Brennan wasn’t smiling. He had a suite in a hotel around the corner, and she didn’t get out of there until two o’clock the next day. He hardly spoke, and never smiled. What he had taken a month to do to her in their last go-around he was able to accomplish easily in a single night. A part of it was very painful, and she bled for a long time afterward. She thought they would be seeing each other again, but no, she never heard from him again. She never heard from her senator, either, and when she returned to New York to get her old modeling job back, it was no longer available. She spent the war working in a magneto assembly plant in Brooklyn, where she met the man she eventually married, without ever mentioning Jim Brennan, whom she held responsible for the downward turns her life had taken. She never knew how, or why. She told Liz’s mother she felt as if she had been buried alive.

On the bed in the motel room in New Jersey, Devlin struggled to remind himself that this was at the heart of Liz’s lifelong curiosity about the Brennans, and her curiosity about the events of the past several days. Devlin struggled to remind himself, but logically enough, the idea wouldn’t stick. He let his mind wander, and soon he was drifting in and out of consciousness.…

10:46 A.M. …

10:46 A.M. …

As soon as he awakened Devlin was moving, sitting up in the unfamiliar bed. The voice he heard was his own, crying out in alarm. He saw that he was all right, alone in the room. Devlin peered through the venetian blinds at the traffic sweeping by on Route 4. It was a nice day, overcast but pleasant. He showered and dressed quickly, feeling his stomach grumble. By now John’s home telephone surely was being monitored, but Devlin dialed it anyway. It rang nine times before Devlin hung up again. Now he called John’s Ninth Precinct number.

“She’s still there, Frank,” John said. “We have a signal: I ring twice, hang up, and call again. And then she doesn’t talk. I talked to Levine last night. As of then, he still had complete confidence in you. Told me to make sure Eileen was safe and not discuss her whereabouts with anyone but you. He called this morning, less than half an hour ago. You were positively identified as the man who survived the shoot-out at the airport. They haven’t publicly connected you to Liz Weinstein yet, but they do know you were at that apartment. Apparently they’re covering up the exact details. I brought up the subject of you turning yourself in. He said that if you wanted, he would call some lawyers. You’ll need the best in the city. He said that.”

“Lederer slit her throat. He thought she was Eileen.”

“Turn yourself in, Frank …”