.”

“It sounds like espionage to me, Nick. That’s not exactly a consular affair.”

But Nick didn’t like the idea of turning Sarah Fontaine over to some CIA case officer. She seemed too fragile, too vulnerable. “It’s my case,” he repeated.

Tim grinned. “Ah, the widow Fontaine. Could it be she’s your type? Though I can’t quite see the attraction. What I really can’t see is how she hooked that husband. Blond Adonis, wasn’t he? Not the kind of guy to go for a woman in horn-rimmed glasses. My deduction is that he married her for reasons other than the usual.”

“The usual? You mean love?”

“Naw. Sex.”

“Just what the hell are you getting at?”

“Hmm. Touchy. You liked her, didn’t you?”

“No comment.”

“Seems to me the old love life’s been pretty barren since your divorce.”

Nick set his coffee cup down with a clatter. “What’s with all these questions?”

“Just trying to see where your head’s at, Nick. Haven’t you heard? It’s the latest thing. Men opening up to each other.”

Nick sighed. “Don’t tell me. You’ve been to another one of those sensitivity training sessions.”

“Yeah. Great place to meet women. You should try it.”

“No, thanks. The last thing I need is to join some big cry-in with a bunch of neurotic females.”

Tim gave his friend a sympathetic look. “Let me tell you, Nick. You need to do something. You can’t just sit around and be celibate the rest of your life.”

“Why not?”

Tim laughed. “Because, dammit, we both know you’re not the priestly type!”

Tim was right. In the four years since his split-up with Lauren, Nick had avoided any close relationships with women, sexual or otherwise, and it was starting to show. He was irritable. He’d thrown himself into salvaging what was left of his career, but work, he’d discovered, was a poor substitute for what he really wanted—a warm, soft body to hold; laughter in the night; thoughts shared in bed. To avoid being hurt again, he’d learned to live without these things. It was the only way to stay sane. But those old male instincts didn’t die easily. No, Nick was not the priestly type.

“Heard from Lauren lately?” asked Tim.

Nick looked up with a scowl. “Yeah. Last month. Told me she misses me. What she really misses, I think, is the embassy life.”

“So she called you. Sounds promising. Sounds like a reconciliation in the works.”

“Yeah? It sounded more to me like her latest romance wasn’t going so well.”

“Either way, it’s obvious she regrets the divorce. Did you follow up on it?”

Nick pushed away what remained of his chocolate mousse cake. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Didn’t feel like it.”

Tim leaned back and laughed. “He didn’t feel like it.” He sighed to no one in particular. “Four years of moaning and groaning about being divorced, and now he tells me this.”

“Look, every time things go bad for her, she decides to call good old Nick, her ever-loyal chump. I can’t handle that anymore. I told her I was no longer available. For her or anyone else.”

Tim shook his head. “You’ve sworn off women. That’s a very bad sign.”

“Nobody’s ever died of it.” Nick grunted as he threw a few bills on the table and rose. He wasn’t going to think about women right now. He had too many other things on his mind, and he sure as hell didn’t need another bad love affair.

But outside, as they walked back through the cherry trees, he found himself thinking about Sarah Fontaine. Not about Sarah, the grieving widow, but about Sarah, the woman. The name fit her. Sarah with the amber eyes.

Nick quickly shook off the thoughts. Of all the women in Washington, she was the last one he should be thinking about. In his line of work, objectivity was the key to doing the job right. Whether it was issuing visas or arguing a jailed American’s case before a magistrate, getting personally involved was almost always a mistake. No, Sarah Fontaine was nothing more to him than a name in a file.

She would have to remain that way.

* * *

Amsterdam

THE OLD MAN loved roses. He loved the dusky smell of the petals, which he often plucked and rubbed between his fingers. So cool, so fragrant, not like those insipid tulips that his gardener had planted on the banks of the duck pond. Tulips were all color, no character. They threw up stalks, bloomed and vanished. But roses! Even through winter they persisted, bare and thorny, like angry old women crouched in the cold.

He paused among the rosebushes and breathed in deeply, enjoying the smell of damp earth. In a few weeks, there’d be flowers. How his wife would have loved this garden! He could picture her standing on this very spot, smiling at the roses. She would have worn her old straw hat and a housedress with four pockets, and she would have carried her plastic bucket. My uniform, she’d have said. I’m just an old soldier, going out to fight the snails and beetles. He remembered how the rose clippers used to clunk against the bucket when she walked down the steps of their old house—the house he’d left behind. Nienke, my sweet Nienke, he thought. How I miss you.

“It is a cold day,” said a voice in Dutch.

The old man turned and looked at the pale-haired young man walking toward him through the bushes. “Kronen,” he said. “At last you’ve come.”

