"Nothing ever happened between us—sexually, I mean. She kept encouraging me to visit her and ride with her, but each time I tried to advance our relationship, she alluded to being in a relationship that needed resolving before she could move on to another. Meanwhile, I kept doing research, speaking with experts, and secretly running tests on Drew's blood. I refused to believe that my relationship with Lily had no future, and she still wanted to see me. Now I know she was the one who was pumping me for information, not the other way around."

"I'm sorry, Jim," Gabe said. "I'm so sorry."

"I was a fool not to see the truth long before I did. My judgment and my ethics were warped by the feelings I had for her. I had been so lonely since my wife passed away . . . I . . ."

Gabe put his hands on the man's shoulders.

"It's okay, Jim. You did what was best for your patient. No one could ever fault you for that."

"Well, finally, in a last-ditch effort to win her over, I decided to take her into my confidence. I mean she was a friend of Drew's, and he was going to nominate her to be in his cabinet. So I told her what I had learned and what I was theorizing, and what I planned to do about it."

Again Ferendelli crossed to the edge of the bridge shadow and peered at the scene he had photographed so sensitively. The white noise and vibrations from traffic speeding overhead were in sharp contrast with the emptiness of the field and the stillness of the river. Feeling the connection between them strengthening, Gabe moved forward and stood shoulder to shoulder with his predecessor, the two of them silhouetted in the strobes of passing headlights.

"How did she respond to that?" he asked.

Ferendelli glanced over at him, his fear and sorrow nearly palpable.

"She told me I would be doing nothing of the sort—that I'd be doing exactly what she told me to do, nothing more, nothing less. She said it was in the tea she served each time before we went riding. Now it was in me—locked in place in my brain."

Gabe felt himself go numb. The tea. Lily had been so proud of her tea—so excited when he wanted another cup.

"What do you mean, it?" he asked, barely able to get the words out.

"Fullerenes—hollow nanoball molecules carrying drugs. She told me her tea was laced with just enough narcotic to make me love it, relax, and want to drink more."

"Oh, God," Gabe murmured, almost inaudibly.

"So that's how she got the fullerenes into my body. I don't know how she did it with Drew, and I don't know how the fullerenes with their microdoses of drugs end up exactly where they would have the most devastating effect."