As he turned to go, Nadia appeared and they almost collided. She must have found Gleason because she looked as if she were about to faint. He gripped her arm to support her.

“He’s not here!” she gasped, panting as if she’d run a marathon. “I checked his bedroom and the kitchen and the bathroom and the closets but he’s not here!”

Not here? He had to be here!

“Ohmigod!” she cried, lurching past Luc. “Look what they did to his computer! It wasn’t like this last night! Jesus God, where is he? What happened here?”

That was what Luc wanted to know. Gleason was supposed to die here, not somewhere else. Or—his heart seized for an instant as a thought struck with the weight of a sledge—had Prather’s men missed him?

Luc guided Nadia to a chair and helped her as she sagged into it. “It looks like just a robbery and maybe some vandalism.”

“I don’t see his laptop,” she said, looking around. “And his living room rug is gone. Does that make any sense?”

It did if Prather’s men needed a way to remove Gleason’s body. But they were not supposed to remove it.

“No, it doesn’t,” he told her. “But you didn’t see any blood, did you?”

He wanted her to say, Yes, oceans of it, but she shook her head.

He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “There. He’s probably away for the weekend with—”

“He’s not!” she said. Tears were sliding down her cheeks. “He would have told me!”

“Come now,” Luc said. “Surely he has other friends. He probably—”

“We’re engaged, damn it!”

Luc felt his knees go soft. Now he too needed to sit. “Engaged? But… but I thought…”

“Doug wanted to keep it secret. He had some idea that management might not approve of a close relationship between a sales rep and a researcher.”

Gleason had been right, of course. Luc tried to frame a reply, but the only words that formed in his reeling brain were, What have we done? What have we done.… ?

With her fiancé missing she’ll be utterly useless in the lab—and not just for a couple of days.

That’s it, then, he thought. Over. Done. Fin.

“I’ve got to call the police!”

Before Luc could stop her, she had the phone receiver to her ear—but only for an instant. She pulled it away and looked at it. “That’s right. I forgot. Out of service.”

She slammed it down and hurried from the room. Luc struggled to think of some way to stop her, some words that would convince her to hold off calling the police, but his mind was a blank. What could he say? Gleason was missing and his apartment showed unmistakable signs of foul play.

Nadia and the police… a potentially lethal combination. To determine who had broken in, she would have to ask why.… and why they had stolen one computer and smashed another. Luc had to assume that Gleason had told her about his invasion of the GEM computer system. Would she make a connection? Nadia was too bright not to. And she would tell the police. And if she had any suspicions that Loki was a street drug, Luc sensed she would bring up those as well. And then the New York City Police and the DEA and the FBI would be dissecting GEM, and issuing warrants, and ending life as he knew it.