“I am sorry, meneer. A day late, but it couldn’t be helped.” Kronen took off his sunglasses and peered up at the sky. As usual, he avoided looking directly at the old man’s face. Since the accident, everyone avoided looking at his face, and it never failed to annoy him. It had been five years since anyone had stared him boldly in the eye, five years since he’d been able to meet another person’s gaze without detecting the invariable flinching. Even Kronen, whom he’d come to regard almost as a son, made it a point to look anywhere else. But then, young men of Kronen’s generation always fussed too much about appearances.

“I take it things went well in Basra,” said the old man.

“Yes. Minor delays, that’s all. And there were problems with the last shipment…the computer chips in the aiming mechanism…. One of the missiles failed to lock in.”

“Embarrassing.”

“Yes. I have already spoken to the manufacturer.”

They followed a path from the rosebushes toward the duck pond. The cold air made the old man’s throat sore. He wrapped his scarf a little tighter around his neck and forced out a thin, dry cough. “I have a new assignment for you,” he said. “A woman.”

Kronen paused, sudden interest in his eyes. His hair looked almost white in the sunshine. “Who is she?”

“The name is Sarah Fontaine. Geoffrey Fontaine’s wife. I want you to see where she leads you.”

Kronen frowned. “I don’t understand, sir. I was told Fontaine was dead.”

“Follow her anyway. My American source tells me she has a modest apartment in Georgetown. She is a microbiologist, thirty-two years old. Except for her marriage, she has no apparent intelligence connections. But one can never be certain.”

“May I contact this source?”

“No. His position is too…delicate.”

Kronen nodded, at once dropping the subject. He’d worked for the old man long enough to know the way things were done. Each man had his own territory, his own small box in which to operate. Never must one try to break out. Even Kronen, trusted as he was, saw only a part of the picture. Only the old man saw it all.

They walked together along the banks of the pond. The old man reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the bag of bread he’d brought from the house. Silently he flung a handful into the water and watched the crumbs swell. The ducks splashed among the reeds. When Nienke was alive, she had walked to the park every morning, just to feed the ducks her breakfast toast. She had worried that the weak ones would not get enough to eat. Look there, Frans, she would say. The little ones grow so fat! All on our breakfast crumbs!

Now, here he was, throwing bread on the water to the ducks he cared nothing about, except that Nienke would have loved them. He carefully folded the wrapper and stuffed it back into his pocket. As he did this, it struck him what a very sad and very feeble gesture it was, trying to preserve an old bread wrapper, and for what?

The pond had turned a sullen gray. Where had the sun gone? he wondered. Without looking at Kronen, he said, “I want to know about this woman. Leave soon.”

“Of course.”

“Be careful in Washington. I understand the crime there has become abominable.”

Kronen laughed as he turned to leave. “Tot ziens, meneer.”

The old man nodded. “Till then.”

* * *

THE LAB WHERE Sarah worked was spotless. The microscopes were polished, the counters and sinks were repeatedly disinfected, the incubation chambers were wiped clean twice daily. Sarah’s job required strict attention to asepsis; by habit she insisted on cleanliness. But as she sat at her lab bench, flipping through the last box of microscope slides, it seemed to Sarah that the sterility of the room had somehow extended to the rest of her life.

She took off her glasses and blinked tiredly. Everywhere she looked, stainless steel seemed to gleam back at her. The lights were harsh and fluorescent. There were no windows, and therefore, no sunshine. It could be noon or midnight outside; in here she’d never know the difference. Except for the hum of the refrigerator, the lab was silent.

She put her glasses on again and began to stack the slides back into the box. From the hallway came the clip of a woman’s heels on the floor. The door swung open.

“Sarah? What’re you doing here?”

Sarah glanced around at her good friend, Abby Hicks. In her size forty lab coat, Abby filled most of the doorway.

“I’m just catching up on a few things,” said Sarah. “So much work’s piled up since I’ve been gone….”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sarah! The lab can manage without you for a few weeks. It’s already eight o’clock. I’ll check the cultures. Go on home.”

Sarah closed the box of slides. “I’m not sure I want to go home,” she murmured. “It’s too quiet there. I’d almost rather be here.”

“Well, this place isn’t exactly jumping. It’s about as lively as a tomb—” At once Abby bit her lip and reddened. Even at age fifty-five, Abby could blush as deeply as a schoolgirl. “Bad choice of words,” she mumbled.

Sarah smiled. “It’s all right, Abby.”

For a moment the two women said nothing. Sarah rose and opened the incubator to deposit the specimen plate she’d been working on. The foul smell of agar drifted out from the warm petri dishes and permeated the room.

