He laughed. The cap was still on the counter; he picked it up, fitted it over the mouth of the bottle, wrapped his thumb and index finger around its edge, and squeezed. “Thank you for the beer. I hope we’ll meet again soon.”

“My pleasure,” I called after him, slightly stunned. Now that was grip strength. He gave a jaunty wave as he headed down the stairs. A moment later I heard his bike pull away.

I shook my head and began to retrieve my furniture from the hall. I had the kitchen table in the door before I realized what I’d seen.

Had he done that on purpose? Had he expected me to put two and two together? Or did he think I wouldn’t remember that he’d handed me a sealed beer bottle that night at Chrystoble Street copshop, the night I was drugged?

I dropped into the chair, because it’s better to sit still when your brain is doing highway speeds. Two cops. Saquash doing the legwork, and Hawthorn… oh, what odds wouldn’t I give that Hawthorn was the big guy? If the pyramid even stopped with Hawthorn, which I didn’t want to think about. Sunny would find out, once she started investigating. Why hadn’t Sunny realized it might go beyond Saquash? I hadn’t, because I hadn’t had any practice at this kind of thinking, but shouldn’t Sunny have been more wary?

Why was he looking for Sunny? Ye Gods—because of the sealed lab. There was no reason to expect Saquash to come back after picking up his parcel, but Hawthorn could have. Hawthorn would know the lab end of the business had been smoked.

And he came to me—maybe to find Sunny, but probably to find out what I knew, too. He would want to know if Sunny was after him. Well, she wasn’t yet. I’d have to find her after all… except that the same problems arose in finding Sunny that I’d explained to Hawthorn, or rather, hadn’t been able to explain. I understood just enough of what she was supposed to be doing to know that I didn’t dare interrupt her at it.

I had to find Hawthorn instead. If I could follow him, keep him from destroying evidence, warn Sunny if it came to that—well, I had to try. I stuffed my keys in my pocket, loped downstairs, got a clean T-shirt off the line and put it on, and went out to the street for the Ticker’s bike.

I hopped on and almost turned the key without looking. I called myself some rude names for being a slow learner. I slid off the seat carefully and looked the bike over, including in and under the sidecar. It was clean.