Sarah went straight to the bathroom. “I’m taking a pill,” she said. “If anybody wants to speak to me while I’m conscious, he’d better do it now.

Stone got her tucked into bed; then he took four aspirin, and he and Dino went into his study, where Dino poured them a drink. “What was the final count on the damage?” Stone asked.

“A few cars,” “Dino said,” “a few shop windows, a few hysterical people, a few pictures; that’s about it. The bomb guys said it was just a bundle of dynamite tossed into the back of the van—no direction to it, no nails or other shrapnel, except the pieces of the van. None of that hit anybody inside the gallery. It blew in every direction. The van took the worst of it, the window, then the armored-glass window slowed it down some more, and the curtains damped some of that. The glass was designed to hold up to a point, then shatter into dull fragments. By the time the bomb blew we had nearly everybody in the back part of the gallery. We were real lucky; it could have been a slaughterhouse. Anderson and Kelly should have run every license plate on the block, but nobody told them to—I blame myself for that—and they weren’t expecting anything like a bomb.”

“I was expecting something,” Stone said, “but not that.”

“It’s a bad business; but at least this will keep my investigation open. This will be all over the news tonight and the papers tomorrow. Why don’t you and Sarah get out of town?”

“We’re already booked on a London flight tomorrow morning,” Stone said. “Think you can handle this without me?”

Dino shot him a withering glance. “Gee, I’ll do my best.”

34

THE HEADACHE WAS STILL THERE WHEN Stone woke up. Sarah was up and in the shower, and her suitcases were spread over her side of the bed. She came back into the bedroom, clad only in a towel.

She held up a hand. “Don’t you look at me that way,” she said. “We’ve got a plane to catch, and there’s no time for hanky-panky.”

Stone sat up in bed and put his feet on the floor. “You’re in no danger from me, not with the headache I’ve still got.”

“You want something stronger than aspirin? I’m a walking pharmacy.”

“You prescribe, I’ll imbibe.”

She went to the bathroom and came back with a pill and a glass of water. “Don’t have any wine for breakfast; the two together will put you under the table.”

Stone took the pill. “What time is it?”

“It’s seven-thirty, and our flight is at ten. You’d better get packed; what with the security measures at the airport, we don’t even have time for breakfast. They’ll have something for us in the first-class lounge—pastries or something.”