“How are you doing, Sarah?” Abby asked gently.

Sarah shut the incubator after setting the plate inside. With a sigh she turned and looked at her friend. “I’m managing, I guess.”

“We’ve all missed you. Even old Grubb says it’s not the same without you and your silly bottle of disinfectant. I think everyone’s just a little afraid to call you. None of them really knows what to do with grief, I suppose. But we do care, Sarah.”

Sarah nodded gratefully. “Oh, Abby, I know you care. And I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. All the casseroles and cards and flowers. Now I just have to get back on my feet.” She gazed sadly around the room. “I thought that coming back to work was what I needed.”

“Some people need the old routine. Others need to get away for a while.”

“Maybe that’s what I should do. Get away from Washington for a while. Away from all the places that remind me of him….” She swallowed back the familiar ache in her throat and tried to smile. “My sister has asked me to visit her in Oregon. You know, I haven’t seen my nephew and nieces in years. They must be getting huge.”

“Then go. Sarah, it hasn’t even been two weeks! You need to give it some time. Go see your sister. Have yourself a few more cries.”

“I’ve spent too many days crying. I’ve been sitting at home, wondering how to get through this. I still can’t bear to see his clothes hanging in the closet.” Sarah shook her head. “It’s not just losing him that hurts so much. It’s the rest….”

“You mean the part about Berlin.”

Sarah nodded. “I’ll go crazy if I think about it much longer. That’s why I came in tonight—to get my mind off the whole thing. I thought it was time to get back to work.” She stared at the stack of lab books by her microscope. “But it’s strange, Abby. I used to love this place. Now I wonder how I’ve stood it these past six years. All these cold cabinets and steel sinks. Everything so closed in. I feel as if I can’t breathe.”

“It’s got to be more than the lab. You’ve always liked this job, Sarah. You’re the one who stands humming by the centrifuge.”

“I can’t picture myself working here the rest of my life. Geoffrey and I had so little time together! Three days for a honeymoon. That’s all. Then I had to rush back to finish that damned grant proposal. We were always so busy, no time for vacations. Now we’ll never have another chance.” Sighing, she went back to her bench and flicked off the microscope lamp. Softly she added, “And I’ll never really know why he…” She sat down without finishing the sentence.

“Have you heard anything else from the State Department?”

“That man called again yesterday. The police in Berlin have finally released the—the body. It’s coming home tomorrow.” Her eyes suddenly filmed with tears. She gazed down, struggling not to cry. “The service will be Friday. You’ll be there?”

“Of course I’ll be there. We’ll all be there. I’ll drive you, okay?” Abby came over and laid a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “It’s still so recent, Sarah. You’ve got every right to cry.”

“There’s so much I’ll never understand about his death, Abby. That man in the State Department—he kept hounding me for answers, and I couldn’t give him a single one! Oh, I know it was just his job, but he brought up these… possibilities that have bothered me ever since. I’ve started wondering about Geoffrey. More and more.”

“You weren’t married that long, Sarah. Heck, my husband and I were married thirty years before we split up, and I never did figure out the jerk. It’s not surprising you didn’t know everything there was to know about Geoffrey.”

“But he was my husband!”

Abby fell silent for a moment. Then, with some hesitation, she said, “You know, Sarah, there was always something about him…. I mean, I never felt I could get to know him very well.”

“He was shy, Abby.”

“No, it wasn’t just shyness. It was as if—as if he didn’t want to give anything away. As if—” She looked at Sarah. “Oh, it’s not important.”

But Sarah was already thinking about what Abby had said. There was some truth to her observation. Geoffrey had been an aloof man, not given to lengthy or revealing conversations. He’d never talked much about himself. He had always seemed more interested in her—her work, her friends. When they first met, that interest had been flattering; of all the men she’d known, he was the only one who’d ever really listened.

Then for some reason, another face sprang to mind. Nick O’Hara. Yes, that was his name. She had a sudden, vivid memory of the way Nick O’Hara had studied her, the way his gray eyes had focused on her every expression. Yes, he’d listened, too; but then, it had been his job. Had it also been his job to torment new widows? She didn’t want to think about him. She never wanted to speak to the man again.

Sarah put the plastic cover over the microscope. She thought about taking her data book home. But as she scanned the open page, it occurred to her that the column of entries symbolized the way she was living her life. Neatly, carefully and precisely within the printed boundaries.

She closed the book and put it back on the shelf.

“I think I’m going home,” she said.

Abby nodded her approval. “Good. No sense burying yourself in here. Forget about work for a while.”

“Are you sure you can handle the extra load?”

“Of course.”

