Midnight outside The Doll House. Julie pushed open the door, stood on the rain-soaked street for a moment, hands jammed deep in the pockets of her raincoat. She took a deep breath of air, then let it out slowly. But no matter how she tried to clear her lungs, Sydny’s scent continued to haunt her. She missed Sydny, deeply. At first, she was perplexed by this anomaly in her life. Then she was troubled. How on earth could she miss someone so profoundly whom she had known for such a short time? Then, the first night she had returned here to The Doll House, having walked to it without conscious thought, as if she were a sleepwalker, a memory surfaced.

She was sitting at one of the small tables, a watered-down drink in front of her, watching the sleek, half-naked girls manipulate their bodies around the glistening metal poles, and thinking how none of them could hold a candle to Sydny’s electrifying act. All at once, as the music changed, as the lights went from blue to red, she recalled how Hemingway had told her that friendships forged during wartime, compressed time, engendered an intimacy that lasted a lifetime. So it had been with her and Sydny—two women who had shared a slice of compressed time that had affected Julie to her very core.

Now, as she stood on the sidewalk, a limousine, still glistening with beads of rain, pulled up to the curb beside her. She was about to walk away when some instinct told her to hold her ground. The rear door opened and as she bent down, Whitman leaned across the seat, smiled at her.

“Hello, Julie. Please get in.”

She climbed in, the door closed, and the limo pulled away from the curb and down the darkened street. She saw The Washington Post, folded over to the story detailing the FBI arrests of the surviving Alchemists, the “discovery” of the Well. She’d read the story this morning. No mention of Omar Hemingway, who had delivered the Alchemists’ names to the FBI, or of Whitman, who had tipped off Hemingway. But, as she well knew, that’s the way the world worked inside the clandestine services. The oddest thing, however, buried deep in the story, was the fact that the accounts—bank, bond, stocks—of the principles had been drained simultaneously. The FBI and Interpol had been frantically trying to find a money trail, but without success.

Whitman smiled. “I thought I might find you here.”

“Knowing you,” she said, “I don’t think it was anything but a sure thing.” She ducked her head. “I’ve been coming here almost every night since…” Her voice trailed off, heading for a sob.

“Why here,” he said, “rather than her place?”

“I couldn’t bear to be there.” She wiped away a solitary tear. “Not after what happened.”

“Thank you,” he said, startling her, “for coming to her defense.”