“Why not?”

She glanced at him. “Because I’m not going to give you what you want.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“Payback for the shot in the ribs I gave you when I kicked you out.”

He was astonished by her answer, and more than a little saddened. She still had the ability to break his heart, it seemed, even more than it was already broken. He decided to move on. “I’ll settle for you telling me the secret of your pool win.”

“It’s all in the pool cue,” she said matter-of-factly. He supposed that now she had plunged the knife in she felt free to speak openly. “I hand-turned it myself from African ebony and Hawaiian koa. This makes it beautiful and perfectly balanced, but that isn’t the half of it. The core is made of a thin rod of tantalum.” She took another sip of her drink. “Do you know anything about tantalum, Whit?”

“Why would I?”

“Right, why would you. It’s an exotic metal with some very interesting properties. The one relevant to this discussion is how readily and rapidly it conducts heat and an electric charge.”

Whitman considered the implications for a moment, before he said, “Where is it?”

As if watching a flower unfurl in slow motion, he saw her left hand open to reveal the tiny circular object stuck to the center of her palm.

“When it curls around the butt of my cue it comes in contact with a plate hidden just beneath the skin of wood.”

“The charge launches the ball.”

“And more. It guides the ball into the pocket.”

“Now that’s just impossible.”

She smiled, as if to herself. “Pool balls are made of phenolic resin. There is something in the tantalum—a certain pentoxide, so I’m told by a chemist friend—that reacts with the resin.” She raised her left hand. “Et voilà!”

“Why do you insist on inserting French phrases?”

“One of these days you should learn French,” she said in a perfectly neutral tone.

“One of these days you should learn to drink añejo.”

“French comes in handy in Southeast Asia,” she said, as if she had not heard him.

“It’s arrogant and pretentious,” he said, “and it makes me feel…”

She sat up so abruptly the last of her whiskey almost slopped over the rim of her glass. “What, Whit? What does it make you feel?”

He looked away, then directly at her because this was the only way to do it without losing face. “I am tired of being in the subservient position.”

“Now you know how I felt.” Setting her glass down, she rose, strode quickly out of the room, down the hall. A moment later, he heard the bathroom door slam and lock.

He sat back on the sofa and sighed audibly. This wasn’t how he imagined the reunion going, but then what did go the way you expected? He closed his eyes, but every time he did so, he saw Sandy’s dead eyes staring up into the Pakistani night, felt the weight of him on his shoulder. Owls were nothing compared to Sandy’s corpse.