Sarah took off her lab coat and hung it by the door. Like everything else in the room, her coat looked too neat, too clean. “Maybe I will take some time off, after the funeral. Another week. Maybe a month.”

“Don’t stay away too long,” said Abby. “We do want you back.”

Sarah glanced around one last time to make sure things were tidy. They were. “I’ll be back,” she said. “I just don’t know when.”

* * *

THE COFFIN SLID down the ramp and landed with a soft thud on the platform. The sound made Nick shudder. Years of packing off dead Americans hadn’t dulled his sense of horror. But like everyone else in the consular corps, he’d found his own way to handle the pain. Later today he’d take a long walk, go home and pour himself a drink. Then he’d sit in his old leather chair, turn on the radio and read the newspaper; find out how many earthquakes there’d been, how many plane and train and bus crashes, how many bombs had been dropped. The big picture. It would make this one death seem insignificant. Almost.

“Mr. O’Hara? Sign here, please.”

A man in an airline uniform held out a clipboard with the shipment papers. Nick glanced over the documents, quickly noting the deceased’s name: Geoffrey Fontaine. He scrawled his signature and handed back the clipboard. Then he turned and watched as the coffin was loaded into a waiting hearse. He didn’t want to think about its contents, but all at once an image rose up in his mind, something he’d seen in a magazine, a picture of dead Vietnamese villagers after a bombing. They had all burned to death. Is that what lay inside Geoffrey Fontaine’s coffin? A man charred beyond recognition?

He shook off the image. Damn, he needed a drink. It was time to go home. The hearse was headed off safely to a designated mortuary; as previously arranged, Sarah Fontaine would take charge from there. He wondered if he should call her just one more time. But for what? More condolences, more regrets? He’d done his part. She’d already paid the bill. There was nothing else to say.

By the time he got to his apartment, Nick had shoved the whole grisly affair out of his mind. He threw his briefcase onto the couch and went straight to the kitchen, where he poured out a generous glass of whiskey and slid a TV dinner into the oven. Good old Swanson, the bachelor’s friend. He leaned back against the counter and sipped his drink. The refrigerator began to growl, and the oven light clicked off. He thought of turning on the radio, but he couldn’t quite force himself to move. So ended another day as a public servant. And to think it was only Tuesday.

He wondered how long it had been since he’d been happy. Months? Years? Trying to recall a different state of mind was futile. Sights and sounds were what he remembered—the blue of a sky, the smile on a face. His last distinct image of happiness was of riding a bus in London, a bus with torn seats and dirty windows. He’d just left the embassy for the day and was on his way home to Lauren….

The apartment buzzer made him jump. Suddenly he felt starved for company, any company, even the paperboy’s. He went to the intercom. “Hello?”

“Hey, Nick? It’s Tim. Let me in.”

“Okay. Come on up.”

Nick released the front lock. Would Tim want supper? Dumb question. He always wanted supper. Nick poked in the freezer and was relieved to find two more TV dinners. He put one in the oven.

He went to the front doorway and waited for the elevator to open.

Tim bounded out. “Okay, are you ready for this? Guess what my FBI friend found out?”

Nick sighed. “I’m afraid to ask.”

“You know that guy, Geoffrey Fontaine? Well, he’s dead all right.”

“So what’s new?”

“No, I’m talking about the real Geoffrey Fontaine.”

“Look,” said Nick. “I’ve pretty much closed my file on this case. But if you want to stay for dinner…”

Tim followed him into the apartment. “See, the real Geoffrey Fontaine died—”

“Right,” said Nick.

“Forty-two years ago.”

The door slammed shut. Nick turned and stared at him.

“Ha!” said Tim. “I thought that’d get your attention.”

## CHAPTER THREE

THE DAY SMELLED of flowers. On the grass at Sarah’s feet lay a mound of carnations and gladioli and lilies. For the rest of her life, the smell would sicken her. It would bring back this hilltop and the marble plaques dotting the shorn grass and the mist hanging in the valley below. Most of all, it would bring back the pain. Everything else—the minister’s words, the squeeze of her good friend Abby’s hand around her arm, even the first cold drops of rain against her face—she scarcely felt, for it was peripheral to the pain.

She forced herself not to concentrate on the gash of earth at her feet. Instead she stared at the hill across the valley. Through the mist she could see a faint dappling of pink. The cherry trees were blooming. But the view only saddened her; it was a springtime Geoffrey would not see.

The minister’s voice receded to a faintly irritating drone. A cold drizzle stung Sarah’s cheeks and clouded her glasses; fog moved in, closing off the world. Abby’s sudden nudge brought her back to reality. The casket had been lowered. She saw faces, all watching her, all waiting. These were her friends, but in her pain she scarcely recognized them. Even Abby, dear Abby, was a stranger to her now.

