Hosts

She nodded. "I think so. But don't tell me anything, Jack. Even if I'm in control, the Unity is part of me. It's always there, always listening."

His features hardened. "I shouldn't have let you talk me out of Plan A, damn it."

"Don't talk like that. You promised, remember."

"Promise or not, Kate, if Plan B doesn't work, it's back to A."

"It will work," she told him, and sent up a silent prayer that it would. "Whatever it is, it will buy me enough time for CDC and NIH to come up with a cure." If they can.

"It better." He flopped back onto the spread and closed his eyes. "And they'd better. Because if they don't, I'll use my own virucidal agent. Don't know about theirs, but mine's administered via nine-millimeter, hollow-pointed injection."

How could he speak so casually of killing eight people? Could he do that? Could her brother be such a cold-blooded murderer?

Looking at his features now as they relaxed toward sleep, she found it hard to believe. She touched Jack's cheek.

"Get your rest," she whispered.

She had an uneasy feeling he was going to need all his strength back, and soon. She'd sensed something while the Unity was controlling her voice. The same background of ecstatic anticipation she'd experienced last night, and something else: fear. The Unity feared her brother. It had feared Fielding, too, and look what happened to him.

Kate went to the front door and locked it.

And then an awful thought jarred her, stiffening her limbs with dread: How much of her would remain in the morning? Would she have enough of her own volition left to fight off the Unity and go home for Lizzie's concert? Maybe the distance to Trenton would attenuate its influence.

She prayed so.

6

"They didn't arrest Holdstock?" Sandy said into his cell phone. He wanted to shout but this was an NYPD detective he was talking to. "Why not? I served him up to you on a silver platter."

He'd called in his "tip" to McCa

"You should get stuff appraised before you buy," Detective McCa

Sandy felt a twinge of nausea. Had he been set up?

He was seated in the dark in the front seat of a car he'd gone out and rented immediately after hearing the news. He was tempted to roll down a window for a breath of night air, but didn't. After what he'd seen a few moments ago, he wanted the windows up and the doors locked.

"What do you mean?"

"Had an alibi," McCa

"Who?"

"The seven other members of his cancer support group say he was with them at a meeting at the time of the killing. Hard to argue with that."

Cancer support group? What the—? Of course! The cult.

Sandy fumed. He should have foreseen they'd band together and cover for him.

"But the handprint—"

"Was just where you said it would be, and a perfect match."

That was a relief. At least he knew the Savior had been telling the truth about that.

"Well? Doesn't that prove he was there?"

"It does, but it doesn't tell us when. Holdstock says he must have left it there when he visited Fielding last Thursday."

"He's lying. He was there last night."

"He says different. It's not like they didn't know each other. Fielding treated Holdstock, and Holdstock says they struck up a friendly relationship."

"Bullshit. When was the last time your doctor invited you over to his house? And that's not a cancer support group Holdstock's been meeting with, it's a cult, and he's their leader."

McCa

"I don't. They find me. And as for the cult, I'm sitting half a block from Holdstock's place now and believe me, this is a cult."

"Don't do anything stupid, Palmer."

"Not me. I'm just watching."

It was stuffy in the rental, the warm air tinged with the sour smell of old spilled coffee, but Sandy kept the windows up. His quick peek through one of Holdstock's windows had sent him scurrying back here with a bad case of the creeps. All those people sitting around the living room, gri

"Listen, detective, every member of that cult is a former patient of Fielding's." Sandy hoped the Savior had his facts straight because he was going out on a limb here. "My source says they developed some delusion that Fielding had caused their tumors just so he could experiment on them, and so they decided to kill him."

"Let's put the cult aside and talk about your source," McCa

"The boys over at the One-Oh-Eight are still looking into Holdstock as a possible, but they're very interested in your source. They'd like to speak to him."

"Her," Sandy said.

That should throw them off. Sandy had been expecting this and figured he'd cover himself the same way he had after the Savior interview.

"Okay… her. She knew about the handprint and the electrical wire. Only way she could know that was to be in the room when the murder went down."

"She told me she was outside, looking through a window."

"The One-Oh-Eight boys say you'd have to be nine feet tall to see through the dining room window."

"Maybe she plays for the Liberty. I've never seen her, only spoken to her on the phone." Sandy smiled, happy with the way he'd slipped that in there.

McCa

"I told you she's—"

"Yeah-yeah, I know what you told me. But the killer wasn't a woman. It was a fairly strong guy. So if your source is really a guy, watch your back."

And then McCa

Sandy hit END on his phone and considered McCa

But why? Reading between the lines of his conversation with McCa

And as for watching his back, if the Savior had wanted to harm him, the perfect time and place would have been at Julio's this morning: nobody had seen Sandy go in, and no one would have noticed if he never came out.

So far everything the Savior had lold him about the murder had been dope. Still, you couldn't be too careful…

What Sandy needed was a story beyond the crime itself. He needed to link Holdstock and his cult to the crime. And since the cops weren't doing it, it was up to him.

That was why he was sitting here. In the dark. In the Bronx.

But hey, that was what investigative reporting was all about, right?

He stared at the lighted windows of Holdstock's place, partially visible through the trees along the sidewalk. He'd watch, but from here. No way he was going back to that window and listen to that humming.