Having learned more than he had expected to about his predecessor and having found one surprise—the portrait of Lily Sexton that the FBI and Secret Service may have missed—Gabe was about to head downstairs when his attention was drawn to book spines at the far right end of the very lowest shelf. A set of six or seven volumes, all paperbacks with colorful covers. He pulled out the largest, thickest of the volumes: Nanomedicine, by Robert A. Freitas, Jr. Volume 1: Basic Capabilities. It was a highly technical treatise, 507 pages long, with an extensive table of contents and vast index. Meticulously block-printed at the top of the inside front cover was the single word FERENDELLI.

Gabe set the tome on the desk and brought out the others. Understanding Nanotechnology, Nanotechnology for Dummies, Nanotechnology: Science, Innovation, and Opportunity, Nanotechnology: A Gentle Introduction to the Next Big Idea. Each of the volumes had Ferendelli's name carefully printed inside the front cover.

Gabe reflected on the neatly folded underwear and carefully arranged socks in the bedroom bureau and added "meticulous" to the characteristics he had already attributed to the man. Then he took a few minutes to flip though the volumes expounding on this latest aspect of Ferendelli—a fascination with nanoscience, the study and manipulation of atomic and molecular-size particles, and nanotechnology, the construction of useful chemicals and machines built from individual atoms and molecules.

Nanotechnology. What Gabe read in just three minutes of flipping pages was already way more than he knew about the subject.

But, he decided, that would not be the case for long.

He brought a heavy garbage bag up from the kitchen and set the books inside. When Alison asked what he was doing, he was ready.

"There are a couple of up-to-date medical specialty texts in the library that I could use at the clinic," he lied. "I'm sure the doc won't mind."

"Terrific. Find anything of interest up there?"

"Nothing," he lied again. "Truth is, I really didn't expect we would."

Piece of cake, he thought as they headed back to the Buick. Once you got the hang of lying, there really wasn't much to it.

Taking a good medical history was much harder.

CHAPTER 18

Midnight.

It had been years—decades, actually—since Gabe had studied uninterrupted with such intensity. Perhaps back then it was a test in med school, maybe his internal-medicine boards. Whatever the exam, given where his life had taken him after Fairhaven, he always welcomed the chance to study where some sort of goal was involved. Tonight that goal was learning as much as he could about nanoscience and nanotechnology.

He had gotten himself up and running with the perusal of a few articles on the Internet and then chosen the most basic of Ferendelli's texts—an overview of the field in a small volume put together by the editors of Scientific American.

Next came Nanotechnology for Dummies.