The Manhattan Hunt Club

"The hunt starts tomorrow," the person said softly, shoving a thick envelope into Jinx's hands before vanishing back into the crowd.

Resisting an urge to look back to see if Paulie Hagen had seen her take the envelope, Jinx scurried across Broadway, ducked into the subway, and was gone.

When Heather allowed herself a daydream, she and Jeff were in his tiny apartment on the West Side. It was Sunday morning, and she was wearing one of his old shirts, one that was miles too big for her. That was all right; just wearing it made her feel closer to Jeff. The Sunday Times was spread all over the floor, and the sun was flooding through the window, and if they ever got around to getting dressed, they'd go out, maybe buy a bagel, and go over to Morningside Park and feed the birds and the squirrels.

Like a movie-like one of those perfect little New York romance movies, where rain never fell unless the heroine wanted to walk in it, and Central Park was as perfect for moonlit walks as for muggings, and there wasn't a drunk or a crazy or a panhandler in sight, let alone a blizzard of trash wrapping itself around your legs as the wind whistled in off the river.

But when she forced herself to face reality, it wasn't like that at all. She was back in her father's apartment overlooking Central Park, and it was dark outside, and Jeff was dead.

She wished she'd never gone down to the Medical Examiner's office. If she'd just ignored that telephone call, if she'd just hung up on Keith Converse and stayed home-

If she hadn't actually seen the body.

Even now, as she lay half awake in the evening darkness, she could see the terrible image of the ruined body in the morgue, barely recognizable as human. The charred flesh, the misshapen face, the-

The place where Jeff's tattoo had been.

How many times had she traced that tiny sun with her fingertip?

"It wasn't there," Keith had said. "I'm telling you, this morning that part of his body wasn't burned, and the tattoo wasn't there!"

Was that why she couldn't get past it, couldn't make herself believe that Jeff was really dead? Shouldn't she have felt a great void inside, a terrible emptiness where Jeff's love had always been? But she didn't feel that emptiness. Instead, she felt exactly as she had since she heard that Jeff was arrested: that it was all a terrible mistake, a nightmare they were all caught up in and from which they would soon awaken. It would be fall again, and Jeff would be waiting for her in their favorite little restaurant, and-

"Stop it!" The words erupted from Heather's throat in an anguished howl. Hugging herself against the chill inside her, she moved restlessly to the window of her bedroom and stared out into the gloom beyond the glass. If it was really only eight in the evening, why did she feel as exhausted as if it were three o'clock in the morning?

There was a knock at the door of the small sitting room that adjoined her bedroom, and a moment later her father appeared. "We thought we'd eat at Le Cirque. Would you like to join us?"

Le Cirque? Le Cirque? How could she even think about going to Le Cirque, or anywhere else, when all she wanted was to be with Jeff?

"What if it was a mistake?" Heather heard herself asking.

Her father seemed baffled by her question, but then his expression cleared and he shook his head. He moved toward her, reached out as if to embrace her, but when she drew away from his touch, his hands dropped back to his sides. "I know it's hard for you," he said. "But believe me, you'll get over this. In a few months-"

"In a few months I'll feel just as bad as I do right now, Daddy," she said. Then, at the look of anguish in his eyes, she relented. "Maybe I will feel better," she conceded. "But not right now. Why don't you and Carolyn just go on to di

He hesitated, then kissed his daughter on the forehead. "I'll see you later then. If you want it, Dessie left some poached salmon in the refrigerator. Try to eat a little bit." He gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze, then was gone.

But being alone only made Heather feel worse, as if the walls of the apartment were closing around her, suffocating her. A minute later she, too, left the building, heading down Fifth Avenue toward-

Where?

She didn't know.

" We'll know when we get there."

The voice that whispered in her mind was Jeff's. It was what he'd always said when he decided they should take an aimless ramble somewhere in the city on a Sunday afternoon. "But where are we going?" Heather would always ask. In her perfectly ordered life, she had always known exactly where she was going, and why she was going there. "Life should not be full of surprises," her father had always taught her. "One should be prepared to deal with the unexpected, but to search it out is a waste of time." Jeff, on the other hand, had always delighted in the unexpected, and always wanted to explore every unfamiliar thing he could find, be it a building, a block, or a whole neighborhood. When she asked him where he was going, and why, he would only grin and shrug his shoulders. "How should I know? We'll know when we get there." And now he was saying it again, if only in her memory.

Though she still didn't know where she was going, Heather felt a little better.

He'll show me, she decided. He'll show me where to go, just like he always did.

CHAPTER 16

Staring at the faint gleam of light far down the tu

Standing on opposite sides of the shaft, they gazed into its depths. Perhaps thirty feet down they could see the floor of another tu

Even had there been a ladder, neither of them would willingly have descended it. Finally, Jagger broke the silence: "We can't get out just by standing here."

Nodding, Jeff shined his light into the darkness that lay in both directions.

There was nothing, no hint as to what might lie beyond the blackness, nor how long it might be before they found another light. Out of this uncertainty, they remained close to the light source, like moths hypnotized by a lightbulb, until Jagger spun around and lunged into the darkness with a growl that fell just short of being a howl of anguish. "We gotta get out of here. Now!"

Jeff, now more terrified of being alone than of the dark, stumbled after him. They moved as quickly as they could, still using only one of the flashlights, until they came to an intersection with another tu

In every direction there was nothing more than the terrible blackness. Jeff turned to his right. Jagger, not questioning his decision, followed him as blindly as he'd followed Jagger a little while ago.

The tu