Automatically Sarah bent down and took a handful of earth. It was damp and rich and it smelled of rain. She tossed it into the grave. The thud of the casket made her wince.

Faces passed by as if they were ghosts in the mist. Her friends were gentle. They spoke softly. Through it all she stood dry-eyed and numb. The smell of flowers and the mist against her face overpowered her senses, and she was aware of nothing else until she looked around and saw that the others had gone. Only she and Abby were standing beside the grave.

“It’s starting to rain,” said Abby.

Sarah looked up and saw the clouds descending on them like a cold, silvery blanket. Abby draped her stout arm around Sarah’s shoulders and nudged her toward the parking lot.

“A cup of tea, that’s what we both need,” said Abby. It was her remedy for everything. She had survived a nasty divorce and the departure of her college-bound sons on nothing more potent than Earl Grey. “A cup of tea, and then let’s talk.”

“A cup of tea does sound nice,” admitted Sarah.

Arm in arm, they slowly walked across the lawn. “I know it means nothing to you now,” said Abby, “but the pain will pass, Sarah. It really will. We women are strong that way. We have to be.”

“What if I’m not?”

“You are. Don’t you doubt it.”

Sarah shook her head. “I question everything now. And everyone.”

“You don’t doubt me, do you?”

Sarah looked at Abby’s broad, damp face and smiled. “No. Not you.”

“Good. When you get to be my age, you’ll see that it’s all—” Suddenly Abby stopped in her tracks. Her breathing was loud and husky. Sarah followed the direction of her gaze.

A man was walking toward them through the mist.

Sarah took in the windblown dark hair and the gray overcoat, now sparkling with water droplets. She could tell he had been standing outside a long time, probably through the whole funeral. The cold had turned his face ruddy.

“Mrs. Fontaine?” he asked.

“Hello, Mr. O’Hara.”

“Look, I realize this is a bad moment, but I’ve been trying to get hold of you for two days. You haven’t returned my calls.”

“No,” she admitted, “I haven’t.”

“I need to talk to you. There’ve been some new developments. I think you should hear about them.”

“Sarah, who is this man?” broke in Abby.

Nick turned to the older woman. “Nick O’Hara. I’m with the State Department. If it would be all right, ma’am, I’d like a moment alone with Mrs. Fontaine.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

He looked back at Sarah. “It’s important.”

Something about the way he looked at her, the stubborn angle of his jaw, made Sarah consider his request. She hadn’t planned to speak to him again. For the past two days, her answering machine had recorded his half dozen calls, all of which she’d ignored. Geoffrey was dead and buried; that was pain enough. Nick O’Hara would only make things worse by asking his unanswerable questions.

“Please, Mrs. Fontaine.”

At last she nodded. With a glance at Abby, she said, “I’ll be all right.”

“Well, you can’t stand around chatting out here. It’ll be pouring in a minute!”

“I can drive her home,” said Nick. At Abby’s dubious look, he smiled. “Really, I’m okay. I’ll take care of her.”

Abby gave Sarah one last hug and kiss. “I’ll call you tonight, sweetheart. Let’s have breakfast in the morning.” Then, with obvious reluctance, she turned and headed toward her car.

“A good friend, I take it,” he said, watching Abby’s retreat.

“We’ve worked together for years.”

“At NIH?”

“Yes. The same lab.”

He glanced up at the sky, which was now dark with storm clouds. A chill had fallen over them. “Your friend’s right. It’ll be pouring in a minute. Come on. My car’s this way.”

Gently he touched her sleeve. She moved ahead mechanically, allowing him to guide her into the front seat of his car. He slid in beside her and pulled his door shut. For a moment they sat in silence. The car was an old Volvo, practical, without frills, a model one chose purely for transportation. It fit him, somehow. A trace of warmth still clung to the interior, and Sarah’s glasses clouded over. Pulling them off, she turned and looked at him and saw that his hair was wet.

“You must be cold,” he said. “Let’s get you home.”

The engine roared to life. A blast of air erupted from the heater, gradually warming them as they drove along the winding road from the cemetery. The windshield wiper squeaked back and forth.

“It started out so beautiful this morning,” she said, watching the rain fall.

“Unpredictable. Just like everything else.”

He smoothly turned the car onto the highway bound for D.C. He was a calm driver, with steady hands. The kind who probably never took risks. Savoring the heater’s warmth, Sarah settled back in her seat.

“Why didn’t you return my calls?” he asked.

“It was rude of me. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Why didn’t you call me back?”

“I guess I didn’t want to hear any more speculation about Geoffrey. Or about his death.”

