Jack stood at the foot of the bed and felt the familiar tingle of rage spreading through his chest and limbs. With all he had seen, all he had done, he had yet to learn how to keep from taking something like this personally. An old woman, helpless, beaten up. It made him want to break something.

“Ask her what he looked like.”

Kusum rattled off something in Indian from beside the head of the bed. The woman replied in kind, slowly, painfully, in a hoarse, rasping voice.

“She says he looked like you, but younger,” Kusum said, “and with lighter hair.”

“Short or long?”

Another exchange, then: “Short. Very short.”

So: It was a young white, either a GI on leave or someone still into the punk look.

“Anything else?”

As the woman replied, she raked the air with clawed fingers.

“His eyes,” Kusum said. “She scratched him across his left eye before she was knocked unconscious.”

Good for you, Granny.

Jack smiled reassuringly at the old lady, then turned to Kusum. “I’ll see you out in the hall.” He didn’t want to talk in front of the private nurse.

As he stood outside the door, Jack glanced at the nurses’ station and thought he saw a familiar face. He walked over for a closer look at the junoesque blonde—every man’s fantasy nurse—writing on a chart. Yes—it was Marta. They had had a thing a few years back, in the days before Gia.

She greeted him with a friendly kiss and a hug, and they talked about old times for a while. Then Jack asked her about Mrs. Bahkti.

“Fading fast,” Marta said. “She’s gotten visibly worse since I came on. She’ll probably last out this shift, but I’ll be surprised if she’s here tomorrow. You know her?”

“I’ll be doing some work for her grandson.” As with most people Jack knew socially—and there weren’t many—Marta was under the impression that he was a “security consultant.” He saw Kusum come out into the hall. “There he is now. See you later.”

Jack led Kusum to a window at the end of the hall, where they were out of earshot of patients and hospital personnel.

“All right,” he told him. “I’ll give it a try. But I make no promises other than to do my best.” Jack had decided he wanted to catch up with this creep.

Kusum exhaled and muttered what sounded like a small prayer. “No more can be asked of any man. But if you cannot find the necklace by tomorrow morning, it will be too late. After that, the necklace will be of secondary importance. But I still want you to keep looking for the assailant. And when you find him, I want you to kill him.”

Jack tightened inside but smiled and shook his head. This guy thought he was some sort of hit man.

“I don’t do that.”

Kusum’s eyes said he didn’t believe him.

“Very well. Instead, you will bring him to me and I will—”