As Grier walked up to her Audi, she had the key remote in her hand and her heart in her throat. She'd seen that man before; there was some kind of flicker in the back of her mind, some memory of him. He hadn't had the eye patch or the cane--she would have remembered those. But she had definitely seen him.

Approaching the car, she stood beside it, every muscle in her body braced as if at any moment the thing was going to go Sopranos on her and blow sky-high. And just as she finally raised her key to unlock it, a black sedan with darkened windows eased by her on Tremont. Looking into the glass . . . she got nothing. All of it was impenetrable, and the sunlight glinted off the windshield so she couldn't see who was driving.

She knew damn well who was inside, however. And she'd bet that he was lifting a hand in a little wave.

The sedan didn't even have a license plate.

As the thing took off, all kinds of smart ideas went through her head, including the ever-present 911 call or doing a dial to her friends at the Boston Police Department or getting her father to come over. But she didn't think whatever was in the trunk was going to kill her. That man had already had his shot at her, so to speak: He could have easily drugged her and dragged her out the back or killed her outright with a silencer.

Letting her fingers do the walking would only lead to complications--and although the first thing she was going to do when she got home was get in touch with her father about this card, she wasn't sure she needed him to come screaming over here in a panic.

Shit, her cell phone might be tapped, too.

Hitting the remote, she released the trunk latch and slowly lifted. . . .

Frowning, she bent down and wondered if she was seeing things right. Sitting on the dark gray felt of the trunk's interior was . . . well, it appeared to be one of those Life Alert buttons that old people used, nothing but a cream-colored plastic transmitter in the shape of a triangle with the logo across the front in red. The chain it was on was silver, and long enough so that if you put it around your neck it would dangle below your heart.

She got a tissue out of her bag and picked the thing up for closer inspection; then she went around, got behind the wheel, and laid it out on the seat next to her. When she hit the ignition, she did flinch--in the event the Audi burst into flames--except her heart rate settled fast. But come on, she was an innocent bystander when it came to whatever was going on with Isaac, and she had to imagine that an American civilian on American soil was not the kind of collateral damage the U.S. government wanted to deal with.

As she drove over to Beacon Hill, she put a call in to her father, and when she got voice mail, she tried to leave a message, but what could she say given that she didn't know who was listening? She ended up deleting the fits and starts and figured he'd see the missed alert on his phone and get back in touch with her.

At home on Louisburg Square, she parked in her spot against the fence and looked around through the car windows. Who was watching her? And from where?

No wonder Isaac had been twitchy. The idea of getting from her Audi to her front door made her wish she had a Kevlar vest on.

Grabbing her purse and palming the Life Alert with the tissue, she got out and hurried over--except as she got closer to her house, she slowed. On the lantern, wrapped tightly around the base, was another strip of white cloth.

Pivoting fast, she stared up at all the brick buildings and wished she could see inside them.

She was not alone anywhere she went, was she.

As her heart got back on the Pony Express and her blood rushed through her veins and her brain, she ducked into her front door, disengaged the big alarm, and put the Life Alert on the breakfront. Dropping her bag, she quickly shut up the ADT's beeping, and then leaned out of the house only long enough to pull the cloth free.

One, two, three: she shut herself in, locked the door and reengaged the monster system--something that she never did in the daytime when she was at home.

With grim purpose, she went into the kitchen with her bag and put everything on the counter: the business card, the pieces of cloth, and the transistor. All of which she was careful to handle with a tissue.

The two sections of fabric were identical and had clearly been ripped off the same source--and she had a feeling where they were from. Isaac's muscle shirt.

What do you want to bet it was a signal that he was--

As her cell phone went off, she yelped and nearly blew out of her shoes. When she checked who it was, she answered and didn't waste time.

"Dad . . . we need to talk."

There was a silence and then Alistair Childe's patrician voice came over the connection. "Are you all right? Shall I come over?"

