He realized that she didn’t know about Octavio Lopez. Not a thing. Devlin had never mentioned the man. There was no need to tell her tonight. The connection might not mean anything anyway. But she was looking at him in that way that told him she knew he was holding something back. He kissed her neck. “We don’t have to talk, do we?”

Eileen held him. “You have another plan?”

“Like what?”

“A fook.” She pinched his cheek. “Ah, now look at that grin. You’re easy, you know. I could make you forget a nuclear war.”

“The way you pronounce that word—”

“Of course! I did it on purpose, just to watch you turn to mush. Or somethin’.” Now she grabbed his belt buckle and pulled him toward her.

4:26 P.M. …

4:26 P.M. …

Soft time, he realized as the dream unfolded pleasantly. His cousin Alice. The Sussex County of the early fifties, when Devlin passed from innocence to young manhood. Convicts called dreams like this soft time. A good dream of sultry summer nights with all the windows of the car rolled down, roadside brush slapping at the old clamshell fenders.…

A ’37 Oldsmobile …

And much later, his cousin Alice, pretty on her wedding day and laughing at his stupidity: “Are you always going to be an asshole about women?”

Now the dream turned dark and frightening. He and Alice were indoors, in a house full of voices. The table between them, a kitchen table, round, oak, was covered with coffee cups and open baker’s boxes. A house full of voices, a bad dream, threatening, even evil, and then from a great distance, Eileen’s voice …

“Frank! Come on, darlin’, wake up!”

He opened his eyes and the dream disappeared in a thousand tiny fragments.

“Are you all right, then?”

“Yes.” He sat up, not awake yet, and looked at the clock. Almost five. The death of Jack Brennan was descending into his consciousness with the speed and silence of a rock dropped off a bridge. He had a very long schedule today and there was no point in putting it off. Another of Eileen’s teachings: When you wake up in the morning, get out of bed and get busy—you’ll feel better and probably live longer. When Devlin asked her where she had gotten such stuff, she’d answered, “That last one from George Burns, who’s certainly in a position to know.”

The woman was full of surprises.

“Well?”

“All right, I’ll bite.”

“Am I going to hear about your dream, or what?”

He grinned. He couldn’t remember the dream at all, but then, in an eye blink, he remembered what the dream was about: Sussex.

“I may have dreamed of the first girl I made love with.”

“What do you mean, may have?”

“I don’t remember,” Devlin said.