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“AN AUDIOCASSETTE?” Coltrane looked puzzled at the object he removed from the envelope.

Seated in a soft-looking brown leather chair behind a large glass desk, Blaine slid a signed letter in Coltrane’s direction, his manicured fingernails glistening. “At the time, I thought it was a strange request, but in my profession, strange requests aren’t unusual. Duncan’s instructions to me were that you should listen to the tape in my presence. When you telephoned to say you were coming, I instructed my secretary to rearrange my schedule so that we could do so now.”

“Thank you.”

“I always made time for Duncan. He was more than a business associate.”

“Yes, I thought of him as a friend, too.”

Blaine was in his fifties, of medium height and weight, with cautious eyes. His hair was perfectly trimmed, his suit expensively tailored, his shoes so shiny that they looked as if they had just come out of their box.

He stood and put the cassette into a player on a stack of stereo components next to law books. As a soft hiss came from speakers at each end of the shelf, he returned to his chair, interlocked his fingers on his desk, and hardened his patrician jaw in concentration.

The hiss on the tape continued. Something made a hollow thumping noise, as if a microphone was being moved. The clinking of what sounded like ice cubes in a glass was followed by the gulp of a large mouthful of liquid being swallowed.

“This message is for Mitch Coltrane,” Duncan’s slurred voice said. “If you’re listening to this tape, you know I’m dead.” Another strained breath. “What an odd thing to hear myself say.”

More clinking of ice cubes. More liquid being swallowed. Duncan didn’t speak again for what seemed like fifteen seconds.

His breathing was forced. “I thought about running, but that would only make her decide I’m a greater liability than I suspect she already thinks I am. Besides, I can’t stand to be away from her. What she lets me do to her . . . A man of my years, with my ordinary looks, with my physical limitations. I never dreamed I could know such . . . To be indulged by . . . Maybe she
doesn’t
think I’m a liability. Maybe I don’t have a reason to be afraid. Maybe things will go on as they are, and she’ll continue to let me . . .”

“What on earth is he talking about?” Blaine asked.

Coltrane held up a hand for Blaine to be silent.

“If only you hadn’t taken those photographs of me,” Duncan said. “You weren’t supposed to get to the South Coast Plaza. Melinda told Carl that you’d be at the first stop, at the Beverly Center, photographing the crowd, trying to find the stalker. She had Carl worked up to the point where she knew he’d use force to discourage you from seeing her again. We were certain that you’d be sufficiently disabled not to go on to the other stores. When the photographs I took of her at the South Coast Plaza arrived at her house in the mail, our assumption was that you’d realize how close you had come to getting an image of the stalker. You’d have become more determined. That would have made
Carl
more determined. Eventually . . .”

A labored breath. “But damn you, you had to keep going, and now, if you’re still alive, you’ve figured out that she destroyed the photographs you took of me and that I’m the only one who had access to your house to steal the negatives. But that still leaves you and me. For the first time, someone knows my connection to her. How will she destroy
that
evidence?”

A bump led to unnerving silence, not even a hiss, as if the tape machine had been turned off. The tape’s hiss resumed.

“I thought I heard her,” Duncan said. “I keep expecting her footsteps to come down the hall. She’ll smile and put her arms around me and tell me who she’s going to be next and the next game she’s going to play. But when she makes me a drink, will she put something in it? Or will she get me more drunk than usual and take me out to the dock for a moonlight stroll and push me underwater — the way she did to that kid who managed to follow her from Sacramento to Arcata?”

“Would someone explain—” Blaine started to say.

“Quiet.”

Duncan chuckled bitterly. “She certainly had that kid jumping through hoops. But then she had us
all
jumping through hoops. Randolph knew what she was. Knew what her mother was. Knew what Rebecca Chance was. But he was powerless to resist, the same as
I
am. Even after he got so angry with Rebecca that he pushed her off that cliff in Mexico, he couldn’t get away from her spell. He had to spend years trying to find the daughter that he wasn’t even sure was his, and when he finally found her and his granddaughter, he fell into the same trap. In the name of love, he excused the terrible things they did. Melinda was happy to take his money, but she never came to see him, never made the slightest effort to delude him into thinking he was loved. Poor Randolph. Such a lonely man. He wanted the comfort of a family, but I was the only one who provided it. He finally had his will amended so that she would inherit the place he most hated, where he killed the woman he never stopped loving, even though he hated her for having manipulated him.”