Cradling the phone in the crook of her shoulder, she picked up the Life Alert by the chain and watched it dangle. Clearly, she was under surveillance --so it wasn't like there was any hiding who she saw or where she went. And besides, having her father show was probably a good idea. She'd always sensed that he had serious power in high elevations, because politicians and military men alike treated him with something more than just respect: They were vaguely afraid of him, in spite the fact that he was an Ivy League-educated gentleman.

Might not hurt to throw him in the mix, and besides, there was no one else she would have gone to with this situation.

"Yes," she said. "Come now."

In the house on Pinckney Street, Isaac stared out from behind his sheet of particleboard with an urge to kill. And that burning drive wasn't in the civilian sense that he was frustrated and wanted to let that shit out in the hypothetical.

He wanted to slit Matthias open from throat to scrotum and gut him like a pig.

Motherfucker was not going after his woman.

It didn't matter what Isaac had to do or sacrifice: Grier Childe, with her good heart and her smart eyes, was not going to become a notch on Matthias's belt.

Clearly, however, she was in the guy's crosshairs. She'd taken off well over two hours ago, and she'd had the cash with her. Which should have been Isaac's cue to leave as well . . . except the black sedan that had driven by at dawn had rematerialized from an alley off Willow Street and gotten right on her bumper.

With no wheels of his own, he'd had to let them both drive away, his goddamn heart pounding with impotent rage. His first instinct was to call Jim Heron --but he still wasn't sure he could trust the guy.

The only thing he'd been able to do was replace the signal he'd tied to her lantern. Picking up a painter's hat that had been left behind, he'd put it on to cover his face and slipped out briefly to tie another piece of that muscle shirt around the iron fixture--just in case whoever was in that car hadn't seen the first one before she'd taken it away. Although that was unlikely. The question was whether the XOps method of marking a situation as clear would matter: In the field, when an assignment was finished and the team member had taken off, he always left a white mark somewhere on the premises or the vehicle or the scene.

Isaac was hoping that it would get his past and his present redirected away from Grier. But, yeah, whatever: When she'd come back home, she'd been sporting a frown so deep it was as if she were squinting, and she'd had something in her hand that she was carrying with a tissue.

Like she didn't want to get her handprints on it or smudge the ones that were there.

Then she'd removed the second mark he'd left on her lantern.

And . . . now the black sedan returned, oozing past her house, going up the street. Coming back. Parking.

"Fuck. Fuck . . ."

He wanted to break cover, march across the street, and knock on the window of that unmarked with the muzzle of his gun. Then he wanted to stare into the eyes of whoever it was while he pulled the trigger and turned the bastard's frontal lobe into a milk shake.

He had a feeling who it was, too.

He hoped that bastard's arm was feeling better.

Man, to hell with leaving Boston now; he wasn't going anywhere until he was sure Grier was out of the line of fire . . . and yet, shit, he was the one who'd put the target on her chest.

He was chewing on that little slice of happiness when a Mercedes the size of a small house drove up to her front door. No nosing around and looking for a parking spot for that bad boy; the thing stopped at the curb and stayed there, the only concession to the illegality being its flashers.

The man who got out was over six feet tall and soldier trim. His gray hair was full and combed back from a side part, and even in the fleece and workout gear, he oozed money. And what do you know, he strode up and used the lion's-head door knocker like he owned the place.

Grier's father. Had to be.

The instant she opened up, he stepped inside, and then just like that, they were shut in together and he couldn't see anything more.

Generally speaking, in a stakeout situation, you wanted to find a single perch and keep still. Moving around increased the likelihood of being spotted --especially in broad daylight in an area you weren't familiar with, when people were already looking for you.

And in his case, it wasn't just bad form to get eyeballed--it was suicide.

So as much as his body was screaming for him to get a move on, close in, change locales, he had to stay put.

Nightfall. He had to wait until nightfall, and even then, he needed to be careful. That security system of hers was a no-break sitch: His specialty was killing people, not disarming state-of-the-art wiring, so the chances of his getting in without triggering it were nil.