“Even if they’re facts?”

“You weren’t giving me facts, Mr. O’Hara. You were guessing.”

He stared ahead grimly at the road. “I’m not guessing anymore, Mrs. Fontaine. I’ve got the facts. All I need is a name.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your husband. You said that six months ago you met Geoffrey Fontaine at a coffee shop. He must have swept you clean off your feet. Four months later you were married. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know how to say this, but Geoffrey Fontaine— the real Geoffrey Fontaine—died forty-two years ago. As an infant.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I don’t understand…”

He didn’t look at her; he kept his eyes on the road as he talked. “The man you married took the name of a dead infant. It’s easy enough to do. You hunt around for the name of a baby who died around the year you were born. Then you get a copy of the birth certificate. With that you apply for a Social Security number, a driver’s license, a marriage license. You become that infant, grown up. A new identity. A new life. With all the records to prove it.”

“But—but how do you know all this?”

“Everything’s on computer these days. From a few cross-checks, I found out that Geoffrey Fontaine never registered for the draft. He never attended school. He never held a bank account—until a year ago, when his name suddenly appeared in a dozen different places.”

The breath went out of her. “Then who was he?” she whispered at last. “Who did I marry?”

“I don’t know,” Nick answered.

“Why? Why would he do it? Why would he start a new life?”

“I can think of lots of reasons. My first thought was that he was wanted for some crime. His thumbprints were on record with the driver’s license bureau, so I had them run through the FBI computer. He’s not on any of their lists.”

“Then he wasn’t a criminal.”

“There’s no proof that he was. Another possibility is that he was in some kind of federal witness program, that he was given a new name for protection. It’s hard for me to check on that. The data are locked up tight. It would, however, give us a motive for his murder.”

“You mean—the people he testified against—they found him.”

“That’s right.”

“But he would have told me about something like that, he would have shared it with me….”

“That’s what makes me think of one more possibility. Maybe you can confirm it.”

“Go on.”

“What if your husband’s new name and new life were just part of his job? He might not have been running from anything. He might have been sent here.”

“You mean he was a spy,” she said softly.

He looked at her and nodded. His eyes were as gray as the storm clouds outside.

“I don’t believe this,” she said. “None of it!”

“It’s real. I assure you.”

“Then why are you telling me? How do you know I’m not an accomplice or something?”

“I think you’re clean, Mrs. Fontaine. I’ve seen your file—”

“Oh. I have a file, too?” she shot back.

“You got security clearance some years ago, remember? For the research you were working on. Naturally a file was generated.”

“Naturally.”

“But it’s not just your file that makes me think you’re clean. It’s my own gut feeling. Now convince me I’m right.”

“How? Should I hook myself up to a polygraph?”

“Start off by telling me about you and Geoffrey. Were you in love?”

“Of course we were!”

“So it was a real marriage? You had…relations?”

She flushed. “Yes. Like any normal couple. Do you want to know how often? When?”

“I’m not playing games. I’m sticking my neck out for you. If you don’t like my approach, perhaps you’d prefer the way the Company handles it.”

“Then you haven’t told the CIA?”

“No.” His chin came up in an unintended gesture of stubbornness. “I don’t care much for the way they do things. I may get slapped down for this, but then again, I may not.”

“So why are you putting yourself on the line?”

He shrugged. “Curiosity. Maybe a chance to see what I can do on my own.”

“Ambition?”

“That’s part of it, I guess. Plus…” He glanced at her, and their eyes met. Suddenly he fell silent.

“Plus what?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

The rain was coming down in sheets and streamed across the windshield. Nick left the freeway and edged into city-bound traffic. Driving through D.C. rush hour usually made Sarah nervous; today, though, she took it calmly. Something about the way Nick O’Hara drove made her feel safe. In fact, everything about him spoke of safety—the steadiness of his hands on the wheel, the warmth of his car, the low timbre of his voice. Just sitting beside him, she felt secure. She could imagine how safe a woman might feel in his arms.

“Anyway,” he continued, “you can see we’ve got a lot of unanswered questions. You might have some of the answers, whether you know it or not.”

“I don’t have any answers.”

“Let’s start off with what you do know.”

She shook her head, bewildered. “I was married to him and I can’t even tell you his real name!”

“Everyone, Sarah, even the best spy, slips up. He must’ve let his guard down for a moment. Maybe he talked in his sleep. Maybe he said things you can’t explain. Think.”

She bit her lip, suddenly thinking not about Geoffrey, but about Nick. He’d called her by her first name. Sarah. “Even if there were things,” she said, “little things—I might not have considered them significant.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, he might have—he might have called me Evie once or twice. But he always apologized right away. He said she was an old girlfriend.”

