It was a large room, exquisitely appointed. Dana was sitting in a pose that suggested she’d been lying down a moment earlier, on a cream-colored couch. It was one of two, set in an L shape. A carved Chinese table stood in front of them, scattered with things: a carafe of dark red wine and two partially filled glasses; the remains of a small meal for two; a little silver-stoppered vial half full of something white; a heavy necklace of silver and turquoise medallions. The lighting came from recesses in the ceiling. The air was cool and dry. There was a sky-blue carpet on the floor three inches deep, and a rack of stereo and video gear topped with a twenty-five-inch monitor.

My eyes kept going, past the rack to another shining wood door and the man standing straight and stiff next to it. I didn’t recognize him at first. He wore a high-collared white jacket and black trousers. His blond hair was scraped back from his face, and he looked even more cadaverous than usual. He was trying desperately to look at nothing, and the effort, I could tell, was almost more than he could bear. Cassidy. Uniformed, clearly in Albrecht’s employ, he was having to witness his boss’s seduction of the woman he was in love with. I turned back to Dana and found her watching me.

“Is this one of life’s little jokes on the two of you?” I asked. My voice was unsteady, but not much. “Or did you use your connections to get him the job?” Connections. I’d realized that Dana had them. I just hadn’t realized they’d been to here.

Dana flushed. “Honey… ” She shook her head.

I looked again at Albrecht, who was pouring himself a drink from a decanter he’d taken from the cabinet, and then back to Cassidy. His deep-set eyes were wide, meeting mine, even wider than the circumstances would warrant. For an instant, I didn’t understand. Then I did what I should have done long before. I turned around.

There was a fifth person in the room. He leaned at ease against the wall, where the opening door from the office had hidden him as I came in. He was tall and lean, with sandy brown hair that fell forward into eyes so light-colored they were nearly colorless. His white shirt was open over his pearl-gray cotton trousers, and his feet were bare. His smile was full of big, even teeth.

“Howdy,” he said. “I do believe you must be Sparrow.”

Frances, I thought in that long moment when I couldn’t so much as swallow, I found the monster.

Mick had said he was strong, fast, and bugfuck crazy. I could see it, feel it, smell it on him, the madness that, when he had to, he could probably disguise as something else. Now he didn’t have to.

He crossed the space between the wall and me in three strides, grabbed up my stiff right hand in both of his, and shook it, hard. “Mighty pleased to meet you, after all this time. I’ve heard an awful lot about you. Heck, for a while I thought I might miss you completely, but here you are at last.” His smile grew, if possible, wider, and he turned it on Dana. “Your friend don’t talk much. You didn’t tell me that.”