I couldn’t see a thing. It was a beautiful greenhouse, with full-sized trees and ornamental shrubs and basins and beds of flowers, and my line of sight was full of leaves. I crawled up the stairs on my belly, to the end of the railing, and all I got was a view of a different bunch of leaves. I could hear Hawthorn, though, off to my left. There was a row of tall, narrow evergreens growing along one glass wall; if I could get to those without being seen, and get behind them, I could straighten up and have a look.

As I slithered across the floor, deaf to anything but the hammering of my own heart, I wondered if Hawthorn had a gun with him. Though with a grip strong enough to cap beer bottles, he didn’t really need one to take care of me. I could smell the evergreens. Then I was between them, my back against the glass, and I could breathe almost normally again. I stood up and peered out through the boughs.

He was wiring up a bomb. It looked pretty much like the one I’d seen under Sunny’s dashboard, though admittedly I hadn’t been able to see that one very well. He wrapped a couple of connections and proceeded to tape the whole thing to the underside of a little rustic bench beside a potted azalea. I watched him work and found myself agreeing with the unseen woman downstairs: Hawthorn had to be nuts. Did he think he could blow up something on the Hill and not start up a hue and cry? And on his own doorstep?

No—that was exactly why it would work. Nobody would believe that the woman downstairs had anything to do with an explosion that had happened near enough to take the plaster off her ceiling. And when the hue and cry started, Hawthorn would throw Saquash to the hounds—ideally, dead, so he couldn’t deny anything. Case closed, heat off, back to business as usual.

But that wouldn’t work, because Sunny had found out about Saquash, and would get a statement out of him damn soon, if she hadn’t already—

Wake up. Orient. Who did you think the bomb was for?

Hawthorn’s head came up sharply. “Who’s there?”

I could have sworn I hadn’t made a sound. Could he have heard Sunny, arriving earlier than he’d expected? No, he wouldn’t have spoken aloud if he’d thought that.

“Don’t make me hunt you out. Show yourself.”

Every minute was worth something. He could damned well come and find me.

The suspense made my stomach chum. I watched him come toward the greenhouse wall, steadily nearer.

and when he began to penetrate the evergreens I gave up and stepped out of them, about three plants down.