“What about family? Friends? Didn’t he talk about them?”

“He said he was born in Vermont, then raised in London. His parents were theater people. They’re dead. He never talked about any other relatives. He always seemed so…self-sufficient. He didn’t have any close friends, not even from work. At least, none he introduced me to.”

“Oh, yes. His work. I’ve been checking on that. It seems he was listed on the Bank of London payroll. He had a desk in some back office. But no one remembers quite what he did.”

“Then even that part wasn’t real.”

“So it seems.”

Sarah sank deeper into the seat. Each thing this man told her left another slash in the fabric of her life. Her marriage was dissolving away to nothing. It had been all shadow and no substance. Reality was here and now, the rain hitting the car, the windshield wipers beating back and forth. Most of all, reality was the man sitting silently beside her. He was not an illusion. She scarcely knew him, and yet he’d become the only reality she could cling to.

She wondered about Nick O’Hara. She didn’t think he was married. Despite his aloofness she found him attractive enough; any woman would have. But there was more than just the physical attraction. She sensed his need. Something told her he was lonely, troubled. Vague shadows of unhappiness surrounded his eyes, creating a feeling of restlessness; it was the look of a man without a home. He probably had none. The foreign service was a career for nomads, not for people who craved a house in the suburbs. Nick O’Hara was definitely not the suburban type.

Shivering, she longed desperately to be back in her apartment, drinking that cup of tea with Abby. It won’t be long, she thought as the streets became more and more familiar. Connecticut Avenue glistened in the rain. The downpour had already stripped the cherry trees of half their blossoms; the first rush of spring had been short-lived.

They pulled up in front of her apartment, and Nick dashed around the car to open her door. It was a funny little gesture, the sort of thing Geoffrey used to do, gallant and sweetly impractical. By the time they stamped into the lobby they were both soaked. The rain had plastered his hair in dark curls against his forehead.

“I suppose you have more questions.” She sighed as they headed toward the stairs leading to the second floor.

“If you mean do I want to come up, the answer is yes.”

“For tea or interrogation?”

He smiled and brushed away the water dripping down his cheek. “A little of both. I’ve had so much trouble getting hold of you, I’d better ask all my questions now.”

They reached the top of the stairs. She was just about to say something when the hallway came into view. What she saw made her freeze.

The door to her apartment was hanging open. Someone had broken in.

Instinctively Sarah retreated, terrified of whatever lay beyond the door. She fell back against Nick and found herself wordlessly clutching his arm. He stared at the open door, his face suddenly tense. Except for the pounding of her own heart, she heard nothing. The apartment was absolutely silent.

Light spilled into the hall through the open doorway. Nick motioned her to stay where she was, then cautiously approached the door. Sarah started to follow him, but he gave her such a dark look of warning that she shrank back at once.

He nudged the door open, and the arc of light widened and spilled across his face. For a few seconds, he stood in the doorway, staring at the room beyond. Then he entered the apartment.

In the hall Sarah waited, frightened by the absolute silence. What was happening inside? A shadow flickered in the doorway, and panic began to overtake her as she watched the outline grow larger. Then, to her relief, Nick poked his head out.

“It’s all right, Sarah,” he said. “There’s no one here.”

She ran past him into the apartment. In the living room, she paused, surprised by what she saw. She had expected to find her possessions gone, to find only empty shelves where her TV and stereo had always sat. But nothing had been touched. Even the antique clock was in its place, ticking softly on the bookshelf.

She turned and ran into the bedroom with Nick close behind. He watched from the doorway as she went directly to the jewelry box on her dresser. There, on red velvet, was her string of pearls, right where it should be. Slamming the box shut, she turned and quickly surveyed the room, taking in the king-size bed, the nightstand with its china lamp, the closet. In confusion she looked back at Nick.

“What’s missing?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing. Could I have just left the door unlocked?”

He stalked out of her bedroom, back to the hall. She found him crouched in the doorway. “Look,” he said, pointing down at the wood splinters and fragments of antique-white paint littering the gray carpet. “It’s definitely been forced open.”

“But it doesn’t make sense! Why break into an apartment and then not take anything?”

“Maybe he didn’t have time. Maybe he was interrupted….” Rising, he turned and looked at her. “You look shook up. Are you all right?”

“I’m just—just bewildered.”

He touched her hand; his fingers felt hot against hers. “You’re also freezing. You’d better get out of those wet clothes.”

“I’m fine, Mr. O’Hara. Really.”

“Come on. Off with the coat.” He insisted. “And sit down while I make a few calls.”

