“I know what you’re thinking. It doesn’t matter. Somebody has to be with Ashley.”

“Meg plans to stay with her, look after her for as long as she has to—”

“No, Pete. Forget it. I won’t let you decide this for me. That demand in the message . . . the announcement I’m supposed to make . . . we can’t jump to the conclusion it has anything remotely to do with the actual motive or motives for what’s happened. It could be a red herring. Meant to throw us off.”

“Or not,” Nimec said. “You really feel we’re in a position to take chances right now?”

Silence clapped down over them again. But now Gordian became very still, staring at the wall opposite him, the printout no longer rattling in his hand. The thick doors and walls of the room blocked out any sounds from elsewhere in the old French mansion.

After a long length of time, he turned to Nimec.

“The path you need to follow starts here,” he said, and put a hand to his chest. “Whatever the reason for what’s happened to Julia . . . those other innocents . . . they’ve fallen into the middle.”

Nimec said nothing for a while, and then nodded pensively.

“Find who’s at the other end,” Gordian said.

UpLink SanJo. Mid-afternoon. Their secure conference room’s sound-baffled, audio-secure walls once again enclosing them in an electronically fortified cocoon of silence. On one of those walls, a flat plasma screen jacked into a digital viewer showed an enlarged image of the e-mail Megan had received hours earlier. It struck the eye like the Mark of the Beast, a reminder that nothing in this technological age can make us impervious to its stain.

“We need to find out what evidence they’re pulling from that greyhound,” Ricci said. “We can’t wait.”

Megan looked at him. “You’re positive it’s that important.”

“I’m positive the cops think it is,” he said. “We cruised past that veterinary clinic a bunch of times. Saw a team of uniforms cooping outside in a patrol car. And I guarantee they weren’t going anywhere.”

“What makes it a sure thing is that they ain’t letting Howell in to see the dog,” Thibodeau said. “He tells us the vet be a good friend of his. Know him for years, care for every one of his hounds. Most’re more dead than alive when he bring them from the track. Some of ’em need surgery. Howell say you have to treat runners different from other breeds. They ain’t able to tolerate certain kinds of medicine or anaesthesia, need lower doses, you know.”

“One reason the cops brought the dog there is that Howell insisted on it when he found her alive,” Ricci said. “The clinic is only a few miles from his rescue center out in the boonies. Good break for him, trying to save that dog. Not too convenient for the badges.”