Assuming he even wanted inside where she lived. The issue was how to best protect her, and it was hard to know what was worse--her in there alone with him on the perimeter. Or him in there with her.

Dimly, he heard his stomach growl and the sound made him feel keenly the number of hours that had passed since he'd eaten last. But he shrugged that off, just as he had countless times in the field.

Mind over matter, mind over body . . . mind over everything.

He just wished like hell he knew what Grier and her pops were talking about.

Standing in her kitchen and staring at her father as he looked at her little lineup of what-the-hells, Grier had so many questions she didn't know where to start.

One thing was certain: When her father reached out to pick up the business card, his hand was trembling ever so slightly. Which in anybody else was the equivalent of a full-blown epileptic seizure.

Alistair Childe was a warm man with a good soul, but he rarely showed emotion of any kind. Especially if it was an upset kind of thing. The only time she'd ever seen him cry had been at her brother's funeral--which had been bizarre not just for the rarity of his tears but because the two hadn't really gotten along.

"Who gave this to you?" he asked in a voice so thin it didn't sound like him in the slightest.

Grier sat down on one of the stools at the island and wondered where to start. "I was assigned a public-defender case yesterday. . . ."

The story was a quick tell, but it got a big reaction: "You let that man come over here?"

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Yes, I did."

"Into the house."

"He's a human, Dad. Not an animal."

Her father all but fell onto the other stool and then he struggled to unzip the neck of his fleece. "Dear God . . ."

"I've resigned from the case, but I went to Isaac's apartment just now--"

"What in the world made you go there?"

Okay, she was going to ignore that outraged tone. "And that was when I was given the card and told to call if I saw Isaac again. And I also got that Life Alert thing." She shook her head. "I'd seen the man before. I swear . . . a long time ago."

If her father had been pale before, now he turned the color of fog, not just blanching, but going opaque gray. "What did he look like?"

"He had a patch over his eye and he--"

She didn't finish the description. Her father bolted up off the stool and then abruptly had to catch his balance on the counter.

"Father?" She grabbed his arm in alarm. "Are you all--"

She was not surprised when he just shook his head.

"Talk to me, please," she said. "What is going on here?"

"I can't . . . discuss it with you."

Grier dropped her hold and stepped back. "Wrong answer," she bit out. "Totally wrong answer."

As she glared at him and all his resolute silence, she realized why she'd felt so oddly comfortable around Isaac: Her father was a ghost as well. Always had been. She'd literally grown up and now lived under the fear that at any moment he could disappear forever.

And her client had given off that exact same vibe.

"You've got to talk to me," she said grimly.

"I can't." The eyes that looked at her were those of a stranger in familiar garb--as if someone had taken a mask of her father's features and stepped in behind the surface dressing to stare outward. "Even if I could . . . I couldn't bear to contaminate you with . . ."

He sagged as if bowing under a great mountain of weight.

Strange, she thought. There were definitely times as you got older when you began to see your parent as a person rather than Father or Mother. And this was one of them. The man in her kitchen was not the all-powerful lord of house and office . . . but someone who was caught in some kind of bear trap, the jaws of which were seen only by him.

"I need to go," he said roughly. "Stay here and don't let anyone in. Turn the security system on and do not answer the phone."

As he went to leave, she blocked his way to the front hall. "Unless you tell me what the hell is going on, I'm going to walk out that door the moment you leave and parade around Charles Street until I either get mowed down in traffic or am found by whatever you're so afraid of. Do not push me on this. Because I will do it."

There was a moment of glower-to-glower. And then he laughed harshly. "You are my daughter, aren't you."

"Through and through."

He started walking, doing laps around the granite-topped island.

It was time, she thought. Time to get the answers to all those questions that she'd wanted to ask about him and what he did. Time to fill the voids of mystery and shadow with tangible answers that were long overdue. God, as much as Isaac was a complication, he was almost like a blessing from above.