Duncan’s voice was unsteady. “I have to stop. I don’t dare let her catch me with this tape recorder. I’d warn you right now in person, but what if I’m wrong? What if she hasn’t turned against me? I can’t give her up. And if I’m right to be suspicious about her? In that case, I’m dead. I’ve got nothing to lose. Make sure she doesn’t destroy you the way she did me. Get even for me, even though I deserve whatever she might do to me. I have absolutely no loyalty to her. God help me, though, how I need her.”

The tape hissed. Something made a scraping sound, possibly Duncan’s hand setting down the microphone. Then the tape became silent, although Coltrane could see it continuing to turn in the tape deck.

“Now?” Blaine asked. “
Now
would you explain what this is about?”

WHEN JENNIFER FINISHED, BLAINE LEANED BACK FROM THE documents she had spread on the desk.

“We have to take this to the police,” Coltrane said.

Blaine shook his head. “I don’t know what good it would do. These materials don’t prove anything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A skillful defense attorney would have a case predicated on these flimsy connections dismissed before it went to trial. You’re filling in blanks without any support for your conclusions. In the eyes of the law, the theory you’re proposing is wildly circumstantial.”

“But what about all the names she used?”

“To protect her privacy. The defense would argue that she’s an unfortunate young woman who, through no fault of her own, has been plagued by men who want to dominate her. A chain of terrible consequences, for which she bears no responsibility, has forced her to keep changing her name and where she lives. You can’t prove she manipulates men into fighting over her. You can’t prove she arranges for the victors to have lethal accidents. The law deals with facts, not supposition.”

“What about Duncan’s tape?”

“The ravings of a man deranged enough to commit suicide. The defense would deny any sexual connection between her and Duncan. It would argue that Duncan was fantasizing. In my professional opinion, these materials are worthless.”

“But they might convince the police to look more closely into Duncan’s death. It’s clear now that he didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered.”

“Clear to
you
. But if Melinda Chance is as calculating as you believe she is, I think it’s highly unlikely that she left anything to incriminate herself.”

Coltrane started to say something, then gestured in frustration.

“But my
personal
opinion is another matter,” Blaine said. “I think this woman is dangerous. I think you should give this material to the police in the hopes that they might finally investigate her. Then I think you should run like hell.”

“I BOUGHT A REVOLVER AND A SHOTGUN HERE BEFORE Christmas.”

The clerk at the gun shop nodded.

“But I couldn’t take the handgun because of the five-day waiting period.”

“You’ve come to pick it up?”

“Yes — and another shotgun.”

JENNIFER’S FACE WAS STARK WITH DISMAY AS COLTRANE SET THE shotgun in the backseat along with the briefcase-like container that the revolver came in. “It’s happening
again
.”

“I know how you feel about guns,” he said. “But I don’t see another choice. It’s my fault I got into this mess. If I’d stayed away from her . . . You don’t deserve to be at risk. You’ve already helped a great deal. I’m going to take you home and—”

“Like hell you are.”

Coltrane blinked.

“She makes me furious,” Jennifer said.

The force of her words made Coltrane study her in surprise.

“I’m furious at the way she used you,” Jennifer said. “At the way she’s threatening you. At what she did to
us
. So don’t give me any bullshit about taking me home. I’m going to do my damnedest to help you stop her.” Jennifer thought about her tone and started to laugh.

“What’s funny?”

“Just like old times. Did you ever argue with . . .”

“Her?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head.

Their laughter subsided.

“Never,” he said.

Jennifer remained silent for a long, somber moment. “Maybe you and I just aren’t a match.”

“Because we disagree about some things? Hey, it’s easy not to disagree when someone’s playing a role and constantly lying the way Tash was.”

