“I hate to bring this up,” Laurie said. “But I have to do something with poor Tom.”

Jack scratched the back of his head. “Do you have access to a shovel?”

“I have a gardening trowel,” Laurie said. “What are you thinking?”

“We could bury him in the backyard,” Jack said.

Laurie smiled. “You are a softie, aren’t you?”

“I just know what it’s like to lose things you love,” Jack said. His voice caught. For a painful moment he recalled the phone call that had informed him of his wife and daughters’ deaths in a commuter plane crash.

While Laurie packed her things, Jack paced her bedroom. He forced his mind to concentrate on current concerns. “We’re going to have to tell Lou about this,” Jack said, “and give him Vido Delbario’s name.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Laurie said from the depths of her walk-in closet. “Do you think we should do it tonight?”

“I think we should,” Jack said. “Then he can decide when he wants to act on it. We’ll call from my house. Do you have his home number?”

“I do,” Laurie said.

“You know, this episode is disturbing for more reasons than just your safety,” Jack said. “It adds to my worry that organized crime is somehow involved in liver transplantation. Maybe there is some kind of black-market operation going on.”

Laurie came out of her closet with a hangup bag. “But how can it be transplantation when Franconi wasn’t on immunosuppressant drugs? And don’t forget the strange results Ted got with his DNA testing.”

Jack sighed. “You’re right,” he admitted. “It doesn’t fit together.”

“Maybe Lou can make sense of it all,” Laurie said.

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Jack said. “Meanwhile, this episode makes the idea of going to Africa a lot more appealing.”

Laurie stopped short on her way into the bathroom. “What on earth are you talking about?” she demanded.

“I haven’t had any personal experience with organized crime,” Jack said. “But I have with street gangs, and I believe there’s a similarity that I learned the hard way. If either of these groups gets it in their mind to get rid of you, the police can’t protect you unless they are committed to guarding you twenty-four hours a day. The problem is, they don’t have the manpower. Maybe it would be good for both of us to get out of town for a while. It could give Lou a chance to sort this out.”

“I’d go, too?” Laurie asked. Suddenly the idea of going to Africa had a very different connotation. She’d never been to Africa, and it could be interesting. In fact, it might even be fun.

“We’d consider it a forced vacation,” Jack said. “Of course, Equatorial Guinea might not be a prime destination, but it would be… different. And perhaps, in the process, we’ll be able to figure out exactly what GenSys is doing there and why Franconi made the trip.”

“Hmmm,” Laurie said. “I’m starting to warm to the idea.”