Kolabati… his feelings for her were confused at this point. He cared for her, but he couldn’t say he loved her. She seemed, rather, to be a kindred spirit, one who understood him and accepted—even admired—him for what he was. Augment that with an intense physical attraction and the result was a unique bond that was exhilarating at times. But it wasn’t love.

He had to help her. So why had he spent most of the morning on the phone? Why hadn’t he gone over to the apartment and tried to find her?

Because he had to get over to Sutton Square. Something within had been nudging him in that direction all morning. He wouldn’t fight it. He had learned through experience to obey those nudgings. It wasn’t prescience. Jack didn’t buy ESP or telepathy. The nudgings meant his subconscious mind had made correlations as yet inapparent to his conscious mind and was trying to let him know.

Somewhere in his subconscious, two and two and two had added up to Sutton Place. He should go there today. This morning. Now.

He pulled on some clothes and slipped the Semmerling into its ankle holster. Knowing he probably would need it later in the day, he stuffed his house-breaking kit—a set of lock picks and a thin plastic ruler—into a back pocket and headed for the door.

It felt good to be doing something at last.

2

“Kusum?”

Kolabati heard a rattling down the hall. She pressed an ear against the upper panel of her cabin door. The noise definitely came from the door that led to the deck. Someone was unlocking it. It could only be Kusum.

She prayed he had come to release her.

It had been an endless night, quiet except for faint rustlings from within the depths of the ship. Kolabati knew she was safe, that she was sealed off from the rakoshi; and even if one or more did break free of the cargo areas, the necklace about her throat would protect her from detection. Yet her sleep had been fitful at best. She thought about the awful madness that had completely overtaken her brother; she worried about Jack’ and what Kusum might do to him. Even if her mind had been at peace, sleep would have been difficult. The air had grown thick through the night. The ventilation in the cabin was poor and with the rising of the sun the temperature had risen steadily. It was now like a sauna. She was thirsty. There was a sink in the tiny head attached to her cabin but the water that dribbled from the tap was brackish and musty-smelling.

She twisted the handle on the cabin door as she had done a thousand times since Kusum had locked her in here. It turned but would not open no matter how hard she pulled on it. A close inspection had revealed that Kusum had merely reversed the handle and locking apparatus—the door that was supposed to have locked from the inside now locked from the outside.