Unconsciously, he backed his way toward the door to the hallway. The sounds of shallow, panicked breathing filled his head, and he had to look around him before he realized the sounds were his own.

Stepping from the storeroom with its sweet sickly smells of blood and death, Seth stood motionless in the darkness, his back pressed against the cool concrete wall. He willed his knees not to collapse as he struggled to organize his thoughts.

The chain of events came gradually. Someone had learned of his mail being stored here. Who? Not Stratton’s people, he thought; they would have mentioned it to him. There would have been no reason to have him followed. They’d have the painting by now. It had to have been the same people who attacked his boat. But how? How had they learned? Seth thought for a moment, and the conversations he had had that morning with both Tony and Karen Bradford came back to him. They had both mentioned the mail and the storeroom. Someone must have tapped his telephone and learned where his mail had been stored. They had broken into the room just as he had. Tony had probably decided to make good on his threat to remove all the mail and had disturbed them in the act of going through it all. And they had killed him for that

Seth felt the nausea only instants before the vomit filled his throat He bent over and retched violently. He heaved until nothing more emerged, then wiped his mouth and lurched over to his briefcase.

Somehow, he managed to get the briefcase closed and make ins way to the men’s room on the second floor without being seen. He plugged a sink with a wad of paper towels and ran it full of cold water. He immersed his face. The cold wet shock gradually soaked the nausea away, and he stood there, eyes closed, trying to breathe normally while his heart experimented with a slower pounding.

Gradually, rational thoughts crept back into his mind. He had to call the police and report Tony’s murder. He had to call someone before the rats returned. There was no question of getting involved now, he thought, as he turned toward the door and left the men’s room. Before this, there had been a compelling reason to avoid entanglements with the law. A lengthy investigation of the murders at the boat would have cast suspicion on him, delaying his search for the painting and for Zoe.

But the painting was gone now, he thought, as he unsteadily made his way toward the philosophy department offices. The painting was gone, and with it, his only leverage. He had to turn things over to people better equipped to investigate. He leaned on the wall beside the departmental office door and fumbled for his keys. At least they’d believe him now, he thought, as he searched for the right key. There would be nothing of the skeptical chiding he had received in Zurich.