“Okay, I’m going to do it now.”

Thank you . . .

But then he heard, “Hold on.”

“What?” Vincent asked. “Is something wrong?”

“She’s on the phone. We’ll have to wait.”

Hungry Vincent was sitting forward. Waiting was not something he did well.

A minute passed, two, five.

“What’s going on?” Vincent whispered.

“She’s still on the phone.”

Vincent was furious.

Goddamn her . . . He wished he could be there with Duncan to help kill her. What the hell was she doing making phone calls now? He wolfed down some food.

Finally the Watchmaker said, “I’m going to try to get her off the phone. I’ll go back up to the roof and come down the stairs into the hallway. I’ll get her to open the door.” Vincent heard some rare emotion in the man’s next comment. “I can’t wait any longer.”

You don’t know the half of it, thought Clever Vincent, who surfaced momentarily before being sent away by his starving other half.

Stripping for her bath, Lucy Richter heard another sound. Not the ticking of the moon clock. From somewhere nearby. Inside? The hallway? The alley?

A click. Metallic.

What was it?

The life of the soldier is the sound of metal on metal. Slipping the long rounds of rifle ammo, fragrant with oil, into the clips, loading and locking the Colts, vehicle door latches, fueler’s belt buckles and vests clinking. The ring of a slug from an AK-47, dancing off a Bradley or Humvee.

The noise again, click, click.

Then silence.

She felt chill air, as if a window was open. Where? The bedroom, she decided. Half naked, she walked to the bedroom doorway and glanced in. Yes, the window was open. But when she’d glanced in earlier, hearing the ticking, hadn’t it been closed? She wasn’t sure.

The Lucy commanded: Don’t be so damn paranoid, soldier. Getting pretty tired of this. There’re no IED’s, no suicide bombers here, no bitter fog.

Get a grip.

One arm covering her breasts—there were apartments across the alley—she closed and locked the window. Looked down into the alley. Saw nothing.

It was then that somebody began pounding on the front door. Lucy spun around, gasping. She pulled on a bathrobe and hurried to the dark foyer. “Who’s there?”

There was a pause, then a man’s voice called, “I’m a police officer. Are you all right?”

She called, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s an emergency. Please open the door. Are you okay?”

Alarmed, she pulled the robe belt tight and undid the deadbolts, thinking of the bedroom window and wondering if somebody’d been trying to break it. She unhooked the chain.

Lucy twisted the lock, reflecting only after the door began to push open toward her that she probably should’ve asked to see an ID or a badge before she unhooked the chain. She’d been caught up in a very different world for so long that she’d forgotten there were still plenty of bad people stateside.