By A Spider's Thread

"I don't think Natalie knew, until a minute ago, what he had pla

"She never loved me," Mark said. "Everything-all of this-was just a ruse, a game. From the first. Nat played Pygmalion and created my perfect woman, knowing all along he was going to take her back. He enjoyed telling me that tonight. He said I took his bride, not the other way around, which marks me as the true si

"I'm sure Natalie came to love you, in her own way," Tess said. She might as well say what Mark wanted to hear, given their circumstances. "As much as she can love anyone."

She was glad that she had never told Mark Rubin about his wife's past. It didn't matter if Natalie had sold sexual favors to one man, one hundred, or even one thousand. She had chosen Mark's stepbrother over Mark, chosen a man over her children. That was enough pain for a husband to shoulder in the final hours of his life.

"She loves her children," Mark said. "She couldn't fake that."

Tess shrugged. Perhaps Mark was right, but Natalie had left her children to die.

She paced the small area, determined to find a way out. She had no intention of dying, not today. Perhaps it was ridiculous to think she had a say in it, but that was how she felt. A tantrum did not seem out of the question. Let Mark pray, as he seemed to be doing now. Tess wanted to throw herself on the hard floor and beat her fists, drum her feet. Wouldn't someone miss her before their time was up? Could the room really be that airtight? The dogs would know she was gone, perhaps start a mournful cry that would irritate the neighbors, nothing more. Otherwise, there was no one in the world who kept track of her, who checked in with her every day. Even the SnoopSisters wouldn't notice a silence of a day or two.

The door to the vault was suddenly wrenched open. Natalie hugged the jamb as if she were too weak to stand. Her face was as green as her eyes. She still held her gun.

"I don't want the children to see," she said. "But Zeke… I'm afraid… I think you need to call someone."

Tess, taking no chances, pried the gun from Natalie's fingers before she ran down the hall and out into the air, the wonderful, cool, breathable air of which she had been deprived for no more than five minutes.

She was no coroner, and she didn't want to touch the body she found slumped over the steering wheel, but she was pretty certain that Nathaniel Ezekiel Rubenstein had never seen it coming. He had turned away from Natalie on the dangerous presumption that he had enjoyed the last word.

Death was not instantaneous, but it was close enough. Zeke had felt the shock of the bullet's trajectory, cutting upward through his torso. Natalie, firing a gun for only the second time in her life, hadn't been able to control the kick. He swore he could trace the bullet's exact path, knew which organs it sliced through on the way to his heart, which it missed by a millimeter or two. But it had done its job well enough, ripping through enough arteries and veins to guarantee his demise.

As he hung over the steering wheel, Zeke's last thoughts were for Natalie. They did not follow the five classic stages, but they were close. Surprise-he never saw it coming, literally and figuratively. Anger-stupid Russian bitch. Amazement-who knew she had it in her? Grudging respect. She'll tell them I killed the cop, back in Ohio . She'll blame everything on me and get away with it, because of that angel face of hers.

In the end Zeke had just enough time to lose faith in everything he had ever believed-in his own power and brilliance, in the steadfastness of Natalie's love, in the destiny of the birthright he had been denied. He didn't have time, however, to replace those beliefs with anything else.

NOVEMBER

Chapter Forty-one

KATHERINE FRANCES MONAGHAN MARRIED TYNER Francis Gray at the Enoch Pratt Free Library on November 21. Perhaps it was a bad sign for Baltimore's quality-of-life index that the central branch of the venerable library system rented itself out for weddings to pick up a few extra dollars, but it was the perfect venue for a woman who had devoted her life to the written word. Tess was amazed by the guest list, which had swelled to almost three hundred names and included Baltimore luminaries that she had never known were among Kitty's and Tyner's acquaintances.

"I think I see half of the '66 Orioles pitching staff out there," Tess said, peeking around a set of shelves in the social-sciences wing, where Kitty was making last-minute preparations. "And the entire cast of Homicide, first season. How do you know all these people?"

"A bookstore owner isn't much different than a priest or a doctor. I tend to their needs, and I keep their secrets. It builds up a lot of goodwill."

"Why is the former governor here? I'm not even convinced he's literate."

"Politicians are easy. Just give them money and they're your friends for life." Tess remembered that Mark Rubin had given her the same advice. "How do I look?"

Given that Kitty looked beautiful even when she rolled out of bed in the morning, it was to be expected that she would be radiant on her wedding day. But there was something extra, an additional glow, a brighter spark in her eyes. Much to Tess's relief, Kitty had chosen a relatively restrained outfit, a suit in a peach color that had always flattered her. She was the most gorgeous woman in the room, as always, but Tess did well by her black dress, her hair coaxed into an upsweep by the hairdresser Kitty had hired. If the shoes hadn't been so painful, she almost might have enjoyed her glamour-girl alter ego.

"You look great," she told her aunt. Feeling dangerously close to tears, she sought refuge in sarcasm. "But I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll."

"Well, the groom rolls. You'll always have that." Kitty glanced at the large clock high above the atrium. "We'll be starting in two minutes. And in fifteen minutes all these weeks of pla

"Why did you do it?" Tess asked. "I don't mean the wedding so much as marriage. You're over forty, you and Tyner were already living together, you both have your own money, your own careers. You're clearly not going to start a family-"

"I could always adopt a girl from China," Kitty said, her face full of mischief. "And don't forget that movie director, the one whose wife had twins when she was in her fifties."

"But why marriage?"

Kitty answered the question with matter-of-fact, unhurried calm, as if they were in her store on a slow afternoon, not holding up three hundred people waiting for a wedding.

"We take so many unconscious risks in this life-especially you, sweetie-that we might as well take a few conscious ones from time to time."

She smoothed a piece of hair back from Tess's forehead. An hour out from under the beautician's touch, a few stubborn pieces were already asserting themselves. Had her hair always been this unruly, or was it just cranky since it had been shorn before its time? "I wish you had a date for the wedding. It's a shame Crow couldn't make it up from Charlottesville."

"I almost had four dates," Tess said. "But Mark checked the time and realized the sun wouldn't have been down long enough for them to make it here on time from Pikesville. Besides, the catering isn't kosher, and the children would be up past their bedtimes. Mark is very strict about their routines-although not as strict as he used to be. He even let the children celebrate Sukkoth late. Isaac said it wasn't fair to have Yom Kippur without having Sukkoth, too."