“Maybe that’s my problem. I always tell the truth,” Jennifer said.

“I wouldn’t call that a problem . . . If I know what’s good for me, you said. I’ll tell you what’s good for me.
You
are.”

Jennifer studied him. Studied her hands. “But how will you feel tomorrow?”

“The way I feel right now,” Coltrane said. He couldn’t help thinking, If we’re still alive tomorrow.

HE HAD CHOSEN A REVOLVER BECAUSE HIS LACK OF EXPERIENCE with handguns warned him to get something simple. There wasn’t any magazine to be loaded and inserted, any slide to be pulled back, any slight possibility of jamming, characteristics of a semiautomatic pistol. With the weapon he had chosen, a Colt .357 Python, all he had to do was press a lever on the left side of the frame, tilt out a cylinder, push six rounds into its chambers, and shove the cylinder back into place. As easy as that, it was ready to use, an important consideration for someone with Coltrane’s inexperience. Granted, a semiautomatic in a similar caliber held more than twice as many rounds as the Python, but Coltrane had concluded that a weapon he didn’t feel comfortable with was almost as bad as not having a weapon at all.

He explained this to Jennifer after he pulled into his garage, loaded the handgun, and shoved it under his sport coat. It gouged his skin.

“You’re going to carry that with you?”

“If we need it, it’s no use in a drawer.” Coltrane loaded the shotgun. “You remember I showed you how to use this?”

“I swore I never would.”

“That was then. What about now?”

“Yes, I remember how to use it.”

Coltrane had closed the garage before loading the weapons. Now he held the shotgun in his left hand, used his right hand to unlock the garage’s entrance into the house, and pushed the door open. Jennifer came behind him. She closed the door as he turned to disarm the intrusion detector, but a fidgety corner of his mind was already warning him that something was wrong. The detector should have let out a thirty-second beep, reminding him to deactivate the system before it went into full alarm mode.

But it wasn’t beeping.

“No,” Coltrane said.

Jennifer secured the dead bolt on the door. “What’s wrong?”

The glowing words on the keypad chilled him: READY TO ARM.

He spun toward the murky stairs that went up and down, aiming the shotgun. “I turned on the alarm when I left, but now it’s off. Somebody’s in the house.”

Jennifer bumped backward against the shadowy wall.

It had to be Tash, Coltrane thought. Duncan had known the secondary codes that disarmed the intrusion detector. She must have made him tell her the sequence.

“Coltrane.” The man’s voice was deep, hoarse with anger. It came from the right, from upstairs in the dark living room.

“Walt?”

Jesus, if he sees me with this shotgun, he might not give me a chance to talk, Coltrane thought. Sweating, he set the shotgun on the entryway’s floor, close to the wall, where it might not be noticed. He buttoned his sport coat, concealing the revolver under his belt. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“The feeling’s mutual.” The husky voice was unsteady with greater anger.

Coltrane flicked a light switch near the front door, activating a lamp in the living room. “I’m coming up. I’ve got something to show you.”

“What a coincidence.
I’ve
got something to show
you
.”

Coltrane took a deep breath and started up the stairs. Jennifer followed, her briefcase tight in her hand.

One step.

Another.

Coltrane gradually came up to the living room and saw Walt diagonally across from him, farthest from the illuminated lamp at the top of the stairs. His face in shadow, Walt was seated in one of the black tubular chairs, his hands on his knees.

“If you’ll give me a minute,” Coltrane said, “I need to tell you something.”

“You read my mind again.”

“Oh?”

“Because I came here to tell
you
something.”

“This is Jennifer.”

“If she’s smart, she’ll get out of here.”

“Let me explain. In her briefcase, she’s got—”

“I don’t give a damn about what’s in her briefcase.” Walt stood, his rigid body rising like sections of an unfolding machine. “What I do give a damn about—”

Coltrane winced when he saw that as Walt rose, he lifted something from beneath the chair.

A baseball bat.

Holding it in his right hand, patting its hitting surface against the palm of his left hand, Walt had never looked so tall and menacing.