Something about his tone seemed to leave Sarah no choice but to obey. She let him tug off her coat, then sat on the couch and watched numbly as he reached for the telephone. Suddenly she felt as though she’d lost control of her actions. As though, just by walking into her apartment, Nick O’Hara had taken over her life. Almost as an act of protest, she rose and headed for the kitchen.

“Sarah?”

“I’m going to make a pot of tea.”

“Look, don’t go to any trouble—”

“It’s no trouble. We could both use a cup, I think.”

From the kitchen doorway, she saw him dial his call. As she put the kettle on, she heard him say, “Hello? Tim Greenstein, please. This is Nick O’Hara calling…. Yes, I’ll hold.”

The next pause seemed to last forever. Nick began to pace back and forth, like an animal in a cage, first pulling off his overcoat, then loosening his tie. His agitation made him entirely out of place in her small, tidy living room.

“Shouldn’t you call the police?” she asked.

“That’s next on the list. First I’d like an informal chat with the bureau. If I can just get through the damned lines.”

“The bureau? You mean the FBI? But why?”

“There’s something about all this that bugs me….”

His words were lost when the kettle abruptly whistled. Sarah filled the teapot and carried the tray out to the living room, where Nick was still waiting on the phone.

“Dammit,” he muttered to himself. “Where the hell are you, Greenstein?”

“Tea, Mr. O’Hara?”

“Hmm?” He turned and saw the cup she held out to him. “Yeah. Thanks.”

She sat down, holding a cup and saucer on her lap. “Does Mr. Greenstein work for the FBI?”

“No. But he has a friend who—hello? Tim? It’s about time! Don’t you answer your calls anymore?”

In the silence that followed, Nick’s face and the way he stood, with his shoulders squared and his back rigid, told Sarah that something was wrong. He was livid. The loud clatter of his teacup on the saucer made her jump.

“How the hell did Ambrose get wind of it?” he snapped into the receiver, turning away from Sarah.

Another silence. She stared at his back, wondering what kind of catastrophe had made Nick O’Hara so angry. Up until now she’d thought of him as a man completely in control of his emotions. No longer. His anger surprised her, yet somehow it also reassured her that he was human.

“Okay,” he said into the phone. “I’ll be there in half an hour. Look, Tim, something else has come up. Someone’s broken into Sarah’s apartment. No, nothing’s been touched. Can you get me the number of this FBI friend? I want to— Yeah, I’m sorry I got you into this, but…” He turned and gave Sarah a harassed look. “Okay! Half an hour. My trip to the woodshed. Meet you in Ambrose’s office.” He hung up with a scowl.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“So end eight glorious years with the State Department,” he muttered, furiously snatching up his overcoat and walking toward the door. “I’ve gotta go. Look, you’ve still got the chain. Use it. Better yet, stay with your friend tonight. And call the police. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

She followed him into the hallway. “But Mr. O’Hara—”

“Later!” he called over his shoulder as he stalked away. She heard his footsteps echo in the stairwell, and moments later the lobby door slammed shut.

She closed the door and slid the chain in place, then slowly gazed around the room. Her stack of Advances in Microbiology lay on the coffee table. A vase of peonies dropped petals onto the bookshelf. Everything was as it should be.

No, not quite. Something was different. If she could just put her finger on it…

She was halfway across the room when it suddenly struck her—there was an empty space on the bookshelf. Her wedding picture was gone.

A cry of anger welled up in her throat. For the first time since she’d returned to the apartment, she felt a sense of violation, of fury that someone had invaded her house. It had only been a photograph, a pair of happy faces beaming at a camera, yet it meant more to her than anything else she owned. The picture had been all she had left of Geoffrey. Even if her marriage had been mere illusion, she never wanted to forget how she had loved him. Of all the things in her apartment, why would anyone steal a photograph?

Her heart skipped a beat as the phone rang. It was probably Abby, calling as promised. She picked up the receiver.

The first sound she heard was the hiss of a long-distance connection. Sarah froze. For some reason she found herself staring at the empty shelf, at the spot where the photograph should have been.

“Hello?” she said.

“Come to me, Sarah. I love you.”

A scream caught in her throat. The room was spinning wildly, and she reached out for support. The receiver slipped from her fingers and thudded on the carpet. This is impossible! she thought. Geoffrey is dead....

She scrambled on the floor for the receiver, scrambled to hear the voice of what could only be a ghost.

“Hello? Hello? Geoffrey!” she screamed.

The long-distance hiss was gone. There was only silence and then, a few seconds later, the hum of the dial tone.

But she had heard enough. Everything that had happened in the past two weeks faded away as if it were a nightmare remembered in the light of day. None of it had been real. The voice she’d just heard, the voice she knew so well—that was real.

Geoffrey was alive.