How had Lex poetically put it at Three Downing just a few nights ago? “Things ripple.” It had all started there, in that seedy bar on the other side of the world more than a quarter century ago.

Without warning, Myron flashed to his father now. He had tried to keep it out, tried to focus solely on the task at hand, but suddenly he saw his father not as a strong, healthy man but sprawled out on the basement floor. He wanted to run out of here. He wanted to get back on a damn plane and go back to that hospital, where he belonged, but then he thought how much sweeter it would be, how much more it would mean to his father, if he could somehow come back with his baby brother in tow.

How had his brother gotten caught up with Gabriel Wire and the death of Alista Snow?

The answer was obvious and sobering: Kitty.

The familiar anger—Kitty’s husband is missing and she’s exchanging drugs for sex favors?—rose to the surface as he crept down the corridor. He could hear the music better now. An acoustic guitar and a soft singing voice:

Gabriel Wire’s.

The sound was heartbreaking. Myron stopped and listened to the lyrics for a moment:

“My only love, we’ll never have yesterday again,
And now I sit through an endless night . . .”

It was coming from the end of the corridor. Toward the stairs up to the third floor.

“My vision blurred by tears,
Hardly feel the bitter cold,
Hardly notice the pounding rain . . .”

He passed an open door and risked a quick peek. Again the room was decorated with frighteningly functional furniture and gray wall-to-wall carpeting. No frills, no flair, no clever accent. Bizarre. Where the huge façade was jaw-droppingly majestic, the interior could double as middle-management office space. This was, Myron surmised, either a guest bedroom or maybe one of the security guards stayed here. But still.

He kept moving. There was a narrow stairway at the end of the corridor. He was nearing it now, getting closer to the plaintive sound:

“Remember our last time together,
Spoke of a love lasting forever,
Our eyes met in some kind of trance,
Everyone vanished as we just held hands,
But now you’re gone too. . . .”

There was one more open door before the stairway. Myron took a quick look and froze.

A nursery.