"Just talk, Dad. Don't be a lawyer--don't think everything through."

He stopped on the far side of the cooktop and stared over at her. "My mind is the only thing I've got, my dear."

After a moment, he returned to the stool he'd dropped onto earlier, and as he sat down, he rezipped the neck of his fleece--which was how she knew she was going to get the truth, or some measure of it: He was pulling himself back together, regaining who he was.

"When I was in the army as an officer, I served in Vietnam, as you know," he said in the direct, matter-of-fact tone that she'd heard all her life. "Then I went to law school, and I was supposed to go back to civilian life. But I didn't really get out of the military. I've never really been out."

"The people who came to the door?" she said, realizing it was the first time she'd ever spoken about them.

"It's the kind of thing that you never really leave. You can't get out." He pointed to the card. "I know that number. I've dialed that number. It takes you right into the heart . . . of the beast."

He went on to speak in general terms, offering loose description instead of clear definitions, but she filled in the blanks: It was government ninja-style, the kind of thing that justified the paranoia of conspiracy theorists, the sort of organization that you were likely to see in movie theaters and comic books, but that sane civilians didn't believe really existed.

"I don't want that"--he jabbed his finger at the card again--"anywhere near you. The idea of that . . . man . . ."

When he didn't finish, she felt compelled to point out, "You haven't really told me anything."

He shook his head. "But that's the thing--it's all I've got. I'm on the fringes, Grier. So I know just enough to be clear about the danger."

"What exactly did you do for . . . whoever `them' is?"

"Information gathering--I was strictly in intelligence. I never killed anybody." As if there were a whole murder department. "A big part of what drives the machine is information, and I have gone out and gotten it, and brought it back. I have also been called upon from time to time for my opinion on certain international figures or corporations or governments. But again, I've never killed."

She was incredibly relieved there was no blood on his hands. "Are you still involved?"

"Like I said, you're never truly out. But I haven't had an assignment in . . ." Long pause. "Two years."

Grier frowned, but before she could ask anything further, he got up and said, "Your former client is in over his head if he's gone AWOL from them. He can't save himself and you can't help him or save him, either. If that Isaac character shows up here again, call me immediately." He swept the card, the cloth strips, and the transmitter up and put them in the pocket of his fleece. "I won't let you get into this mess, Grier."

"What are you going to do with all that?"

"I'm going to make sure it is clear that you no longer represent Isaac Rothe, that you are going to have nothing to do with him, and that if you see him again, you will be contacting me directly. I will explain that you chose none of this and that you are eager to move along. And most important, I will state emphatically that you were told absolutely nothing by him. Which is the truth, isn't it?"

The hard look in his eye told her that even if that wasn't the case, she'd better be damned sure to maintain it was.

"He never said a word to me about what he'd done or why he was on the run. Not one word." As Grier watched her father sag with relief, her frustration eased up. "Dad . . ."

She went to him, slipping her arms around his waist and hugging him for a long moment.

"I'll call you in one hour," he said. "Turn the system on."

"The phone lines are tapped."

"I know."

Grier stiffened. "How long have they been?"

"Since the very beginning. Some forty years ago."

God, why was she even surprised . . . and yet the violation left a bad taste in her mouth. Like so much of this did.

After she showed him the door, she locked herself in and hit the alarm, then went into the study and peeked out the window to watch his Mercedes pull away from the curb and take off down Pinckney Street toward Charles.

When she could no longer see his taillights, she put her hand into her pocket and got out the things she'd taken from his when they'd embraced: The Life Alert and the business card and the strips of cloth had not in fact left with him.

Alistair Childe had been absolutely correct about one thing: She was nothing if not his daughter.

Which meant she wasn't going to be sidelined in this.

You're crazy, you know that, her ghostly brother said from beside her.

"Not a news flash." She glanced over at him. "I've been talking to a dead guy for the past two years."

This is serious, Grier.

She looked down at the things in her hands. "Yes. I know."

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